Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax

Author:Andromeda Romano-Lax
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-04-02T21:51:50+00:00

13 Sayoko

“Sayoko-san.”

She heard the voice and saw the eye slits pulsing dimly behind Hiro’s transparent visor. He was crouched at her bedside, head angled close to hers.

“Is everything all right?”

“Excuse me, but no.”

Hiro had woken her up, and this time not with the wails of a colicky newborn, but with the worried sighs of a confused adolescent, if that’s what he was now: anxious, sensitive to rejection, glumly fascinated by the pleasures and lies of adulthood.

“Did something happen?”

He did not answer. She knew that he was withholding, trying to work something out, trying to avoid worrying her as well.

“You never finished your story, about Daisuke.”

“It’s too late. Another day.”

“But you may forget.”

She hesitated before answering. “I don’t think so. My mind is feeling sharper.”

She could make out his silhouette, shifting as he settled back onto his heels. He did not withdraw to the corner of the room.

After a while, he said, “They always come for the stranger, don’t they? The hunters came for Daisuke.”

“Eh?” She was too old for these long nights.

“They felt they must remove the threat, the one who was different.”

“No, no, it didn’t happen like that.” She yawned, eyes closed, and just as she opened them again, she saw his slits dim and brighten again, mirroring her as closely as his design would allow.

“He was safe, then.”

“No,” she said.

“When I ran away into the park, you did not feel I was safe.”

“That’s true.” She felt tranquil slumber retreating just beyond reach.

“Because I am a stranger, and different, and not safe,” Hiro said. “Like Daisuke. But you protected him.”

“That’s right.” Sayoko thought this would be enough. She thought he would, at last, go into sleep mode.

“But it wasn’t enough to keep him safe.”

“Well, no.”

“Did he have a long life?”

“No, regretfully. But—”

“But?”

“But I cannot say that he did not have a good life. Long is not always good, and short is not always bad. It is only short.”

She had begun to tell the story that first night merely to comfort him when he wailed. She had continued it to hold fast to the memories. Sharing was useful, still—it brought forth images, words and pictures nearly forgotten.

But there was something else, and it was more urgent: the need to continue Hiro’s development. Happy endings did not teach everything that a developing mind must learn. Sad endings did not impart everything that was true and beautiful about the world. The only story that seemed true was one that had no simple and definite end, one that kept going, like the seasons themselves: bright winter followed by plum rains followed by typhoon season followed, at long last, by bright winter again. The problem with her life was that the rains, for her, had been so long—decades long. Whether something good might come of enduring was not yet certain.

But she was sheltering Hiro too much from the facts of this world.

As she had protected her son by refusing to share anything that might stop him from fitting in as a young man, that would damage his career at middle age, that would make him think less of his family.

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