The Gift of Numbers Read Online Free PDF Page B

house for my
mother from the time I was a small child. When I was barely two
and not quite potty trained, I would wash out my own panties if I
had an accident; and before I was even in elementary school, I was
using the knives in the kitchen and cutting up the ingredients to
make fried rice. By the time I was ten, I not only took care of the
whole apartment, but I was even paying the electric bill and attending
meetings of the neighborhood association in my mother's
place.
    My mother never said a word against my father and always insisted
he was a fine man and terribly handsome. He managed a
restaurant somewhere, but the specifics were always kept from
me. I was given to understand, however, that he was tall, fluent in
English, and a connoisseur of opera.
    The image I have of my father is that of a statue in a museum.
No matter how close I come to him, I can't get his attention, he
continues to stare off into the distance without looking down, and
he never reaches out his hand to me.
    It wasn't until I entered adolescence that it occurred to me how
odd it was that the wonderful man my mother described had
abandoned us and had never offered even the least bit of economic
support. But by that time I had no interest in learning more
about him, and I accepted the role of silent accomplice when it
came to my mother's illusions.
    It was my pregnancy that utterly destroyed those illusions,
along with the others she'd carefully stitched together from fabric
scraps, piano lessons, and leftover flowers. It happened not long
after I'd started my junior year of high school.
    The boy was someone I'd met at my after-school job, a college
student majoring in electrical engineering. He was a quiet and
cultured young man, but he lacked the decency to take responsibility
for what had happened. The mysterious knowledge of electricity
that had attracted me to him in the first place proved useless,
and he became just another careless man who vanished from my
world.
    Once my pregnancy became obvious, there was nothing I could
do to appease my mother's anger, even though we now shared the
experience of giving birth to a fatherless child. It was a melodramatic
sort of anger. Her feelings seemed to block out my own. I
left home in the twenty-second week of my pregnancy and I lost
all contact with her.
    When I brought my baby home from the hospital, it was to
public housing that had been set up for single mothers, and the
only person who welcomed us was the woman who served as matron
for the institution. I folded up the one picture I had saved of
the baby's father and stuffed it into the little wooden box they had
given me at the hospital to hold the umbilical cord.
    As soon as I'd managed to get the baby into a day care center, I
went straight to the Akebono Housekeeping Agency and arranged
for an interview. It was the only job I could think of that matched
my limited skills.
    Shortly before Root entered elementary school, my mother and
I reconciled: a fancy backpack arrived in the mail for him. This
happened at the same time that I had left the single mothers'
home and set up house for ourselves. My mother was still managing
the wedding hall. But just as our troubles seemed to be over
and I'd begun to see how comforting it could be to have a grandmother
for my child, my mother suddenly died of a brain
hemorrhage—which may be why I was even happier than Root
himself when I saw the Professor hug him.
     
    The three of us soon fell into a pleasant routine. There was no
change in my schedule or workload, other than making more food
for dinner. Fridays were the busiest, as I had to prepare food for
the weekend and store it away in the freezer. I would make meat
loaf and mashed potatoes, or poached fish and vegetables, and explain
repeatedly what went with what and how to defrost the
food, although the Professor never quite figured out how to use
the microwave. Nevertheless, when I arrived on Monday morning,
all the food I'd prepared was gone. The meat