With one hand Amaya massaged her protruding belly and with the other raised the cup of green tea to her lips. Only two more months and the baby would thankfully arrive.
It wasn’t that she minded being pregnant with her and Kevin’s first child. She liked the experience despite the way it made her look when she gazed in the mirror in their small apartment at the University of Illinois. What looked back was a slight, twenty-two year old woman, just over five feet tall with a stomach that she thought made her look like a beached seal.
Kevin was always so kind whenever he saw her looking at herself. He would come up from behind and circle her waist. “You’ll soon need arm extenders,” she told him, as she joined her hands over his. “It’s not good to be married to a basketball.”
He pushed away her long, black hair and kissed her neck. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Long arms run in my family.” Then they would giggle, fall on the double bed that was becoming too small, and make whatever love they could without actually having sex.
No, she looked forward to the baby despite the fact that the girl — she and Kevin had asked the doctor to tell them the gender — would make the small apartment even more crowded. Rather, it was the problems to come afterward: what they would name the child and how they would travel back to her parent’s village for the oshichiya mimeishiki — the naming ceremony in the Shinto shrine that would appease her ancestors. Most of all, Amaya worried about how her in-laws in Indiana would react to having a Japanese grandchild. From the first time she met them, she worried that her mother-in-law did not like the idea of their son marrying an Asian. It was not that her mother-in-law was rude, far from it. She made sure to be polite but remained toward Amaya distant, almost cold.
June was as hot in Illinois as it was in Japan, and, if possible, more humid. But what surprised Amaya was the lack of rain. In Shimane Prefecture on the eastern shore of Japan, it rained every day during the summer. Here in Urbana, it had not rained in six months. Whenever Kevin got off the phone with his parents, he complained how this two-year drought was ruining farmers like his father.
Amaya was startled by a knock on the door. She remembered Kevin’s admonition to look through the peephole. She peered through the hole and saw Marlene, the wife of one of Kevin’s colleagues in the Comparative Literature Department. Amaya liked her well enough, except that she always asked personal questions or talked about her marital problems.
She opened the door. Marlene’s blond hair was partially hidden under a checkered kerchief. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, which seemed odd to Amaya. In Japan, a woman never went out, even if just visiting a friend, without looking her best. Marlene clutched a grocery bag to her chest.
She breezed past Amaya toward the kitchen table. She didn’t take off her shoes, although Amaya in the past had offered her uwabaki, slippers that the Japanese wore indoors. For whatever reason, Marlene never took the hint.
Marlene dropped the bag onto the table. “Bagels and cream cheese,” she announced. “Jewish comfort food. Perfect for morning sickness.”
“But it’s afternoon,” Amaya said. She didn’t wish to be rude, but she disliked the doughy rolls with the strange hole in the middle. They made her feel even more bloated.
“Honey, its morning somewhere, and there’s nothing like a nosh to make everything right with the world.”
“Nosh?” Amaya asked.
“Nosh. A treat. A naughty indulgence.”
Amaya placed the bagels on a plate. Marlene spread cream cheese on her bagel and took a bite. “You’re not having any?”
Amaya lied. “Since I became pregnant I hardly eat.”
“Guess you’ll be ecstatic when the baby finally comes.”
Amaya smiled. “Yes, it will be nice to feel normal again.”
Marlene smeared another slab of cream cheese on her bagel. “So, have you and Kevin decided on a name?”
Amaya looked down. “No, the naming continues to be a difficulty.”
“How do you mean?”
She struggled to find the right words in English. “In our family, it is customary to name the first child after the geographical place where the baby was born.”
Marlene stopped chewing. “Don’t tell me you and Kevin are naming your girl Champaign-Urbana!”
Amaya shook her head. “No, that name wouldn’t sound Japanese at all. I would like to call her Nois.”
“Nois? What kind of crazy name is that?”
Amaya tried not to show her annoyance. “What state are we in?” she asked.
“Illinois,” Marlene said. “Hey I get it; you’ll name the child after the last syllable in the State’s name. I have to admit it does sound Japanese.
Amaya smiled. “I’m glad you agree.”
“Yeah,” Marlene said. “I’m just glad that Kevin isn’t attending college in Kansas.”
Amaya struggled to understand but came up blank. “What do you mean?”
“Forget it. “What does Kevin think of the idea?”
“He doesn’t hate the idea, but he’s afraid that his mother will.”
“I take it his mother isn’t too crazy about having a Japanese daughter-in-law.”
“It’s difficult to tell,” Amaya said. “She hardly ever speaks to me. Mostly she acts like I’m not there.”
Marlene pushed her half-eaten bagel away. “That’s it; I have to stop or I’m going to end up looking like the Goodyear Blimp.” She wiped the edges of her mouth with a napkin. “How did you and Kevin meet, anyway?”
“We met inJapan. Kevin was on a grant doing research at the University in
Shimane. I was an undergraduate majoring in literature. It was hitome bore — what you Americans call love at first sight.”
“And you two got married right away?”
Amaya sighed. “Yes and no.”
“Yes and no? What does that mean?”
“You must understand,” Amaya said. “My parents are from a rural village. They believe in kodon, tradition. In their eyes, Kevin and I are not really married until we have the shinzen shiki, the traditional Japanese wedding ceremony at the Shinto Shrine. And with Kevin’s dissertation and job searches, I don’t know when, if ever, we will make it back for that.”
About Richard Luftig
