A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton Read Free Book Online Page A

it annoying, he could never get the ball in the cup.’ She wrapped the string around the handle. ‘Do you mind if I keep this?’
    â€˜Please. Take what you must.’
    She thanked me and next she pulled out a piece of paper from the chest and smiled. ‘Here, I think this is for you.’ She handed me a drawing, which consisted of little more than circles for the bodies and heads and sticks for arms. Underneath, he had written ‘Grandmother and Grandfather’.
    I felt embarrassed. ‘It could be either of us.’
    She looked inside the chest. ‘You were lucky to spend more time with him.’
    The truth made me blush. ‘We will keep looking for them.’
    â€˜They are gone, Amaterasu. I think we must accept this. I think we already have.’
    I managed to look in her eyes. ‘What will you do?’
    She picked up one of the sweaters I had folded and held it to her face, breathing in the memory. ‘Carry on, endure, live. What else can we do?’ She ran her hands over the brown wool. ‘And you?’
    The words were even more hollow when repeated. ‘Carry on, endure, live.’
    And so I had, for nearly forty years, I carried on, I accepted Hideo was gone. Now the idea of him was back, not a boy, but a man, and every time I thought about him I saw pikadon and that empty home and that drawing.
Grandmother and Grandfather
. I returned to the bedroom and retrieved the sketch, the writing almost illegible, despite no sunlight to blanch the ink. In the kitchen I placed it next to Yuko’s diary.
    I had kept my promise. I had never read her journals. While I told myself I was doing a honourable deed by preserving her privacy, in reality, I was just a coward. I had turned away from what I could not face, but Yuko could sift the truth from the lies. She could bring Hideo truly back to life. Only my daughter would make me believe that this mutilated man was her son.

An Omen
    Engi: In Buddhist philosophy, engi is the definite law that governs the mutation of the phenomenal world where all living things must die and nothing is permanent. In secular use, engi means an omen or luck. A dream about a snake is said to be a good omen and that about a fish a bad one. Good-luck charms are popular among shopkeepers who display them in their stores. Some charms are the exorcising arrows (hamaya), the decorated bamboo rake (kumade) and the figure of a beckoning cat (maneki-neko).
    I opened the first of Yuko’s diaries and ran my hands over the yellowed paper. The ink seemed almost too fresh, as if written weeks not years ago. This was not my daughter on the page, but these words were all I had. I started when the two of them began: July 29, 1936. They met in his office, a routine medical appointment, a young girl sent to a doctor by her father, a doctor who had been a family friend. The way she described the day, everything was heightened. The cicadas’ song, the sun on the stone curves of Spectacles Bridge, the smell of seafood as she passed Shinchi in the taxi, the grey slab of the hospital and the stillness of Sato’s office, all were bright and intense. She caught the details: the photograph of his dead brother in uniform, the cracks in the leather examination table and the Buddhist plaque on the wall, whichsaid: ‘
We eat, excrete, sleep and get up. This is our world. All we have to do after that – is to die
.’
    If I close my eyes, I can see it all, locked inside her. Everything seemed to carry weight and portent.
‘He introduced himself and asked after Father. He said they had known each other for more years than I had been alive. I thought it strange I had never heard of his name before. He seems younger than Father but maybe that’s because he is taller, leaner, his hair thicker. His handsomeness made me shy. I felt self-conscious when he looked at me as if he could see a part of me I wanted to keep hidden. I’m blushing as I write