Silent Honor(10)

“And sweet and kind like his mother,” Masao whispered, smiling at her. He knew that he would cherish her forever.

“You must teach him English,” she said softly, and he smiled, laughing at himself for once. “And we will take him to California to visit his cousin,” she went on, woozy from the drugs, but busily planning their son's future.

“Maybe hell go to college there,” he said, playing the game with her. “Or maybe Hiroko will…. Well send her to Takeo at Stanford.” But this time Hidemi smiled as her eyes fluttered open again.

“She's only a girl….” Hidemi corrected him. “You have a son now.”

“She's a modern girl,” he whispered as he bent close to his wife. “She will do everything Yuji can,” he said, with eyes filled with dreams, and she laughed at him. He was so crazy with his modern ideas and plans for all of them, but she knew just how much she loved him.

“Thank you very much, Masao-san,” Hidemi said awkwardly in English as she drifted off to sleep, holding her husband's hand.

“You're welcome, little one,” he answered her more fluently, and settled down in a chair to watch her.





Chapter 3

NO!' HIDEMI said forcefully. It was an old argument between them, and one she absolutely refused to give in on. “She's a girl, not a man. She belongs here, with us. What good will it do to send her to California?” Hidemi adamantly refused to send her daughter away to college.

“She's almost eighteen years old,” Masao explained patiently for the thousandth time in a year. “She speaks English very well, but she will benefit enormously from at least a year in the States, if not longer.” He wanted her to do all four years of college there, but he knew that for the moment, Hidemi was not ready to let her do it. “It will improve her education, open up her ideas, broaden her horizons. And my cousin and his wife will take good care of her.” They had three children of their own, and lived in Palo Alto. But Hidemi knew all of that, and she still didn't want to do it.

“Send Yuji next year,” she said stubbornly, as he looked at her, wondering if he'd ever win the argument. It was really something that he wanted for Hiroko. She was very shy, and very traditional, in spite of her father's revolutionary ideas, and he thought it would do her good to leave Japan for a while. It was Yuji who really wanted to go, who was dying to spread his wings, and who was so much like him.

“We can send Yuji too, but this would be an unforgettable experience for Hiroko. She'll be safe there, she'll be in good hands. And think of all that she'd learn.”

“A lot of wild American habits,” Hidemi said disapprovingly, and Masao sighed in despair. She was a wonderful wife, but she had very definite, and very traditional, ideas about their children, particularly their daughter. Hiroko had been schooled in every possible ancient tradition before her grandmother died the year before, and Hidemi herself continued all of them with meticulous precision. They were important, certainly, but there were other things Masao wanted Hiroko to learn, that he thought were more important, particularly for a woman. He wanted her to have all the same opportunities as Yuji, and in Japan, that was far from easy. “She can learn English here. I did,” Hidemi said firmly as Masao smiled at her.

“I give up. Send her to be a Buddhist nun. Or call a go-between and find her a husband. You might as well. You're not going to let her do anything with her life, are you?”

“Of course I am. She can go to university here. She doesn't have to go all the way to California.”

“Think of what you're depriving her of, Hidemi. I'm serious. Can you really live with yourself, doing that to her? Think of the experience she would have there. All right, never mind four years of college. Send her for a year. One school year. It would be a year she would treasure for the rest of her life. She'll make friends, meet new people, get new ideas, and then she can come back and go to university here. But she'll never be quite the same again, if she goes … or if she doesn't.”

“Why do you have to make it my responsibility for cheating her out of an opportunity? Why is it my fault?” Hidemi pouted.

“Because you want to keep her here. You want to keep her comfortable, hidden in your skirts, safe in our little world, shy, and old-fashioned, and totally tied up by all the useless traditions your mother taught her. Set her free, like a beautiful little bird. Shell come back to us…. But don't clip her wings, Hidemi, just because she's a girl. It's not fair. The world is hard enough for women.” It was a fight he had long championed, and one his wife didn't entirely agree with. She was perfectly satisfied with her lot in life, in fact, as his wife, she enjoyed a great many freedoms. But she also knew it, and she wasn't entirely deaf to what he was saying, or the voice of her own conscience.