The Woman in the White Kimono Read online

  Oceans and decades apart, two women are inextricably bound by the secrets between them.

  Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage to the son of her father’s business associate would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man—an American sailor, a gaijin—and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.

  America, present day. Tori Kovac, caring for her dying father, finds a letter containing a shocking revelation—one that calls into question everything she understood about him, her family and herself. Setting out to learn the truth behind the letter, Tori’s journey leads her halfway around the world to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption.

  In breathtaking prose and inspired by true stories from a devastating and little-known era in Japanese and American history, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.

  Praise for The Woman in the White Kimono

  “The Woman in the White Kimono is an elegant testament to the tenacity of hope, even when the bindings of cultural and familial expectations are drawn so tight. I look forward to reading more from this talented author.”

  —Kelli Estes, bestselling author of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk

  “A powerful and heartbreaking novel; a lush and masterful exploration of the indomitability of the human spirit set against the backdrop of post–World War II Japan. Exquisite and emotionally satisfying. I loved this book!”

  —Karen Dionne, bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter

  “Cinematic, deeply moving, and beautifully written. I so enjoyed this.”

  —Carol Mason, bestselling author of After You Left

  “This is a story that will stay with me—a book that is meant to be savored and re-read and treasured... So poignant and emotional. Each character jumping off the page and claiming a place in your heart. I loved everything about this book.”

  —Renita D’Silva, author of The Forgotten Daughter

  The

  WOMAN

  in the

  WHITE

  KIMONO

  ANA JOHNS

  Ana Johns worked over twenty years in the creative arts field, as both a creative director and business owner, before turning her hand to fiction. Born and raised in metro Detroit, she now resides in Indianapolis with her family. The Woman in the White Kimono is her first novel.

  AnaJohns.com

  For my father, David Gaydos

  1936–1988

  Once we meet and talk, we are sisters.

  —Japanese proverb

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  My given name is Naoko Nakamura. My married name is Naoko Tanaka. And once, for a short time in between, it was something else—a nontraditional name from an unconventional wedding ceremony held under an ancient tree of flickering lights.

  We did not have an ordained priest to perform the ceremony. We were not married in a sacred shrine, and I did not have the three customary costume changes.

  But I had love.

  That evening, night blanketed the village of little houses and bundled it under a cloak of black, but the orange western sky clung to its horizon, peeking, curious. The humid air kissed my cheeks as I stepped from the porch onto the ground, and when I rounded the corner, I gasped.

  Paper lanterns lined the pebbled path and butter-gold orbs illuminated the trees like the yellow hotaru, fireflies, swarming after July’s heavy rains. So many that when I walked under their branches and looked up, they were like giant umbrellas shielding me from a hundred falling stars.

  With a smile, I ran my hand down my gown to feel its lush texture under my fingertips. I had never felt more beautiful or more nervous. My insides crackled in excitement like a sparkler’s flare, a charged path that raced through me from toes to fingertips.

  Ahead, at the center of the small waiting crowd, was my soon-to-be husband. The lantern’s light reflected in his eyes, causing the white wisps at the center to dance like sails across the bluest ocean, and I was lost in them. In him. In that moment.

  Each step I took brought me closer to my future and farther away from my family. It was a contrast of extremes in every sense, but I had somehow found my place between them. That was what Buddha called the middle way. The correct balance of life.

  I called it happy.

  A life with love is happy. A life for love is foolish. A life of if only is unbearable. In my seventy-eight years, I have had all three.

  Grandmother would often say, “So it is with sorrow. So it is with happiness. It will pass.” But even in my old age, when I close my eyes, I can still see the distant flicker of a thousand tiny lights.

  ONE

  America, Present Day

  Even at night with half the staff, the Taussig Cancer Center ran as shipshape as its namesake. With Dr. Amon at the helm, I prayed my father could somehow weather the storm, but his lapsing health had me perched at his side, watching for signs.

  Although I had the lights dimmed and the TV on mute, my father wrestled with sleep. Machines hummed, monitors beeped, conversations rolled like waves from the hall. Someone whistled.

  “Whistling up a wind was risky,” Pops would say about his days at sea. “It could summon strong gales and rough waters.” The hospital wasn’t his navy ship from the fifties, but with the improbable coincidence of sharing its name, I wouldn’t snub the nautical superstitions. I found my feet and closed the door.

  “What...” Pops flailed his arms, causing the plastic IV lines to flap like ropes against a mast. “Tori?”

  “I’m here, Pops.” I hurried over, placed my hand on his arm. “You’re at the hospital, remember?” He’d woken disoriented several times over the last week with shorter periods
of rest in between. This had become our new norm.

  He strained to sit up and grimaced with pain, so I placed a hand behind his upper back and lifted to work a pillow there. With both arms braced under his, I helped him shift, amazed how light he’d become. He’d joked that he was “half the man” but I didn’t laugh. The truth was far from funny and the joke far from true. He was still my larger-than-life father.

  I handed him the plastic cup of ice. He shook it to rattle the chips loose, then sipped on what had melted. One taste triggered the reflex—a static cough he struggled to clear. I took the cup, gave him tissues and waited for the fit to pass. With a final expulsion, he lolled back and closed his eyes.

  “You okay?” Empty words, because of course he wasn’t, but he assured me with a nod just the same.

  Then he sighed, a deep, raspy breath, his words pushing through it. “Did I ever tell you about the famous blue street? It was the first thing I saw when I stepped off my ship in Japan.”

  “And the girl who liked your eyes was second, right?” I brightened, happy he was lucid and hoping he’d stay that way long enough to retell it.

  “Well, I looked a little better back then.”

  “You look a little better now.” He did. Color warmed his cheeks; his eyes were sharp and focused. His movement had improved. It was wonderful and discomforting at the same time. Dr. Amon said to watch for a “rally of improvement” right before Pops would take his final turn.

  For my father, the last hurrah. And for me, a final story.

  From the chair beside his bed, I leaned in and propped my chin under my fist. “So, you took one step, bent low to run your fingers over the reflective stones embedded in the street and...?”

  “And I stood up and there she was.”

  “Staring.”

  “Yes. And I stared back, saw my future and fell in love.” Pops angled his head with a soft smile.

  Even though it was the condensed version, I fell in love with that story all over again because it led to all the others.

  “Every time I came to port, she would meet me there,” Pops said. “But I was always coming and going. That’s just how it was. We were two ships passing in the night like in the Longfellow poem.” Pops wheezed a labored breath.

  I reached for his freckled hand and squeezed.

  “After the service, I was landlocked in Detroit and drowning in a bottle. But then I met your mama, and she saved me.” His eyes locked to mine. “And here’s what you need to know. Are you listening?”

  “I am.” I hung on every word.

  “Mama was the love of my life, but before that life, I lived another. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” His lips twitched.

  When? When did he try to tell me? My mind raced through every moment of the last few weeks, trying to decipher what I’d missed. I didn’t even understand what “lived another life” could mean. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  “It’d be easier if you just read my letter. I need you to do that now, okay, Tori? It’s time.”

  It’s time?

  The swell in my chest was instant. It inflated behind constricted ribs and strangled my heart. I held the emotional bubble in place with shallow breaths, fearing it might burst. I couldn’t move.

  He reached over, patted my hand. “It’s with my stuff. Go and get it.”

  I found his bag behind the restroom door, placed it on the counter and unzipped the top. With trembling hands, I rummaged through his clothes but froze as my fingers grazed paper. I pinched to pull the envelope free, then stood with it and stared.

  The red ink. The kanji script. The creases and folds.

  Walking back to face my father, our eyes met.

  A dying man. A heartbroken daughter.

  “Come here, sit down,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t. Because you couldn’t take back goodbye. I wasn’t ready to say mine, so I didn’t want to hear my father’s. I couldn’t.

  The back of my throat ached from the pressure. “I’ll, um...” I stepped toward him, then stopped, needing everything to slow down and take a breath, so I could, too. The stress of the last few months, the heartbreak of his slow decline, the unrelenting cancer, and now... A lump rose in my throat as tears formed. I made quick steps to the door.

  Pops said something, but I was already in the hall hidden from view. I covered my mouth and took long, deep breaths, trying to fight back the swell of emotion. How did we get to this point? We had researched treatments, applied every home remedy, arranged for a specialist, and it still wasn’t enough. Confusion and guilt stacked heavy on my shoulders, and I wilted under its weight. I glanced at the envelope. In hindsight, I should have opened it on the day it arrived.

  * * *

  My father had been watching the game in his living room. “Tori, is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me.” I tossed my keys and his collected mail on the table, surprised he’d heard me come in with the TV so loud. “There’s a letter for you.” I leaned into the living room and waved it.

  His eyes stayed fixed to the screen. Mine dropped to the empty suitcase still sitting beside his chair. He had yet to pack for the hospital and we were leaving in the morning. Although it was something of a miracle the specialist fit him in, I understood my father’s lack of enthusiasm.

  I hated cancer.

  It ate away at more than just his body. It devoured his spirit, and that consumed mine. I had become desperate, a child at thirty-eight.

  I left him to watch his game, one of the few things he still enjoyed, poured myself a cup of coffee, then settled in to sort the excessive amount of mail. It’d been bound with thick rubber bands and stuffed in his PO box as though he’d gone on a monthlong vacation and forgot to place his service on hold. Only he hadn’t. It just slipped his mind to have me check it.

  I took a sip of coffee and found myself gazing at the letter. Red Asian symbols stamped in every direction. Thick, red lines crossed through the address. Above it, English letters spelled out PARTI. Parti? I flipped it over. Flipped it back. It’d been folded more than once, the edge frayed as though it had caught in the automatic sorter; I was surprised it was delivered at all.

  The investigative journalist in me itched to rip it open.

  I held it to the overhead light. If positioned just so, I could make out the outline of a folded note and a cord of some sort. I shook it, but the envelope carried no weight. Turning it over, I smoothed out the folds, then caught sight of a familiar word smudged in the bend.

  Japan.

  The ink had bled from the J. I traced it with the tip of my finger. Who did my father still know in Japan? Stationed there in the navy, he told all sorts of exaggerated tales about his time overseas, but they were from some fifty years ago. There weren’t any emblems or military insignia, so not an official reunion announcement. Maybe an unofficial one? He had played baseball while enlisted—even in Japan.

  Once, the Seventh Fleet navy team challenged the Shonan Searex, Yokosuka’s farm league, in an exhibition game to a sold-out stadium. Pops would place a cupped hand over his brow as if scanning the crowds whenever he talked about it. “Not one empty seat as far as you could see. Can you picture it, Tori?”

  I always could.

  The open-air arena, the perfect field of manicured green and my father, so young, so nervous, warming up on the sandy pitcher’s mound.

  “You can’t imagine the noise,” Pops would say. Instead of applause, colorful plastic bats thudded the backs of seats—thump-thump-thump. Cheer captains ran up and down the aisles, beating drums and shouting victory chants. Organized fan groups in designated sections sang personalized songs and shouted through megaphones. Pops said baseball in 1950s Japan gave a thunderous voice to a quiet culture.

  Although the game was a friendly one, the promoted match against the USA carried heavy undertones. Pops
said the Land of the Rising Sun wanted nothing more than to beat back the stars and stripes of the red, white and blue.

  “I almost wished we’d lost,” Pops always said. “My girl’s family was up in those stands, and I didn’t want to cause insult, especially before I’d met them.”

  It was always “his girl” when he told those stories. I never got her name. And if Mama was around, I never got those stories. If I asked about his girl, he’d shake his head, blow air from his inflated cheeks and say, “She was special, all right.”

  So was he. I adored him.

  A man who drank fruit brandy like his Slovak father, swaggered like John Wayne and spun colorful yarns like no one else.

  Although, with most of his stories, it was difficult to discern their truth. “What is truth but a story we tell ourselves?” Then he’d wink, tap my nose and leave me to dissect fact from fantasy. Something I was still doing.

  But that letter from Japan—that was real.

  “Tigers lost,” Pops said, startling me as he shuffled toward the fridge. He opened it and stared.

  “Do you want some lunch?” He needed to eat something. He was wasting away. At first, his trimmer figure gained compliments, but the admiration ceased when the weight loss didn’t. Even his hands—the same ones that had once pitched in a sold-out stadium—had thinned to knobby bone.

  He closed the refrigerator empty-handed, cinched the belt of his blue robe, then scratched the stubble on his dimpled chin. “No, I’m okay, thanks.” He pointed to the envelope. “What’s that?”

  “I told you. You got a letter.” I held it out. “It’s from Japan.”

  He swiped it lightning quick, squinting at the markings. At once, his expression fell flat. Clasping the letter tight to his chest, he spun on slippered heels and left without a word.

  I waited a few minutes before I followed.

  He stood frozen, his gaze anchored to the envelope in the middle of his darkened room. Pinch-pleated curtains couldn’t keep out the sun’s prying eyes. Or mine. I nudged the door an inch or two wider. The breach gave way to long fingers of light that stretched across the room and tapped his shoulder. He turned, clasping a hand over his unshaven face to hide the unfamiliar expression. One as foreign to me as that letter.