The ring

Two years ago, my mother gave me half of all the jewelry she owned.  Among the items I received was a beautiful string of pearls, a set of illegally made and rare tortoise shell earrings, a round coral ring that was purchased in Hawaii and a older, large sapphire ring that she claimed was a gift to me from its original owner, a lady whom I will refer to as Ms. N.

The ring has a long history that begins in Yokohama, among a row of wooden homes near the Tsurumi River in the Namamugi district.  Long ago, the areas close to the water were littered with shell pieces and smelled of sea water brought in from the greater Yokohama Bay.  The streets were narrow and clean while the homes were wooden, flammable and old.  At night, the street would become dimly lit with lights strung along the waterfront. Yokohama was an international port town, and perhaps the allure of the salt water enticed my grandfather to become a fisherman.

My grandparents were teenagers when they would meet in Yokohama.  My grandfather was a handsome, charming young man from a family that was remarkably good looking but poor.  He married the prettiest girl from an impressive family descended of samurai who once ruled over Kamakura.  Together, they would soon have children that were of little interest to them, choosing to spend what money they had on movies, eating outdoors and gambling.  Due to neglect, heir first two children went on to live with my grandmother’s relatives.

Ms. N had lived next door to this young couple and listened to the late night arguments and chaos that came from their home.  Once my mother was born, Ms. N heard my mother’s cries that would go on into the evening.  She observed that my mother was always left alone to stew in her soiled diapers,  a small baby bottle near her baby fists that was filled with spoiled milk.  Ms. N relayed the ordeal of her neighbor’s baby daughter to her lover, a wealthy gentleman from a distinguished family.  The gentleman, whose own wife was unable to have children, brought my mother home to join his household, where she would grow up alongside the small children of her adopted older sister.  She would also play with the neighborhood kids, although my mother would later discover that two children she spent time with were her real older brother and sister.

My mother grew up surrounded by wealth and in the comfort of loving parents.  She was chauffeured to and from school, wore the best clothes, had the finest school supplies and reveled in the riches by taunting her classmates.  Her father would show her off to his friends and give her pocket change which my mother saved.  When she was seven, my mother was told that she had saved enough money to buy a large plot of land and home.  With wide eyes, my mother decided to save more money for an even bigger property.

The war, of course, decimated her savings and changed my everyone’s fortunes.  My mother would spend her days and evenings running from burning buildings and homes with a futon covering her head as she hid in shelters.  What items the family had would burn in uncontrollable fires, and the loss of material wealth would affect my mother and the decisions she made throughout her life.

By the time she was fifteen, both of my mother’s adoptive parents would die.  Ms. N would inherit her lover’s property and remaining wealth, offering it all to my mother if they lived together.  My mother would decline the offer out of loyalty to her adoptive mother, who had suffered under her husband’s affairs for a long time.  While my mother would spend most of her days speaking of ways to honor her adoptive mother, she never once mentioned any distinctive qualities unique to this woman other than to say that she was “…very nice…”

Instead, my mother returned to her blood parents and to a home that had turned into a circus.  Her older brother Masumi had been banished from the household for becoming a yakuza, while her older sister Reiko had been left in charge of her younger four brothers and sister.  Reiko would die a few years later from a burst appendix, leaving my mother in charge of her younger siblings.

Having lived in wealth and surrounded by love, my mother abhorred her new living conditions.  With too many children demanding attention from inattentive parents, my mother spent her days arguing with her parents.  My grandmother worked out of her home as a beautician, but spent much of her time making lovers of the postman and the milkman.  My grandfather simply chose to remain absent as long as he could, and the family remained mired in poverty, eeking what living could be made from missing suppers and scant pocket change.  It was only through the benevolence of a generous family friend that the family had a roof over their head.

Desperate for a change to her living conditions, my mother found my father standing at a bus stop in Yokohama.  She approached him, then followed him back to his apartment, moving in with him that evening.  They would marry a few days later, and she would sail away from Japan, looking into a sea of tearful faces as she stood on deck of the ship.  There are photographs of this moment, where adopted relatives stand next to natural blood family, all holding onto streamers that extend from ship to shore.  In all the photographs, however, Ms. N is absent.  (I would show this photo but my dog, literally, ate it).

Why Ms. N thought to give me this ring is a mystery.  My mother’s communications back to Japan while Ms. N was still alive was always in the form of posted letter.  She kept them tucked away in an old Gumps box, and I used would read them at my leisure as my mother’s adopted sister would often place animated drawings in letters for my amusement.  There were also few letters from my grandmother, those most made their way into the garbage can.  There were none, as I can recall, from Ms. N.  I could only assume that my mother had somehow met Ms. N when she returned to Japan when my sister and I were still young.

So why did my mother wait so long to give me this ring? She gave my sister a ruby ring, a string of pearls and other jewelry when she was still 12.  I have seen the ring many times, always tucked away in box someplace deep within her bureau.  My mother often showed me the ring but never told me of its origin until a few years ago.  Even then, she never once told me that Ms. N intended for me to have the ring. This might have made a nice gift when I was younger, or even as a birthday present.  Instead, it came to me while my mother decided to clean the closet one day because I tall enough to reach her jewelry.

I now wear the ring on my right hand.  There is something mysterious and enticing about possessing a ring that had gone from lover to lover, and then to the grandchild of the lover.  I suppose the writer in me could make up a story to fill in loose ends, but the silent whispers and double meanings in conversations with my mother as to Ms. N, the ring, her father and everything else about Namamugi seems to be an allegory to her own life.  While her own parents were rude and brash, never once hiding their disdain for their own children or their sordid affairs, my mother preferred the hush hush lifestyle of the wealth and comfort in her adopted home, where everyone gave the proper face as the world fell down, like firebombs, around them.

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