A story by Hiroko Oyamada,
translated by David Boyd

Mothers
by Hiroko Oyamada
translated by David Boyd

I went outside holding my three-year-old in my arms. Mom was there, sitting on the engawa, dressed in black. Wild touch-me-nots were growing just beyond the toes of her sandals. It was almost evening, and the sky was a muted, watered-down color. When I sat down next to her and put my daughter on my lap, I realized she wasn’t wearing black at all. It was the same summer dress she’d been wearing for years: purple with embroidered polka dots. My daughter was looking down, playing with the bow on the front of her T-shirt. “The garden’s a mess,” my mom grumbled. “It’s been like this ever since Dad passed. The lawn’s dry and patchy, and the hedges are out of control… I can’t even tell the flowers from the weeds anymore.” She wasn’t entirely wrong. The garden wasn’t what it used to be when Grandpa was around. Still, I wouldn’t call it a mess. “It’s fine,” I said. “No, it’s a handful—it always has been.” Mom grew up in this house. My father moved in when they got married, but he got sick and died before either of my grandparents. Mom had cared for her husband, raised two children, and looked after her father in this house; now she was taking care of her bedridden mother. My little brother, who could never hold down a job, still lived here, spending his days inside, happily glued to his computer.

I saw a white plastic bag on the grass not far from where Mom was sitting. “What’s that?” I asked. “Trash?” She looked at me like I was speaking a different language. I pointed and tried again: “What’s in the bag?” “Oh, that?” Her eyes glazed over for a second or two, then she shut them tight, as if a bug had flown into her face. Slowly, she opened her eyes, leaned in, and whispered in my ear: “The tomatoes.” “Tomatoes?” “Yeah.” Mom got up and flipped the crinkled bag over. Three tomatoes tumbled out over the withered grass. They were bright red and gleaming. “From our garden,” Mom said. There was a small vegetable garden in the back, and tomatoes were in season, but there was no way that these could’ve come from our garden. It was probably the weather: most of our tomatoes came out misshapen and inedible. The bottoms were ripe, but the tops were green and hard as plastic. The three tomatoes I saw looked nothing like those—they were perfect and beautiful. “You remember…?” Mom said a name, a name I’d never heard before, but she made it sound like it was someone we knew well. “He’s always coming into the garden, picking our tomatoes and handing them out…” “Handing them out?” “To the neighbors.” “Why?” “He said Dad asked him to.” I could hear people talking in the distance. A brown cicada buzzed nearby. “Really, I wouldn’t put it past your grandpa,” Mom said. “And they go way back, of course. Anyway, he keeps bringing them back, saying nobody wants them because they’re overwatered, or riddled with worms, or the seeds were no good to begin with.” “Really?” “Really.” “That’s…” I stopped for a second to think how to put it, “That’s terrible.” There was more I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the words. Mom nodded. “Yeah. It’s been like that ever since Dad died… Kei-chan!” Her voice rose sharply as she called my daughter’s name. I looked down. My daughter was staring at one of the red tomatoes by my mom’s sandals. The sun coming off the surface was reflected in the black of her eyes—a bright dot. Mom’s voice seemed to tremble as she said, “Don’t you—” “Any, body, hooome?”

Somebody was calling out from the gate. A little old man was there, looking at us. He seemed somehow familiar. He was bald and hunched, and he had a friendly expression. He wore a gray windbreaker just like the one my grandpa used to wear. He grinned as he called out, “Furukawa-san!” Mom didn’t respond. She hurried back over to the engawa and sat right up against me. “Furukawa-saaan!” That had been my name for so many years that I was about to answer him myself, but Mom put her hand on my knee to stop me. The only sound was the cicada, brown and cloying like burnt oil. I felt something rise up in me. Then something dark, even black, descended. I couldn’t see the yard, my mom, or even my daughter in my lap. I closed my eyes. I could feel something warm on my back. I jumped, then I realized it was Mom. She had one arm around my shoulder and the other around my daughter, making the three of us into a triangle. I followed her lead and held my daughter as tightly as I could. My daughter’s back rose and fell steadily with every breath. When I leaned forward I could smell her saliva. Everything’s fine—she hasn’t been stolen away. That’s all that matters. The smell of tomatoes filled my nostrils. I felt Mom rocking as she held us, shifting her weight from side to side. All I could hear was squishsquishsquish. It was already dark, but still getting darker. The man’s voice came again from the darkness. “Furukawa-san, it’s me—these, are yours.” I thought I felt something splash against my ankle. The strong smell of something green—Thank you, Mother’s been… It was a woman’s voice, high-pitched, faint, a little shaky. “You tell her, when she’s feeling better, to come and say hello, all right?” Thank you, this means so much to us… “She needs to get outside, she can’t stay in bed. At that age, once your legs start to go…” Of course, thank you… “She’s got a lot of life, left to live, her husband’s share, too.” She’ll be pleased… Thank… you… Dzzzh-zhp-zhp-dz-zhp, the cicada rattled off a few notes as it flew into the air. “All right, until, next time,” said the voice. The gate creaked. I felt Mom relax, and then I opened my eyes slowly.

Everything went back to the way it had been. It was evening and we were on the engawa. The sky was starting to turn golden yellow. Bats were flying overhead. I saw the old man walking away from the gate. Even from behind, he looked just like Grandpa. Mom took a deep breath, then let us go. A breeze cooled the sweat on my back. When I looked over, there was a white bag right next to my mom. I could see red showing through the plastic. Inside were large, perfectly round… “Tomatoes?” Grandma called out to my mom from the house. Mom got up and went inside, leaving the tomatoes behind. A moment later, the bag tipped over as if it couldn’t hold the weight anymore, and the tomatoes came spilling out. The heavy smell of soy sauce and sugar seemed to fill the air as another cicada started to call out right next to us.

Translator: David Boyd

David Boyd (b. 1981) is an assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His translation of Hideo Furukawa’s Slow Boat (Pushkin Press, 2017) won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He has translated three novellas by Hiroko Oyamada: The Factory (2019), The Hole (2020), and Weasels in the Attic (2022). He won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the second time for his translation of The Hole. His translations of Kuniko Mukōda’s “Nori and Eggs for Breakfast,” Hiroko Oyamada’s “Something Sweet,” and Kanoko Okamoto’s “Sushi” appear in vol. 1 of MONKEY. For vol. 2, he translated Oyamada’s “Along the Embankment” and an excerpt from the novel Takaoka’s Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa. His translation of Oyamada’s “Turtles” appears in vol. 3. With Sam Bett, he co-translated three novels by Mieko Kawakami: Breasts and Eggs (2020), Heaven (2021), and All the Lovers in the Night (2022).

Author: Hiroko Oyamada

Hiroko Oyamada (b. 1983) is one of Japan’s most promising young writers. Her short novels The Factory, The Hole, and Weasels in the Attic were translated by David Boyd and published by New Directions. Her story “Spider Lily” was translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter and published in the Japan issue of Granta (Spring 2014). “Lost in the Zoo” and “Extra Innings,” translated by David Boyd, appear in vols. 6 and 7 of Monkey Business. “Something Sweet,” “Along the Embankment,” and “Turtles,” also translated by David Boyd, are featured in MONKEY, vols. 1–3.

More stories by Hiroko Oyamada