Read Online Sisters of Heart and Snow by Margaret Dilloway - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Margaret Dilloway
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on a big black horse, his face contorted into a scowling mask, an army behind him. The woman is in the lead.
Iâve never seen anything like this. A woman warrior, in Japan?
Another picture, the same woman. Now her horse leaps, her dark hair flows in a banner behind her, as if the hair itself is the battle standard. A Mona Lisaâlike half smile tugs her lips. A man cowers below her, a severed head, drawn in gruesome detail, rolls off a body and under the horse. I gasp.
And another, this one depicting the samurai woman kneeling at what seems to be some kind of ceremony. A long low table, laden with food, is behind her. A smaller woman, in a rich-looking kimono, kneels beside the samurai. She holds her hand out to the warrior, and the warrior reaches toward her.
âOh yeah,â Drew says, her voice loud. âI remember this now.â
âNow? Just now?â A twinge of annoyance. Why didnât Mom show this to me?
Drew shrugs. âI didnât really think of it as a book. Itâs bound like a photo album. I donât know. I didnât remember.â She traces the samurai woman with the tips of her fingers.
âDid Mom tell you the story? Whatâs it say? Who are these women?â My pulse pounds hard. Below the women, in faint pencil, so light against the color of the paper that I can barely see it, my mother has written our names.
Rachel.
Drew.
I hear her small, high-pitched voice as clearly as if sheâs in the room. My diaphragm contracts sharply, without my cooperation, hurting my ribs.
Our mother is not a warrior. She isâwasâthe opposite. If there was anyone who fit the stereotype of a passive Asian woman, itâs Hikari Snow. She sat in the backseat if we had a male guest. Never questioned our father, no matter what outrageous thing heâd done. She had our fatherâs dinner ready and his laundry done without his asking. Once sheâd even left Drewâs school concert early so she could switch the wash into the dryer. I couldnât count the times she blindly accepted things my father wanted, even if they adversely affected her. Or me.
Growing up, when people asked about my parents, the way people do with their half-masked nosiness after they observe that my momâs Asian, Iâve always given them the plainest vanilla answers. These days people probably wouldnât care, but back then they still did. âYes, she speaks English. Yes, sheâs a citizen.â The most unusual thing Iâve let out is that Mom came over in the 1970s to marry my father. âWas he in the military?â they always ask next.
âThey met through business,â I answer, leaving out a word. They met through
a
business.
I never tell the interesting part of the story, the thing that would make their jaws drop. Only Tom knows. None of Tomâs family or my best friends or even my children know this part.
My mother, Hikari Snow, was a thirty-three-year-old secretary working a dead-end job in Tokyo in the early 1970s when she submitted her photo and biography to a mail-order-bride catalog called
Satsuma Blossoms
. Just like the picture brides of the turn of the century, ordered by Japanese men working in Hawaii and California, Hikari wanted to get out of Japan but had no means to do so besides offering herself up for marriage to a stranger.
My father, Killian, a divorced businessman older by sixteen years, was charmed by Hikariâs mastery of English and her orphan status. No pesky family matters tying her to home. He promised her a life without want, where she wouldnât have to live in a filthy third-floor walk-up with four other women. Where she wouldnât have to decide between paying rent or buying food. In return, he imagined heâd get a supplicant wife whoâd bear children and keep house. Which he mostly got.
âJust tell people I met your mother in Japan when I was there on business,â my father told me when I was
Iâve never seen anything like this. A woman warrior, in Japan?
Another picture, the same woman. Now her horse leaps, her dark hair flows in a banner behind her, as if the hair itself is the battle standard. A Mona Lisaâlike half smile tugs her lips. A man cowers below her, a severed head, drawn in gruesome detail, rolls off a body and under the horse. I gasp.
And another, this one depicting the samurai woman kneeling at what seems to be some kind of ceremony. A long low table, laden with food, is behind her. A smaller woman, in a rich-looking kimono, kneels beside the samurai. She holds her hand out to the warrior, and the warrior reaches toward her.
âOh yeah,â Drew says, her voice loud. âI remember this now.â
âNow? Just now?â A twinge of annoyance. Why didnât Mom show this to me?
Drew shrugs. âI didnât really think of it as a book. Itâs bound like a photo album. I donât know. I didnât remember.â She traces the samurai woman with the tips of her fingers.
âDid Mom tell you the story? Whatâs it say? Who are these women?â My pulse pounds hard. Below the women, in faint pencil, so light against the color of the paper that I can barely see it, my mother has written our names.
Rachel.
Drew.
I hear her small, high-pitched voice as clearly as if sheâs in the room. My diaphragm contracts sharply, without my cooperation, hurting my ribs.
Our mother is not a warrior. She isâwasâthe opposite. If there was anyone who fit the stereotype of a passive Asian woman, itâs Hikari Snow. She sat in the backseat if we had a male guest. Never questioned our father, no matter what outrageous thing heâd done. She had our fatherâs dinner ready and his laundry done without his asking. Once sheâd even left Drewâs school concert early so she could switch the wash into the dryer. I couldnât count the times she blindly accepted things my father wanted, even if they adversely affected her. Or me.
Growing up, when people asked about my parents, the way people do with their half-masked nosiness after they observe that my momâs Asian, Iâve always given them the plainest vanilla answers. These days people probably wouldnât care, but back then they still did. âYes, she speaks English. Yes, sheâs a citizen.â The most unusual thing Iâve let out is that Mom came over in the 1970s to marry my father. âWas he in the military?â they always ask next.
âThey met through business,â I answer, leaving out a word. They met through
a
business.
I never tell the interesting part of the story, the thing that would make their jaws drop. Only Tom knows. None of Tomâs family or my best friends or even my children know this part.
My mother, Hikari Snow, was a thirty-three-year-old secretary working a dead-end job in Tokyo in the early 1970s when she submitted her photo and biography to a mail-order-bride catalog called
Satsuma Blossoms
. Just like the picture brides of the turn of the century, ordered by Japanese men working in Hawaii and California, Hikari wanted to get out of Japan but had no means to do so besides offering herself up for marriage to a stranger.
My father, Killian, a divorced businessman older by sixteen years, was charmed by Hikariâs mastery of English and her orphan status. No pesky family matters tying her to home. He promised her a life without want, where she wouldnât have to live in a filthy third-floor walk-up with four other women. Where she wouldnât have to decide between paying rent or buying food. In return, he imagined heâd get a supplicant wife whoâd bear children and keep house. Which he mostly got.
âJust tell people I met your mother in Japan when I was there on business,â my father told me when I was
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