I had been waiting for her since I got back from school and I remembered holding the receiver beneath my chin, listening to the warm timbre of her words. ‘I’m coming, Sumichan,’ she said. ‘I will pick you up and we will go to Shimoda.’
I thought about the homework I still had to do for juku and the written kanji exercises I’d been given, but I didn’t care; I was tired of living with Grandpa. ‘Will you stay with me, Mummy?’
‘Yes, Sumi,’ she said. ‘I promise. I am coming to get you.’ She paused. I could hear her fumbling with her keys. ‘Tell Grandpa to expect me. I’ll be with you in an hour, okay?’ I nodded and then gasped ‘Yes’ into the phone. I was so excited. ‘I’m coming, Sumi,’ she repeated. ‘I’m coming!’
I lay on the floor beneath the greyscale map as the minutes ticked past. I was cold and they had taken my coat. I wondered if my father had left a bento for me. Eventually, another woman entered the room. She was dressed in a simple black trouser suit and she held a briefcase in one hand and a large leather handbag in the other. The woman paused at the threshold of the room and her pearl earrings caught the light as she turned her head and quickly shut the door.
She approached me slowly. ‘Hello there,’ she said. Her voice was soft. ‘Has anyone brought you lunch?’ I shook my head. The woman looked at my bare arms in my light school blouse, at my legs in their thin white stockings and plaid skirt. ‘Are you cold?’ She went outside for a minute and returned with my coat.
‘This is nice,’ she said as she wrapped me in the camel-coloured wool, admiring the black bows down the front. ‘Did your mummy buy this for you?’
I nodded.
She slipped off her high heels, placing them by the wall, and sat on the floor beside me. ‘Here,’ she said, reaching into her handbag and pulling out a small box. ‘You can have my bento. I brought it from home.’ She opened the lid to reveal barbecued eel and pickles on a bed of rice with sesame. ‘Is this all right?’ she asked and I nodded. She handed me some chopsticks. ‘These are a bit big for you,’ she said, ‘but we’ll manage.’ I took them from her, feeling the smoothness of the lacquer between my fingertips, and bit into the eel, smiling as it melted in my mouth.
She did not ask me any questions as I ate my lunch, and her briefcase remained closed. When I had finished, she opened her handbag and brought out a portable Shogi set. ‘This is no way to spend time away from school, is it?’ She opened up the box and I looked at the flat white tablets inside with fine black characters imprinted on them. I liked this game, it was like chess, but I thought it was strange that she would carry it around and so I looked up at her in question. ‘It’s magnetic,’ she said, lifting up the board to demonstrate, shaking it slightly so I could see how the pieces adhered to the plastic. ‘My husband bought it for me – so I can practise on the train home.’
She set it down in front of me and waited. I did not really feel like playing, but the lady had been kind to me. She looked at me and smiled, and when she did there was something so illicit and fun about our being together that I did not want to refuse her. She glanced towards the door and it occurred to me that she had somewhere else to be, that she might not have time to play with me. I began to set out the pieces, choosing my side of the board. She settled down to play, although for a time she remained distracted, alert to the sounds that passed outside. In the end she played the first game so badly that I actually laughed.
As the afternoon drew on she relaxed and we chatted about my life, what I’d been learning at school, the activities I liked to do, my favourite dinner at Grandpa’s house. Gradually, I began to answer her questions and we spoke about my home in Meguro. She asked when I had last lived with my parents. She asked about my parents’ friends – did any of them visit us? I shrugged and tried to answer as best I could, but I was closest to Grandpa and Mama. I grew quiet as I mentioned my mother. ‘When did you last see her, Sumiko?’ she asked. I shook my head and the silence stretched between us. ‘When did you last speak to her?’ she continued. I was quiet as she looked at me. When I refused to say anything more she moved closer to me on the carpet and placed an arm around my shoulders. Eventually, I allowed her to pull me against her and rest her cheek against my hair. I could smell the scent she wore, a light musk, like my mother’s. ‘The last time you spoke to her, Sumi, was it on the phone?’ she asked softly.
‘She didn’t come,’ I whispered, as the pain in my chest began to swell and spread. ‘She didn’t come.’
The woman picked me up, drawing me half across her lap. She held me tight, rubbing my back. ‘It’s okay, baby, everything is okay,’ she murmured as I gasped in sharp, wet sobs, leaning into her neck, soaking the collar of her shirt. She was still holding me when my grandfather opened the door. I have never seen him look so angry.
Ties That Bind
I remember exactly where I was standing in Grandpa’s study when I received the phone call from the Ministry of Justice. I can still see everything just as it was, in the home I had lived in nearly all my life. For a long time after that call, I remained very still, staring at the carpet. There were twists of white twine dotted here and there and in tangled piles beneath Grandpa’s armchair. My fingers tingled. I rubbed their tips together reflexively as though to soothe myself with movement.
The twine was made from very thin, tightly wound paper that writhes against your fingers as you try to tie it. During the final exams for the Supreme Court all our handwritten essays have to be bound together neatly with this string. Every lawyer I know, anyone who has ever practised law, will have spent hours and hours tying and retying twine, for if you cannot bind the exam papers correctly, you fail the year. No one writes up until the end. In the final flurry you can hear the slide and tap of papers being stacked and then the silence as everyone in the auditorium bends to secure their answers with loops and knots, pulling the string taut.
These events were so recent that coils of twine were still scattered across the floor of the study, yet that phone call had jarred me from my present life. It had mentioned my mother, dead for twenty years.
Standing at my grandfather’s desk, I picked up the receiver again. I returned the call to the Ministry of Justice and was put through to the prison service. My name was not on their records, they said; they could not release any information about the prisoner. I mentioned the phone call I had received and that the caller had hung up, but they were sceptical. ‘Our staff are extremely professional, Miss Sarashima. If there were an accident with the line, they would have called you again.’
It was true that the Ministry of Justice was precise in its communications. Their caller had asked for my grandfather and so she should have spoken only to him. For a moment I thought of phoning him myself, but then, as I pictured him at the onsen sitting with his friends in the heated rock pools, white flannels resting on their heads as they retold storeys and jokes, I realised that I could not ask him. He had never mentioned anything like this to me; he had never implied, even for a second, that there was a connection between my mother and a man in prison.
Slowly, I walked towards our bookcases, looking at the bound ledgers of Grandpa’s favourite legal cases placed next to my own small white textbooks. I ran my hands over the shelves of novels, poetry and plays, before finally stopping at a row of box files. These contained our family birth certificates, health insurance, bank accounts: a paper trail of our lives running straight from my grandfather to my mother to me. Everything we were was in that room, yet I had never seen a trace of Kaitarō Nakamura there.
Kneeling on the floor, I located the file for my mother. There was only one. Through all these years it has remained on the shelf, still there, beneath the layers of current life: ‘Rina 1965–1994.’ The leather veneer was slippery to the touch as I rested the box on my lap. Inside were my mother’s certificates from school and her acceptance letter from Tōdai, formatted in exactly the same way as mine. This was followed by her marriage ce
rtificate and a copy of the deed to the apartment in Ebisu where she had lived with me and my father. Next was a rental agreement for a two-bedroom flat in Shinagawa; it had my mother’s seal and my grandfather’s at the base of the lease. He had helped her secure the new apartment. Even after the divorce. He helped her, as he has always helped me.
That apartment in Shinagawa was meant to be my home yet I never saw it – it contains the last hidden chapter of my mother’s life. I cannot even remember the sound of her voice, but I do remember the last time I heard it. I believe she was standing in that apartment when she called to tell me she was coming to fetch me, when she said we would go to Shimoda.
For hours after speaking to my mother I waited and waited. Later that night, Grandpa went out to look for her while I remained on the stairs, holding my stuffed white tiger. He was gone for so long that I feared he too had been swallowed by the darkness. When he returned, Hannae told him that I had refused to eat my dinner or go to bed; he could see from my face that I had been crying with fear. Grandpa sat next to me and drew his arm around me to hold me tight. His touch was warm and familiar; the amber and ginger of his cologne prickled in my nose as I leaned into the heat of his skin. Grandpa rested his chin on my head. He told me that Mama had tried to keep her promise, that she had been driving home to us from Shinagawa when her car had gone off the road. Driving home, to me.
At the bottom of the file was her death certificate. I paused before reaching out to touch it. To this day it reads:
Place of Death: Shinagawa Ward.
Cause of Death: Cerebral hypoxia.
Everything was consistent with what I’d been told of how she died in the car crash. Nothing has changed. Those facts have not altered in twenty years. That afternoon, alone on the floor of my grandfather’s study, looking at those words, I realised that of all the lies we are told, the very best ones are close to the truth.
Forgotten Parties
A few hours later I walked through Shinagawa, the road twisting ahead of me in the fading light. The neighbourhood was quiet; only the leaves stirred. A detached cobweb floated in the breeze as I walked past the low condominiums and an abandoned soccer field, bare of sand. I had read once that hundreds of years ago there was a site of public execution near here and that even when the site moved on, kegare remained in the earth – the soil foul with spiritual corruption, polluted by blood and crime. Now, of course, the very knowledge of this is buried. There is only the steady influx of everyday life: new people, new homes, new families. And no one to give a thought for what lies beneath the dust. I wondered if my mother had known about this when she moved to Shinagawa. I wondered if she had walked here in the early evening as I did, if she had ever come here in search of help.
The police station had retained its cream walls and brown glass windows, but at only five storeys high, it looked squat in comparison to the towering modern architecture by the bay. Through the glass doors I could see the model of Peepo, though he too looked smaller.
I walked towards the main counter, noting the officers sitting behind their desks in their loose blue jackets and face masks to keep out summer allergens and pollution. These are the faithful omawari-san, ‘Honourable Mr Go Around’, the keepers of our peace. As I walked across the hard grey tiles, several officers noticed me. Was I all right? Could they help? They were anxious, but also surprised that anything requiring their attention should have happened.
I handed over my birth certificate and the document confirming my surname change from Satō to Sarashima. I needed to speak with someone regarding a closed case, I said. The man behind the main counter hesitated and bit down on a yawn. It was difficult, he said. Perhaps I could come back on Monday?
I looked beyond him, to the very back of the room and the metal grille and velvet curtain that shielded the inner corridors and departments. I had visited several police stations in the service of learning about the law, but I had entered this one only once before, when I was a very small child.
I believe that a crime against my mother occurred in this neighbourhood, I explained. I would like to see any records you have relating to Rina Satō. The man behind the desk was reluctant. If I could come back, he suggested, there might be someone on duty next week who could help.
I thought of the aborted phone call, of how the prison service had asked for my grandfather, how they had mentioned my mother as though she were still alive. I could feel anger rising inside me. I looked at the police officer, an administrator with his bored Friday-afternoon face, and said a word rarely used in daily conversation.
‘No.’
He looked at me as though he had not heard. ‘Ms Sarashima, if this is an old case the files will have been transferred to the new archives off-site.’
‘No,’ I repeated. He smiled as though I had said something amusing. I leaned towards him over the desk.
‘You will find someone,’ I said. ‘Anyone who is aware of a case involving Rina Satō – you will find them now.’
‘Miss—’
‘I received a phone call from the Ministry of Justice about my family. A crime against my mother occurred in this ward,’ I persisted. ‘A record of it will be here.’
To my slight gratification, my voice filled the sad little hall. People were staring at me as I stood next to Peepo. I thought of the photographs Grandpa had shown me of my mother at university, of her laughing over her shoulder, fierce and young with dyed ochre hair in downtown Tokyo. I think she would have smiled.
The man hurried away, brushing aside the velvet curtain and disappearing deep into the station. He left me standing by the desk for an age. The other officers would not look at me. I was sitting alone, cold in my anger, when an older woman appeared before me. ‘Ms Sarashima,’ she said, ‘please follow me.’ She held the curtain for me and then walked up the staircase ahead. ‘You would not have had any luck with the archives,’ she said as we climbed. ‘The files you need have not been transferred. Everything before 1995 is no longer considered necessary.’
I followed her in silence. Through the walls I could hear the thud of feet and limbs on tatami mats, the daily judo practise that was compulsory for every officer in the force.
‘I will skip mine today,’ my guide said with a smile.
‘You are not an active officer?’ I asked.
‘I am nearing retirement.’
We continued down a corridor to an open-plan office. The woman held the door for me and I followed her inside, taking the spare seat by her desk.
‘Thank you for your help,’ I said as she sat down beside me. I looked at the file in front of us. It was impossibly slender, as though it contained nothing at all. ‘Could you please confirm for me what Kaitarō Nakamura was charged with in relation to my mother?’ She looked slightly startled by my question, as though she could not imagine that I did not know. ‘There has been some debate in my family as to the exact charge,’ I added.
The woman nodded and opened the file, turning over the first page. ‘According to the notes, the public prosecutor did not charge him for a long time,’ she said, ‘but eventually they filed for homicide.’
‘Homicide?’ I asked. I could hear a dull pounding in my ears, the beat of my blood.
‘Ms Sarashima, can I get you some water?’
I looked up at her and shook my head. ‘Is this the only charge against him?’
The woman nodded, but still I watched her, waiting for her to contradict me, to tell me that my mother had died in an accident while driving alone.
‘I’ll just be a minute,’ the woman said, leaving me with the file open on the desk. I could see the charge sheet clearly. There was his name, Kaitarō Nakamura, and beneath it his occupation: Wakaresaseya. As I read the word and mentally traced its origin, I began to understand how he had become involved with my parents and the role he had played in their divorce. I looked at the characters again: wakaresase – ‘to
split couples up’ and ya – ‘professionally’. It is hard to believe, but such services exist all over the world today in honey trappers, hustlers, con artists, friends and family for hire. Where there is a desire, there are people willing to fulfill that desire for a price. Consequences are not necessarily part of the deal. My hand shook as I held the piece of paper. At the bottom of the sheet was the official charge: homicide of Rina Satō.
My throat closed. The fluorescent light was too bright for my eyes. I thought of my grandfather and all the storeys he had told me, the family storeys that everyone has which eventually transcend into myth. I thought of my mother, who had been taken from me not by accident, but by another person.
I swallowed, wanting to ask the officer if there was any more information on the case, but I knew that the rest of the documents would have been sent to the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office in preparation for the trial. Nothing of the investigation remained with the police, only the names of those involved and the charges.
The policewoman returned with a glass of water and I sipped it slowly. ‘Do you have the name of the prosecutor who handled the case?’ I asked. ‘Or the opposing counsel?’ The woman pulled the file towards her and flipped to the back. There were two business cards stapled to the final page and, beneath them, a newspaper article. The one cutting my grandfather had never given me. The policewoman apologised and moved to tuck it away, but I asked to see it, holding out my hand.
She watched me as I read over the paragraphs. There were scarcely more than two hundred words there and yet they defined me and my family so completely. ‘Please keep it, if you like,’ she said, before turning back to the file and noting down for me the names and office addresses of the prosecutor and the defence attorney.
What's Left of Me is Yours Page 5
