Chapter Two

The female coworker who had recommended teaching online classes to her was named Tarada Umeiko, and she taught history and historical literature. She opened up her front door that morning to find Asima standing on the other side in a scarf and black winter clothes, cheeks flushed, stamping the outside snow from her boots on the doorstep. The quiet winter day lay behind her.

"Asima-san," said Umeiko, eyebrows risen, "this is a surprise." She had fluffed, short, salt and pepper black hair and a thin, lined, motherly face.

"Yes," said Asima awkwardly. "I'm sorry. I should have called."

"No, don't be sorry at all! Come in!" Still seeming surprised at this sudden bout of socializing, Umeiko stepped aside to let Asima into her home.

It was a small one-story place, covered in warm quilts and framed photographs of family and friends. It smelled like dumplings and a back screen door led out to a tiny garden. It was a bit shabby and cluttered with dustables, mostly rustic wood, but it was one of those places that immediately felt like home.

Asima realized she was staring. She quickly took off her boots and put them by the front door. There was another thought: Was her own house anywhere near as homey as this? Would three children like it there?

"Please sit down," said Umeiko kindly, waving to her Western style table.

Asima sat down obligingly. "I do not deserve such kindness," she said, bowing her head. "I have always distanced myself from you, and now I come on a mission."

"Well, now, you are very dedicated, Asima-san, if a bit severe. No one faults you for that. It is to be admired," said Umeiko frankly, with only slight disapproval. She sat down beside Asima at the table. "What do you need?"

"... Advise," Asima admitted.

"A second surprise," said Umeiko, and she honestly looked it.

"I - want - well I don't want, but -" How could she say what was going on without admitting too much? "I'm sorry, I don't know how to put it. I came without thinking -" Asima started to stand, but Umeiko placed a hand over hers.

"Why don't I make us some tea?" she suggested.

The kettle whistled. Umeiko took it off the burner, turned off the stove, and poured the water into two mugs with tea packets. She placed one steaming cup at Asima's place, one at her own. The mugs were simple, yellowish white with little sprigs of flower on them, and humble.

"I thank you," said Asima, wrapping her hands around the warm mug. She took a piping hot sip, and felt the burning liquid slip down her throat, soothing her. She started to thaw a little bit, calming herself.

"So," said Umeiko in a businesslike manner, sitting down. "You want something but you don't want something. What is it that you want but don't want?"

"... To adopt children," Asima answered truthfully.

Umeiko nodded, taking this in. "So you want to raise the children and I know you can logistically, yet you are afraid of giving up being alone and afraid of raising them with a foreign mother. Perhaps you are also afraid of failing them?"

Asima stared at her in honest surprise. "How did you know…?"

"Oh, Asima." Umeiko smiled in amusement. "You are not nearly as hard to read as you think you are." Asima did not know what to say to this. She sat in silence, and Umeiko correctly interpreted the silence as an assent. "Alright. Let's deal with each problem in turn, from back to front.

"First, you are afraid of failing them. I have grown children, Asima, and I am going to tell you a little secret. We are all, and always, afraid of failing them. Including me."

"But - you're motherly," Asima protested. "I'm not."

Umeiko chuckled. "Not yet. You might surprise yourself. All mothers manage, mothers of all different styles. You are more sophisticated, but that is not necessarily a bad thing - you are calmer, and could provide more.

"And let's look at it this way," she said, when Asima still didn't seem convinced. "No matter what we do in life, there is a chance we will fail. So why do anything at all? We could fail at everything!

"You are usually so brave, Asima. To come here alone with no money and work your way through university, learn a foreign culture and language - that is a very brave thing. What you left behind in Egypt, I don't know, but leaving it must have taken enormous courage. You could also have failed at that, but you tried anyway. And, clever girl, you managed.

"What if you had never left Egypt? What would have happened?"

"... I would have spent the rest of my life miserable," Asima realized, troubled, "wondering what might have happened if I'd had the courage to run." Umeiko smiled meaningfully. "But what about the worry about the girls having a single foreign mother? I might surprise myself as a mother, and I might need to stop being so afraid of failure, but you have to admit that worry at least is valid."

Perhaps, since Asima being a mother was fated to be, she might surprise herself as a mother. Perhaps she should have the courage to give it a try. But what would Umeiko have to say to this next, more realistic worry?

Umeiko looked down, and spoke carefully. "I cannot totally advise you in this," she admitted. "I could tell you that if anyone has a problem with an interracial family, screw them. To let your heart guide the way. But it's not always that easy, is it?

"All I can tell you, Asima, is that there are plenty of Japanese couples who would make for much worse parents than you. If it was a choice between many a Japanese person I know, and you, I would choose you for a parent - every time. You are responsible and you have a good heart. That's important. I think if anyone could manage being a single foreign mother, it would be you."

Asima swallowed, and also looked down. She was choked up and she didn't entirely understand why. "Thank you," she managed at last, and she meant it. "I know most of my fears… are just panic anxieties. I am…"

"You are afraid of losing your precious isolation," said Umeiko, nodding. "May I make an observation, Asima?"

"You are on a roll today. Please do," said Asima frankly.

Umeiko smiled, amused. "It is not that you are selfish, Asima. You do not use your isolation to indulge yourself. Do not take this the wrong way, but sometimes it seems to me that instead you use it to hide. And that is why you are alone."

Asima stilled.

"You have to let people into your life sometime, Asima," said Umeiko quietly, her eyes pitying. "You need some sort of family, and if this is what your heart is telling you, all the better. But loneliness changes us, it becomes our comfort zone, and there will be a lot of damage you have to undo to let it go."

Asima suddenly stood. Looking worried, Umeiko stood with her. "Thank you," said Asima, almost mechanically. "You've… given me a lot to think about. I must go."

"I hope I have not offended you," said Umeiko, her brow creased in concern.

"No. Not at all. You… were right on the mark, I think." Asima squinted her eyes shut with effort against a sudden headache. "I… I just need some time to consider my options."

Umeiko nodded uncertainly, and led her to the door.

"Remember, Asima," she said, pausing in the doorway. "It is not all about you. If you decide to adopt… some beautiful little children out there need you, and would be very lucky to have you."

Asima paused and stared back at Umeiko, wide-eyed and torn. Umeiko smiled a little sadly, and shut the front door.

Asima took a walk in the cold and the snow, walked into the downtown area, through the winter crowds and past the city lights and tall buildings. It was close to Christmas and New Year's celebrations, and chattering, excited crowds of shopping people filled the streets and the restaurants, swarming past the gleaming glass storefronts.

But the escape tactic of city walking didn't work. Every child Asima passed, every little girl… she thought of those three little girls. If she didn't picture their alternative childhoods and how much they needed her, she pictured holding their hands and smiling in an indulging way as they giggled and leaped through the streets. Just like the little daughters with parents that she passed.

She found herself staring at families, who caught her eye in confusion and suspicion. Asima looked awkwardly away, embarrassed, and continued walking.

A part of her told her she couldn't do this. But she realized in surprise that another part of her thought longingly of her big, dim marble house being full of children's cries and footsteps. She thought longingly of having children, being a mother. Being a wife was not for her, but being a nurturer was something else. Protector - that was what her name meant.

She realized, her eyes stinging (because of the cold wind, she told herself), that she didn't want to be alone anymore. And that thought surprised her.

Umeiko was right in one way. It was never about indulging herself and enjoying isolation. It was about hiding. Asima had been taught all her life that people could only go it alone, that one had to keep a straight face, that distance was necessary. As Batul, she had been taught to hide and distrust. As Asima, she'd had no one to help her.

Distance and isolation were comfortable. But Asima had already had to go outside her comfort zone once in her life, and that was in a big way. She felt strangely on the cusp of something - just as she had back then.

She didn't know who to turn to. For the first time in a long time, she wished for her family, but Asima expected they would all be too angry with her to have much advice to give. She'd burned those bridges long ago.

So instead, she turned to the library. While everyone else made Christmas and New Year's preparations, she holed up in back tables with library texts under the sympathetic eyes of the librarian. They were all baby books. She needed as much information as possible.

But aside from some essential, obvious rules, all the books had different advice. It seemed parenting was something one figured out for oneself. And this was no help at all. Of course she could learn the physical techniques, but what about that "mothering instinct" she'd always heard about?

Tired after many days of reading and studying, she wandered out of the library and ended up sitting on a frigid, dark bench at a park. She looked across the field - and realized she could see children playing, in the distance. They were making snowmen. She had never noticed what an awful lot of children the world held until now.

"Having a child yourself?" Asima looked around. The mother of the playing children was sitting beside her on the bench, smiling.

"Am I really that obvious?" Asima asked, exasperated. The mother simply laughed. "Hey, can I ask you something? I don't feel like I have that… mothering instinct everyone keeps talking about. I'm not one of those women who coos at children."

"The mothering instinct is a myth. I didn't coo at children either, but I love my own. And there was no mothering instinct… only a desire to protect, and a love that formed over time.

"You don't think you're going to end up a good mother, but you learn, you know. You take the lessons from your childhood, and decide which ones to repeat and which ones not to."

Asima relaxed, an almost-unnoticed fear lifted from her mind. "My childhood was… not spectacular," she admitted flatly.

The woman nodded. "It's all about what you choose to emulate," she said thoughtfully. "You can either choose to be like your family, or choose to be not like your family. It's up to you. Plenty of women with horrible childhoods end up becoming wonderful mothers."

Asima watched the playing children, nodding. "Is it harder?" she asked at last. "Having more than one child?"

"It is," the woman admitted, contemplative. "But if you do it right…" She smiled. "Those children will have at least one best friend for life. And your house will be full and animated. Wouldn't that be nice?"

The words echoed through Asima's mind days later, on New Year's Eve, as she was sitting at the marble countertop having cold soba noodles alone inside her big, dim home.

Sophisticated, she had once thought it. Now it seemed empty, dank, and silent.

Your house will be full and animated. Wouldn't that be nice?

Asima sighed. She'd heard the line in a movie at the theater once, alone ironically: You look like a new mother. Scared shitless.

"This is the stupidest thing I have ever done," she announced aloud. "But alright. I'll try to help them."

The words echoed through her home, and on the surface nothing changed. But Asima felt something hovering in the air, something almost like anticipation. Whether that was the spirits or herself, she could not tell.

The clock chimed midnight. The new year had struck.

Asima walked up to the private investigator's office door, one amidst many in a wide rented office building with thin, dull, color-flecked commercial carpet and a gleaming elevator. He was on the third floor, and the gold plate on his door, when she stepped out into the morning air from the elevator, read Hideyoshi.

What a magnificent name, she thought grumpily, clutching her cup of coffee and taking a sip. She'd had to get up at 6 AM to make it here on time and was rather sour about it. Asima was not a morning person.

She knocked on the door and it swung open at once. A heavily jowled man with browned skin, broad shouldered and scowling with a closely shorn buzz cut of dark hair, opened the door for her. He wore official dark clothes.

"Tammam-san?" he said gruffly. "Come right in."

Asima entered, and sat down across the brown wood desk from him. His laptop was open, though she could not see it, notepads and pens littered all around him. He was somewhat disorganized but, she thought sarcastically, at least he would never run out of places to write things down.

Hideyoshi-san sat down across the desk from her. "Now," he said, dark eyes concentrated closely on her underneath heavy, carved eyebrows. "What do you need?" It was like something out of an old fashioned noir movie.

She cleared her throat, surprised, and slid across the desk a slip of paper with three family surnames and a city name. "I would like these three families investigated. All I know is that their names are Jonouchi, Mazaki, and Kujaku, and they all have at least one infant child. They should be young couples. They live in Domino City."

She thought simply asking him to find three babies who belonged to other families would seem suspicious even for a private investigator.

The man nodded, scribbling things down, typing notes on his computer. "And… what would you like to know about them?"

"I want a complete inventory of all their family members, where they live, and what their general job and family situation is. I would also like the names and addresses of any family friends they might have," Asima listed off. The private investigator nodded, making notes. She slid a check across the desk next. "Here is your payment."

He took the check and his eyebrows lifted at the sum.

"Well," he said, smiling icily and pocketing it, "this will be a very thorough investigation."

"I had hoped so," said Asima contemptuously.

Her plan was to talk to all the parents - and then adopt all three girls at the same time, assuming they were all already born. But first, in order to convince them, she had to find them.

The investigator and Asima talked for a few minutes more, and then they both stood, the meeting finished. "Quick timing is imperative, Hideyoshi-san," said Asima, frosty and reserved.

"Of course, Tammam-san," he said obediently, ushering her politely toward the door.

The pieces had been set. Now the game was to be played. Asima had once, after all, been a gaming strategist. And as her biological family could attest, once she had decided on something, she did not exactly fuck around.