Free The Mask Carver's Son by Alyson Richman Page A

hair. He whispered into her ear all the ancient love poems she had held so dear.
    My face white as Fujiyama betrays my red, red heart.
    On my way to Edo, I found your face in the weave of my sleeve.
    When the blankets arrived, he removed her wet robes, like a mother changing the soiled clothes of her baby. He dabbed her sweating brow with a cloth soaked in fragrant tea. He wound his fingers tightly into hers and looked deep into her frightened eyes, never flinching all the while as Grandmother pressed strips of boiled cotton between Mother’s bleeding thighs.
    When his mother-in-law appeared finished, he stood up to retrieve the stack of blankets. Hoping to appear helpful, he placed each warm layer over his ailing bride.
    “Take the
fourth
off, Ryusei,” Grandmother told him before the blanket had even reached my mother’s chin. “You, if anyone, should know better.”
    He grew pale, realizing his near mistake. “You are right, Mother,” he said wearily. “Indeed, I should.”
    *   *   *
    When the doctor arrived, my mother had already lost consciousness.
    She had spent her last hours of memory pleading with my father to save their child’s life before her own.
    “Please,” she had begged him. “Save our son.”
    He had not wanted to hear her. She was the one he most wanted in this world. He did not need an heir. He did not need a disciple. All he truly needed was her.
    *   *   *
    He held her hand even when she no longer had the strength to grasp his fingers. He pressed her smooth wrist to his cheek, inhaled the sweetness of her lips, even when the breaths no longer seemed to come.
    *   *   *
    When the doctor arrived, he tried to pry the mask carver’s fingers free. My father would not budge.
    “Yamamoto Ryusei-sama,” the doctor insisted. “You must let me attend to your wife.”
    My father lay next to her, his forehead lowered to her brow.
    He heard the doctor’s words, but no more would come from his lips. He only stared.
    It was finally Grandmother who pried his fingers from hers. She never forgot the sight of those two interlocked hands. Laced like two tendrils. Clutching until icy white.

SIX
    M y father’s greatest betrayal was caused by neither his wife nor his former patrons but by me, his son.
    Had my father not believed in magic, perhaps the reality of my birth would not have been as painful. But he was no ordinary man; he created faces that lived on the stage, and he did this all with the sheer sorcery of his hands. He believed that happiness was owed him for his suffering. But he should have known that the gods do not reward those who believe themselves owed.
    Journeying to Kiyomizu, they had each prayed separately for a son. They rang the temple bell, clapped their hands, bowed their heads, and prayed for my health. But unfortunately they forgot to pray for my mother’s.
    Yes, I was born from the waters of my mother’s blood and in the blue-black darkness of her death.
    “I am not sure we can save her,” the doctor had informed them as he walked to the adjacent room lit with coal. “Her placenta has disengaged.”
    “And the child too?” Grandmother asked.
    “The only chance for survival is if I cut,” he said with resignation.
    All eyes fell onto Father, already collapsed in anguish.
    “Do what you can, Doctor,” said Grandfather.
    And so the doctor did. Carved me out from my mother’s belly, with a small knife, not with a chisel.
    My mother, nothing but an empty gourd, resting on a blood-soaked tatami, her eyes as vacant as two black stones. Her greatest duty fulfilled, she departed without a sound.
    The three of them stood in silence. Grandmother whispered to herself: “I have killed her.” Father thought to himself, Death follows me wherever I go. Neither could speak the thoughts aloud. It was only I, screeching my newborn cries, and Grandfather, who thrust his fist into the bamboo pole of the
tokonoma
, and cursed the Gods for taking his children, who refused