All I Asking For is My Body Part 2

Kiyoshi’s mother is a very superstitious woman.  After she left her family back in Japan and moved to Hawaii in order to marry, a series of misfortune events took place that forced the young couple to hand over to her parents all of their savings.  Kiyoshi’s mother began to think after this that she was the carrier of bad luck as she told Kiyoshi “A bad wife is fifty years of bad crops,…, I wasn’t a bad wife, but a bad-luck wife.”  Kiyoshi’s mother seems to be slightly more superstitious that most Japanese women.  After she suddenly falls extremely ill, her unfounded fears have her believe that the reason behind her sickness is a debt that a relative must have with life, something similar to karma.  She believes that a relative most have done something terribly bad and had gone away with it; however a retribution must be paid, and if that who did bad is not punished someone else in substitution will be.  She assumes she’s an alternator to pay for who has done badly.  Although Kiyoshi is not a believer himself of all of her mother’s popular beliefs, he respects them, and he’s careful about them.  I, personally, also consider most of them to be “silly superstitions” as Kiyoshi’s father calls them.  However, there’s a part of me that reminds me to know better and respect the wisdom of those who had been here before me, and the rest of us; and so, Kiyoshi asked for Obaban’s help.

The day after Kiyoshi talked to Obaban about his mother’s sickness, how nothing was working for her, and how she was afraid she was being the substitute to pay somebody else’s condemn Obaban died.  After learning the sad news, Kiyoshi felt relief as he understood that if his mother’s beliefs were true, and what she needed was not doctors but someone to be a substitute for herself, she had been saved by Obaban taking her place.