Mitsuko's mother died three days ago.
To the funeral home director, it was a completely average wake and funeral. The room was filled with relatives and friends, but not overflowing; the weather was neither overly sunny and warm to be ironic, nor raining and dreary, but warm, with a slight cool breeze and spotted with clouds. Guests passed black-and-silver envelopes to Mitsuko in a black dress and a man in an equally black suit. The girl looked worn and haggard from crying and lack of sleep; the man had dark circles under his eyes, but otherwise gave no hint to his thoughts. The priest said his sutras, incense was burned, and gifts were given to the guests. A few, including the girl and man, stayed to keep vigil, but most left.
The funeral was much the same. Incense was burned for the dead woman, her new precept name was given, flowers were placed around the body, and the casket was sealed.
Mitsuko's quiet sobbings, and the shsh shsh shsh of her father's hand rubbing gentle, comforting circles on her shoulders, were the music to which the ceremony played.
When the tray was pulled out of the cremation chamber, Mitsuko turned away and ran out of the crematorium.
She didn't want her last memory of her mother to be a pile of ash and bones on a platter.
Some time later, her father also exited the building, holding an urn. Mitsuko looked at it like it was a vicious animal. He took her hand, and quietly walked her to the car. He never said a word as he drove to their apartment, and his expression hadn't changed at all.
When they got home, Mitsuko's father placed the urn containing the ashes was placed in a shrine with a picture of the dead woman in a black enamel frame. They knelt in front of it, saying a quiet prayer.
When they finished, they stood up as one. Mistuko's father quietly walked over to the opposite wall, on which there were several dozen pictures of a smiling, happy family, starting at the wedding of the dead woman and the man. In the more recent photos, the woman looked more gaunt, and ill. In the most recent, taken in front of a baseball stadium while on vacation in America, she is wearing a bandanna over her head. A very famous American baseball player, in his game uniform, is standing with the family, his arms wrapped around Mitsuko's mother and father and beaming as if these strangers were his dearest friends. The family's smiles are all very strained.
Mitsuko's father took that picture off the wall. As Mitsuko watched, he began to take more photos down, gathering them in his arms. Every single one of them was a photo with Mitsuko's mother in it.
"Dad?" Mistuko asked. "What are you doing?"
He ignored her. A picture from Mitsuko's tenth birthday party of her mother proudly carrying a birthday cake is the next to come down.
"Dad!"
Still, he doesn't respond.
She ran up to him, and grabbed his arm, pulling him away. He barely moved. "Stop, what are you doing!"
Finally, he looked at her. "Fine," he said. pushing the pile of photos into his daughter's arms. She looked at him, confused, then takes one picture in her hand and moves to put it in its space on the wall.
"No," he says, putting his arm in front of her. "Put them in your room. Do not hang them back up again."
Mitsuko's jaw dropped, bewildered. She didn't understand. For three months, he hardly ever left his wife's side, holding her hand in the hospital bed in silence, watching her heart rate slowly weaken on the monitor, as if that would let them switch places and make her healthy again. Now, he was pulling pictures off the wall in a near frenzy.
He pulled the last picture off its mounting, the one of her in a Western wedding dress. Gently, his hands trembling slightly, he placed that picture on the pile in Mitsuko's arms. He looked at his daughter, his face still expressionless.
"Do whatever you want with those," he said. "As long as I don't see them again."
He walked into the room he used to share with his wife, and closed the door. Mitsuko stood at that wall, holding pictures of her mother and staring at nothing, for a very long time.
The next day, the rest of the pictures of her mother in the house were gone. Within a week, there was no trace she had lived there at all, except for the funeral shrine in the living room.
Mitsuko cried in her room, sometimes alone, and sometimes with her father hugging her tightly and rocking her back and forth like a baby until she fell asleep. For weeks, she left in the morning for school, came home, did her homework, sat down on her bed, and sobbed into her hands.
Outside, on a branch of a tree in a neighbor's yard, a small animal, like a cat with a long squirrel's tail, long ears tipped with pink, and an unchanging cat's smile watched her.
Part 1.
