The Mask Carver's Son by Alyson Richman Page B

sandals silently as they walked behind us. Neither wished to pay his respects to the Gods, as both were angered by their loss.
    Father had lost love, and Grandfather had lost his link with his last surviving child. And of these two great losses I dare not judge whose loss was greater.
    Grandmother dropped a few drops of water from a bamboo ladle onto my infant fists and then carried me up to the great altar where incense clouded the air. She stared at the flicker of candles; she bent her knees and bowed her head.
    And it was there she thought she saw a vision of Mother nestled under the swollen calves of Buddha. Cloaked in the white of a pilgrim, hooded like a bride, she slept.
    She turned to her husband, her face as pale as the robe of the priest who passed behind the altar, “Do you see anything at the base of the Buddha?” she asked.
    He looked at her strangely and shook his head to show he did not know what she saw. But as his gaze fell on that of his new grandson, he noticed how the small child extended his hands toward the bronze statue, how the child’s eyes widened, transfixed.
    “I do not see what you see, Chieko,” he told her, “but perhaps the child does.”
    Looking down at me, she saw the top of my forehead grow pale, cast by the light of the tall temple tapers, my small, plump hands reaching toward the sagging belly of the statue.
    He sees her too, she thought to herself as a warmth flowed through her body. It never occurred to her, however, that another person besides her husband might have seen her as well.
    For she did not see Father, or perhaps even think of him, as he stood there motionless behind her. But he saw more than either of us. Mother. The image of his lost love. Transparent as wet cotton. Floating toward him and then evaporating in midair.

EIGHT
    O ne of the first things I learned from Grandmother was that when spirits of the dead wished to visit the mortal world, they often used the bodies of small children to reveal their lost souls. “Before the age of seven the spirits can enter and leave you at any time,” she said to me one night as she placed the coverlet beneath my chin. “So we must take care of you.” She looked down at me with her sad black eyes. “You are your mother’s shrine.”
    I grew up believing those words. That my mother lived inside me. That I was a vessel for her soul.
    My dreams, I believe, were unlike those of most young children. Colorful and rare. Mother would appear like poured liquid, suspended by air, her robes a blurred lavender. I would see her, and she would lean down and touch me with the sweep of her hand, create a cradle from the weaving of her thick black hair.
    When I awakened, I would tell Grandmother, “I have seen her! She has come,” and she would kneel by my futon and hold me so close that I could feel her ribs. Her small nose pressed into the sprout of my hair, her arms tightening with each of her breaths.
    I often wondered, as I grew older, if in his dreams Father saw her too. I never believed he dreamed wooden dreams cast forever in brown. But had he seen her, reached out in a half-awakened state to touch her, his fingers would merely have grasped the air. And he would certainly have have had no one there to hold him when he realized, as he collapsed in the shadows of those dark nights, how truly deep was his despair.

NINE
    T here were certain things that my grandmother knew she could not protect me from. Things that were chosen for me before I was born. For she had witnessed her husband’s declaration and my father’s reaffirmation: I was to be a son of Noh.
    Originally she did not think anything of the decision. She had expected such. That was how the Yamamoto family had lived for centuries. Emperors had strained their ears to hear my ancestors’ melodies, Shogunates had fought to be patrons of our troupes. She herself would have preferred that I grow to be an actor like Grandfather. Proud and stately. A man who commanded respect.