How to Be an American Housewife Read Online Free PDF

tomatoes were huge that year—our cat Miki used the garden as a litterbox, and I also composted bits and pieces of kitchen scraps.
    With Mike wrapped up on my back in a long bolt of material, I used all the strange ingredients we didn’t have in Japan—sugar, bay leaf, basil, oregano, sage. “Everything in Japan tastes fishy,” Charlie once told me, “even the spaghetti.”
    “Then why like sushi?” I asked.
    “That’s not fishy,” he said.
    That made no sense, so I threw my hands up.
    I made certain not to use any fish sauce or soy sauce in this dish, though either would have made it taste a lot better. Then I let it simmer all day, just like it said to, wondering when my new husband would get home. The Navy mostly kept him on a regular schedule when he was ashore, but you never knew for sure. A military wife knew her husband doesn’t truly belong to her.
    When I heard Charlie singing up the walkway, I put the plate on the table and waited. I hadn’t even eaten myself, though it was nearly seven o’clock. Mike was already asleep in the dresser drawer we had pulled out and padded as a temporary crib, swaddled in a receiving blanket I had knitted myself.
    “Tadaima!” Charlie sang out the traditional Japanese greeting. I’m home.
    “Okaeri!” I responded. Welcome back.
    “Boy, it’s too quiet in here.” He hung his sailor hat by the door, his curly red hair popping up, and left his shiny black shoes next to my pumps. Then he turned on the television. “I’m going to look at Mike for a minute.” Charlie headed for the bedroom. He loved that boy; he’d wake him up to hear his voice coo.
    “No. You crazy? Never go back sleep.” I blocked the doorway. “Eat.”
    He kissed me with a laugh, spinning me around so the collar on his dark sailor’s uniform flew out. “Yes, madame.” He scraped the metal chair out from the table and swung his leg over it, cowboy style. Then he tasted the spaghetti. I held my breath. He made a face. “Too sweet.”
    I sat down, trying to think of the English words. I shook my head and raised my hands. “What mean?”
    “It’s not like my mother’s.” He pushed the plate away. “I don’t like the onion chunks.”
    His mother’s sauce had most certainly been watered-down tomato paste and sugar, with no spices because they were poor. I stood up so quickly that the little wooden table slid away from me. “No eat, I throw!” I pointed at his head.
    “What?” His lips twitched, trying not to smile.
    “I throw.” I picked up the plate. I saw that on television once. That was how I spent most of my time in America, watching television and learning English. On one show, the wife threw the dinner at the husband’s face. “This from book.” I shook my head. “No throw out.” I would never really throw food at Charlie. I only wanted his attention. I never wasted food. In Japan, we never wasted a grain of rice or a speck of salt.
    Charlie’s eyes were big. I thought about our wedding day, when I wore a tall headdress. Some people said it was to cover up the woman’s horns that showed up after marriage. That’s what my father told Charlie, who had laughed. I wondered if Charlie was thinking about that, too, thinking that my horns were showing.
    “All right, already,” he said, putting a forkful into his mouth. He stared at the TV, like he always did. He used to watch it until two or three every night, even when there was nothing good on. And then he ate the entire plate, with seconds. As he should have. It was delicious, worth all my effort.
    I had spent most of the previous day searching for the spices in the Commissary, the discount grocery store on the base where we bought our food. It was a marvel unlike anything else I’d seen in America so far, including the Statue of Liberty. There were gleaming aisles of every type of food you could dream of. In Japan, especially during the war, the storekeepers only had a few bags of rice. Salt. Some roots. Here, I