When I was young, I used to believe I was cursed. It's one of several reasons why I was so slow to make friends while I was growing up- not that I didn't have friends, because I did, but not close friends. I was scared to get too close to anyone, because I didn't want to risk losing them to the curse that kept killing everyone around me...starting with my mother.

I was born on August fifteenth in the town of Yamanashi, in a little hospital a few miles from the village of Azu. My mother died the same night, of 'birth complications.' I never knew what those were, just like I don't know why Father didn't take Mother into Toyama, where there were far better hospitals. Maybe Mother's doctor was in Yamanashi, or maybe there just wasn't time to get all the way to Toyama. All I know for sure is that the doctors were concerned that I might have been affected by whatever Mother had, because my body temperature was slightly higher than most new babies'. They did some testing and decided that I wasn't feverish or sick, so after Mother's funeral, Father took me home to Azu.

My father wasn't able to care for me and still continue working, and I think even if he had been, he was too caught in his grief to want the responsibility. I don't mean that to sound heartless; it's taken me a while to understand how he must have been feeling, but even in his sorrow, he wanted me and refused to turn me over to an orphanage or foster care. His solution was to ask his parents to come to live with us, and they did, leaving their apartment on the outskirts of Toyama to live with me in a little house in the forest outside Azu.

I don't remember when I was told that most children had a mother and a father all the time instead of a father sometimes and grandparents the rest of the time- I seemed to always know it- but I do remember frequently feeling confused about it. I knew I was supposed to love my parents and feel bad that they weren't with me, but most of what I felt about my mother was curiosity. I knew that she had married my father at twenty and was barely twenty-two when she died. Grandfather told me she was soft-spoken and dutiful, and Grandmother said happiness shone from her like sun off the water. She also said Mother had a way of relating to people and made friends very quickly. But I wanted to know more than that: things she liked, things she didn't like, how she met my father, how she felt about having a baby. I never asked any of my questions, though, because it made my grandparents unhappy to talk about her. And I guess deep down I was afraid that if I knew enough about her, I would start missing her. It seemed an unnecessarily painful thing to do to myself, so I kept my curiosity to myself, most of the time.

Father was a confusion to me, too, in a different way. I mean, I knew him...sort of. I knew him well enough to miss him when he was away, and he was away most of the time. He was a professional photographer, always traveling around the world and taking pictures of things to put in magazines and other publications. His favorite subjects were natural things, especially endangered or rare animals, and he always sent copies of his pictures home so my grandparents and I could look at them. Grandfather was very proud of him and arranged all the pictures in albums; there were about twenty photo albums lined up on the bookshelf in Father's little office above his desk. I enjoyed looking at the pictures, too, and whenever I missed him too much, I would slip into the office and look through the albums at my favorites.

I was doing this one day- I was maybe four, but I still remember it very vividly- when I pulled down an album I hadn't looked at before and opened it to find pictures of Mother and Father together, and their wedding. I was startled at first- well, shocked, really- and then afraid I shouldn't be looking, but I couldn't help myself. Lying on my stomach on the floor, I slowly turned each page, studying each photo carefully and keeping my ears open for the sound of someone coming down the hall. I can't describe how it made me feel to finally see what Mother had looked like.

Somehow, when you think of someone you don't know, your mind makes a picture of what they might look like. Then, when you do see a picture of them, it never looks like what your imagination expected. It's a strange feeling. But after you've looked for a while, the real picture begins to replace your mental one, and the person becomes familiar. It's a fascinating and incredibly disorienting process, and to say I was riveted would be an understatement.

I took so long over it that it really was lucky no one caught me. I probably wouldn't have been punished, but I figure it would have made Grandmother upset and she might have put the album where I couldn't get at it- and given me a lecture about respecting other peoples' property. Then again, maybe not. But the thought of being punished or scolded didn't stop me at all; I snuck into Father's study as often as I could get away with and studied that album until I knew it by heart. I gradually worked my way through all the other albums on his shelf in a single-minded quest for more photos of Mother, and was very disappointed when I realized it was only that one album that had them. I kept it to myself, though, and tried to always put everything back in the proper place before I left. I had a feeling Father would be cross if he knew I'd been looking at his pictures, and I didn't like it when he was cross.

Strange thinking, considering that he sent the pictures home for us to see...it's weird, what guilty little secrets will do to your thoughts.

I wonder sometimes if my father was happy when he was on assignment; I know he was never happy when he was at home. He was a thin, melancholy man with a sad face, thinning black hair and distant brown eyes. I hardly ever saw him smile, and even when he did, it was a sad smile. I don't remember ever hearing him laugh. He had a very bad temper, often shouting into the telephone at people or snapping at my grandparents; he was always very kind and quiet with me, but I was still pretty wary of him and stayed out of his way when he started to scowl.

I know where I got that from, anyway.

There was always more tension in the house when he was home, yet I missed him very much when he left on his assignments and wished he'd come home more often. When I was very young, I thought perhaps he didn't like us, but Grandmother carefully explained that it was the other way around: he did like us, very much, but he had to be away because he had to earn money to buy us the things we needed. It was right around then that I decided I didn't like money; it was what kept Father away from us, so I didn't want anything to do with it.

It was just as well I felt that way, because we didn't have much money. I don't know if we were actually 'poor' at that time or not, but I do know I wore out my clothes almost completely before I got new ones, and I even got pretty good at patching them- Grandmother taught me how. I think that could be from playing in the woods all the time, though. Grandmother and Grandfather and I lived in a little wooden house a mile from Azu- off an unpaved road- surrounded by the forest that I used as my personal playground. I was forever falling out of trees and into creeks and thickets and generally coming home scraped-up and muddy. Grandmother always shook her head and scolded, and Grandfather called me a wild child, but I didn't care. They never got mad, and I had a lot of fun.

I know now that they were concerned because I had no one to play with, and I did wish for some friends, but I made do with my imagination. Most kids have a few imaginary friends; I think I had a dozen and a half, and they were good enough company. I did meet some kids when I turned seven and started school, but like I said, Azu was a very small village and most of the families that lived there didn't have young children. When I began first grade, there were only five other students in my classroom, which didn't seem particularly odd to me, but I was a little surprised to find that two of them were in second grade- and there was only one teacher. Really. The school was so small, and the students so few, that several teachers taught several grades in one classroom, simultaneously. It was a little confusing at first, but I soon got used to it and it wasn't long before all six of us were learning more or less the same things.

The traditionalists would not have approved at all, of course, but I think that's one of the reasons why I've never been particularly conventional myself. I learned pretty early to be flexible and improvise.

I liked my teacher and my schoolmates were friendly, but they weren't exactly friends. They lived in the village and I went home to the woods every day, so I never really got to spend recreation time with them. Still, I enjoyed their company a great deal, especially during lunch and recess. Would you believe I felt a little disloyal to my imaginary friends when I told Grandmother that it was nice to have kids to talk to who would answer me? It wasn't their fault they were only imaginary...

Yes, I was kinda weird. Probably still am. That sort of thing doesn't really wear off, does it?

When Father came home for New Year that winter- he always tried to be home for my birthday and New Year- and I told him I was learning grade two as well as grade one, he seemed pleased and smiled, saying he was proud to have a clever son and that I was my mother's boy all through. And then something happened that I never forgot, the thing that made me understand him so much better. His smile faded as he said, "You have her quick mind, and you look so much like her-" and stopped as a terrible sadness came over his face. "Yes," he said cryptically, staring at me, and then he got up from the chair he was sitting in and hurried outside to smoke. (He always smoked when he was unhappy, and Grandmother wouldn't allow him to do so in the house.) I felt awful, guilt-stricken, and wished I hadn't said anything. It didn't occur to me that I couldn't have known a simple comment about school would lead his memory to Mother.

He was fairly cheerful the next day, but he left sooner than usual after the New Year celebrations ended. I took the next chance I had to pull out the wedding photo album and really study it, even surreptitiously comparing the picture of my mother to my own face in the mirror. Of course I was a boy and she a woman, but even so I could see similarities. Black hair was nothing special, we all had that, though mine was much finer than Grandmother's and Father's. It was always getting in my eyes. But my eyes- they were the main thing, they were the same blue as my mother's. I put the pictures away and went into the woods to think about things for a while, and when I came to a conclusion, I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before. "He doesn't like being with us because I look like Mother, so when he sees me he thinks of her and feels bad," I told Grandmother when I went back inside, all in a rush, and Grandmother turned from the stove and looked at me.

"Yes, dear child," she agreed. "That is one reason. Another is that everything in our home was hers; either she owned it or she chose it for the house. He sees her in every chair and plate. It hurts him to see them, but it would hurt him even more to get rid of them for something new."

I thought about that for a while, leaning against the stove. I liked the warmth; it seemed to curl up inside me somewhere and it felt comfortable. "I didn't know," I said at last, meaning I wished I had known.

"You look the way you look, you can't change that," Grandmother observed, stirring the sizzling food in the fry-pan. "It will do no good to wish you were someone else, nor to feel bad that your father is unhappy. He would see her in you no matter what you looked like, because you were hers. Just as he sees her in the plates and cups, because she chose them. Now, please set the table for me, little love."

That meant the topic was closed, so I set the table and went to get Grandfather, who was chopping wood. But I didn't stop thinking that I ought to look different. Still, I wasn't a girl, and that was good. Having a daughter who looked like his wife probably would have been even worse for Father.