Momoko seemed to lack.
“I’m filled with rage!” said Momoko loudly. Baring her teeth, she pulled at her hair. “I’m going to kill myself!”
Yashiko clapped with approval and anticipation.
“Excellent! Let it all out!” said Sarah. “Get all your feelings out of your system!”
Momoko stood at a loss, unsure how to improve on what she had already done.
Sarah came to her aid. “But first,” she said, “you’ll need love! Let me give you a hug.” With both arms, she folded Momoko in a tight embrace. The daring physicality of this move drew little shrieks of nervous laughter. Now the game was really under way.
“Pretend you’re chewing gum!” cried Yashiko, recalling one of their previous games. “With your mouth wide open!”
Amid their cries of laughter, Sarah became aware of an urgently hissed “Kora! Kora!” coming from the balcony. It was Mrs. Asaki. Sarah looked up, and for a fleeting instant she caught a look of revulsion in the old woman’s eyes, a look that pierced her to the quick.
She understood instantly that their physical antics were in bad taste. It didn’t matter that she had been mocking these foreign mannerisms in a spirit of Japanese solidarity; her great-aunt would only see that it was an unsavory influence on her cousins. Now Mrs. Asaki would probably talk to her granddaughters in private, explaining that Big Sister came from a “different world” and they mustn’t imitate everything she did. Sarah had grown up listening to Granny Asaki’s talks; she and her cousins had been constantly warned not to imitate the slang used by children from the weaving district, or the precocious mannerisms of child stars on television. “It’s fine for those people,” Mrs. Asaki would say, “but our family has different standards.” All of this flashed through the girl’s mind, and her face burned with humiliation.
By now, they had all stopped playing and were looking up at the balcony. Smiling benevolently, the old woman placed her forefinger to her lips as if noise had been her only concern. Then she gave a little wave and turned away.
Had Sarah imagined that steely look? No. It had been there.
For the first time, she felt the start of a slow-rising anger: against Mrs. Asaki, and against these children who had to be so carefully protected from her crass influence.
chapter 14
Still in shock, Sarah followed her cousins into the Kobayashi house. At the sound of the kitchen door rolling open, Mrs. Kobayashi and Mrs. Rexford looked up from the low dining table where they sat doing sums on scraps of paper. From their guilty expressions, Sarah guessed they had been making financial calculations. In this period of rising yen, the vacation money that Mrs. Rexford had recently converted was increasing in value. And Mrs. Kobayashi’s stock investments, which she secretly funded with part of her household budget, were rising as well. These days, a good many Japanese housewives indulged in financial speculation for pocket money. But they were discreet about it, for such activities were not becoming to a lady.
“Girls! Why don’t you go over to the snack shop and get yourselves some ice cream,” said Mrs. Rexford. “We need a little privacy to discuss adult matters.” She stood up, rummaged in a cupboard drawer, and gave them a handful of loose change.
“What’s wrong, Big Sister?” Momoko asked as they walked over to Mrs. Yagi’s snack shop.
“Nothing,” Sarah replied shortly.
They ate their ice cream sitting outside in public, on a wooden bench set up next to the snack shop. They had purchased the new ice cream phenomenon, Jewelry Box, currently advertised on television. It was a single-serving container of vanilla ice cream, in which “jewels” were embedded: shards of colored ice in red and blue and yellow and green.
The afternoon street was deserted, with cicadas droning in full force. The girls scraped carefully with their wooden spoons. “Look,” said Momoko. “I got a red diamond!”
“I got a green one!” said Yashiko.
As Sarah’s shock wore off, her anger grew. She itched to strike back at Mrs. Asaki, who overprotected her grandchildren at the expense of another child’s feelings. And those grandchildren weren’t even hers!
Yashiko left the bench and wandered away to examine an anthill.
“She really likes bugs,” Momoko remarked. “She says she’s going to be a scientist when she grows up.”
Sarah turned to face Momoko. The gathering force of her feelings flickered into a flame of intention.
“You know what?” she said. “I bet you didn’t know that Granny Asaki isn’t your real grandmother.” After so many weeks of vigilance it