Chapter 11

Still Sachiko’s turn:

“Do you worry about rushing things?” Darcy asked me. “You’ve only been here a week, right?”

“It is a short time, but then Robert and I have been together across time and space for much longer – time for us to learn of our love,” I said.

“I hope you’re right, Chiki,” she replied. “So many people consider marriage to be disposable.”

“Throw away,” I said. “I know of such. I know of many who consort outside of marriage. It is almost normal, I think. But I know my Robert and I know Robert’s Sachiko and those things won’t work. We will marry...”

“In his church?”

“In front of his friends and his family and his god.” I paused to watch her eyes. “You will be there.”

She smiled. “That is a fact. I will be there. With my fiancé. God? You are Christian?”

“I knew nothing of ‘Christian’ before Robert. He has explained. I have accepted. It is as it should be. In the old ways, his god will be my god...”

“But Christian, it means to follow, to believe...” Darcy said softly. There ae things ... Baptism...”

“It is not something that Robert says I will hang around my neck. It is not a sign, a ... label. Robert says ‘in my heart’, so I take it in my heart. But also as in the old ways ... his god is my god.”

“He told me of believing, and accepting, and being baptized. The water symbolizes dying, am I correct?”

“It does.”

“I cannot explain, but I think baptism means more to me. I am here talking with you in America. I have a new life already. I understand and accept. To go from obeying the old ways to believing, I do not think it was difficult for me. I was raised much different from you and Robert, but I understand faith and I understand duty.”

“Neither of them seems important anymore,” Darcy sighed.

“It is always like that in every place and every time. We sometimes think we’re different from those before us, but we’re not.” Inwardly I knew that she would not understand that I died 800 years before and was reborn, released, into this new world.

“I guess you’re right. Still, sometimes it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Yes,” I told her, “as it does to me, but we can look at the world with wonder and do as we know to do.”

I ate another bite of that sticky bun. “And this thing is decadent.”

“Isn’t it, though? I don’t do this often, but it is an indulgence. So what are we shopping for today?”

“I think I need informal clothes like you wear sometimes – the short pants and the tops.”

“A selection?”

“I should have brought some,” I said. Little lie again. I don’t know how the clothing I own appeared at Robert’s apartment, but it did. I begin to think that the selection was enough to get me presentable and that getting more clothing was intended as part of my finding my way in Robert’s world.

“What are you wearing for your wedding?”

“I am not sure. It is to be a small thing – formality, really. What do you think?”

“Oh, you can go all over the map on weddings -small to extravagant.”

“Extravagant. Huge. Ostentatious,” I said, words appearing in my head as I spoke, a strange feeling because little Japanese girls from country inns aren’t supposed to know words like that in Japanese, much less American English.

“So probably NOT any of those,” Darcy replied. “Who’s planning it?”

“I do not know.”

“Robert’s mother, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you mind if I call her and offer my assistance?”

“You would do that for me?”

“Certainly. You’re my friend. Robert is my friend. This is what friends do.” Darcy smiled. “Shall we call her together?”

“Let’s do that,” I said. I thought ‘why not?’ Am I not going to be her son’s wife, her daughter-in-law?

It’s a cellphone, I’ve learned, and has memory for Robert’s parents, both of them. I select to call his mother.

“Sachiko!” she chirps. Yes, when Robert gave me the phone, he showed me many things with it, and we called his mother so she had me in her phone as well.

“Hello, Mizz Richard. It is me. I have my friend Darcy here. We are talking about the wedding.”

“Hello, Darcy.”

“Hi, Missus Richard. Chiki and I are shopping and we want to know your thoughts on the wedding.”

“Robert and Sachiko said it would be simple.”

“Robert has a suit,” I said. “I have seen it at our apartment. I need a dress.”

“She needs a dress,” Darcy repeated.

My new mother-in-law talked about a special dress for the wedding, to be worn once.

“That would be wasteful,” I said.

“Lots of people do that, Chiki,” Darcy said. “They spend thousands for a special dress for the wedding.”

“I don’t want to spend thousands for a dress I wear one time,” I said. “In Japanese households, the wife is the money manager. I am starting now. A simple dress that you and I think is pleasing, and I will wear it to be married and then I will wear it at special times for my husband and our friends.”

“My boy’s really getting something,” Mizz Richard said.

“Did I say something offensive?”

“No,” Mizz Richard said. “It’s good to have an opinion.”

“Does it make you unhappy? A dress I wear many times?”

“No, no. Chiki, I see weddings for the children of my friends and I find that often there is a lot of money wasted.”

“She’s right, Chiki,” Darcy said supportively. “I need to show you some pictures.”

“Darcy, don’t sell her that other kind of wedding,” Mizz Richard chided.

“Oh, I won’t. Chiki’s, well, the more I find out, the more I think Robert gonna have to step up his game to deserve her.”

“Darcy, darlin’, they NEVER do enough to deserve us.”

Darcy laughed at the joke. So did I. I’d heard similar words for Lady Sakura. I think women are still the same over eight hundred years and half a world. In Lady Sakura’s case, the man that didn’t deserve her was captain of one of the daimyo’s regiments, his position in life was not compatible with hers. They could never marry, but they could be friends and lovers, beautiful to behold for such a brief time, just like the cherry blossoms for which she was named. Robert and I, we met at a point in time, but from that point, our marriage will be as eternal as heaven can make it.

By the end of the day I had new clothing, including a very nice, simple dress. Darcy had shown me examples of some wedding gowns. I looked at her. “You may look beautiful in a dress such as this...”

“You would, too, Chiki,” Darcy smiled.

I smiled back. “but I desire something simple.”

“I’m not going for that, either,” she said. “Mom switches back and forth when the moon changes. One day she’s thinking that she’s losing the chance for me to be a princess and the next, she’s telling me that she admires my sense of frugality.”

“Frugality. That is what a wife should practice with the family money.”

“Yes, but all you ever see is these grand spectacles tossed up like it’s the normal thing. Or if it’s not the normal thing, it’s the thing us normal people should aspire to reach.”

My new friend. I am rapidly understanding her thinking, which is to say, her heart. Guileless.

“Neither you nor I are normal, Darcy. We can be, we can do as our hearts desire.”

When Robert showed up to take me home, I hid the wedding dress and I told him how happy I was to make a new friend. Of course...

“What’s in the box?”

“The dress I will wear for our marriage ceremony.”

“Darcy did that?”

“Yes. We talked with your mother. They have it planned. I am being treated well by them. We will have a small traditional wedding. And you and I need to meet with your minister tomorrow.”

Darcy smirked over my shoulder. “You got yourself one that’s gonna take care of you.”

Robert’s turn:

I’d spent the day taking the steps to roll myself as gracefully out of college as I could.

And I called Dad.

“You’re serious, son?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“That little girl’s not making you do something you’d rather not do?”

“I dunno if she knows the difference between being the wife of an engineer and being the wife of a farmer.”

“We’ve talked. Engineering might be a lot easier.”

“But I’m the son of a farmer and I had that in the back of my head. You know how you and I talked about it. Sachiko says that a son should follow in the steps of an honorable father.”

“I’m an honorable father.”

“Sachiko used that term. And when I talked about how many acres we own and how many we lease, she said that in feudal Japan you would have been a major lord, a daimyo, but you need a couple hundred samurai to back up your title.”

“Son, she seems very intelligent. You telling me things like this, that makes me think she’s got more of a sense of family and history than I expect from somebody her age, and that includes you.”

“That’s just it, Dad. Ever since I met Sachiko, I feel like she makes me into a better person.”

“Well, I can tell you that your mom’s beside herself with the idea about you coming back here.”

“Good or bad?”

“Good. She’s the one who demanded that we put you and Sachiko up in one of the rent houses here on the farm. We have one vacant and it’s just been remodeled.”

“We’ll take it. For the time being.”

“Oh, I guess you have some idea of future plans, then?”

“We always talked about great-grand-dad’s old place...”

“Yeah, that place is too far gone to renovate. You know that.”