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Back when she was 18, she'd been thrilled that she'd caught his eye. An American, a famous jockey, a playboy, an adventurer. Those blue eyes looking at her while he fed her candies in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. She was still on fire with excitement for America. Possibilities had spilled out around her in every new city she'd stopped in. Everywhere the beauty, the immensity of it; the gaudiness, the newness.
And here he was, beautiful and new. Freshly grieving and flayed open. And here she was, ready to give him tenderness in exchange for those burning looks, for a little piece of America even as she inched back home.
Her father raised his eyebrows at how openly she talked to Johnny, at how she laughed at his crude jokes, at how late they stayed together.
Ha. Dad doesn't even know that he calls me Rina. Think it's scandalous that we sit too close together? You should see where he touches me while you're napping, old man.
She said as much to Johnny, who said, "I really hope he doesn't see where I touch you. I don't know if I could take him in a fight."
Johnny had been eager to put his newly functional genitals to work. Rina was flattered, and interested, but a little too practical for that. There was no way she was showing up in Japan with a fatherless American child. Not one to give up, she told him how to write her in Japan.
They parted ways in Europe, Johnny to go on to Naples with his dead friend. From the way he talked about what was in the coffin, it seemed to Rina that perhaps some things had occurred out there in the wilderness that would elicit disapproval from both church and state. This didn't bother her. She considered herself a woman of the world, and had seen many strange things on the American continent.
A moment in France, in Spain, and then Norisuke moved his daughter along.
Japan loomed. Sat on the deck of some passenger ship, Johnnyless, Rina tried to convince herself to be happy to return to Japan. Family. Friends. Food.
She slumped and sighed and resigned herself to her mother's life. Not a bad life, she reminded herself. A comfortable life.
The fruit business was her idea. She researched prices and talked to ship captains and presented her findings to her father, who promptly started a business with her brother.
A letter came several months later to a still-fuming Rina.
It said hello, it said I've settled into a new place in America. It said I hope I've written your address right, it said I hope this finds you well.
"I missed you on my way back to America. I hope you're happy in Japan, but I kind of hope you're missing me, too," it said.
Rina wrote back instantly.
"Hello Johnny,
I'm glad to hear you are doing well. I am doing well myself. I have also missed you.
I hope this is not too forward, but if you could please reply with a proposal of marriage, that would be greatly appreciated. I would very much like to join you in America and this seems like the best way to do so.
I'm sorry if this request offends you. I felt no need to be coy, as I know you have no reputation or fortune to protect, nor anyone worthwhile to gossip to. Don't worry, I know how to make money. I'll support the both of us.
With affection,
Rina Higashikata"
Johnny replied with one letter laughing at her outright, calling her ridiculous and scandalous and rude. He sent another with the requested proposal for marriage, asking herself and her parents for her hand. This letter was written with almost the right amount of sweetness and deference that was required of a suitor. She sighed at its faults, but knew it was the best he could do. It alighted on her beauty and wit. Rina thought that he could have mentioned a few more wifely qualities, but was pleasantly surprised that he thought she was clever.
Her father was disgruntled if not surprised. Her mother was horrified.
"You're still young, Rina," her mother said. "You can find yourself a nice man."
"One with prospects," added her father.
"I could," she agreed. "But I want to be with Johnny. And I want to be in America."
Her parents came with her to New York to give her away in moderate disgust. Her mother fussed and her father drank.
Johnny was nervous the whole time, which irritated Rina. She was determined to have a nice time. Stephen and Lucy Steel very kindly hosted the wedding in their massive, rather nouveau-riche estate. Lucy, absolutely giddy, took Rina to get a dress, and her mother did her hair up fancy. She thought to herself that she looked quite the pretty picture in her lace and her flowers.
Her groom certainly agreed. The way those blue eyes burned made the low-necked American wedding dress feel well worth the fight with her mother.
They moved somewhere a little bit south and a little bit west. Rina made a name for herself in business and accounting, and bought them a small ranch. She liked the way his cane thump-thumped on the wood floors. Johnny kept house and taught riding lessons sometimes. Her little househusband, she called him.
They had some lean winters at the beginning, and those might have been the times she loved him most. The dark nights when he would make something edible out of the nothing she brought home, when he would hold her close against the wind and snow and tell her stories about the race that were so fantastical she didn't know where reality ended and fairy tale began. He said he never minded the cold as long as he had someone to weather it with, and talked about a tree, a girl, a curse and a gamble.
She taught him Japanese. It went slowly, but she figured they had time. Her native language sounded funny and sweet in his Kentucky fried mouth and sometimes she made him say things just to laugh at him. She learned the banjo. In the summer, Johnny would put her in his saddle and go fast around their field to make her laugh and shout.
Johnny objected to the name George at first.
"I don't like my father that much," he muttered when Rina suggested it.
"I think it's a good name," she insisted. "And it deserves a second chance."
Johnny's father was, of course, delighted. He loved the baby more than he'd ever loved Johnny, who was quick to point this fact out after every visit.
The Higashikatas visited not long after George was born. They politely cooed over the new baby and made faces at the Joestars' odd marriage and American house. Rina wore pants around the house just to see her mother frown. Johnny told her she should wear pants more often. She stole half his clothes and nursed Baby George in shirts and suspenders.
Rina's mother left with a weary sigh and a pat on her daughter's cheek. Struggling to think of something positive to say to her black sheep, she arrived at, "At least you're all healthy." This made Johnny laugh.
Things were good good good on that little ranch. That summer before she got sick was hot, and they had cherry pie and fresh strawberries and George learned to walk. That fall, when things started to fall apart, Johnny shot a gorgeous turkey and there was talk of giving George a little sibling.
That spring, Rina was in Japan with a fatherless American baby.
George's Japanese was worse than she had hoped. The name she'd built for herself was back in the States, but she couldn't bear to go back to their little house without Johnny, couldn't bear to part with the Jizou in the park.
The blood had spread over the cobblestones and under the gingko leaves, carrying them with it like little ships. It stained the knees of her yukata. The dress stayed in a box in her closet, unwashed. On very bad nights when she didn't feel like herself or like a person at all, she would press her face into the dirt and blood and try to remember what he smelled like. She would put her lips on the fabric and try to remember his skin. She would suck it into her mouth and hold it there.
The image of his headless body splayed out on the street was persistent. It stayed with her through that awful, awful pregnancy in her mother's house. When she looked at her daughter's pretty eyes she thought of how she couldn't remember his. Just that rock.
Two little babies. Her parent's house. Relentless grief.
Remember that corpse he had with him? she thought. I wonder if he ever put it down. I wonder if he ever really buried it.