Paul was the only one to whom I told everything. I suppose I was closer to him because I’d known him the longest, because we’d been playing together since before we went to school, and because he lived on my street. We saw each other more often than we saw our friends from school, and we knew each other’s families—and family secrets. Going to Catholic school, Paul also seemed a little more sissified than regular kids, and I guess I thought he’d understand the allure of having a pen pal more than my other friends would.
He did.
“I wish we had pen pals at my school,” he told me glumly. “I guess the nuns probably think we’d be writing sex stuff or something, so they don’t want to lead us into temptation.”
Paul was always thinking about sex stuff.
He looked at me. “So what do you write to her about?”
I reddened. Not because I’d been writing to her about sex but because I hadn’t. I told Paul the truth. “Mostly I just tell her about how I’m this really cool, tough, popular kid. All the girls want me and all the boys want to be me.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Oh, and I’m a champion surfer.”
“That’s so great!”
I shrugged, proud of my accomplishment but trying to play it down. “How’s she ever going to find out? I could say anything.”
“You could be anyone you wanted.” Paul seemed amazed by this. Amazed and entranced. “You could invent a new personality for yourself. Or take someone else’s personality.” He shook his head. “Wow.”
I’d never really thought of it that way, and hearing him say that made me realize that maybe Paul wasn’t as happy with who he was as he seemed to be. He had a good life, certainly a more stable home life than I did, and generally speaking he was pretty content. But still, there was always room for improvement, and it occurred to me that even with his Brady Bunch parents and nice private school, maybe he wanted to be a little less wussy than he was, a little more normal.
Maybe everyone wanted to be someone they weren’t.
The thought was sobering. Was it possible that even happy people weren’t that happy? That everyone was secretly discontent with their lot in life? If that was the case, was there any hope for me? I thought of my parents and my brother. None of them were satisfied; none of them were living the lives they wanted. Robert or Edson, either. Kyoko seemed happy, but maybe that was because she was lying to me the same way I was lying to her. Maybe the only truly happy people were fictional people, like the Jason Hanford I’d created in my letters.
No. I refused to believe that. Kyoko was happy. She was exactly the same way she seemed in her letters, and I was just overreacting.
“So… can I check out her picture?” Paul asked.
This was awkward. I’d told him about Kyoko’s photo, but I realized that I didn’t want him to see it. I didn’t want anyone to see it. I wanted to keep that for myself.
“Uh… no,” I said.
Paul frowned. “I thought you said she was good-looking.”
“Oh, she is.”
“Well?”
I didn’t know how to explain it, didn’t really understand it myself, but shook my head. What Kyoko and I had was pure and special, and I wanted to make sure that it remained uncorrupted. Letting someone else see her picture, even a friend like Paul, would break the spell, would bring hard outside reality into our fragile pen pal world.
I was saved from having to defend my decision by Paul’s mom, who announced from the porch that it was time for lunch. “Would you like to eat over, Jason?” his mom asked. “I could call your mother.”
“No, thanks, Mrs. Germain!” I told her. “I’d better go home!”
I said good-bye to Paul and headed back up the block. Paul hadn’t laughed at me, and like me, he seemed to think having a pen pal was cool, but I still regretted opening up to him about it. I wasn’t sure why, and I had the strange feeling that if I’d written to him instead of talking to him in person, I wouldn’t mind so much. I’d be okay with it.
I thought about that as I walked down the sidewalk to my house and realized that I preferred communicating with people through letters rather than face-to-face. It seemed more real to me somehow, and although until now I’d done nothing but lie to Kyoko, I felt I could be more honest in my letters than I could in person, more myself. I didn’t have to act or play games or worry about reactions to what I said. I could just write down my thoughts and feelings in the privacy of my own room, and the recipients could read and react in the privacy of theirs.
I suddenly wished I could write to everyone instead of talking to them. Even my friends.
“Where’ve you been?” my mom demanded as I came through the kitchen door.
Even my family.
2
I ran out of envelopes far earlier than scheduled, and though I could have asked Miss Nakamoto for more, I was embarrassed to do so. Instead, I took my allowance money and, on the way home from school one Friday, stopped in at the post office to buy some stamps that would enable me to send letters to Japan. I got away from Robert and Edson by telling them that I had to wait at school for my brother, who was supposed to pick me up. As soon as they were down the street and around the corner, I was off.
In the post office, I saw the witch.
I heard her before I saw her—that tap-tap-tap of her cane on the floor—and then she rounded the corner of the alcove housing the P.O. boxes and glared at me. One eye was slightly bigger than the other, and both were encased in a face that would have looked disturbing even if it had not been so horribly wrinkled. I glanced quickly away. At close quarters like this, she seemed even scarier than she did on the street, and in her glare I thought I saw recognition. That both worried and frightened me. I didn’t care if I was part of the faceless rabble on which she heaped her scorn, but if she was to single me out…
I thought of Acacia High School’s dead pepper tree and the missing ducks from the pond in Murdoch Park.
She brushed past, close enough for me to smell the strange sweet herbs on her breath. Her bony shoulder would have bumped my arm had I not stepped aside, but I did and I was glad. I didn’t want her to touch me.
Once she was past, I forgot all about her. I stepped up to the counter and bought six stamps with postage enough to send six letters to Japan. Six extra letters! I felt free, filled with possibility, the way an artist must feel when viewing a virgin canvas. I’d broken out of the box, and while I hadn’t exactly been playing by the official rules of the Pen Pal Program, now I could really indulge myself and do what I wanted when I wanted.
That night, I wrote my longest and most detailed letter yet, describing a fictional day in my life cobbled together from my own daydreams and the overheard conversations of other kids. As I finished, I heard a noise from down the hall. I quickly shut off my desk lamp and remained unmoving, praying I wouldn’t get caught. But the sound grew no closer; it seemed to stay at the opposite end of the hall. In the stillness of night, auditory elements were amplified, and as the noise differentiated itself into individual components, I realized I was listening to my parents having sex.
I was filled with disgust. I knew what sex was, of course, but there was no place in my conception of it for this animalistic grunting, and I felt queasy as I hid my letter inside my school notebook and made my way over to the bed as silently as possible. Hiding my head under the pillow, I tried to think of something else entirely, tried not to hear my mom’s rhythmic high-pitched squeals, my dad’s low guttural groans.
I think that night was the beginning of my nightmares. I cannot really remember having any nightmares prior to then, but I have suffered from them ever since. Often they are so vivid and realistic that not only can I not get the images out of my mind, but I cannot be sure whether what I remember is a dream or something that really happened.
The one that night was a doozy.
I was in my bed asleep, and the light in my room was switched on. “Get up!” my dad ordered. I bli
nked against the brightness, threw off the covers and put on my clothes, still feeling groggy. Stumbling down the hallway, I went to the bathroom, combed my hair and then made my way out to the kitchen. It was still dark outside—I could see only blackness beyond the kitchen window—and I wondered why my dad had awakened me so early. There was something not right about it, and my muscles tightened with anxiety. Something was wrong with the kitchen light, too, I noticed. It was dimmer than usual and had a flickering quality, like a candle flame. “Eat your breakfast!” my dad ordered, but though I looked around the room, I couldn’t see him. A plate of pancakes was on the table, however, and I sat down in my usual chair, preparing to eat.
Across from me, atop what looked like a dirty cardboard box, was a single chicken foot, embedded claws up in a square of brown Jell-O.
I realized that this was my dad.
“What are you looking at?” my dad demanded, and the claws of the chicken foot opened and closed in time with the words. “Eat your breakfast!”
“No!” I yelled, pushing my chair away from the table.
And the chicken foot flew through the air, claws open, to rip out my throat.
I awoke in a cold sweat, believing for a brief disorienting moment that my dad really was a chicken foot embedded in brown Jell-O. Then I saw the dark outline of my desk, a black shape in the bluish nonlight of night, and I thought of Kyoko, who on the other side of the world might have been writing to me at that very moment in a shaft of sunlight. The reality of existence returned to me. I lay there for a moment, listening, but the house was silent, my parents’ exertions over. I waited another minute or so, just in case, then got up, walked over to my desk, switched on my lamp, took out my letter and reread it.
I took out my pen.
P.S., I wrote at the bottom.
And continued on for another three pages.
It was both exciting and gratifying when Kyoko’s letters began arriving on a weekly instead of bi- or triweekly basis. She, too, had broken the pen pal rules, declining to write the obligatory monthly missive and opting to respond to each of my letters as it arrived, although she still kept to the Saturday schedule as I’d instructed.
I was getting pretty good at writing letters, if I do say so myself, and I thought of writing one directly to Miss Nakamoto. I didn’t know her home address, but I could write to her in care of the school, and she would be sure to get it. I even went so far as to pen the first half. I told her she was a very beautiful woman and that I found her very interesting and intelligent. But when I read it over, I could tell that it had been written by a kid. My intent was to send it anonymously, with the hope that she would think it was from an adult, a secret admirer, and we could begin an epistolary relationship, one that would last years. Gradually, she would fall in love with me, and maybe by that time I would be old enough that it wouldn’t seem too ridiculous.
It would be a while before my writing skills were at that level, however. Feeling depressed, I tore up the letter and immediately wrote another one to Kyoko, giving free reign to my mood by describing in detail the divorce of my parents and how tough it was on me.
How I wished it were true.
My dad was getting drunk more and more often. What used to be an occasional thing became first a weekly, then an almost nightly, occurrence. They fought about it, he and my mom, and the fights grew louder and uglier. One evening after dinner, they were arguing in the kitchen. I was in my bedroom doing homework when I heard a plate smash against the wall. That was followed by my mom’s incoherent screech and then the clatter of falling silverware. Another plate hit the wall or the floor and smashed loudly. I poked my head out of my door to see what Tom was doing, to see if he was taking all this in, but the door to his bedroom remained closed. I knew he had to hear what was happening, but he obviously didn’t want to get involved, and the two of us were not close enough that he would ever share his thoughts or feelings with me.
For some stupid reason, I decided to go out to the kitchen and see if I could calm them down, get them to stop fighting. I poked my head around the corner of the doorway just as my dad, glassy-eyed and lurching, threw a piece of our best china at the wall. It smashed right next to the refrigerator, pieces skittering across the floor to join others already there. “I hate you!” my mom whispered venemously. “One day you’re going to die in an accident and I’ll be glad!”
“Bitch!” my dad said in a slurred voice, banging his hand down on the counter.
They both saw me at once.
My dad stared dumbly, his alcohol-fogged brain trying to formulate a response. Scowling, he picked up another plate, ready to whale it at me, but my mom was quicker than he was, and before I could utter a word, she strode across the linoleum and grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging deep enough into my skin to draw blood. “Get in your room!” she shrieked.
“I heard you—”
“Get in your room and stay there!” She shoved me into the hallway, then turned back toward my father.
I ran back the way I’d come, crying not from the pain but the humiliation. How could I have been so stupid and naive to think that I could intercede in their argument? Slamming the door to my room, I thought I could hear the muffled sound of Tom laughing.
The next morning, my dad was back to his normal asshole self, and since I had to talk to somebody, I talked to him. For all I knew, he didn’t even remember last night. I steered clear of my mom. She was silent as she made breakfast, and that was always a bad sign. Tom, too, sensed the mood of the room and without a word grabbed a piece of toast and dashed out the door, headed for school. I was younger and obligated to eat, but I did so as quickly as possible and got out of the house myself, heading for Robert’s, where I waited for him to finish his breakfast before we met up with Edson and walked to school.
When I got home that afternoon, my desk had been ransacked.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. And in a way, I wasn’t—I’d been expecting this from the beginning. But it still felt like a gross violation of my privacy, and I was both angry and embarrassed as I put books and papers back in their proper places. Had she read my letters from Kyoko? Had she seen Kyoko’s picture? At least two envelopes were out of order and their contents had been replaced haphazardly, so those had probably been read. I quickly opened them up and glanced through them, grateful to find that they were early ones and dealt mostly with generic topics. The photo was still hidden and untouched.
If my mom asked me anything, I decided, I would just explain that it was part of a class assignment.
But she didn’t. She didn’t say a word. She knew that I knew that she knew about my pen pal, but both of us pretended nothing had happened and we maintained our usual muted hostility.
I knew I had to find a new location to store my letters, but there was no privacy in that house. During the next few days, I went over every inch of my room, even went out to the garage and into the crawl space under the house, but could find no safe place to keep my correspondence. Finally, out of desperation, while my parents were at the grocery store and Tom, who was supposed to be watching me, was over at one of his friends’ house, I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk, got my dad’s box cutter from his tool chest and sliced a hole in the carpet beneath the drawer. I slid all of Kyoko’s letters under the rug and replaced the drawer.
No one would ever find my letters here, I thought.
And no one ever did.
3
It was hard for me to get a sense of what Kyoko’s home life was like. I don’t know if it was the language barrier, or simply the fact that she was closed and reserved and didn’t share easily. Whatever the reason, there were huge gaps in my knowledge of her, gaps my imagination did its best to fill. In my mind, she lived in a close-knit traditional Japanese family, with a geisha-looking mother and a father who wore a business suit even at home. I imagined their lives to be satisfyingly structured, as clean and clear and uncluttered as their bamboo-matted rooms and white paper wall
s.
My own family situation was more… chaotic. When we weren’t at each other’s throats, we still lived uneasily with each other. My dad was drunk most evenings and mean even when he wasn’t. And there was always the threat of violence with my mom. She never hit me that much—and, truth to tell, it never really hurt—but her moods were so volatile, and her anger was so fierce, that I lived with the constant fear that she would explode, beating me unmercifully. This feeling became worse after my dad’s arrest, and I believe it was the same for Tom, though the two of us never spoke of it.
Kyoko’s school also seemed a lot more tranquil and less rancorous than mine. I wondered if that was a cultural thing or if she was just one of those people who breezed easily through life, smart and pretty and popular, floating above the problems that plagued lesser mortals.
No.
She was a normal kid, neither exceptional enough to draw attention to herself nor distinctive enough to differentiate herself from the crowd.
It occurred to me that I liked the fact that I didn’t know a whole lot about Kyoko’s life. She was, in a way, a blank slate, and I could project my own needs, wishes and aspirations onto her depending on my mood.
The letters flew back and forth between us. One special Saturday, I even received three of them at once, a harmonic convergence that left me feeling exhilarated for the whole week.
Despite the holes in my picture of her—or perhaps because of them—I grew to care about Kyoko much more than I thought I would, and much more than I intended. She was still a stand-in for my beloved Miss Nakamoto… but she was also a person in her own right (or in her own write). I liked her, and strange as it might seem, she was my best and closest friend. I could tell her anything without fear of being laughed at or judged.
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