Like Morning Dew

Abstract

Like Morning Dew Mimi Kawahara (bio) As Suki swoops toward me, flexed feet high, black hair flying behind her, eyes wide in astonishment, she exclaims, "Look, Mama, I'm swinging!" I smile and put my palms together in silent applause. Next to her a pouting girl bounces in place as her mother types on her phone. "Push me pleeease," the girl pleads. Glancing up at Suki pumping her spindly legs, the mother addresses me, "What's your secret? I can't get her to try." "Her imaginary friend went first," I reply. "Oh … I see," the woman says tentatively, unsure whether I'm ingenious or insane. Suki conjured up Charlotte last year after a beastly boy bullied her, pulling her hair and squinting at her "alien" eyes. He has since moved away, but Charlotte has remained. Often a nuisance channeling Suki's complaints, occasionally she serves as a helpful role model. Emerging from Riverside Park for snack time, Suki skipping at my side, I feel the weight of my actual secret. If that woman knew I'd been paid to act as Suki's mother three afternoons a week for the last two and a half years and had no children of my own, she wouldn't want my parenting advice. "Can you stay for dinner?" Suki asks, taking my hand. "Not today, I have to get back to Tomo." To explain my inability to spend more time with her, I invented an older son who had chosen to stay in Japan with his father but then developed hikikomori, whereupon his father, unable to stay home with Tomo, sent him to me. I thought a boy, especially a troubled one, would be less likely to arouse jealousy. Not that Suki had heard of hikikomori, but she understood that a happy person wouldn't hide out in his room for months on end, and I felt better having a full backstory. "Can you make those onoko- pancakes again?" "Oko-no-mi-ya-ki," I say slowly. "Let's make them together on Wednesday." "Mi-ya-ki–Yay!" she squeals, with a few exclamatory jumps. After Suki's mother died, Ken tried several sitters, but Suki turned her toddler back on them all, insisting her mama would come home soon. Unable to declare that Hiromi would never return, Ken was near his wits' end when he saw an Instafamily ad online. With the semi-consoling thought that Suki, though a precocious 18-month-old, wouldn't remember the rental mother if she didn't work out, just as the sitters would soon be forgotten, he filled out the form specifying the qualities Instamom should possess (Japanese, petite, kind, gentle, patient) and providing the family history she should have under her obi before her initial visit. I arrived six months after Suki had last seen her emaciated, bald mother at Sloan Kettering, bearing scant resemblance to her former self, so Ken felt fairly sure that Suki would accept me, and if she noticed any differences, we would attribute them to residual effects of the illness. [End Page 211] I fit the desired profile. There was only one problem: I'd grown up without a mother, so had no familial model to follow. In preparation I read a stack of parenting books and binge-watched The Brady Bunch and Modern Family, but still I worried that Suki would know I was an imposter. In the event, she hid behind Ken's legs until I bent down and beckoned her as he had instructed me to do. She jumped into my arms, and voila! Instafamily! In our early days, I felt awkward and inept, but I've grown into the role, as I imagine real mothers do. Climbing the stairs to their parlor floor home after her swinging triumph, I smell the matcha Ken has made for me. For Suki there will be "bubble water," her term for seltzer, and a treat. Today it's pretzel goldfish. Stuffing her mouth until she has chipmunk cheeks, Suki arranges the remaining fish in a head-to-tail heart on her plate and presents it to me. I hug her as I swallow a familiar bittersweet brew of...