Stories of My Life

The Newbery, 1981.

Motherhood As Inspiration

A man I had just met asked me what I did. When I replied I was a writer he said: “Oh, I know all about that. When I was a kid, my best friend’s father was a writer. If we went to his house we had to tiptoe around. We couldn’t make any noise at all because his dad was always working.”

“You did say ‘father,’ didn’t you?”

Because it’s quite different, or at least it was in my day, if the mother is the writer. Four children take a lot of time, but I have said more than once that the people who took my time were the very people who gave me something worth writing about.

It began with the first novel. I started writing a novel, as I said, because nothing else I’d written was selling, and I thought I might be able to write a chapter a week and at the end of the year have a book. I wanted to write a story set in Japan, because I was a little bit homesick, both for Japan and that feeling of competency I had once had, back in the days when I was a confident young single woman. Besides, if I wrote a story set in the past, I would have an excuse to read Japanese history, something I loved doing. I don’t think I even knew that if I did that I would be committing historical fiction. I wasn’t thinking about genre, I was thinking about story. I’m sure I didn’t realize that a book for young people set in twelfth-century Japan would be, for all practical purposes, totally unmarketable.

But a novel has to have more than a fascinating setting and well-paced plot. It has to have an emotional core. It has to be written out of passion. And the heart of this novel, set in twelfth-century Japan, came from an unexpected source. It came from six-year-old Lin.

As I indicated earlier, Lin’s initial adjustment was difficult, and again when we moved from New Jersey to Maryland in 1966, a lot of it came unglued and had to be redone. But, by 1968, when she was five, then six, life had settled down pretty well for her. Still, there were times when for no reason we could discern, the bright, happy little daughter she had become would disappear. In her place would be a silent waif. It was as though the child we knew had simply pulled down a curtain that we could not reach through.

This might go on for several days at a time, and it scared me to death. Where had she gone? What was she experiencing behind that blank stare? And how on earth could I reach her?

The curtain had been down for several days. I had tried everything—cajoling, begging, holding her. Nothing got through. One evening I was in the kitchen making supper when she came in. Without a word she climbed up on a high kitchen stool and sat there, her tiny body present, but the rest of her completely closed away. I tried to chat with her in a normal tone of voice. There was no answer, no indication that she even heard. The harder I tried, the more tense I became.

Finally, I did what any good mother would do under the circumstances. I lost my temper. “Lin,” I yelled, “how can I help you if you won’t tell me what’s the matter?”

She jerked to life, her eyes wide open. “Why did that woman give me away?”

Then it all began to pour out. Why had she been given away? We’d never told her she was a foundling. It seemed too harsh– just that her mother had not been able to keep her and wanted her to have a home. I repeated this, adding that I was sure her mother hadn’t wanted to give her away and wouldn’t have if there had been any possibility that she could take care of her. Was her mother alive? Was she all right? I couldn’t answer her questions, but she let me try to comfort and assure her. She never again, even in adolescence, pulled down the curtain in just that way.

She is a mother now herself—a wonderful, loving, funny mother. I watched her giving her own babies all the care that she herself never had as an infant, but that somehow she knew how to give. She is a wonder and I cannot tell you how much I admire her.

But in the context of this story what she gave me that day was not only herself, but the emotional heart of the novel I wanted to write. What must it be like, I wondered, to have a parent somewhere whom you do not know?

I look at The Sign of the Chrysanthemum and it’s no marvel to me now that I had difficulty finding a publisher. It is set in the midst of the civil strife of tw

elfth-century Japan. The central character is a thieving bastard who is searching for the father he never knew. The girl he cares about ends up in a brothel. I didn’t put her there because I wanted to scandalize my readers, but because a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl in twelfth-century Japan who had no one to protect her would, most likely, end up in a brothel, and the penniless teenaged boy who loved her would be powerless to save her.

Now, at some point I must have realized that I hadn’t seen a lot of books for young readers along this line, but when I wrote The Sign of the Chrysanthemum I wasn’t, to be honest, worrying about readers. I was writing a story I needed and wanted to write, as honestly and as well as I knew how.

For any of you out there who have wondered about the difference between novels for the young and adult novels, the adult best seller at about the same time my book was published—a best seller that, by the way, was breaking every sales record since Gone with the Wind, was the sentimental, moralistic tale of an over-achieving seagull.

First draft of The Sign of the Chrysanthemum.

Then how on earth did my book ever see the light of day? Granted, it almost didn’t. It made the rounds of various publishers for more than two years. And then a miracle happened. It was taken out of the seventh or eighth publisher’s slush pile by a young Sandra Jordan, who read it and loved it. She took it to her boss, the senior editor, who had recently returned from a visit to Japan and who was and is a woman of vision in the field of children’s books. She has always dared to publish books that she felt would open up unknown worlds for children. I’m sure Ann Beneduce had no illusions that the book would sell well. She hoped, of course, that it would sell respectably, but she wanted young readers to have a chance at the book, and she wanted the writer of it to have the chance to write more books.

In 1970 Ann Beneduce handed my manuscript to an editor who was just coming off maternity leave. I can promise you, if that had not happened, I would not be writing this book, for that first editor, Virginia Buckley, has been the editor of all my novels. And if my books are good, it is because Virginia would never let me stop working until they were.

Mary helps edit.

Of Nightingales That Weep, my second novel, also set in twelfth-century Japan, was written before the first was published. I was already to write another, but, alas, I had no ideas for a new book. I had four children, though, why not ask them?

There was no debate. They all wanted a mystery story. I really like a good mystery story, but I am realistic enough to know that they aren’t easy to write. It seemed to me that it took the same kind of brain that it took to win at chess, and Lin had been beating me at chess for the last five years. “Do you think,” I asked my eager children, “that anyone who is regularly beaten at chess by a six-year-old has the kind of brain it takes to plot a mystery story?”

At just about that time, I saw in The Washington Post an advertisement for Bunraku, the Japanese puppet theater. The Osaka Bunraku Company was coming to perform at the Kennedy Center. My mind went back to puppet performances I had seen during my days in Japan. The main theater had been destroyed during the war, so the theater I went to was small and dark. Patrons took their lunches for the several-hour play and sat on tatami mats to watch. As humble as the surroundings might have been, the puppets and scenery were magnificent. The puppets in Bunraku are nearly life-sized and manipulated by three people—one does the feet, another the left hand and the master puppeteer does the head and right hand. In most scenes all the puppeteers are under black hoods except the master, who is dressed in formal kimono. You would think that the audience would be fascinated by the puppeteers, but even the unhooded master is soon forgotten as the puppets themselves seem to come to life before your eyes. There is something a bit spooky about the puppets, so lifelike, but not really alive. What a marvelous setting for a mystery, I thought, but then remembered that I really was not up to writing one. So the children and I compromised. I would try to write an adventure story with as much suspense as possible.

As I was reading everything I could get my hands on about Bunraku, I had what some people call a waking dream. In it I saw a boy in the upper story of an old Japanese warehouse. The place was filled with trunks, and costumes hung from the ceiling. The only light came from a single window at the far end of the room. The boy was scrabbling about looking for something—something that he could not find. Then I heard heavy footsteps coming up the staircase, and in the dim light I saw the white face of a warrior puppet. Behind the puppet, a hooded figure was manipulating the head and right hand of the puppet. And in the hand was a samurai sword.

That was all I got—the boy vainly looking for something and a menacing hooded figure manipulating a sword-wielding puppet. So I had to write The Master Puppeteer to find out who the boy was and what he was looking for and who was trying to frighten him and why.

I knew I couldn’t write about Bunraku without going back to Japan and seeing more plays and interviewing puppeteers and historians of the puppet theater. I had four young children and very little money, so that seemed impossible. But my husband suggested I ask for a larger advance on Of Nightingales That Weep, which I did with fear and trembling, but the publishers doubled my advance from one thousand to two thousand dollars. This allowed me, not only to go to Japan, but to take ten-year-old Lin with me. From Japan we went on to Hong Kong so that she could visit the orphanage where she spent her first two years, something she had often said she wanted to do.

When we got back from that wonderful trip, I was very tired. I tried to get back to writing the book, but everything I wrote seemed dry and lifeless. The extreme tiredness proved to be a symptom of cancer. After my hospital stay I began to write again, but I had lost any confidence in my ability to write the book. I decided to read it aloud one stormy night in the barn we rented at Lake George. The electricity was off and candlelight seemed appropriate to the story. The next day I caught John Jr. rifling the drawer to read ahead. I was thrilled. The story was working. And so The Master Puppeteer was born. When the Mystery Writers of America gave me a special award for my non-mystery book, I was almost as proud of the citation as I was of the National Book Award that the book also garnered.