Chapter Four

Getting used to being a new single mother with three infant children - Asima had expected it to be hard.

She was wrong. It was harder.

At first she simply got no sleep at all. If one wasn't wailing in the middle of the night, another one was. Finally, she learned to time it so she took care of all three at the same time. She kept an alarm on her phone and like clockwork, she woke up and got up every two hours to feed and burp all three babies and change all of their diapers. She kept that two-hour ritual up throughout the day, so their bodies would get used to the routine.

And at first it seemed that was all they did: ate, burped, pooped, and slept. Asima made sure to talk to them every day, not in a baby voice, but chattering to them in idle conversation, as though they were equals. She waved toys above them and made stupid airplane noises, watching in amusement as they tried to bat at the toys.

But mostly, they just watched and listened. It was as if they were drinking in everything around them, eating things up, from their new nursery to their new mother. They were learning, Asima realized eventually. They were learning from their surroundings.

She bathed all three of them at once, in a tiny bathtub, rubbing them carefully with soothing, relaxing lavender water, holding them upright with one arm and trying to be as tender as possible. She fed them healthy soy formula. She bought a giant stroller and took them walking to the park for one hour every afternoon. People stopped and cooed at them as they passed, waving hello and calling them "adorable." This was almost as expected as the perpetual surprise of passersby at the difference between Egyptian mother and Japanese daughters. Asima didn't encounter as much overt prejudice as she had expected, though she had to get over the occasional nasty comment and pretend with frosty dignity that it didn't hurt.

The girls weren't always as cute as they seemed. Asima had expected new motherhood to be disgusting, and it was. The girls pooped both inside their diaper and while being changed, they threw up on her on a regular basis, and if they weren't sneezing on her they were rubbing their faces against her shirt to combat runny noses. Asima had a strong constitution when it came to the disgusting, but she was so compulsively clean that she never liked this part. Saying something or waving a hand away did no good; the babies didn't understand.

It was mostly just a lot of work. If she wasn't carrying and bouncing one, she was carrying and bouncing another, and each individual girl needed newborn care. All of Asima's friends had to group together to help her - Umeiko (who called herself "Grandma" to them), her scholar friends, and her choir friends combined. The girls were watched while Asima went to the relative bliss of the grocery store, when she went to choir group, and sometimes when she just needed a bit of precious time to herself. Even that was fraught, though - it took some time for the girls to be comfortable being babysat. The first few times Asima left, they would begin crying and screaming heart-wrenchingly for their mother, even as Grandma Umeiko tried to comfort them.

Each girl had an individual personality.

Shizuka was peaceful and serene and rarely cried; she favored her mother with lots of gummy smiles and loved watching big, colorful objects moved before her face, waving her hands at them. She was a cuddler.

Mai cried often, loudly, and insistently the minute she wanted something, but she also stopped crying quickly and had a great deal of energy - she batted at her toys, wiggled her arms and legs around a lot, and seemed determined to roll around and sit up very early.

Anzu made lots of little noises, as if trying to communicate, and she was continually watching everything around her with a very keen eye. She always quieted and stilled when the two-hour point came, as if already as an infant she had her world figured out and memorized.

Asima didn't expect the upwelling of affection to come so early. But far before they began walking and talking, she realized she felt enormous fondness for the children, in spite of all the trouble they caused. It was difficult to watch such an innocent, passionate personality that was tiny, fragile, and entirely dependent on you, and not end up loving it.

She was there for their first smiles, their first rolling over and sitting up, their first crawling. She got ridiculously excited at every milestone, bought them toys and a play rug, sprinted around frantically after them when they began crawling. (Lots of doors in the house had to get a lock after that point.) She was there for their first words, and the first time they began calling her "Mother." Her heart absolutely melted every time it was said. She knew it then - she was a sucker.

Sometimes they encouraged each other toward milestones. When Mai stood trembling to her feet and began stumbling her way toward Asima one afternoon, Asima quickly knelt and put out her hands, terrified. "Carefully… carefully…" Mai determinedly stumbled her way toward Asima.

Then, brightening, Shizuka decided she was game and followed Mai. At last, tentative but curious, Anzu toddled to her feet and stumbled away after her sisters.

"Careful - careful - oh my God - oh my god -" Asima watched in utter terror. She felt she was probably more afraid and panicked than her daughters, and might be hyperventilating just a little bit. She fell with every fall they made, felt a spark of triumph with every step. When they got up every time, and at last stumbled their way into her arms, she began shrieking in delight, just like every other stupid mother she'd always been contemptuous of.

"Mother - did it!" Anzu managed, and the other girls began joining her, and for perhaps the first time in her life Asima felt true, loving, proud human connection.

Children grew alarmingly quickly, at least in their younger years, Asima learned. They went through potty-training, naptimes, big-girl beds, toddler babble and endless rounds of questions. They began eating healthy baby foods in their high chairs, then finger foods and sippy cups, then sitting at the table and eating big-person foods, and she began teaching them - or trying to teach them - manners and cleanliness, sometimes with failure. They began running around after each other in the backyard, or on their daily walks, and if she'd thought crawling made it hard to keep up with them, walking and running was at least double that. She seemed to be in a constant state between proud and frantically alarmed.

This, she learned, was normal for a parent. The mother at the park that day had been right. Every night, Asima would tuck the girls into bed, say goodnight, turn on the bedroom nightlight and pause at the door. They seemed so tiny in their vast beds, so happy, and sometimes - unrealistic as it was - she wished she could protect them and keep them like that forever. Love always followed.

Then she would leave the bedroom and smile as she immediately heard jumping around and giggling sound on the other side. How they always managed to mess around late, but wake her up early the next morning excited to do fun things - well, that was far beyond her.

They continued to evolve as they grew. Anzu was obedient and rule enforcing, but she was also the queen of babble and fourteen thousand endless clever questions on random subjects even Asima didn't always know. She was take-charge in her rule enforcing and caution, though not the boldest - that prize belonged to Mai. Mai was feisty and rambunctious, getting into everywhere and everything she wasn't supposed to, and she was the queen of temper tantrums. Shizuka was calm and serene, often playing the cheerful, happy diplomat between the other two, but she was also the queen of daydreams and would begin wandering off during their daily walks after random things that interested her.

The girls were close to each other - not only did they play together and sleep in the same room underneath the same kinds of canopies and the same ceiling of glow in the dark stars and fairy lights, not only did they go through the same milestones, not only did they listen to the same stories and music, but they had an almost supernatural sense of one another. Each always knew exactly how the other two would react to everything, and if Asima wanted to know where one girl was, all she had to do was ask the other two. They would point and say matter of factly, "She over there."

Much to her relief, they seemed to love their Mother and were perfectly content in the house they'd grown up in. Every evening was bathtime, pajamas, and then she would read to them from a picture book, everyone gathered fascinated on one bed behind her to watch and listen. "One day I will begin homeschooling you," she said, "and you will be able to read these books like me."

She played them music as well, overcoming her dignity to dance around to it like a dork and get them to join in - culture and education were as important to her as cleanliness. So, she realized in surprise, was having fun. Asima finally learned to relax and have fun around three children, forming a dry, cheerful sense of humor around absolute chaos.

One day Asima got some playground equipment for the backyard. She had workers set up a jungle gym. Mai was the one who charged forward, climbing all over the new playground equipment.

"Gonna get hurt!" Anzu mandated, arms crossed, pouty, tearful, and scowling.

Mai rolled her eyes, exasperated. "Gotta climb up sometime," she said.

"Ooh! Look! Butterfly! Let's catch butterfly!" said Shizuka airily, watching one flitter over her head. And so eventually, they set to chasing butterflies around the yard, trying to catch them with nets instead.

"Try not to ruin the flowerbeds!" Asim called, wincing as they trampled among the plants.

Umeiko chuckled. "They're having fun, Asima," she said. "Let them be."

"Grandma Umeiko! Wanna help?" one of the girls called brightly, brandishing a butterfly net.

Umeiko was always game to help and could be free to be fun where Asima could not be. "Sure!" she called, beaming, and bounded at the three girls, chasing them. They squealed and ran in different directions, laughing, trying to avoid being tickled.

Grandma Umeiko often brought over baked treats and sweets, so she was their "absolute favorite" in the proudly precocious Anzu's enthusiastic words.

Asima did try to teach the girls not to be afraid or disgusted by bugs. She had them catch fireflies on summer nights, too. This did lead, however, to somewhat heartstopping moments wherein a little girl would pick up a spider and examine it brightly, and Asima would have a heart attack. None were afraid of roughhousing or getting dirty, though, and she cut off any attempts on their part to be picky eaters. Asima was proud of that.

Raising three girls as a single mother was difficult. Asima never pretended it wasn't. Mai grew a full head of wavy blonde hair to go with her violet eyes, Anzu short brown hair to go with her blue eyes, and Shizuka long straight auburn hair to go with her hazel eyes, and each suited different coloring when it came to clothes, but all three loved getting into Mother's makeup.

Asima would come in, hands on her hips, ready to scold them for playing with things in her room. Then she saw the war-like face paint spread across their expressions and began laughing - she could not help herself.

More difficult was intervening in fights. If one wasn't screaming because a sister had stolen her toy, another girl was screaming because her sister had put stuff in her space or was "touching her on purpose." They loved stealing from each other almost as much as they loved snickering and annoying each other, or being messy. Anzu and Mai were both easily fired up, but even Shizuka could become frigid and cold when pushed too far. Anzu and Mai shouted then got over it, but Shizuka could become frosty, silent, and stubborn for hours after becoming upset.

Asima, who had not gotten on well with her own brother, always knelt before them and said seriously, "My brother and I never got along, and now we don't speak. I want you three to be better than that. You're sisters, and you have to love, understand, and support each other for the rest of your whole lives. Through thick and thin, boys and fashion and everything else - these two other girls are the only other people you will always have throughout the rest of your entire life.

"Now, I want you each to say sorry and admit what you did that was wrong. Okay?"

Asima never tolerated any fighting. She particularly headed off any clawing, scratching, shrieking, or slapping. Such things were never okay in her house. She promoted cleaning up big messes, playing together, and sharing. Soon enough, the fights would be forgotten and the sisters would be happily playing together again.

"Your parents all had to go away somewhere else, so I took you in," Asima would say, which was technically the truth but not the whole truth. "I adopted each of you. You see? We all came from different families but we're together now. So it's important that we all love each other very much."

Mai had about twenty stuffed animals on her big-girl bed - for such a tomboy, she had a distinct love for cute, fluffy things and enjoyed giving them bizarre names. And out of all the girls, she most loved playing ball outside.

Shizuka had a collection of rocks and crystals and feathers found around the yard. (Sometimes Asima would purposefully buy things and leave them there for her to find.) Shizuka also drew vast colorful pictures that were essentially inintelligible, but Asima pretended to understand when she babbled explanations anyway, or drew funny colors in the coloring book.

Anzu loved playing with any kind of toy or action figure, boy's or girl's, ordering them around and directing imaginary play with them. She loved vast mats and houses that were their own little worlds she could arrange things around in. Anzu was a born chatterer, and easily and excitedly shared her ideas with others, albeit often in toddler babble.

And Asima started them on chores. They helped her with the houseplants, brought her cooking materials during dinner preparation, and every day they picked up all their own toys and put them back in the play chest themselves. They even helped make their big-girl beds, with some amount of pride. Soon, they were doing other things on their own, like chasing each other around shrieking and laughing at the park. They were their own people, but they knew all the rules: eat politely at dinner, wash your hands, bedtime is bedtime, hold hands and look before crossing the street. Dinners were usually something healthy: stir fry, salad, wrap. Or for a snack, berries and yogurt, trail mix. Eggs and toast for breakfast.

They did eventually learn the things Asima wanted them to learn - an almost boyish fearlessness, cleanliness and neatness, healthy eating and playing around, polite speech, and a love for stories and music. They did fun things together, and with their Mother. From an early age, she let them decide things and become individuals for themselves. The four of them had fun picking out new clothes together, and Asima made sure to tell them often - no matter how cheesy and pointless it seemed at the time - how proud she was of them for being themselves, and how much she loved them. Love, that was important, and she emphasized it. She made sure to tell them what strong, clever people they were. Thus, they became stronger and cleverer.

And so they grew more and more individual: Anzu clever and chatty, but also cautious and bossy, and increasingly smirking and crafty when trying to win against her sisters (though less tearful and angry and rule enforcing as time passed and she grew more secure). Mai fiery and short-tempered, but bold and energetic and the first to try anything, mixed with an almost Asima level of fearless wisdom and calm (as she grew out of the tantrums that were largely ignored and love instead was emphasized). Shizuka serene and daydreamy, compassionate and kind and surprisingly perceptive despite her seeming dottiness, but capable of both enormous bravery and a fierce kind of coldness and dignity when she wanted to be (encouraged by her mother's emphasis on inner strength and individualism).

Asima made sure, despite her own private anxiety and fears - she made sure they learned how to fix their own problems themselves. She did care for them - tending to their colds when they were sick, bandaging their cuts and bruises when they came crying to her. But with smaller things, she let them figure it out. "What do you think you should do for yourself?" she asked them, every time they came upon a conundrum. And slowly they learned to puzzle out their own problems, and became increasingly independent themselves, even from a young age cleaning up their own messes and making their own food. They even stopped wiping their noses on Asima's shirt. She never shouted, but her fearsome disapproval dissuaded them from misbehaving anyway.

The only kinds of television she allowed them to watch were Disney and Miyazaki movies, and that only sparingly and only when the television involved strong women. Kid's movies at the theater were vetted before the children were allowed to sit through them. No electronics yet. They would sit before the television, watching transfixed as they imbibed a great deal of imagination and loving ideals, and the movies inspired them. One of their favorite things to do, besides dancing in a silly way with Mother, from the beginning was dressup. Asima and Umeiko would tirelessly handmake requested costumes, just to give the girls a chance to dress up as fantastical characters and chase each other around the room, commanding and shouting and pretending to be the strong women they loved in the movies.

One summer, Asima slathered them with sunscreen and took them to the seaside. They ate watermelon on towels underneath an umbrella, felt the sand between their toes, poked at seaweed and collected shells and looked in the tidepools while the tide was out, walked along the pier, and Asima took them one by one by the hand in one piece bathing suits to stand at the exciting edge of the surf. At sunset, to end the day, they built a sandcastle on top of Asima before heading back exhausted to their hotel rooms and falling asleep on the stiff blue beds. Summer trips to the beach would later become a yearly treat, spanning several scrapbooks and hundreds of pictures.

She really did smile indulgingly and hold their hands as they bounced excitedly through the streets. They formed a little human chain, the four of them together.

As they became older, she took them more to the vast green local children's park, she took them to the local pool for swimming lessons, and she took them from tricycles to bicycle riding. One day, Umeiko and Asima were standing smiling on the suburban road outside Asima's house, watching as the girls took their first crooked wheels on bicycles along the smooth, paved cul de sac.

"Like this!" Mai called, showing Anzu a move. She was already scraped up pretty badly, which was how she knew what to do, but she hadn't cried once.

"Like this?" a tentative but curious Anzu asked, trying to copy the movie Mai was showing her. She wasn't as good at physical moves, but she gave it a try nonetheless, in her own quirky, precocious, deadly concentrating kind of way.

"This is so cool! It's like I'm flying!" Shizuka called in delight, spinning around the road in delight, watching the sky pass by her.

"Try to concentrate a little more on the road!" Asima called after her in worried amusement.

"Kay!"

Umeiko chuckled. "They take after you a lot, you know."

"They do?" said Asima in surprise, uncertain and puzzled. She pointed at herself.

"Yes, they're always copying you," said Umeiko. "They are their own people. But they get a lot of the love and happiness in their eyes, a lot of their calm and bravery and intelligence, from you. They really look up to you, you know. I'm the fun one, but you're who they look up to. I think they find you very comforting. It makes sense; you're a good mother. Anzu, the precocious one, says you have a cool silvery voice and soft gentle hands and you smell of sandalwood. They are very lucky to have you."

She smiled as Asima looked contemplative. "I don't feel like I'm much of a person to look up to," she admitted at last.

"You have changed, Asima. And I think it's for the better," said Umeiko.

"I have?"

Umeiko nodded. "You've opened up, become calm and fun and formed a wonderful deadpan sense of humor. These girls have been very good for you. You seem happier. Not as uptight. You wear your ponytail a little looser these days," she joked. "Your face doesn't seem so pulled back."

"I am happier," Asima realized. "I am. I think I might start teaching online classes again, actually. I've been considering that for a while. And maybe it's time to teach them some things," she added thoughtfully to herself, watching the girls play.

"I thought you weren't going to homeschool them for another year," said Umeiko in surprise.

"I'm not," said Asima, determination forming. "That's not what I was talking about."

Some of it, they could only learn as they became older, but much of it they could start now. It was time to teach the girls about magic, Arabic and Egyptology, and games. And soon would come the beginning of homeschooling.