The Uchikake
Elly hadn’t been to her uncle’s house in a year and a half. In the interim, suburban sprawl had consumed the remaining farmland bordering Eighth North in Orem. Her cousin Tom had grown half a foot and Naomi had added several inches to her chest. The house itself had hardly changed at all. The apple orchards bordering her uncle’s backyard still thrived. The branches were heavily laden with fruit.
Of all the relatives on her mother’s side, Aunt June was the most American. She was technically more Japanese than Elly (her grandparents had immigrated to Hawaii in the 1920s). Though her language skills were no better than the average returned missionary’s.
Since moving back to Japan, Emily had resumed going by her Japanese name, Mariko. “M&M,” Sam called her. Sametaroh had always gone by Sam. Compared to her relatives and siblings, Elly felt like a chameleon, adapting her cultural colors to whatever environment she happened to be in.
Aunt June was preparing the pork cutlets when they arrived. The smell of sh yu and steaming rice always transported Elly back to Japan. But her aunt always spoke English, and that pulled her right back to America.
June said to Connor, “I gather you’re going to marry my niece. Good luck with the in-laws.”
“Grandpa approves of him,” said Elly. “We had lunch yesterday.” June gave her a bemused look. She of course meant Elly’s mother. She
said to Connor, “I once thought of setting you up with Atsuko, Nobuo’s oldest. She’s attending the ELC Fall semester.”
“Atsuko?” said Elly. “She’s only eighteen. What about Emily?”
“With her attending Kobe University, that didn’t seem very practical.”
“True.” Elly nodded. “Wait a minute. When Uncle said I should date Connor, what was I, runner-up?”
“Ah,” June said, as Oh Sensei came into the kitchen. “So that’s what you’re so anxious about.”
“What?” Uncle said.
“Having to explain to your big sister that Connor and Elly’s elopement was your idea.”
“It was not my idea. They did it without any of my help.”
“True.” Elly grinned. “But we might not remember it that way.”
“See?” Uncle said, a comically plaintive expression on his face. “I told you I’d be taking the fall for this. Besides, they’re not eloping. Elder Packard is performing the marriage.”
“I don’t think that will get you off the hook.”
“I know it won’t. It’s my bad karma.”
Aunt June shrugged. “You just tell her that I told her so.”
“You’re the one that was going to tell her that.”
“Tell her what?”
“Well, Elly, when you do get around to telling your mother, be sure to tell her that I told her so.”
“Told her what?”
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” June strode to the doorway and shouted, “Tom! Naomi! Time for dinner!”
After the blessing on the food, June said to her niece, “Makoto tells me you’ll be living with Connor’s aunt.”
“Aunt Wanda,” Elly said. “She knows Mom and Dad.”
“Really?” said June, “how’s that?”
Connor said, “My uncle taught accounting in the business school.”
“It’s a nice apartment,” said Elly.
“They may be rushing,” June observed. “But they’re not doing so heedlessly. They at least have a place to live.”
“I didn’t say they were doing anything heedlessly. I said what they were doing reminded me of my sister.”
Elly said, “Mom and Dad eloped?”
“No more than what you and Connor are doing.”
“And Sayaka never did anything in her life heedlessly.”
“I was only describing what other people said.”
“What other people?” Naomi asked.
“Never mind,” her mother said.
A moment of silence followed. Elly said, “So, Atsuko—I suppose she already has a place to live? I’m leaving my landlord a roommate down.”
“She’s staying in Helaman Halls. It’s right next to the ELC.” June said to Connor, “Did you live with Nobuo and Yuki in Sakai?”
“No, I had an apartment in Osaka two stops down on the Midosuji.”
“And now that we’re on the subject,” June said to her daughter, “with Atsuko coming here, you’ll be able to—”
“Mom—” Naomi sighed.
“No,” her mother said, refusing to concede ground. “Nobuo and Yuki think homestay is a great idea. Plus, we hardly see them anymore. We’ll fly over with you.” She explained to Elly and Connor, “Naomi is going to spend Winter semester in Sakai on study abroad.”
“I didn’t say I was going to. I said I’d think about it.”
“It’s a great idea,” said Elly.
“See?” her mother said.
Elly and Naomi were sitting next to each other at the table, so Naomi couldn’t glare at her cousin. She glared at her mother instead. Her mother ignored her. “They have a very nice house, don’t they, Connor?”
“It’s a nice house,” Connor agreed.
“A nice neighborhood.”
“It’s a nice neighborhood.”
“A nice school.”
“I don’t know anything about the school.”
Naomi said, “So why doesn’t Tom go?”
“Because I’m going to be a senior next year,” her brother responded, as if this was the dumbest thing anybody had ever said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You’re a freshman. You’re not doing anything important.”
“Says you.” To her mother, “I can hardly speak Japanese anymore.”
“That’s the whole point. Elly is practically fluent.”
“That’s because Elly grew up in Japan.”
“All the more reason. The older you get, the harder it becomes. At any rate, we won’t be going till December, which will give the world plenty of time to end.”
After dinner, the cleaning up was left to Uncle Oh and Connor. June said, “I have something to show to Elly.” She added, as they walked down the hallway to the master bedroom, “Have Connor tell his Aunt Wanda I’ll be paying her a visit so we can arrange the reception.”
“Oh, we don’t need a reception. I thought we could just have a dinner with the people who attend the wedding.”
“Then call it an open house. When you visit your parents over Christmas, your mother will no doubt have something extravagant planned— which you, my niece, will gratefully and gracefully go along with.”
“Yes, Auntie,” Elly said with an exaggerated bow. She asked in a more serious voice, “How mad do you think Mom will be at me?”
“She—and your dad—put their families in much the same position when they got married. Which doesn’t justify what they did. But it did establish a certain precedent.”
“Did you know they were going to get married?”
“When I transferred into the district, they’d been pretending for three months that they had a purely professional relationship.” June laughed. “Of course, we shimai knew exactly what was going on. Your mom put up with some pretty merciless teasing.”
“How? How did you know?”
“He showed her such respect. Not that he was rude to the rest of us or put her on a pedestal. I mean he took her seriously and valued what she had to say in the manner it was intended. She, in turn, saw a young man coming into possession of his convictions, learning how to make priorities and stand behind them. Your mother knew that once he made a priority of her, she’d never have to question her place in his life.”
June got three kimono boxes from the top shelf in the wardrobe closet and set them on the bed. She opened the smaller box. “The kosode,” she explained. “It has a shorter sleeve and no train. It’ll be appropriate for the temple ceremony.”
She held up the white kimono. Elly slipped into it. The smooth silk lining was cool against her arms. June said, “I had to hem it up a hand’s breadth, so it should fit you just right.” She knelt and checked the length. Then stepped back for a better look. “You should wear kimono more often, Elly.”
“That’s what Mom says.” She looked at her reflection in the dresser mirror. “It’s exquisite.”
“Now, after the temple ceremony—” With far more care, she opened the two larger boxes and took out a wedding kimono and robe.
Elly gasped. “A shiromuku uchikake! Where did you get it?”
“In his later years, my grandfather’s reaction to the excesses of American liberalism was to rekindle a nostalgia for the old ways he’d left Japan to get away from in the first place. So he insisted I wear a shiromuku and uchikake at my wedding reception. But once in a lifetime isn’t nearly often enough for a kimono this nice.”
Elly snuggled into the snowy uchikake, turning to the side so she could see in the mirror the silver cranes embroidered across the back.
“Look at yourself,” June said, adjusting the mantle across her shoulders. “No parent could stay angry at the sight of such a lovely bride.” She retrieved the obi and held the glimmering silk sash against Elly’s waist.
Elly felt as if some other girl was staring back from the glass, her chameleon-like nature already melding with the pure white wedding robe. “Can I show Connor?” she asked.
“No, you may not. Have some respect for tradition.”
She eased out of the uchikake and kosode. “When Mom and Dad got married, did Grandpa—” She paused to come up with a more tactful way of phrasing the question. “Did Grandpa object to the fact that Mom was Japanese?”
“What makes you think that?” June asked, in a manner that questioned not the truth of what Elly was asking, but how she came to ask it.
“Something Grandpa said to me yesterday. I think he thought Mom told me about it. Except she never did. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
June nodded. “Yes, but I don’t think it had anything to do with her being Japanese.”
“Just not white enough.”
“The shock of the unexpected. She was different. Not the girl next door. To put it cynically, he might have worried it would hurt his advancement in the Church Education System. The proclamation about blacks and the priesthood had just come out and not everybody was comfortable with the fact of a racially-integrated church. Scratch the surface of any Utah ward and you’ll find a redneck or two. But the most harm is caused with the best of intentions. A lot of fake concern about what the children will look like and supposed cultural conflicts. Frankly, there’s a more profound cultural gulf between the East Bench and the West Valley than between a middle-class Mormon from Japan and a middle-class Mormon from Utah.”
She stopped talking for a moment. Her voice was calmer when she spoke again. “But even if that were the case, your grandfather was yielding to public opinion, not personal prejudice. And your mother didn’t help matters any. I’ve never known anybody so incapable of showing deference to authority, even when it was in her own self-interest.”
“I think he was sorry about it,” Elly said in a subdued voice.
“I’m sure they both are.” A distant look came to her eyes. “I sometimes wonder if what hurt him the most was that his son and daughter-inlaw simply assumed from the beginning that the rest of the family would object to the marriage. Go looking for conflict and conflict will find you. Your father got his MBA at Stanford. They didn’t come home for two years. I think it was just long enough for things to settle.”
June said to her niece, “People change. That’s what’s important. Not something a good man said in anger and regretted and repented of a quarter-century ago. There was plenty of blame to go around. Whatever he may have thought then, when you were born—they came back to Salt Lake to have you—and he held you, his first grandchild, in his arms and looked into your big brown eyes, nothing else in the world mattered.”
She smiled. “You see, the reason your mother never mentioned their disagreements was because they aren’t important. Not the kind of thing people of character hold onto—just in case—like a knife up the sleeve.”
Reluctant in wrath, Elly reminded herself. She nodded.
“Good,” said June. “What about birth control?”
“What?” said Elly, thrown by this whiplash switch of subject matter. “I— I’m on the pill,” she stammered, her cheeks growing warm.
“So you’ve been to see Dr. Zhang?”
“Yes, I’ve been to see Dr. Zhang.” Elly had even confessed her visit to Planned Parenthood. Dr. Zhang scolded her for not coming to her first, and then complimented her for thinking ahead, observing that too many young Mormon newlyweds seemed to think that simply not wanting to get pregnant had the same biological effect.
“I’m only doing your mother’s job,” June said pointedly.
“Well, okay,” Elly grumbled. Though now that she thought about it, getting lectured about the facts of life by Dr. Zhang and Aunt June was preferable to hearing them from her mother.