Chapter 2
"Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence." ― Gregory Maguire, A Lion Among Men
My new mother detested my very existence from the very beginning. There was no love shown towards me and she neglected my well-being whenever her mother, my new grandmother, was not watching. How could she possibly love me? I was a product of rape and it would take a very strong woman to love a child born from rape. Yes, the child would be blameless in the rape, but it was often hard for the victim to see the child as such. A child was often just merely be regarded as an unwanted parting gift from the rapist. While my new mother showed her open hatred of me every chance she got, I found that I could not blame her. Despite being put back into an infant's body, I still possessed the adult mind that I died with. I could see things from her perspective, but that did not mean I approved of her treatment of a blameless newborn.
My new mother was neglectful. She avoided all possible contact with me, both physically and emotionally. It was just too painful for her because I reminded her of the ordeal she had gone through. In the end, the only reason my new mother even held me or even had any contact with me was to feed me because her mother had forced her to. The feeding sessions were short because they required physical contact, something she deathly hated. The irregular and short feeding sessions resulted in me being smaller and weaker than most premature babies. It was nothing sort of a miracle that I even survived the first few months of my new life. If my new grandmother was not present then I have no doubt that I would have perished within the first few days of life.
While my new mother treated me abysmally, if found that I could not bring myself to hate her. I could not connect myself as the person who she was treating so terribly. There was a certain disconnection between my new body and my mind. Often when I was laid down to be put to sleep I would spend the time pondering my situation instead. I was this baby. No, I'm not this baby. This baby is me. No it's not. I could look at my reflection and feel like I was looking at another person. Who is this person? Who am I? Am I and the baby the same person? Are we two separate people? I was a young Chinese woman in the twenty-first century living in the United States. This body belonged to a baby Japanese girl living in the late Tokugawa era[1], which brings me to another problem. When I could finally see clearly again, I discovered I had been reincarnated into the past. Careful eavesdropping on people's conversations had allowed me to gather what year it was. I had been born on February 14, 1846. No, the irony of a person who was romantically inapt being born on Valentine's Day did not escape me.
This whole situation was mind-boggling, but not as much as the issue of language. Despite being only fluent in English and Mandarin Chinese upon death, upon rebirth I was instantly able to understand Japanese while retaining knowledge of my previous languages. Is a person supposed to be able to remember his or her past life along with all that knowledge? Is a person even supposed to be reborn into the past? Being reborn in the past would seriously mess up the historical timeline, so what was I doing here? A thousand questions with not a single answer emerging anytime soon. I'm willing to bet that this is some huge cosmic joke to someone out there.
Another reason I found that I could not hate my new mother was that I still could understand her point of view. She was a young fifteen year old girl with a natural beauty that was not only forced to give birth to her rapist's child, but was also forced to care and raise that same child. She was unwed and while she did live in a rural village where it was more common to find unwed mothers, it was still considered shameful. No one cared that my new mother was a victim of rape. All the other villagers saw was that she was an unwed mother and therefore promiscuous. Just by being born, I had already ruined her chances of getting married into a good household. Even her father, my new grandfather, announced loudly that he was ashamed of her even though he knew that his daughter was the victim of rape. He even went so far as to claim that she asked for it, which I could not understand. No one ever asks to be raped. However, even though I could understand why my new mother could not stand me, that did not mean I approved of her neglect. Newborns die easily without proper care, especially before the modern age of medicine.
I had always believed that child born from rape was essentially the same as a child born from love. The difference was not in the child but in the series of events that led up the creation of the child. An infant is blameless for it did nothing wrong nor could it chose what situation it was born into, much less chose whether to be born or not. Regardless of the situation that resulted in a child, every child deserved to have at least the basic necessities to live a healthy life. Every child deserved to have the chance to grow to their full potential.
So it was clear that my new mother hated me and I understood that, but what I didn't understand was why she did not dispose of me. Infanticide in Tokugawa Japan was actually not all that uncommon and there was even enough medical understanding by that time to perform abortions, although somewhat crudely. At first I thought that the reason my new mother did not dispose of me was because my new grandmother wouldn't approve. Even though I was born through less than ideal means, it appeared that my new grandmother didn't care. She had wanted a grandchild and didn't care who the man that fathered me was. As time passed, it became apparent that my new grandmother was not the reason that my new mother did not kill me. My new mother could have easily killed me and claimed it was some form of wildlife that had killed me. No one would question that claim. We lived on a farming community in the countryside and every once in a while there would be a poor kid that would be attacked and killed by a wild dog in the village. The true reason my new mother did not kill me became clear after I hit the five month mark of my new life. Despite her extreme hatred of me, she was soft. She cried whenever a fox got to one of the chickens of the farm. She cried when her mother instructed her to butcher a duck for the evening meal. She was too soft, too gentle, and cried far too easily. She didn't deserve to be stuck with a bastard child. Fate had not been kind to her. But in the end, even the soft and gentle-hearted have a threshold, a breaking point. Even the kindest person in the world could perform the most horrific acts when prompted to.
"Okaa-san, I'm going out for a stroll." my new mother announced one night. "It's a nice night for a walk."
"Alright, but take a lantern out with you, it's dark out." my new grandmother said as she washed the dishes without looking up before she suddenly jumped up like a bolt lightening hit her. "Oh, wait! Sachiko, you should take little Aka-chan[2] with you. You should spend more time bonding with your daughter."
My new mother sagged immediately at her mother's suggestion. She must have been wanting to have some alone time without her bastard child. It was already bad enough to be forced to raise her rapist's child, but now she had to spend every waking moment with it too? I felt bad for her and would love to give her time where she didn't have stay near me, but I couldn't do much about her situation, seeing that I haven't even bothered to try speaking yet. I couldn't even say no to my new grandmother's idea for my new mother. The reason I hadn't even tried to speak yet was because I had gotten the distinct feeling that my new mother would have preferred to have a baby that didn't even try to speak to her so I had tried to be respectful of her feelings and remained silent, but because of that course of action, I wasn't even sure how to get my voice to work in this new body yet. Since I couldn't say no, I quickly closing my eyes to pretend to be asleep in hopes of wiggling out of having to intrude on my new mother's alone time.
"Okaa-san, she's asleep. If I take her with me, she'll wake up." my new mother said with a strained voice of scorn.
"Nonsense, Sachiko." my new mother's mother said as she disregarded the excuse with a wave of her hand. "I saw her eyes open just a moment ago. She was watching you."
"But Okaa-san—"
"No, I won't take any of your excuses. You her mother and you should behave as such!" my new grandmother scolded. "It shouldn't matter that you don't want her. Don't you agree, Anata?"
"Don't bring me into this." my new grandfather answered gruffly. He was just like my new mother in that he didn't want me around either. I was bad news for his family.
My new grandmother tsked at her husband's unhelpful answer before turning to her daughter to harshly say, "Just take her with you! That isn't too hard to ask for is it, Sachiko?!"
Knowing that she lost the battle, my new mother silently picked me off the makeshift futon in defeat and took me outside with her. She held me silence as she strolled through the quiet village. It was the night of a new moon so only the soft glow of candlelight leaking out from the nearby huts lit the path. She said nothing during the walk as she let her feet led her towards an unknown location. There was nothing to say, after all, no normal nine month old baby would understand so why bother?
An hour of this behavior passed before my new mother came to a stop at a riverbank that was left of the small village. There had been a sudden down pour of rain recently so the river was running faster than normal and often washed up trash people discarded by tossing it into the river. There were broken nets discarded by fishermen, broken planks of wood that had broken off boats and wooden crates, and there was even a fully functional abandoned fishing boat. After staring hard at the abandoned boat on at the edge of the river, my new mother walked towards it with steadfast purpose. Before placing me in the boat, she looked at me once more, as if she were wondering if this was the right thing to do. However, her desire to be rid of me must have won rather quickly because she placed me on the boat in less than a minute of staring at me.
"The fallen blossom never returns to the branch; the shattered mirror never again reflects. I pray that we will never meet again." were the last words that woman said to me before she pushed the boat off the riverbank so that the river could take me and the boat away.
It was clear that she could care less about what would happen to me. The old abandoned fishing boat was, while functional, weathered and unstable. In fast enough rapids, the boat would be sure to sink and bring me down with it. On the ninth month of my short new life, my biological birth mother in this new life left me to die at the mercy of Mother Nature. That night was the last time I ever saw that woman ever again.
[1] The Edo period (江戸時代 Edo jidai), or Tokugawa period (徳川時代 Tokugawa jidai), is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japanese society was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional Daimyo. The period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, and popular enjoyment of arts and culture.
[2] A common nickname for babies.