All I Asking For Is My Body, Part II, Dialogue

Why does Kiyoshi believe Obaban is a substitute for his mom?

I believe Kiyoshi gets the idea that Obaban is a substitute for his mom from his mother’s belief in superstitions, she thinks if someone gets away with a bad deed then someone is going to pay for it and not necessarily the person who committed the bad deed this person somehow replaces them she believes. This is also where the term “substitute comes from in the book.

Kiyoshi’s mother becomes very ill and is hospitalized; he is to look after her and the younger children while his father is fishing. Obanan seems to be the one who lifts his mother’s spirits as she is doing poorly. Obanan goes onto to tell Kiyoshi about bachi, which means doing something bad and getting away with it. Obanan then says that if his mother can find a substitute to take her place of death because of her bad luck she may be freed from it before it is too late.

Kiyoshi’s mother than explains her substitute theory to him at this time thinking she was near death. She tells Kiyoshi that she is next in line in her family to die because she believes that it happens in fours. Kiyoshi’s uncle died from tuberculosis, his grandmother from grief, and his grandfather from a stroke, so she thinks it is now her turn in the family line. She went on to explain that it is receiving the punishment for someone’s bad deeds in her family which Kiyoshi believes her.

Almost near her death Kiyoshi receives bad news and finds out that Obanan died of a stroke and not his mother. He is relieved and in the story we read that she becomes better and this concluded that what she told Kiyoshi is true in that Obaban took her place and died as her substitute for someone’s sins.