Basho

It was five months into her pregnancy when her doctor presented her with an ultrasound image that revealed a complex story. A competition between her fetus and a rapidly growing tumor right next to him. A bout in progress in her gut? No, come to think of it, not a brief contest but a basho—a full-fledged tournament. A wrestler was seeking to shove her son out of the circle. But unlike her baby, this challenger had no human features, no head nor body beyond its dark jellyfish silhouette squashing her boy. 

The technician—the same one who a few months earlier had revealed the gender of her fetus—had quickly turned the screen away from her. Now she knew why. Then he left her to fetch the doctor. She hastily wiped the jelly off her belly so that her boy wouldn’t get cold. For at least a half an hour she had waited under the disposable blue gown and scratchy white blanket for the technician and doctor to return. 

While the two medical personnel conferred in hushed tones about the screen image, she had lain serenely, hands folded over her chest. Earlier she had envisioned how she would share good news about her growing baby boy with her mother, her haha, on a Zoom call that evening. She had smiled to herself, thinking about how her update would calm her mother, who continued to drop vague hints of the dangers that spending time among foreigners could pose, especially during a pregnancy. And when the technician switched on the lights, her doctor turned toward her, and she listened attentively to him, her sensei, when he delivered the news: slightly smaller than average fetus, strong heartbeat, rapidly growing. As was his opponent.

With a copy of the scan in a crisp manila envelope nestled beside her, she drove home, considering the sensei’s suggestion that she return later that week with her husband to talk further. Did she want to do that? Wasn’t this her quandary, not her husband’s? He had played no role in her pregnancy with their daughter. Why would he now? Besides, he was preoccupied with his job as a visiting professor, eager to transition to a permanent slot before the arrival of their second child. She would give him the envelope, but that was it. And perhaps best not to share this news at all with her mother? Conversations with haha on Zoom were already a struggle and this wouldn’t be easy. She wasn’t sure.

But the image in the envelope explained a lot. A whole lot.

She had been dreaming of sumo wrestlers all these months. The hot summer nights that greeted them on their arrival and now the cooling autumn ones with the rustle of the falling leaves. Almost every night. Weeks before she even knew she was pregnant. During these dreams, she had experienced the pushing, the pressure, the sweating of a sumo bout in which one of the wrestlers was shouldering his opponent to shove him out of the dohyō. But never the resolution. 

So in an odd way, the news didn’t particularly surprise her. In fact, it was almost reassuring of the unbreakable bond already in place between herself and her son. They were on the same wavelength and together would prevail throughout this basho. She would see to that.

The ultrasound also helped explain why she herself resembled a wrestler, what with her belly so swollen this early in her term. Before she saw the image, she and her husband had concluded this was going to be one significant boy. They’d even gone so far as to identify distant relatives on each side who’d been outsized people. Their baby would simply be like them, part of that tradition. It happens. 

Her mother had gone a step further and begun at four months inquiring on their Zoom calls if she was carrying twins. Fair question. Her haha had observed her previous pregnancy firsthand, so she knew this time around how remarkably large her daughter had become. 

The first time her mother had raised the twins question was during an evening call, which for her was late morning. Once her daughter had shaken her head, haha had frowned and snorted dismissively as if to say, well, something isn’t right.

The next week, a night when her husband was working late, her mother opened their conversation by calling her fat—“Futotte kuru ne,” haha had exclaimed as soon as her image flashed onto the screen,” haha’s lips pursed in disapproval. She refused to respond. The ensuing silence seemed to last forever until her mother explained herself. “It’s their food, you know. Nothing is safe there. I told you the two of you should have waited to move.” 

Close as they were, she had resented haha’s intrusions. In fact, they were one of the reasons she had been relieved to relocate to this new country—to gain some space from her mother. This was her pregnancy, her belly, and most of all, her outsized baby boy. Or so she had thought. 

Of course, the second scan generated plenty of questions. How far exactly had these two in her belly gotten in this basho? she wondered. Did the tumor align with her pregnancy or proceed at its own pace? Were the two of them in the crouch that marked the beginning of each bout or well past that? And what if this intruder gained ground against her son? Could this be remedied? Or was there no chance of a rematch? She didn’t know. And at this point, she wasn’t certain she even wanted to know. 

All she wanted was her son. 

Her son, she had smiled to herself after the first ultrasound. 

The baby who would become the little brother to her three-year-old daughter. 

The child who would complete their family and carry its Japanese name. 

Son—the English word for musuko—always slid so satisfyingly from her tongue when she said it out loud.

Now she wanted that son even more than she had months ago. And she remained convinced he could prevail. After all, his heart was strong, the doctor had said. The heart of a sekitori, she told herself, the top-level wrestlers who possess the strength and endurance to win.

But the image was also a cautionary tale. Conceived just before she and her husband had left their home country for his new job, her son was now sharing her womb with a gaijin, an outsider that meant him harm. She had arrived in this country right after his conception, and in her haste to help her family settle in, had she paid sufficient attention to these influences? Had she let her guard down and failed to protect her son from this faceless invader? 

With the image etched indelibly on her mind—a kick in the face if there ever was one—she concluded she was remiss in her casual attitude toward this second pregnancy. No wonder she had inadvertently provided succor to this intruder. No wonder she had unknowingly strengthened it to the point where it now threatened to eject her son from the dohyō, steal his rightful victory. She wiped her eyes and sat up straighter and taller as she pulled into her driveway. Time for change. 

During the next few weeks, she found a Japanese grocery forty miles from her home and began to shop there to rid her home of foreign food. Gradually the boxes of Rice Krispies that her daughter had relished for breakfast gave way to bowls of miso soup and imported Japanese rice—not that Japanese-style stuff grown in California from the nearby grocery chain. 

At her fifth month, she donned the dark yellow woven obi sash her grandmother and mother had worn during their pregnancies and she had worn with her daughter to keep her baby in place and warm from the winter cold now approaching fast. 

And even though this country had no shrines, like the one she had visited with her mother in Japan for good luck during her first pregnancy, she sang the lullaby her mother had once sung to her and that she still sang to her daughter each night. Along the pine forest trails near their house, she raised her voice each morning on her favorite stanza. The words “I would quickly leave here back to my family home” lingered in the air—part lullaby, part prayer that she in turn hoped would soothe him and help him understand that she would protect him no matter where they were. Then she inhaled the fresh scent of the trees that she knew would strengthen his lungs. 

Best of all, she kept dreaming of sumo. During one of these dreams on a particularly cold night, she thought she had glimpsed her baby’s arrival, the kimarite—the winning techniques—he would employ to force his way from her womb. She awoke that morning with a joy she knew she would experience soon when she held him in her arms to feed him. Later that same day after her shower, she stood before her bathroom mirror, palming her breasts and urging them to expand more rapidly. “After the fight he’s got on his hands, this guy is going to need lots,” she had whispered to them. “Lots.”

A month later, she returned to the doctor’s office where the technician again scanned her belly, focusing especially on the left side where the interloper skulked. She was hopeful. Perhaps the Japanese food had not appealed to it? Perhaps it had shrunk or even departed?

This time, she learned the results from two doctors, not one. After she dressed, they greeted her in a light-yellow consultation room with pictures of butterflies on the walls. Her own doctor, her sensei, said little. Instead, he observed her closely while an older one, the senpai, delivered the scan results. Elbows on his thighs and hands clasped between his knees as he leaned toward her in his swivel chair, he told her with his kind creased eyes and a deep steady voice that her son was continuing to grow and that they could still hear his heartbeat. She sighed involuntarily and cradled her right side where she knew he resided. She remembered driving there that morning, thinking she already knew what they would say, and now she learned that she was right. No wonder that joyous dream.

But then the older doctor slid his chair even closer, clasped her hands, and explained further. The invader had also grown. And suddenly so did her confusion. She frowned, and the doctor repeated this. Both her boy and the tumor were growing, he indicated, her boy at a slower-than-normal rate and the tumor keeping pace. She sat stunned. This was not what her dream had informed her. This was all wrong. Hadn’t she done all she could?

There was nothing to be done but wait, the senpai concluded. Who would win was uncertain, yet any intervention could carry far greater risks to the warrior in her belly than to his challenger. 

After the older doctor left, her sensei spent considerable time with her explaining a page of instructions that she was to follow during this last segment of her son’s bout. He spoke slowly, stopping intermittently to ask if she understood. She nodded. He asked if she had questions. She didn’t. Or at least none she could articulate. She listened carefully.

Yet while she drove home, she kept hearing over and over again a phrase that was new and strange to her that both doctors had voiced: “only time will tell.” That comment made no sense to her.

That afternoon, snippets of her mother’s warnings about dangers in this foreign country echoed in her mind. “Remember, you are Japanese. Japanese. They are not. They are gaijin.”

Perhaps haha was right, that this was a dangerous country and that these threats were indeed real? Now that she knew the invader still flourished beside her son, she understood better the worry about these foreign influences on her boy. Looking around her, she imagined the interloper everywhere in her house—in their mail promoting local restaurants and shops, the bleach-infused cleaners so strong they stung her eyes, and the black pepper her husband had begun to sprinkle on his rice. She realized that it had eluded them all. 

But she refused to be cloaked in the fear her mother sought to wrap round her, and there was no way now she would share the information from the second image with her. Nor would she consult her husband further. Her husband, now immersed in his own competition for tenure and working every night until after midnight in the hope of solidifying a position that could guarantee his family’s financial future. 

Besides, she was resolute in her belief that she and her family would win out. That she could channel all nourishment to her son and prepare him for those final decisive moments in the dohyō. 

Gaijin or not, she read the instructions from the doctors several times. She needed all the help she could get. 

As instructed, she kept eating. But she tossed out the Fuji apples from the local grocery store. Fuji, indeed. What had she been thinking? The imported ones would cost three times more from the Japanese store and were quite the bargain at that. 

As instructed, she stuck mostly to “strict bed rest.” But even after she translated the word strict, she stood long enough at her stove to prepare a large pot of chankonabe, the stew of sumo champions made of a rich miso broth, chicken, and most importantly, imported shiitake mushrooms. These she inhaled before washing so that her son too could smell the Japanese soil that tied them to their ancestors. Soil that would nurture them both as only something truly Japanese could. With each spoonful she slurped, she whispered to him, “This is food for your kantō seishi, your fighting spirit.”

As instructed, she rested. Or at least most of the time. She lay on the floor each morning to stretch and stroke the side of her belly where her child resided. Since she had seen the initial image, she had slept on her left side, hoping to crush his competitor. 

She drove every other day to the Japanese grocery store not only to acquire Japanese foods, but also so that her son could hear even more voices speak his native language. “They are speaking to you,” she counseled him, so he understood that the welcoming cries of “Irasshaimase” were specifically directed to him, to his imminent arrival. 

And as instructed, she stopped walking the forest trails near their house. Or at least she didn’t cover as much ground. Instead, she confined her trips to the first bench along the trail where the slope of mountain returned her to Aokigahara and where she could continue to inhale the pine-filled air that was so much like the mist-filled breezes that had swaddled her and her family just weeks before they left Japan. She continued to sing to her child and, on arriving home, took the briefest possible shower so she could quickly retie her obi tightly to protect her boy. 

As time passed, she continued her rituals. With just over two months until she was due to greet her boy, their family quietly celebrated the Christmas holiday—even toasting the new year without incident over Zoom with her haha—she sticking carefully to her regimen and managing to steer clear of all the chocolates her daughter and husband consumed. 

It seemed to be working. She felt good all over. 

Most important of all, her dreams about sumo continued those first few weeks of the new year. Lasting for what seemed like the better part of her overnight sleep, they left her with odors of baby oil similar to competitors’ hair wax and images of taut torsos launching concerted pushes. But the dreams no longer revealed the winning sekitori. So each morning, before she got out of bed, she rubbed her own arms with baby oil and conjured up the dream in which her son was victorious, soaking in the joy evoked by seeing his strong upright body circling the ring and letting the resolve spread throughout her swollen limbs. 

During that same time, she began counting the kicks on her right side to which she awoke each morning—the shiko or leg raising she presumed her boy was practicing before his final bout. These told her that he remained healthy and strong, well positioned to dominate the intruder. She smiled knowing she had prepared him well and that he was up to his task. She was right there with him, ready to fight alongside as best she could. Her spirits remained high. 

By mid-January, however, the situation began to change. The winter had grown colder, colder than she had ever experienced, and she could no longer leave the house for fear of chilling her baby. Even in their home, she refused now to remove her tightly wound obi. 

Her dreams became more intermittent, fragmented, and at times troubling. In one instance, she recalled awakening to one in which her son was toppling over in the dohyō, shoved by a limb of the artificial Christmas tree in their den that no one had had the energy to take down. Or was it a branch from one of the firs in the forest she had visited? Whatever it was, it was foreign, malign. And not long afterwards, when she most wanted to continue her dreams of her son winning his final bout, these dreams disappeared entirely. So did her sleep. 

Her joy descended into a grim determination, her body transformed each day into a sweaty, messy bout with no clear victor. All her life, she had played by the rules. Done the right things. Started their family with their beautiful little girl. Waited until the right time to have this boy child she and her husband had dreamed about before they left their home country. Yet now she was not only living in a strange country, but she was adrift and under siege from a hostile invader intent on murdering her son. And with her husband so busy with work or care for their daughter she couldn’t find the right moment to give voice to her fears. All of a sudden, she missed the embrace of her haha with whom she’d taken pains to share so little. 

Her belly became further distended and swollen, almost painful to her touch. She stopped eating. Nothing tasted right. She no longer kept next to her bed the framed image of her boy that her husband, in a silent bid to connect with his son, had excised and enlarged from the original scan of the conjoined two she had given him in the manila envelope. Why would she seek a bond with a child she might never hold? 

By mid-January, her son’s kicks became weaker and less frequent. Her doubts began to mount. In early February, when she awoke to no kicks in her belly for the second day in a row, she knew it was time to return to the doctors. Was “time telling” her something? She didn’t know. Maybe during this visit, she would ask them to explain the meaning of this phrase. 

She phoned her sensei to request an appointment. She was told this time to come as soon as she could to the adjoining hospital, not a place she had previously visited. Her doctor would meet her in the lobby. 

He arrived quickly after she checked in and, smiling as always, escorted her to a technician’s room close by. But no technicians joined them this time. Instead, the older senpai curtly greeted her and her doctor, and rather than leaving, they turned away while she undressed. The senpai hastily performed a scan, her sensei holding her hand while the cold gel seeped down her sides. 

She held out hope her musuko might share with all of them a kick—even though he hadn’t for some three days now. He didn’t. For the last time, she surreptitiously wiped away the gel on her belly with her free hand—the other still in her sensei’s. She did not want to dishonor either one of them, but this was her child after all. 

The senpai wordlessly nodded to her sensei and left quickly. Her doctor remained behind to explain: the tumor was now bearing down on the baby and choking off her son’s access to oxygen. They could no longer remain in the dohyō together. Her sensei smiled at her and squeezed her hand. He informed her that her senpai was preparing to conduct a surgery right away, using that phrase again—that time would tell. Before she could finally ask what this meant, she was whisked away on a stretcher to a pre-op room. 

Within less than an hour, in a brightly lit operating theater, the contest began in earnest. No family member would observe, just the masked and capped doctors and staff who greeted her. Lying on the stretcher clenching her obi tightly now to her side, she attempted to lift her head enough to bow to each of them. After all, her son’s life now lay in these foreigners’ hands. As the anesthesiologist connected yet another bag of solution to her drip, no one understood her fervent incantations of gambatte kudasai or “please do your very best”—the finest prayer she could summon to ward off the possibility of awakening alone. 

And when she later heard through the haze that enveloped her what she dared to hope might be her baby’s cries, she wondered: whose were they—hers or his? Had the interloper placed her son in an unrecoverable position? Was her son the loser? Or was he circling the dohyō in victory? Bowing to honor her with the kenshokin—the winner’s fat envelopes of prize money that marked the end of every basho?

Slowly, very slowly, she reemerged from the anesthesia. The fog in her head continued to lift. She hadn’t dreamt it—a high-pitched wail pierced her ears. And when she fully opened her eyes, she registered first the perspiration on her senpai’s brow and then a pair of tiny fiercely clenched red fists proclaiming his first victory. Or perhaps complaining that he was cold? It really didn’t matter. Time had told her.