“Eriko was a man a long time ago. He married very young. The person he married was my mother.”
“Wow…I wonder what she was like.” I couldn’t imagine.
“I don’t remember her myself. She died when I was little. I have a picture, though. Want to see it?”
“Yes.” I nodded. Without getting up, he dragged his bag across the floor, then took an old photograph out of his wallet and handed it to me.
She was someone whose face told you nothing about her. Short hair, small eyes and nose. The impression was of a very odd woman of indeterminate age. When I didn’t say anything, Yuichi said, “She looks strange, doesn’t she?”
I smiled uncomfortably.
“As a child Eriko was taken in by her family. I don’t know why. They grew up together. Even as a man he was good-looking, and apparently he was very popular with woman. Why he would marry such a strange…” he said smiling, looking at the photo. “He must have been pretty attached to my mother. So much so he turned his back on the debt of gratitude he owed his foster parents and eloped with her.”
I nodded.
“After my real mother died, Eriko quit her job, gathered me up, and asked herself, ‘What do I want to do now?’ What she did was, ‘Become a woman.’ She knew she’d never love anybody else. She says that before she became a woman she was very shy. Because she hates to do things half way, she had everything ‘done,’ from her face to her whatever, and with the money she had left over she bought that nightclub. She raised me a woman alone, as it were.” He smiled.
“What an amazing life story!”
“She’s not dead yet,” said Yuichi.
Whether I could trust him or whether he still had something up his sleeve…the more I found out about these people, the more I didn’t know what to expect.
But I trusted their kitchen. Even though they didn’t look alike, there were certain traits they shared. Their faces shone like buddhas when they smiled. I like that, I thought.
