Only later would I learn that because her own mother was mentally ill and my father was unresponsive, it had been Kobun my mother had turned to when she got pregnant, asking him what he thought she should do. “Have the child,” Kobun had advised. “If you need help, I’ll help you.” But in the intervening years he had not offered any help. No one had promised as much as Kobun or had seemed, to my mother at the time, as trustworthy. At the time, my young father had also trusted Kobun, who told him that if I turned out to be a boy, I would be part of a spiritual patrimony, and in that case my
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