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wanted to buy everything and nothing. I didn’t know how to cook the big juicy steaks Charlie loved; mine turned out leather dry. I had no idea how to make soup without miso or fish stock. I used water instead, and it tasted awful.
    Day after day, I experimented with American foods from the Commissary, learning how to cook all over again. Fry up a piece of meat, boil potatoes, carefully reading the recipes in my book over and over. It was hard learning recipes from a book, all alone, with new ingredients. Sometimes I misread them, mixing up “baking powder” and “baking soda” more than once.
    My own mother had taught me how to cook by observation. No formal measurements. Learning how to cook was like learning a language. You picked it up. All I had to do was be around her while she made rice or manju or fish stock, and just like that, I knew how to make these things, too.
    From the time I first had memories, my mother had been teaching me how to be a good housewife. I helped her do the chores every day, cooking and cleaning and sewing. As we worked, she would sing. Usually she sang isobushi , meaning “rocky-beach melody,” in her high, thin voice. It was one of the oldest folk songs, the same song fishermen and Noh actors had performed. It sounded like wailing, a lament.
    Mother was tough; she came from farming peasant stock. She had a long torso, short powerful legs, and wide feet. The type of person who could squat in a field like a salaryman sat at a desk. Her hair had been half gray since I could remember. Her kimonos were darker colors, solid blues and reds flecked with white.
    “Shoko-chan,” she would say, “take this for me.” I would take over stirring the pot of vegetables while she shifted my little sister Suki from her back to her front to nurse. In those days, children got nursed for a long time, until age two or three or even older. Sometimes that was all of the nourishment they got. It certainly was for my sister.
    I watched my mother, her weariness etched on her face though her voice soared, her breasts two sad sacks of rice, and her song seemed more like a warning to me.
     
     
    WHEN I HAD MY OWN DAUGHTER, I had tried to teach her how to cook, but Sue was a clumsy child. Nervous.
    Once, at age seven or so, she made cookies with me. “Measure flour. Make flat with knife,” I said to her. She spilled the flour all over immediately, then the sugar on the floor, then stuck a finger up her nose as she stood there, almost crying. I couldn’t believe it. When I was seven, I was cooking and going to the shops alone, and my child couldn’t even measure flour or tie a shoe.
    “You watch, okay? Sit watch.”
    She had sat with a sad face on the chair.
    “When old, no spill, you can help, okay?” I felt bad for her, but I did not have the time or energy to redo what she had done.
    Now I realized I was too impatient. I should have taught her how to clean up. I should have shown her what to do as my mother had for me. Maybe that was why Sue could not learn my own isobushi , hear my own warning.
    Getting used to American negativity can be difficult. Americans do not politely defer or help you save face; they simply say, “No,” loudly and emphatically. Being aware of this phenomenon will help prevent shock.
    Japanese say “No” when they mean “Perhaps.” Therefore, if you are talking in English to an American and you mean to say “Perhaps,” you might accidentally say “No.” This is confusing to the American.
    Reserve “No” for situations where you absolutely must respond in the negative; use “Perhaps” for all other situations where you mean to give a gentle deferment.

    —from the chapter “Turning American,”
How to Be an American Housewife

Four
    I returned to the bedroom to kneel before my shrine, which I kept in a glass-shelved curio cabinet. When I left Japan, Father gave it to me, knowing there would be no Japanese churches where I was going. It was about the right size for a