Arashi
All Rivers
Laughing, she raised her hands in am intricate dance plucking the strings mercilessly. Crescendos, peaks, rising to the fevered pitch of her music. She had no need of the music being written on paper. The music came freely from her hands. She could hear the sounds of joy around her as her friends and family danced to her melody. Music. It was her talent. Her joy. Her savior from the mundane. As the song came to end, applause lit the entire room and joyfully Chihiro bowed three times and retired back to her seat besides her mother.
Yuko, once a very beautiful woman, still had her youthful smooth complexion but years of dealing with her husband made her a great more wary looking than a typical woman of her age should have been. Akio, still stout and goofy, toasted loudly and a bit drunkenly spilling half the good sake on the table cloth and his suit while his wife dabbed at her husbands clothing with a napkin. The marriage was not what one would call fairy tale. In actuality, the marriage was never "magical". Yuko stopped trying to clean the sake stain and simply sat back in her seat, smoothing her gown as she did. It was expensive. More expensive than she would have liked it to have been. She bought it with Chihiro on a mother daughter shopping trip. It was Chihiro who found it and Chihiro who convinced her to buy it. All Chihiro.
Sipping delicately at her own sake, Yuko stole a glance at her daughter who was glowing under the praise and her own success. Her mouth was parted and watching her father with a politely interested expression. The mother chuckled to herself. Her husband was never a great speaker and Chihiro could not hide her emotions from her own mother. While Chihiro's two beautiful eyes were trained on her father, her hands were gently strumming a ballad on her biwa.
Yuko savored the moment, closing her eyes. She loved this kind of music best. Slow and calm. The music was best described as two oars, rowed by a strong man in deep waters. Her father was a fisherman in Okinawa and her Yuko's mother too grew up by the great seas of Japan. In that way, there was never a month in Yuko's childhood when she did not feel salt water on her ankles whether she was rushing to meet her father on the docks her playing with her mother's nieces by the muddy banks. Her studies were average at best and at worst, horrendous. Luckily for Yuko, her mother was a traditional woman whose expectations of Yuko only involved marriage and children.
She found her love in a local man with whom she had played with since childhood, whom her mother had known from birth. Her father was good friends with his and it seemed the perfect match. For this man, she was willing to forsake her dreams of leaving the village. For him she would do anything. She was content in being the mother of his children and to wait for him to come home every night. Her mother laughed with joy at their engagement. Her father toasted to them at almost every meal. The two families were so happy. But life and work went on. Yuko was only sixteen, a high school drop out who stayed at home with the endless chores and learning to be a proper wife. Her fiancée went out to sea every morning and she would be there before he left every day with his lunch packed neatly in a bento box. "My darling. My angel", he called her when he slipped a simple silver ring on her finger. Plain, elegant and the best he could do. This money, he sweated and labored for. She loved it. She would let him kiss her cheek and he would whisper, "Wait for me." And she would set the table for him every night and she would wait. And wait. And he would come home to her and they would laugh and eat and love. One night she waited and waited. But he did not come back.
They said the storm devoured him like a child devoured candy. In one gulp, there was no trace left!
They sent her to the nearest city to revive her spirits and it was there that she met Akio. In those days, Akio was a promising young man who was never handsome but certainly attractive in his own way. His laughter and cheer was a good change from her father's quiet speech which was as slow and languid as the sea. His voice and nature distracted her from her memories of her first love's rough, but tender hands and gently considerate eyes. He was a worker in one of those typical offices and he boldly told her that he found her attractive the say he met her. Again, a change from her dead lover's slow awakening of his own emotions and eventual romantic and beautiful confession. He made love to her quickly, grunting and heaving above her. She felt next to nothing but let him do as he would while beneath him, she remembered faintly a warm, wanting voice and that beautiful slow build up to ecstasy in which both of them would lose their inhibitions and find only each other.
But he was a man and she was lonely. So when he told her he would marry her presenting to her an expensive but cheesy ring, she put aside her old one and accepted her fate. She took him home to meet her parents.
Her father was pleased with the match, happy to watch his only child taken care of and able to finally leave their little fishing town to the suburbs. Her mother had taken one look at the boisterous man who was her son-in-law and knew what kind of match her daughter made even if her daughter hadn't. Her mother did not truly approve, or even acknowledge the marriage, until Chihiro was born, a daughter, a woman, worthless to so many but to their home, she was a tiny miracle.
Yuko's father arrived at the hospital with an old tea set that had been the family best. Yuko used to admire it when she thought no one was looking, lifting each cup from the box and holding it to the light to see the painted orchids. The set was leftover from her mother's family who had once been wealthy but reduced to almost nothing when their home was destroyed in a floor. One year, the sea rose high above the normal ride line. The inhabitants barely had time to grab their children none the less a tea set. Luckily, Yuko's mother, who had always been afflicted with some illness or another, had been staying with relatives in another village with better weather for her health. The woman had taken with her a few treasured items she did not wish to be parted with. Symbol. A symbol of a better life than a fisherman's daughter. Than living in a small village that stank of the sea.
She remembered her mother, dressed in a clean, brown kimono catching her holding the forbidden tea cups in her hands. Her mother's shrill voice shocked the little girl who dropped two of the cups that hit the tatami with a clear sound. PANG. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The beautiful cup which she had admired and put so much hope it chipped. She had cried in shame and fear, expecting a good slap. Her mother, however, had simply put her hands around her and held the cup in her hands and mused, "Such beautiful things are for those who have no burdens. You see? Now it is fit for our house." Yuko cried harder. Her mother put the tea set back in the box and left her daughter to her tears.
Her mother had also presented a gift. But not to the couple. She held the clumsy Akio in contempt and her wishy-washy daughter was a disappointment. But the pretty little Cherub that was Chihiro was her joy and pride. In a small box, Yuko found a small girl's outfit complete with pretty pink shoes. Her mother insisted that Chihiro would grow into them.
A few months later, Yuko's father, who now did not need to fish for a living but merely went out on his boat for pleasure was lost at sea, Yuko's mother went to live with them. Her strong clear eyes were clouded and joyless. She had married at nineteen and had born Yuko at two and twenty. She was forty four.
She claimed that she saw the tempest rise above her head and consume her husband. She would never see the sea again.
Yuko had just started work at a nearby factory so the widow stayed at home with the baby. In that way, she began to live again. She cherished Chihiro and in her she put all her hopes and all her fears. "Do not take this child near the sea. It will swallow her as it did you father." The woman's words were spoken out of paranoia and years of depression but nonetheless, the couple never took the toddler to the beach as she requested. It did not matter.
And Yuko remembered a different river. A different boat. She could hear the water slowly bob up and down and the boat parting the waves in a lulling motion. She could still feel the stickiness of her skin and the sweetness of a toddlers flesh in her arms. Her beautiful Chihiro, safe in her lap. Not the sea as her mother had warned. It was a river. A river that had almost taken her daughter. A family vacation to the water. She has missed it, Yuko realized. The stench of the sea had become all but a faint perfume and her husband's youth and energy was tiresome and juvenile.
But she had Chihiro. A daughter borne of desperation to add life to her existence dressed in a small pink dress and tiny pink shoes. She had tried hard not to cry at the comforting rocking motion of the boat. She relived her own girlhood sitting in that little motorboat with her husband awkwardly trying to get comfortable. She could almost feel her first love's breath on her neck and arms about her waist. In that one moment of nostalgia, her husband lifted the little girl into his arms, and in that one moment of impulsiveness, her daughter fell into the water.
Yuko had tried to jump in after her but her husband held on to her tight. The police searched for hours and found no trace of the baby. They thought she was lost. Until hours and hours later, they found her sitting by herself on the shore. She was missing a shoe.
The expression on her daughter's face was strange and eerie. A look of extreme concentration and wisdom. Her eyes were trained into the water and in one chubby hand she held a handful of wet sand. She did not move. Yuko followed her daughter's gaze into the water and for one moment, one second, saw a pair of dragon eyes staring back at her. Powerful and accusing. Why did she not watch her daughter better? Why did she ever let her daughter go? But than it was gone, and the eyes disappeared with a flash of brilliant white. And than there was nothing but the river and its impenetrable color of blue. Hysterical and overjoyed, she lifted the toddler into her arms calling to her husband. Chihiro was safe. But she noticed than that the strange look was still plastered on her daughter's face.
Then Yuko's mother got the news of the events of that day, she slapped her daughter and snatched the baby girl out of her arms, cradling it and weeping. Her hopes and dreams could have been lost in one powerful wave of the river. It was that day that she presented the toddler with the biwa. Yuko's grandmothers own biwa which Yuko's mother taught to Chihiro with surprising gentleness and patience.
All rivers lead to the sea. That was the crux of it wasn't it.
Chihiro. She had given birth to the girl out of selfishness. She never knew what a blessing a daughter could be. It was Chihiro who held her during her mother's funeral service and Chihiro who had given the speech of remembrance. Chihiro had cooked and cleaned the house with an eerily expert care for a twelve year old while Yoko lay in bed squeezing tears into her handkerchief. Chihiro's grandmother left her a good sum of money and all her possessions as well as an old set of Japanese instruments. Including the biwa.
But she remembered with sharp clarity the day before her mother's death, she smelled suspiciously like salt and before the old woman collapsed, she had cried out, "Tsunami!"
Yuko has lain, alone and helpless with her grief, on her bed as her husband paced outside the room, nervous and unsure. It was that moment when her daughter went into the room and began to play. The biwa. It soothed her soul. It soothed her heart. The music sounded like the great sea of her childhood. Her father's monotonous, throbbing voice. The languid fluidity of her mother's hands. The repetitive tempo of the sea washing up to shore and coming onto her bare feet. Her tears went into her mouth and she tasted the salty liquid. That one song was enough to transport her two decades past. Her empty stomach suddenly felt very full and health poured out of her body. That's when she realized that Chihiro was glowing. Literally. It was not the first nor the last time Yuko would ever question the power of her daughter. She had seemed magical and wraithlike and Yuko fell into a deep dreamless sleep. When she awakened, Chihiro was snuggled beside her holding the biwa in her arms. The Chihiro who took charge and comforted, the Chihiro who cleaned and cooked was not her daughter, she realized with horror. Those motions Chihiro used were like Yuko's mother and always Yuko would believe that that night, it was her mother who comforted her using Chihiro as an earthly vessel. She awakened the tiny little girl who started from her mother in alarm shoving the biwa away from her own body in fear. She refused to touch it and withdrew into her own world of childish practicality and cowardice.
Chihiro became bratty and uncontrollable. She made friends easily enough but unfortunately made enemies twice as quickly. Her cleverness knew no bounds and her intuition was nearly always correct. When Akio's company relocated him, Chihiro had seemed totally unmoved. Yuko had expected tears and tirades of fury. But Chihiro obliged her and packed her things. So she was normal but not really normal. Yuko was used to her tiny voice telling her how to do things, small things, like not buying too much of this vegetable because it would "obviously" rot before all of it was eaten. Or not buy a dress because the material would "fall apart easily". She had bought the dress anyways despite her daughter's warning hoping to wear it on the day of the move as a sign of her new life in a new town but sure enough, after three washings, the threads broke loose and the gown split into pieces.
She ended up wearing her normal everyday outfit. Opting for her special gold earrings. Chihiro had said nothing but merely sulked and soaked up the sun in the backseat. Yuko had told her to wear a seat belt, but Chihiro ignored her and lay on her back examining the flowers her friend had given to her. Such pretty blossoms. Chihiro was fascinated by them. Whether she was fascinated with her friend's sentiment or with the flowers themselves, she would never know. Before the trip Chihiro's little voice chirped to them to "write down the directions and not let Daddy drive like a chicken". They ignored her. She resisted the urge to slap her daughter's face as her own mother would surely have done when she was a girl. Who was this little idiot to tell her what to do all the time? A flash of resentment went through her body. And unbearable pain. She wanted to be rebellious and not listen to Chihiro because in some twisted way, Chihiro reminded Yuko of her own mother and so when she told them not to go in through the tunnel, they ignored her. The action itself was done out of pent of up frustration. But then she felt the warm press of her daughter's hand on her arm and she realized that Chihiro for al her wisdom was still a little girl, overly cautious and presumptuous in her manners. She still needed a mother and Yuko felt ashamed at her horrible thoughts. Her husband, a self declared out doors man, seemed to enjoy the meadows that ran on the other side of the tunnel but Yuko was afraid of the strange staring statues. Chihiro looked just as afraid trying to pull them back. Then something very strange happened. For one blurred moment, Yuko smelled something more delicious than anything in the world. She wanted to follow it and eat and eat until she grew fat and grotesque but sated. And than the next moment, she realized with a panic that her daughter was missing. Fighting to hold down the nausea, she looked about the meadow. At that minute, she was so sorry. For selfishness. For lost hope. For a lifetime wasted. For her mother. For everything. And then she saw a glimpse of a familiar bobbing brown ponytail. It was Chihiro. Relief swept over her. Relief and love. That was when she began to love her daughter. But it would not do to hug the girl and kiss her cheek here. Why, she was only gone for a moment! Instead she gave her daughter a stern but half meant reprimand for running off and started for the tunnel. They walked out together into the strange forest again to find new car rusted and covered with moss. Her husband's four wheel drive, pride and joy, rusted and ruined. Akio's confusion reflected onto her own face and she looked to her daughter. Chihiro's face. It was so old. So wistful. So silent. Something had happened in that one moment. Something strange and unknown that let her daughter age a lifetime. She and her husband cleared away the plant life on the car which barely started up. It was as if the car had aged decades.
As their car left the forest behind, it seemed to get younger and younger until the ride was as smooth as it was when they first bought it. Akio finally relented to ask for direction once they got out of the forest, yelling his questions at a half deaf local through an open window. They reached their new home in good time and as Akio's stepped out of the car, he gasped. Yuko rushed out too and to her shock, the rusted and destroyed car once again looked like new. Again, Chihiro said nothing.
They spent the rest of the day unpacking and cleaning. She left Chihiro to her own room and her own devices. After putting away the silverware, Yuko lay on the covered sofa too tired to think. And then she heard it. A faint lovely sound.
She followed it to her daughter's room. She was strumming the biwa. From that day on, her daughter seemed to grow out of her strange shell. She was never to be a great beauty but she was most definitely striking with her grandmother's exquisiteness, her grandfather's insight, her father's friendliness and liveliness as well as clumsiness but oddly transformed so that her missteps and lack of balance made her seem more attainable and vulnerable as well as extremely being endearing. Her studies were never going to be perfect but they were most definitely high above average and her ability to grasp concepts made her popular and well liked. She was everything Yuko had hoped to be herself. But still, part of her still wished that Chihiro was the daughter of her first fiancée whom she loved all her life and not the child of Akio who she did not love at first but grew to love over years together.
As Yuko wandered more and more into her thoughts, her grip on her wine glass loosened and slipped from her fingers. Something flashed beneath her eyes and she realized that Chihiro had caught the glass. Some sake still spilled on the floor and Chihiro cleaned it up with a napkin.
She did not even look at her mother but went back to playing her little songs. Although Chihiro had every reason to be happy, Yuko sometimes caught a faraway look in her eyes that was all too familiar to her. "Wait for me" he had said and when he did not come back, her once clear eyes clouded and dulled with pain. Over the years, the sharp pain became deadened and throbbing eventually becoming emptiness, regret and disappointment. And so she understood her daughter the same way her mother understood her. With strange half understood glimpses of emotions and experiences but never really wanting to know everything.
She could have left this family years ago and she never did. She made a decision and she stuck to it now. She owed her family that much. Tonight was her second wedding to the man who had taken care of her as best as he knew how. He was not perfect and he was not a poet but he was her husband and she was their daughter.
She was awakened from her thoughts again but her husbands booming voice "Come come! Another song! Another one!" "Yes another one!" "One more!" the crowd echoed and Chihiro gave a shy modest smile before stepping up to the stage again. As her melody uplifted the souls of the multitude, she felt her own soul dip deeper and deeper into her heart but it was her heart she put into the music.
Yuko proudly watched as her daughter showed off her skills as well as her manners before her peers startling only at someone's hand on her shoulder. It belonged to a very well dressed woman perhaps in her early thirties. She was so beautiful that Yuko almost had to draw back. But the woman seemed to expect that and bowed before her. "I congratulate you on your marriage Ogino-San." Yuko polite stood and bowed back. "I thank you for your kind words. Please sit." The woman sat in Chihiro's unoccupied seat and watched Chihiro with hooded, hungry eyes. "Your daughter. She is gifted and beautiful both." Again, Yuko bowed her head respectfully trying to figure out who this woman was.
"Again, I thank you but I am sorry I do not recall meeting such a kind person."
The woman smiled matronly. A strange look on such a young face. "I was the friend of Sato Yuriko and Sato Aika."
Yuko gaped at her. "Why, Sato Yuriko was my grandmother. My mother's mother and Aika was my mother."
"I know." the woman answered without lifting her eyes off Chihiro.
"But Sato Yuriko died long ago and you look so young."
"Do I?" the woman pondered. "You are kind."
They were silent for a moment before the woman rose to her feet. "You love your family despite it all don't you?"
Yuko was shocked. "Why of course!" she exclaimed.
The woman seemed to be satisfied with that answer. "But you long for the past that can no longer be yours and always you will be bitter and cold."
Yuko bowed her head in shame. "But truly. I love my family."
The woman nodded absently. "There will be a time Ogino-San when you must decide what is important to you."
Again silence. "You daughter, Ogino-San, she has Yuriko's face and Aika's talent."
"Mother played the biwa?" asked Yuko.
"Aika played beautifully before the fall of her family. She was bred to be a lady and that I taught her. When the sea destroyed everything she held dear, all she had was a half-insane woman for a mother and her fingers. She watched her family perish in the water along with her home. For years, she wove, sewed and played for money. I suppose after she married she never played again. She never forgave herself for cheapening music so but one must do as they must and she kept herself from begging as she would."
"My mother was proud to be married to my father."
"Was she?"
Yuko practically shook with anger. How dare this woman just walk in and start insulting her mother.
"It matters not." the woman yawned. "I did what I could for her but she wasted away anyways. She did not take my offer. I suppose I should never have made it an option."
"What?"
"Oh. Nothing you should be concerned about now. Chihiro. She has the light. Potential."
"Did my mother?"
The woman's face was tender than and so old looking. She turned Yuko's face up. "In the old days, a woman was measured by her mother's family even more so than her father's. Your line is very old, girl. Chisato, Esa, Ginko, Yuriko, Aika and so many before them. Aika had the same hope in her and so did you. Hers was snatched from her, child. I sympathize with her. But you. You threw away any power you had years ago. Willingly. I can not allow you to take Chihiro."
The woman's eyes.
Were like a storm on the sea.
:: " Do not take this child near the sea. It will swallow her as it did you father." :: "What? Wait!" cried Yuko as the woman began walking towards Chihiro like a hurricane, and all parted in her wake.
All Rivers
Laughing, she raised her hands in am intricate dance plucking the strings mercilessly. Crescendos, peaks, rising to the fevered pitch of her music. She had no need of the music being written on paper. The music came freely from her hands. She could hear the sounds of joy around her as her friends and family danced to her melody. Music. It was her talent. Her joy. Her savior from the mundane. As the song came to end, applause lit the entire room and joyfully Chihiro bowed three times and retired back to her seat besides her mother.
Yuko, once a very beautiful woman, still had her youthful smooth complexion but years of dealing with her husband made her a great more wary looking than a typical woman of her age should have been. Akio, still stout and goofy, toasted loudly and a bit drunkenly spilling half the good sake on the table cloth and his suit while his wife dabbed at her husbands clothing with a napkin. The marriage was not what one would call fairy tale. In actuality, the marriage was never "magical". Yuko stopped trying to clean the sake stain and simply sat back in her seat, smoothing her gown as she did. It was expensive. More expensive than she would have liked it to have been. She bought it with Chihiro on a mother daughter shopping trip. It was Chihiro who found it and Chihiro who convinced her to buy it. All Chihiro.
Sipping delicately at her own sake, Yuko stole a glance at her daughter who was glowing under the praise and her own success. Her mouth was parted and watching her father with a politely interested expression. The mother chuckled to herself. Her husband was never a great speaker and Chihiro could not hide her emotions from her own mother. While Chihiro's two beautiful eyes were trained on her father, her hands were gently strumming a ballad on her biwa.
Yuko savored the moment, closing her eyes. She loved this kind of music best. Slow and calm. The music was best described as two oars, rowed by a strong man in deep waters. Her father was a fisherman in Okinawa and her Yuko's mother too grew up by the great seas of Japan. In that way, there was never a month in Yuko's childhood when she did not feel salt water on her ankles whether she was rushing to meet her father on the docks her playing with her mother's nieces by the muddy banks. Her studies were average at best and at worst, horrendous. Luckily for Yuko, her mother was a traditional woman whose expectations of Yuko only involved marriage and children.
She found her love in a local man with whom she had played with since childhood, whom her mother had known from birth. Her father was good friends with his and it seemed the perfect match. For this man, she was willing to forsake her dreams of leaving the village. For him she would do anything. She was content in being the mother of his children and to wait for him to come home every night. Her mother laughed with joy at their engagement. Her father toasted to them at almost every meal. The two families were so happy. But life and work went on. Yuko was only sixteen, a high school drop out who stayed at home with the endless chores and learning to be a proper wife. Her fiancée went out to sea every morning and she would be there before he left every day with his lunch packed neatly in a bento box. "My darling. My angel", he called her when he slipped a simple silver ring on her finger. Plain, elegant and the best he could do. This money, he sweated and labored for. She loved it. She would let him kiss her cheek and he would whisper, "Wait for me." And she would set the table for him every night and she would wait. And wait. And he would come home to her and they would laugh and eat and love. One night she waited and waited. But he did not come back.
They said the storm devoured him like a child devoured candy. In one gulp, there was no trace left!
They sent her to the nearest city to revive her spirits and it was there that she met Akio. In those days, Akio was a promising young man who was never handsome but certainly attractive in his own way. His laughter and cheer was a good change from her father's quiet speech which was as slow and languid as the sea. His voice and nature distracted her from her memories of her first love's rough, but tender hands and gently considerate eyes. He was a worker in one of those typical offices and he boldly told her that he found her attractive the say he met her. Again, a change from her dead lover's slow awakening of his own emotions and eventual romantic and beautiful confession. He made love to her quickly, grunting and heaving above her. She felt next to nothing but let him do as he would while beneath him, she remembered faintly a warm, wanting voice and that beautiful slow build up to ecstasy in which both of them would lose their inhibitions and find only each other.
But he was a man and she was lonely. So when he told her he would marry her presenting to her an expensive but cheesy ring, she put aside her old one and accepted her fate. She took him home to meet her parents.
Her father was pleased with the match, happy to watch his only child taken care of and able to finally leave their little fishing town to the suburbs. Her mother had taken one look at the boisterous man who was her son-in-law and knew what kind of match her daughter made even if her daughter hadn't. Her mother did not truly approve, or even acknowledge the marriage, until Chihiro was born, a daughter, a woman, worthless to so many but to their home, she was a tiny miracle.
Yuko's father arrived at the hospital with an old tea set that had been the family best. Yuko used to admire it when she thought no one was looking, lifting each cup from the box and holding it to the light to see the painted orchids. The set was leftover from her mother's family who had once been wealthy but reduced to almost nothing when their home was destroyed in a floor. One year, the sea rose high above the normal ride line. The inhabitants barely had time to grab their children none the less a tea set. Luckily, Yuko's mother, who had always been afflicted with some illness or another, had been staying with relatives in another village with better weather for her health. The woman had taken with her a few treasured items she did not wish to be parted with. Symbol. A symbol of a better life than a fisherman's daughter. Than living in a small village that stank of the sea.
She remembered her mother, dressed in a clean, brown kimono catching her holding the forbidden tea cups in her hands. Her mother's shrill voice shocked the little girl who dropped two of the cups that hit the tatami with a clear sound. PANG. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The beautiful cup which she had admired and put so much hope it chipped. She had cried in shame and fear, expecting a good slap. Her mother, however, had simply put her hands around her and held the cup in her hands and mused, "Such beautiful things are for those who have no burdens. You see? Now it is fit for our house." Yuko cried harder. Her mother put the tea set back in the box and left her daughter to her tears.
Her mother had also presented a gift. But not to the couple. She held the clumsy Akio in contempt and her wishy-washy daughter was a disappointment. But the pretty little Cherub that was Chihiro was her joy and pride. In a small box, Yuko found a small girl's outfit complete with pretty pink shoes. Her mother insisted that Chihiro would grow into them.
A few months later, Yuko's father, who now did not need to fish for a living but merely went out on his boat for pleasure was lost at sea, Yuko's mother went to live with them. Her strong clear eyes were clouded and joyless. She had married at nineteen and had born Yuko at two and twenty. She was forty four.
She claimed that she saw the tempest rise above her head and consume her husband. She would never see the sea again.
Yuko had just started work at a nearby factory so the widow stayed at home with the baby. In that way, she began to live again. She cherished Chihiro and in her she put all her hopes and all her fears. "Do not take this child near the sea. It will swallow her as it did you father." The woman's words were spoken out of paranoia and years of depression but nonetheless, the couple never took the toddler to the beach as she requested. It did not matter.
And Yuko remembered a different river. A different boat. She could hear the water slowly bob up and down and the boat parting the waves in a lulling motion. She could still feel the stickiness of her skin and the sweetness of a toddlers flesh in her arms. Her beautiful Chihiro, safe in her lap. Not the sea as her mother had warned. It was a river. A river that had almost taken her daughter. A family vacation to the water. She has missed it, Yuko realized. The stench of the sea had become all but a faint perfume and her husband's youth and energy was tiresome and juvenile.
But she had Chihiro. A daughter borne of desperation to add life to her existence dressed in a small pink dress and tiny pink shoes. She had tried hard not to cry at the comforting rocking motion of the boat. She relived her own girlhood sitting in that little motorboat with her husband awkwardly trying to get comfortable. She could almost feel her first love's breath on her neck and arms about her waist. In that one moment of nostalgia, her husband lifted the little girl into his arms, and in that one moment of impulsiveness, her daughter fell into the water.
Yuko had tried to jump in after her but her husband held on to her tight. The police searched for hours and found no trace of the baby. They thought she was lost. Until hours and hours later, they found her sitting by herself on the shore. She was missing a shoe.
The expression on her daughter's face was strange and eerie. A look of extreme concentration and wisdom. Her eyes were trained into the water and in one chubby hand she held a handful of wet sand. She did not move. Yuko followed her daughter's gaze into the water and for one moment, one second, saw a pair of dragon eyes staring back at her. Powerful and accusing. Why did she not watch her daughter better? Why did she ever let her daughter go? But than it was gone, and the eyes disappeared with a flash of brilliant white. And than there was nothing but the river and its impenetrable color of blue. Hysterical and overjoyed, she lifted the toddler into her arms calling to her husband. Chihiro was safe. But she noticed than that the strange look was still plastered on her daughter's face.
Then Yuko's mother got the news of the events of that day, she slapped her daughter and snatched the baby girl out of her arms, cradling it and weeping. Her hopes and dreams could have been lost in one powerful wave of the river. It was that day that she presented the toddler with the biwa. Yuko's grandmothers own biwa which Yuko's mother taught to Chihiro with surprising gentleness and patience.
All rivers lead to the sea. That was the crux of it wasn't it.
Chihiro. She had given birth to the girl out of selfishness. She never knew what a blessing a daughter could be. It was Chihiro who held her during her mother's funeral service and Chihiro who had given the speech of remembrance. Chihiro had cooked and cleaned the house with an eerily expert care for a twelve year old while Yoko lay in bed squeezing tears into her handkerchief. Chihiro's grandmother left her a good sum of money and all her possessions as well as an old set of Japanese instruments. Including the biwa.
But she remembered with sharp clarity the day before her mother's death, she smelled suspiciously like salt and before the old woman collapsed, she had cried out, "Tsunami!"
Yuko has lain, alone and helpless with her grief, on her bed as her husband paced outside the room, nervous and unsure. It was that moment when her daughter went into the room and began to play. The biwa. It soothed her soul. It soothed her heart. The music sounded like the great sea of her childhood. Her father's monotonous, throbbing voice. The languid fluidity of her mother's hands. The repetitive tempo of the sea washing up to shore and coming onto her bare feet. Her tears went into her mouth and she tasted the salty liquid. That one song was enough to transport her two decades past. Her empty stomach suddenly felt very full and health poured out of her body. That's when she realized that Chihiro was glowing. Literally. It was not the first nor the last time Yuko would ever question the power of her daughter. She had seemed magical and wraithlike and Yuko fell into a deep dreamless sleep. When she awakened, Chihiro was snuggled beside her holding the biwa in her arms. The Chihiro who took charge and comforted, the Chihiro who cleaned and cooked was not her daughter, she realized with horror. Those motions Chihiro used were like Yuko's mother and always Yuko would believe that that night, it was her mother who comforted her using Chihiro as an earthly vessel. She awakened the tiny little girl who started from her mother in alarm shoving the biwa away from her own body in fear. She refused to touch it and withdrew into her own world of childish practicality and cowardice.
Chihiro became bratty and uncontrollable. She made friends easily enough but unfortunately made enemies twice as quickly. Her cleverness knew no bounds and her intuition was nearly always correct. When Akio's company relocated him, Chihiro had seemed totally unmoved. Yuko had expected tears and tirades of fury. But Chihiro obliged her and packed her things. So she was normal but not really normal. Yuko was used to her tiny voice telling her how to do things, small things, like not buying too much of this vegetable because it would "obviously" rot before all of it was eaten. Or not buy a dress because the material would "fall apart easily". She had bought the dress anyways despite her daughter's warning hoping to wear it on the day of the move as a sign of her new life in a new town but sure enough, after three washings, the threads broke loose and the gown split into pieces.
She ended up wearing her normal everyday outfit. Opting for her special gold earrings. Chihiro had said nothing but merely sulked and soaked up the sun in the backseat. Yuko had told her to wear a seat belt, but Chihiro ignored her and lay on her back examining the flowers her friend had given to her. Such pretty blossoms. Chihiro was fascinated by them. Whether she was fascinated with her friend's sentiment or with the flowers themselves, she would never know. Before the trip Chihiro's little voice chirped to them to "write down the directions and not let Daddy drive like a chicken". They ignored her. She resisted the urge to slap her daughter's face as her own mother would surely have done when she was a girl. Who was this little idiot to tell her what to do all the time? A flash of resentment went through her body. And unbearable pain. She wanted to be rebellious and not listen to Chihiro because in some twisted way, Chihiro reminded Yuko of her own mother and so when she told them not to go in through the tunnel, they ignored her. The action itself was done out of pent of up frustration. But then she felt the warm press of her daughter's hand on her arm and she realized that Chihiro for al her wisdom was still a little girl, overly cautious and presumptuous in her manners. She still needed a mother and Yuko felt ashamed at her horrible thoughts. Her husband, a self declared out doors man, seemed to enjoy the meadows that ran on the other side of the tunnel but Yuko was afraid of the strange staring statues. Chihiro looked just as afraid trying to pull them back. Then something very strange happened. For one blurred moment, Yuko smelled something more delicious than anything in the world. She wanted to follow it and eat and eat until she grew fat and grotesque but sated. And than the next moment, she realized with a panic that her daughter was missing. Fighting to hold down the nausea, she looked about the meadow. At that minute, she was so sorry. For selfishness. For lost hope. For a lifetime wasted. For her mother. For everything. And then she saw a glimpse of a familiar bobbing brown ponytail. It was Chihiro. Relief swept over her. Relief and love. That was when she began to love her daughter. But it would not do to hug the girl and kiss her cheek here. Why, she was only gone for a moment! Instead she gave her daughter a stern but half meant reprimand for running off and started for the tunnel. They walked out together into the strange forest again to find new car rusted and covered with moss. Her husband's four wheel drive, pride and joy, rusted and ruined. Akio's confusion reflected onto her own face and she looked to her daughter. Chihiro's face. It was so old. So wistful. So silent. Something had happened in that one moment. Something strange and unknown that let her daughter age a lifetime. She and her husband cleared away the plant life on the car which barely started up. It was as if the car had aged decades.
As their car left the forest behind, it seemed to get younger and younger until the ride was as smooth as it was when they first bought it. Akio finally relented to ask for direction once they got out of the forest, yelling his questions at a half deaf local through an open window. They reached their new home in good time and as Akio's stepped out of the car, he gasped. Yuko rushed out too and to her shock, the rusted and destroyed car once again looked like new. Again, Chihiro said nothing.
They spent the rest of the day unpacking and cleaning. She left Chihiro to her own room and her own devices. After putting away the silverware, Yuko lay on the covered sofa too tired to think. And then she heard it. A faint lovely sound.
She followed it to her daughter's room. She was strumming the biwa. From that day on, her daughter seemed to grow out of her strange shell. She was never to be a great beauty but she was most definitely striking with her grandmother's exquisiteness, her grandfather's insight, her father's friendliness and liveliness as well as clumsiness but oddly transformed so that her missteps and lack of balance made her seem more attainable and vulnerable as well as extremely being endearing. Her studies were never going to be perfect but they were most definitely high above average and her ability to grasp concepts made her popular and well liked. She was everything Yuko had hoped to be herself. But still, part of her still wished that Chihiro was the daughter of her first fiancée whom she loved all her life and not the child of Akio who she did not love at first but grew to love over years together.
As Yuko wandered more and more into her thoughts, her grip on her wine glass loosened and slipped from her fingers. Something flashed beneath her eyes and she realized that Chihiro had caught the glass. Some sake still spilled on the floor and Chihiro cleaned it up with a napkin.
She did not even look at her mother but went back to playing her little songs. Although Chihiro had every reason to be happy, Yuko sometimes caught a faraway look in her eyes that was all too familiar to her. "Wait for me" he had said and when he did not come back, her once clear eyes clouded and dulled with pain. Over the years, the sharp pain became deadened and throbbing eventually becoming emptiness, regret and disappointment. And so she understood her daughter the same way her mother understood her. With strange half understood glimpses of emotions and experiences but never really wanting to know everything.
She could have left this family years ago and she never did. She made a decision and she stuck to it now. She owed her family that much. Tonight was her second wedding to the man who had taken care of her as best as he knew how. He was not perfect and he was not a poet but he was her husband and she was their daughter.
She was awakened from her thoughts again but her husbands booming voice "Come come! Another song! Another one!" "Yes another one!" "One more!" the crowd echoed and Chihiro gave a shy modest smile before stepping up to the stage again. As her melody uplifted the souls of the multitude, she felt her own soul dip deeper and deeper into her heart but it was her heart she put into the music.
Yuko proudly watched as her daughter showed off her skills as well as her manners before her peers startling only at someone's hand on her shoulder. It belonged to a very well dressed woman perhaps in her early thirties. She was so beautiful that Yuko almost had to draw back. But the woman seemed to expect that and bowed before her. "I congratulate you on your marriage Ogino-San." Yuko polite stood and bowed back. "I thank you for your kind words. Please sit." The woman sat in Chihiro's unoccupied seat and watched Chihiro with hooded, hungry eyes. "Your daughter. She is gifted and beautiful both." Again, Yuko bowed her head respectfully trying to figure out who this woman was.
"Again, I thank you but I am sorry I do not recall meeting such a kind person."
The woman smiled matronly. A strange look on such a young face. "I was the friend of Sato Yuriko and Sato Aika."
Yuko gaped at her. "Why, Sato Yuriko was my grandmother. My mother's mother and Aika was my mother."
"I know." the woman answered without lifting her eyes off Chihiro.
"But Sato Yuriko died long ago and you look so young."
"Do I?" the woman pondered. "You are kind."
They were silent for a moment before the woman rose to her feet. "You love your family despite it all don't you?"
Yuko was shocked. "Why of course!" she exclaimed.
The woman seemed to be satisfied with that answer. "But you long for the past that can no longer be yours and always you will be bitter and cold."
Yuko bowed her head in shame. "But truly. I love my family."
The woman nodded absently. "There will be a time Ogino-San when you must decide what is important to you."
Again silence. "You daughter, Ogino-San, she has Yuriko's face and Aika's talent."
"Mother played the biwa?" asked Yuko.
"Aika played beautifully before the fall of her family. She was bred to be a lady and that I taught her. When the sea destroyed everything she held dear, all she had was a half-insane woman for a mother and her fingers. She watched her family perish in the water along with her home. For years, she wove, sewed and played for money. I suppose after she married she never played again. She never forgave herself for cheapening music so but one must do as they must and she kept herself from begging as she would."
"My mother was proud to be married to my father."
"Was she?"
Yuko practically shook with anger. How dare this woman just walk in and start insulting her mother.
"It matters not." the woman yawned. "I did what I could for her but she wasted away anyways. She did not take my offer. I suppose I should never have made it an option."
"What?"
"Oh. Nothing you should be concerned about now. Chihiro. She has the light. Potential."
"Did my mother?"
The woman's face was tender than and so old looking. She turned Yuko's face up. "In the old days, a woman was measured by her mother's family even more so than her father's. Your line is very old, girl. Chisato, Esa, Ginko, Yuriko, Aika and so many before them. Aika had the same hope in her and so did you. Hers was snatched from her, child. I sympathize with her. But you. You threw away any power you had years ago. Willingly. I can not allow you to take Chihiro."
The woman's eyes.
Were like a storm on the sea.
:: " Do not take this child near the sea. It will swallow her as it did you father." :: "What? Wait!" cried Yuko as the woman began walking towards Chihiro like a hurricane, and all parted in her wake.
