The Things She Owned

by Katherine Tamiko Arguile

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Years after the death of her cruel and complicated mother, Erika’s house is still full of the things Michiko left behind: an onigiri basket, a Wedgwood tea set, a knotted ring from Okinawa. In defiance of Japanese tradition, Erika has also kept the urn containing Michiko’s ashes, refusing to put her memory to rest. Erika throws herself into working as a chef at a high-end London restaurant and pretends everything is fine. But when a cousin announces that she will be visiting from Japan, Erika’s resolve begins to crack. Slowly the things Michiko owned reveal stories of Michiko’s youth amid the upheaval of Tokyo during and after the war. As the two women’s stories progress and entwine, Erika is drawn to the island of Okinawa, the homeland of her grandmother. It’s a place of magic and mysticism where the secrets of Erika’s own past are waiting to be revealed. Beautiful and mysterious, The Things She Owned explores the complexity of lives lived between cultures, the weight of cross-generational trauma, and a mother and daughter on a tortuous path to forgiveness.

Release date: April 28, 2020

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

South China Sea, August 1979

The sun is blinding. When Erika closes her eyes, its rays pulse white beneath her lids. When she opens them she sees her mother against blue sky, magnificent, like a goddess. Michiko is wearing a cream swimsuit, showing off sun-bronzed skin. Permed black curls tumble from a red and white polka-dot scarf around her head. Erika searches her mother’s face. Sometimes she glimpses the eyes behind those huge Jackie-O sunglasses.

She stares at Michiko’s crimson lips sipping from a martini glass. An olive skewered by a toothpick rests against its rim, which Michiko holds in place with a scarlet nail as she drinks. She empties the glass and plucks the olive from its stick with her teeth, glancing sideways at the men around her on the yacht. Julian rushes forward to refill it.

All afternoon Michiko drinks, reclining on the deck cushions, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She nods, giggles at the men. ‘Hontō—? Usō!’ she coos. Really? Oh, you’re such a liar!

Erika wants to reach out and feel the icy glass the way her mother feels it. She wants to trace the outline of her mother’s mouth with her fingertips. She moves close, and the heavy smell of sandalwood and spice envelops her. Her mother loves this perfume – Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium. Erika touches Michiko’s arm, feeling the sun’s warmth in her skin. But her mother swats her hand away as if it were a fly.

Michiko laughs at something Julian says. He’s acting the clown, entertaining his lover. He mimes walking the plank and goggles his eyes. He teeters into a handstand, leaps up to take a bow and struts about with his chest puffed out like a rooster. Michiko’s friend Marit laughs too, though not as loudly. Erika is happy Marit is here – she and her husband have come to visit them in Hong Kong. Marit is kind to Erika. She has a way of making Erika feel she can be herself and not get into trouble for it.

As the sun falls towards the sea, Michiko grows quiet. Erika can see she’s still smiling, though at no one in particular. Her eyes are focused somewhere beyond the horizon, her face pink and orange in the setting sun’s rays. When she looks peaceful like this, she doesn’t seem so frightening.

It’s the right moment. Erika lays her head in Michiko’s lap; Julian laid his head there earlier.

‘Ugh! Hot and sticky. Go play!’ Michiko pushes her off, pointing with the hand holding the glass, slopping icy vodka on Erika’s legs. The cold cuts through the heat of her skin. The shock of it is strange, like a burn and an itch.

Erika heads to the prow to curl into the cushions there. She’s never been on such an enormous yacht. She peers over the edge at the waves far down below, listening to the conversation and laughter behind her. She turns to look at her mother, who is holding out her glass again. One of the men, the blond one, leaps forward with a bottle.

The man stares at her mother as he pours. He has an odd expression on his face, and the glass is overflowing, the drink spilling into her mother’s lap. ‘Oh,’ cries Michiko, ‘so cold!’ And he takes a fistful of napkins from a tray and mops her lap; she twitches at his touch. Erika watches her mother covering the cloud of injection marks on her thighs with her palms while he wipes, watches Julian crossing his arms, his face darkening. The man sits close to Michiko and drapes his arm over her shoulder. He leans into her, whispering to her in a peculiar way with his face turned to the side so his mouth is close to her ear and his ear close to her lips, as if he wants to trap every word. Everything goes quiet.

Erika is so absorbed by the sight of her mother with the man that when Julian looms over her she jumps.

‘Hey kid! How about a swim?’

She loves swimming but feels a stab of fear when she thinks about being out here in the open ocean where her feet can’t touch the bottom. Maybe everything will be okay if she wears her water wings.

Heart thrilling, she brings them to her mother and holds them out. The blond man is still curled around Michiko, murmuring. Erika waits for her mother to look at her.

‘Come on, kid, we haven’t got all day!’ Julian sounds angry.

Erika wonders if her real dad would have been more patient. Erika doesn’t know what he looks like because he left before she can remember, but she knows his name is George, which she thinks is a kind-sounding name. Her mother said that George left because he didn’t want Erika, but Erika knows that sometimes her mother lies.

‘Mama—?’

Michiko whips round. ‘“Mama” wa dame! Michiko desho!’

Erika holds up the floppy pieces of orange plastic. Her mother tuts and gestures to come closer. When she darts forward for them, Erika flinches, but Michiko just slips a wing onto each of Erika’s arms, purses her lips around the valves and blows, leaving crimson smears. The blond man stays where he is, watching. Erika suddenly wants to push him away, hard, both hands against his chest, but Michiko has her arm gripped tight. Erika feels her blood pulsing as the wings grow fatter, and when her mother roughly runs a forefinger inside the inflated water wing, she catches the soft skin of Erika’s inner arm. It hurts, but she makes no sound. She loves her mother too much at this moment, despite everything. She wants to sit close and put her arms around Michiko’s neck. She wants to be where the blond man is, closer, even, so she might merge back into her. She basks in the imagined gaze of a mother’s love, keeping very still, the way you’d keep still if you saw a deer in a clearing and didn’t want to scare it off. But then Michiko slaps her bottom with a laugh. ‘Go on, have swim,’ she says. ‘Julian take care of you.’

Erika heads for the long ladder that stretches all the way down the side of the yacht into the waves, but Julian picks her up from behind before she can reach it, grabbing her under the arms. He whirls her around.

‘Wa-haay! Whoo!’

It makes her laugh. He plays with her like this now and then. It’s fun, though it makes her feel a bit sick. It’s the funniest feeling when he puts her down and the room keeps tilting and spinning even after she’s stopped going around in circles. She can’t work out where the floor is, or even where her own body is, and she’ll fall over, laughing until her tummy hurts.

She sees flashes of sea, the sun, blue sky, her mother, the blond man, Marit, the other man, the deck, the sail, the sea, the sun, blue sky, her mother, the blond man, Marit, the other man, the deck, the sail … She’s flying.

‘Yaaah! I’m gonna chuck you in! Here we go! Whoooshhh!’

She feels Julian stumble, and her heart skips. His breath smells of beer. He steadies himself. Now he swings her from side to side as he inches closer to the edge of the yacht; he’s pretending he’s going to throw her overboard. Erika’s laughter turns to shrieks each time he swoops her up over the edge, when, for a moment, she feels as if she were lifting right up and out of his arms and can see the abyss of the dark shining sea far below. Each time, her tummy falls out from inside her as he scoops her back towards the deck, making her scream and laugh. Each time, she expects him to put her down so she can go to the ladder and climb down into the sea. But he keeps on and on, swinging and swooping and hollering. She starts to feel sick. She wants him to stop. She cries out, ‘I want to get down!’

He keeps going, as if he can’t hear her, and she squirms in his grip.

‘No! Let me go!’ She shouts louder. ‘I don’t like it!’

Still he doesn’t stop. He keeps swinging her backwards, forwards, over the edge of the yacht, lurching. ‘Wa-haaaayyy! Woo hoo!’

‘Julian, put her down!’ Marit’s voice.

He doesn’t stop.

‘Julian!’ Marit is shouting.

His arms grip Erika’s ribs so tightly they hurt. She wants to cry, but knows it will embarrass her mother, so she bites her lip, her breath catching in her throat. She whimpers. She struggles once again to break free of Julian’s clutches. Still he keeps on and on.

‘Julian! ’

On an upwards swoop over the edge of the yacht, Erika wriggles free. She feels the familiar lift out of Julian’s arms, but then there’s only the brush of his fingers against her ribs as she plummets, her body turning through the air as she falls, her stomach leaping to her throat. The rush in her ears, the white noise of the waves beneath her, is punctured only by Marit’s long scream as she falls, headfirst, for what seems forever.

Erika

Erika spends her one day off a week cleaning her own and Lila Mackenzie’s flats – three hours for herself and two for her elderly neighbour. She goes upstairs each Monday afternoon, taking a week’s worth of casseroles and soups to put in the eighty-five-year-old widow’s fridge, and when she’s done she stays for a chat and a cup of tea and a biscuit. Mrs Mackenzie is frail and leaves messages on Erika’s answering machine whenever she needs help with something, like opening a jar of honey or changing a light bulb. The relationship grew organically. There’d never been an official arrangement, but they’d assumed the roles of carer and cared for, settling into a comfortable companionship that bridged the fifty-five-year gap between them. Erika never tires of the stories Mrs Mac tells again and again as she reminisces over old photographs and prized objects. The old woman’s memories are a robust and lively contrast to her brittle body. She sits curled and impeccably dressed in her enormous golden velvet armchair, her eyes sparking as she talks.

Mrs Mackenzie’s stories reconnect an unidentifiable, broken thread inside Erika. She leaves, feeling restored somehow, clutching a shopping list and a purse of money from the widow’s pension. She delivers the groceries before her evening shift later in the week, giving her a chance to check up on her neighbour. Mrs Mackenzie has two daughters and five grandchildren but Erika’s never seen them visiting. The daughters are busy people and rarely seem to call, yet Mrs Mackenzie speaks lovingly of them, smiling at their photos above the mantelpiece. Erika wonders if they know how lucky they are, having this mother’s unconditional love.

She’s glad of the hours she spends cleaning the flat and tending to Mrs Mackenzie’s needs. It keeps Erika from swimming into uncharted waters of empty time. Without these tasks, she’d happily work seven days a week. Before she got to know her neighbour, she’d even suggested this to her boss, André, the head chef at the restaurant where she worked. He said he’d be more than happy to let her kill herself working every day of the week if she wanted to, if it weren’t for the miserable bastards at Health & Safety. He’d never had anyone complain about having time off, he’d said, and frankly, mate, Erika was a freak, but he’d forgive her because she was a fucking awesome sous-chef and had a nice arse. She’d grimaced before getting back to her station to prep her mise for evening service.

Erika navigates her day in a trance of tidying, dusting, polishing. Once her flat is clean, with everything in its place, she always feels better. It’s a ritual of righting herself. If Marcus stays at her place more than three nights a week, things begin to unravel. Spoons get jumbled up with knives, the bar of soap becomes embedded with black curls of pubic hair, and mismatched socks emerge from the washing machine. She feels a tension growing inside her like a spring winding ever more tightly, until, despite herself, she shrivels and closes inwards. Eventually she can’t look him in the eye anymore and has to ask him to stay away for a while. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does, he doesn’t take it personally. He has more important priorities: his son, Felix – his treasure, the love of his life. Erika has never met Felix. She doesn’t want to, not until she’s sure she and Marcus will stay together for the long haul.

The relationship suits them both. Erika’s equally happy to oblige when Marcus is the one to ask for space. They loop away from one another, planets on separate orbits, knowing their paths will converge again.

Erika takes longer than usual to clean on this particular day. She works up a sweat, squinting against the glare of the late May sun. She balls up newspaper and gives her side of the glass a hard polish with vinegar, a tip from Mrs Mackenzie. She unscrews the smoke alarms from the ceiling to dust them, wobbling on tiptoe on a chair. She empties the kitchen cupboards and wipes down the shelves. She works through without stopping for lunch. She isn’t hungry.

She vacuums the carpet on the other side of the dining table. The hose catches the edge of the dark antique Korean cabinet that sits in an alcove. She yanks it free and the machine topples on to its side with a whine.

‘Fuck’s sake.’

She stoops to right the vacuum cleaner and stands up too quickly. Dizzy, she grabs at the dining table to keep from falling. A piece of paper wafts off it onto the floor at her feet.

She bends to pick it up and a strangled sound escapes her. She kicks the off switch on the vacuum cleaner and sinks into a chair with the piece of paper, an unread email she’s been avoiding all morning. When she first saw the subject heading and sender in her mailbox, it had filled her with such dread it made her nauseous. She’d printed it out to force herself to read it; holding it in front of her now she wills herself to focus. The Japanese words are typed in roman script, to make them easier for her to read.

Kei wants to visit her in London. She’s been thinking about her aunt a great deal recently, she writes. Could she please visit Michiko Obachan’s English grave? Is it near London? She’s sure Erika hasn’t meant to withhold this information, although it would have been nice to hear where her aunt’s remains are buried. She understands that as Michiko Obachan’s only child, Erika must feel a heavy sense of responsibility, but Kei knows she can trust her, as a descendant of the Takigawa clan, to fulfil it. She is sure Erika recognises her duties in accordance with the virtue of filial piety.

Erika draws a deep breath, forcing herself to read on.

Of course, Kei will stay in a hotel so as not to be any trouble. She is thinking of arriving towards the end of August to stay for about a fortnight. Would Erika please be so kind as to find her a hotel close to her house? She knows most of the hotels in her neighbourhood are expensive, but she does so want to stay near her cousin. Perhaps Erika would be good enough to find her one where the rates are not too high.

Erika decides to reply later, once she’s calmer, once she’s had a good night’s sleep. She unplugs the vacuum cleaner and kicks the recoil button, the cable snapping as it reels itself in. She walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge, but she still isn’t hungry. She puts the kettle on for a cup of tea. It’s early but she’s tired and ready for bed. She’s spent longer than usual cleaning. She’s run the duster across every windowsill, wiped down curtain rails and skirting boards. Every surface reflects the late afternoon light and glimmers cleanliness. The carpets are lint free; the bathroom tiles are shining and the kitchen cupboards are spotless.

Only the Korean cabinet, topped with its sombre arrangement of objects, stands neglected in its alcove. It’s furred with a thick layer of dust. Erika hasn’t cleaned it. She hasn’t cleaned it in years.

Erika

‘Oi-oi!’

Erika realises she’s been dozing. Shrieks of kids high on summer holidays blast through the shush of waves over pebbles and smash into her consciousness. Frankie’s baritone bellow is louder than all of the kids’ combined. Erika’s definitely awake now but keeps her eyes closed, screwing them up against the sun glaring red through her lids. Sweat trickles into one ear. She wipes it on her towel with an exasperated swipe of her head.

‘Oi! Erika! Sarah! You coming in or what?’ Frankie shouts.

She pulls the towel over her head, scrubs her mop of black curls and wipes her face. The summer’s already making newspaper headlines as the ‘Great Heatwave of 2003’; people have died all over Europe. In the oppressive heat, she feels her body constricting and prickling, as if it were trapped in a tightening vice. But it could never be hot enough to persuade her to go into the water.

Sarah is draped on the chair beside her with a floppy hat on her face. She flips up the brim and looks over. ‘You’re awake.’

‘Yep. Fucking Frankie. I was having such a lovely snooze.’ Erika swigs from her bottle of water and watches Sarah get up and strip off her wrap. ‘You’re not going in, are you?’

Sarah gives her a funny look. ‘Course I am, I’m roasting. It’s thirty-six degrees, for fuck’s sake. Come with.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘You could just paddle.’

‘No.’

‘Come on, how often do we—’ Sarah registers Erika’s expression. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Really. I just … I don’t like going into the sea.’ Erika hugs her arms and shivers.

Luca, Sarah’s boy, sits on an inflatable li-lo on the pebbles between them, his face fierce with concentration. He’s scribbling loopy shapes into a giant sketchpad with fat crayons. He flicks over to a new page with a dramatic flourish and draws a huge yellow oval in the middle.

Erika leans over him. ‘Hey. What’s that, a sun?’

He draws a black horizontal line across it and above that, two black dots, like hard pebbles. ‘Nooo!’ He chortles. ‘That’s you, silly!’

A frisbee glances off Erika’s shoulder, spraying water everywhere.

Luca stands up. ‘Hey! You wet my picture!’

Erika dabs at the sketchbook with her towel. ‘Jesus, Frankie!’

The other chefs fall about in the waves, hooting and shouting. Frankie comes up the beach to retrieve the frisbee, arms outstretched and head cocked in mock supplication.

‘Oh my god, Sarah, he’s so fucking annoying.’

‘You said a bad word. Naughty.’ Luca bows his head over his sketchbook again.

‘I did, didn’t I, Luca. I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me off. I promise I won’t do it again.’ Erika pulls a guilty face at Sarah, who chuckles.

‘Don’t worry. I let it slip all the time. We have a swear box, don’t we, Luca?’

Frankie stands dripping over them. ‘Hey, Luca! Come and play frisbee with us in the water.’

‘Can I, Mummy?’

Sarah rummages around in her beach bag. ‘You need your wings on. Come here, baby.’

Erika watches Sarah blow air into the orange armbands. Luca’s skipping a jig, impatient, slipping about on the stones. ‘Just wait!’ Sarah calls out between puffs. ‘Stand still!’

Erika’s heart beats faster. She looks again at Luca’s sketchbook. The circle of yellow crayon is supposed to be her face, framed with a curly black mane. The line for a mouth and black dots for eyes are expressionless. She flicks back dog-eared pages. Great pink balloon faces with gaping red grins and blonde bubble hair. Blocky, bright cars with giant faces lolling from windows. Green scribble-trees, crooked houses with chimneys, orange smiley suns with red rays. She turns back to her portrait. Black lines for a body, arms and legs, and claws for hands. Behind it, a blue–black scrawl: the sea, empty of people or creatures, dark and seemingly endless. The solitary stick figure stands with its back to the waves, lipless mouth clamped shut. She breathes out. It’s just a kid’s picture, for god’s sake.

Erika watches as Sarah walks Luca into the sea. Her mouth is dry; when she raises her water bottle to her lips, she notices her hand is shaking. Luca is knock-kneed with excitement, dancing his little dance, flailing his arms. The puffed-up wings make them look like spindly sticks. A wave breaks against him and he staggers and clutches his mother, squealing. Erika realises she’s clenching her fists.

She slumps back into the deckchair. Maybe she needs another nap. It was a late finish to service last night – eighty-four covers. After desserts had gone out, they’d cleaned their stations, then spent another hour mopping and disinfecting the floor.

It had been an emotional evening and stinking hot too, in more ways than one. Just past midnight, André had screamed himself hoarse down the phone at Peter, the owner, about how that was fucking it, he wasn’t fucking well opening his fucking kitchen again until Peter’d fucking well fixed the pile of bollocks drains and he wasn’t going to stand in a putrid, stinking fog while trying to serve up fucking lobster fucking quenelles with fucking truffle velouté when everything fucking stank of shit. And he could fucking well consider his fucking restaurant closed until Peter got the fucking plumbers in and fucking fixed it, and properly this time. ‘We are not fucking running’ – here he’d paused for breath, red-faced and eyes bulging – ‘a cocksucking Wimpy Bar.’

They’d continued to mop around him. Sarah mimed a cheer behind André’s back and Erika had to stifle a laugh. They got the rest of the week off, perfectly timed for the biggest heatwave since 1976. At their usual post-service session at the Queen’s Head, they’d clinked celebratory glasses and declared that the next day, given the forecast predicted a scorcher, they’d get the train to Brighton.

Erika must have dozed off again, because she doesn’t notice Marcus standing over her until she feels his shadow cool her face. She opens her eyes and squints at his outline, black against the sun. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat.

‘You’re early.’ She raises herself up to meet his kiss.

‘The staff meeting this afternoon was cancelled. Too hot. They need to get air conditioning in that building, the tight-arses. Train could have done with it too; it was like a sauna all the way down from Victoria.’ He kicks off his shoes, peels his shirt over his head and chucks it at Erika’s feet.

She takes it and drapes it over her face to block out the sun. It smells, not unpleasantly, of his sweat.

‘Come in with me. Just knee-deep.’ He takes her hand.

She pulls it back. ‘No.’

‘It’s shallow. Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll just cool down.’

‘I said no.’ She pulls his shirt off her face and squints at him against the sun. She hugs her knees to her chest. ‘I can’t.’

He doesn’t ask why. Just smooths his fingers through her hair and down to her shoulder where a koi carp of red and gold ripples across her skin. ‘Whatever, babe. I’m going in.’

Erika watches him pick his way across the shingle down to the water. He greets Sarah with a kiss, salutes the swimming chefs and exchanges a high five with Luca. Arms stretched out, he strides into the sea, bounding over the waves towards the others. He makes it look easy.

Like Erika, Marcus has never known what a conventional relationship looks like. He was twelve when his mother died. He was raised by his grandmother while his father worked for months at a time on the oil rigs. His grandmother had nurtured and loved him, believed in him. Maybe it’s because of this unwavering love that, despite his unconventional childhood, Marcus has remained secure in himself. He and Erika differ in this way. Whatever storms cast Erika adrift, Marcus is her anchor – at least, for now.

There are so many day-trippers in Brighton today. She c. . .