The Mask Carver's Son by Alyson Richman Page A

another?
    Guilt consumed her. Now that my mother was gone, Grandmother could no longer escape the realization of how selfish she had been.
    She could not deny her self-loathing. She knew on the surface that she appeared the dutiful wife. She spoke to her husband only when he addressed her, she maintained a large and beautiful home and ensured that she, her husband, and Etsuko were always dressed appropriately. The death of her son, however, had affected her deeply, and perhaps that had been the turning point in her life, when she realized that there were some obligations for which she was responsible and others that she could never control. Etsuko had become her extension. Perhaps, even before her daughter’s death, Grandmother knew in her heart that it wasn’t fair to expect her daughter to sacrifice herself, her dreams, her love.
    But her husband so desperately wanted a son. This mask carver was the perfect solution. That which they believed would fill in the missing pieces of their family. And when they heard that Etsuko was with child, oh, how they had rejoiced! Once again her husband and she had thought only of themselves. The child was to be a boy. They felt it in their veins. They believed that the gods would reward them for the losses they had endured.
    How gravely they were wrong.
    She could not help but consider herself responsible. The omens were there but she refused to see their fate. She feared upsetting her husband and, even worse, feared upsetting the fulfillment he gleaned from having another male in the household. Foolishly, she believed that if she supported the union of the mask carver and her daughter, her husband would no longer look at her as the wife who had failed to give him a son.
    Now, however, as she stared at my father, she came to realize the impact of her mistakes. She found her shoulders beginning to slope even lower and what black was left in her hair succumbing to gray. Yet from the distance of the corner six-mat room where she now slept, she was awakened by my cries.

SEVEN
    I was my grandmother’s child for a time. Hers completely. The two males of the family coexisted under the blackened rafters of the old house, each in his own mind anxious for the day when I would be old enough to be initiated into the world of Noh. Grandfather imagined the day when I would be old enough to appreciate the theater and the craft of both him and his peers. Father, the day when I would pick up my first chisel and come to love the wood.
    But Grandmother loved me as if I were her own. Her own children lost to her, I became the only living connection she had with her daughter.
    So she raised me as if she were starting anew. In a world where she tried to shield me from the burden of my birth. To love me as she wished she had loved Mother. Without imposing the contagious notion of sacrifice.
    In my infant years I was treated like a young prince. I was weaned on ox milk and washed in water steeped in Manchurian violets and Chinese bell flower. My swaddling clothes were made from the threads of silkworms, harvested after weeks of feeding from a diet limited solely to mulberry leaves and yellow rape blossoms. Grandmother constructed my crib from thatched dried
suzudama
stalks and cushioned its interior with soft gauze pillows. And as if to ensure my safety, she pinned a tiny ornament of
jizo
, the god of protection, to my underclothes and embroidered a tiny version of the family crest to drape over the canopy of my cradle.
    She swore she would never offend the gods again.
    Thirty-one days after my birth, as dictated by tradition, I was placed in the center of my grandmother’s obi, tied in silk, and taken to the local temple. This ceremony, the Hatsumairi was my first journey outside the home. And as the custom specifies, the males of the family followed Grandmother as she carried me, the child, in front, secured ever so safely by the tightness of her sash.
    Both Grandfather and Father wore black and slid their