Free Butterfly's Child by Angela Davis-Gardner

river of wind and snow, the ghostly light from the parlor his guide. When he stood on the porch stamping his boots, his mother peered out at him, her face tight with what looked like anger but he knew to be concern. “Go sit by the stove,” she said. “I’ll bring cocoa.”
    He looked into the parlor. “You were so long,” Kate said. He hadn’t noticed before how pale and thin her face had become.
    â€œGot caught up in work,” he said. “Didn’t realize how bad it was out.”
    Benji was squatting by the stove. Frank had never liked that Japanese way of sitting, like doing your business. Even some women sat that way, but not Butterfly.
    â€œGoing to get out of these clothes,” he said, and went upstairs. After he changed, he went into his study. It was cold as the dickens, with only the heat from the stove below filtering up into the room. He sat at the desk and flipped through one of his father’s ledgers—meticulous accountings of outlay and profit. There were occasional brief notes between lines of figures:
Corn done well this year; Grasshoppers wiped us out
. He found the ledger for the year he’d left for sea, 1881 it had been, summer, July; his father had whipped him one too many times. There, July 18, was a notation:
Frank gone
. Nothing more.
    Seven years later, Sharpless had introduced him to Butterfly on a warm autumn evening in Nagasaki. A few more years, and here he was, back at the farm with Butterfly’s son and an American wife. His father would have plenty to say to all that.
    There was a knock at the door and Benji came in, carrying a cup ofcocoa; he handed it to Frank without a word and stood staring. His eyes, like hers, accused him.
    â€œWhat do you want?” he shouted. The boy darted away.
    There was a bottle of whiskey in the closet. He found it, took a long draught, and another, then laid his head on the table and slept.

 
    The leaves on the trees
were as big as squirrels’ ears, Father Pinkerton said, so it was time to plant. This spring he would show Benji how.
    Benji sat in Father Pinkerton’s lap, both of them holding the traces as the horses pulled the plow back and forth and back and forth across the field, getting rid of last year’s crops and making the dirt smooth. Then they started over to make hills in the ground. Benji thought of the hills in Nagasaki; these were nothing but poked-up places in the dirt. Father Pinkerton said what a good job he was doing, making straight rows without any cricks, and that the first time he’d plowed on his own when he was not much older than Benji, his father had said it looked like a drunk had got loose in the field. Father Pinkerton smoothed Benji’s hair; it made him feel sleepy, then tired.
    The land was so wide it went on and on and the sky came down to it, and there was nothing to look at except the horses’ rumps and their shiny tails that sometimes lifted up so the manure could fall out, and nothing changed.
    Mama didn’t know America was like this.
    â€œWill I always be here?” he asked Father Pinkerton.
    Father Pinkerton was quiet and then he said, “People die and leave the earth but they go to heaven.”
    â€œLike Mama,” Benji said.
    â€œYes. But you won’t go for a long time. Don’t you worry about it.”
    â€œI want to go to Japan.”
    Father Pinkerton didn’t answer; he was pulling on the left trace to make the horses turn, and they started down the flat space again.
    â€œWhy did Mama die?” Benji said.
    Father Pinkerton didn’t answer, so he asked again.
    â€œWe don’t know exactly. We found you at a church with a note pinned to your coat. It said to please take you to America.”
    It was the same lie Mother Pinkerton told. He looked up at Father Pinkerton’s face, like the one in the picture. “Mama died,” he said, “and you came. You and Suzuki said Mama was