by Matsuda Aoko
Society had changed a great deal since Kuzuha’s time working in an office. She’d heard that now it was hard even for men to become fully fledged employees with permanent contracts. Society had become more equal, but in a bad way. Women hadn’t risen up – rather the men had slid down. Kuzuha knew that the glass ceiling, which had previously been apparent only to women, was now visible to this young man, too.
I bet that comes as a surprise to you, doesn’t it? Kuzuha wanted to say to him. It’s different from how you were told it would be, right? You know what, though? As women, we’ve grown up with that ceiling since we were tiny. There was never a time when we couldn’t see it. But somehow or other, we’ve all managed to live with it. It’ll work out in the end for you, too.
Kuzuha wanted to tell this young man all that, but she guessed he’d figure it out for himself eventually. That didn’t stop her feeling sympathetic towards him, though, especially when she considered that not only did he have the ceiling to contend with – he also had to endure being watched over by men of the older generation, and being told to bear all the pressures that came with being a man. Just take it, go on! Take it like we’ve done all this time! Kuzuha figured that must be tough. At the end of the day, he’d just have to learn to ignore those older guys. Times changed, after all. Having observed them quietly throughout her life, Kuzuha could say with confidence that most of those men were basically scum.
In one way, the quantity of despair that men and women were feeling would soon become more or less equal. Maybe that would make it an easier world for people to live in, Kuzuha caught herself thinking somewhat indifferently, as if it was unrelated to her. And indeed, it was unrelated to her. Such things were affairs for people, not foxes.
Standing in front of the door to her office, Kuzuha, the department head, opened the door for the young man beside her.
What She Can Do
From where they stood, it was all her fault. She was entirely to blame.
She’d left home, taking the child with her, and bringing her short-lived marriage to an end. In more ways than one, her other half wasn’t the paternal sort, the husbandly sort. In more ways than one, he wasn’t the child-support-paying sort either.
It was her fault, they thought, for not considering her child. For getting divorced, for becoming a single mother. She was in the wrong because she hadn’t properly thought through the consequences. She was wrong for prioritising her own needs as a woman.
What was she supposed to do now? She felt utterly lost. She had no one to turn to. She needed to work and she needed to look after her young child, but there was only one of her. She was so desperate that she’d gladly have accepted help from a cat, but even if a cat had consented to step to her aid, there wasn’t much it could have done.
There was no one around to tell her about the benefits that she was entitled to. They looked coldly on her situation. She had brought it on herself, they said, and refused to proffer a helping hand. This would be a test of her capabilities, they declared, resolving to watch how much she could accomplish on her own, eagerly anticipating the moment when they would be able to point, their chests puffed out in self-satisfaction, and say, ‘See! I told you so!’ They didn’t feel any twinge of pain or guilt about adopting such an attitude. It was her own fault, after all.
‘Still, you have to feel sorry for that poor child.’ They frowned and nodded with knowing expressions as their mouths formed these words of truth.
‘A parent’s selfishness hurts the child the most.’
‘The child is always the greatest victim in these situations.’
‘Bringing such misfortune on her own child! What a cruel-hearted woman she must be!’
She goes to work. So that she and the child can get by, she works morning and night. Her mind and her body suffer, and still, she continues to work. They can hardly believe it. What is she thinking, working like that all the time and never spending any time with her child? Can such a person even be called a mother? No, let us be clear. A person like her does not deserve to be called a mother.
What’s more, to go by what they’ve heard, her night job is an, ahem, night job. Well, there you have it! A perfect fit for a woman of such loose morals! It’s all turning out just as we thought, they say, shaking their heads. They shake and shake, throwing their heads from side to side with such force it’s a miracle they don’t snap off. Everything is proceeding just as they imagined. It’s always the same with women like her – they all make the same mistakes. So dumbfounded are they by her flagrant lack of morals that they look to their own lives, their own lifestyles, and are relieved to discover how upright they appear in comparison, how little resemblance there is between them and her.
They don’t know this (and if they did they’d most certainly fall into a spluttering fit) but when she goes out to her night job, she takes the risk of leaving her daughter alone in the house. She doesn’t have parents or friends who can look after the child, and she cannot afford to pay for a regular babysitter.
Please let her behave today. Please don’t let anything happen to her.
Every day when she goes out to work she has to pray like this, as if she’s gambling, as if she’s writing a wish on one of those little slips of paper they hang up in the supermarket in July during the tanabata festival. At work, all decked out in her slinky dress, speaking in a slinky voice, she can’t shake off her anxiety. Life feels like a never-ending game of Russian roulette. Just because today was okay doesn’t mean that tomorrow will be too. There is no end in sight. And yet she can’t do anything about it. She has no way out.
—
So she decides to step in and help. She has been observing the tricky situation of the woman and child. That’s part of her job.
First of all, she makes sure she has a thorough grasp of the issue. She then summarises it in a report and submits it to her boss. Her boss passes eyes framed by thick black-rimmed spectacles over the report, immediately gives it the stamp of approval, and sends her out on the case.
After the woman leaves for work, she quietly watches over the child. The room is somewhat messy. She decides to tidy up a little – not so much that it’ll be obvious straight away, but just a bit.
The child notices her there right from the start. At first, the child pretends to play on her own but then she can’t contain herself any more and moves over to the corner where she is sat dead upright. Not easily intimidated, the child reaches out a hand to her kimono in amazement. She seems fascinated by the feel of it, so different to the clothes that she herself is wearing. Looking down with great tenderness at the child stroking her kimono, she produces a sweet from the fold of her wide sleeve and hands it to the child. The child gladly takes the sweet and begins sucking it. Each time the sweet moves in the child’s mouth, a lump appears in one of her cheeks. Seeing this, she smiles in satisfaction.
Sweets are her secret weapon. With sweets, she always manages to win children over. For a long time, she used to pay daily visits to the sweet shop, but at some point she realised it was an ineffective way of going about things, and instead started to carry a stockpile around with her. The owner of the sweet shop seems pleased by her decision to visit more infrequently too, although she could never understand why he found her presence quite so terrifying. Now she pops one into her own mouth, and looks at the child, mirroring the child’s one-cheeked lump.
Soon, they are like old friends. After all, in the past the woman had gone by the name of The Child-Rearing Ghost. That wasn’t a title they gave you for nothing. There were very few children who didn’t take to her. ‘Hey, ghost lady!’ they would call out to her affectionately.
As soon as she began babysitting, she felt absolutely certain that this was what she’d been born (and had died) to do. (It should be acknowledged straight away that she was headhunted for the position, so someone must have noticed her suitability for the work before she did.) While
alive, it never once occurred to her that she’d find a job so perfect for her in the afterlife. In fact, she had never worked in her life. But jobs aren’t at all bad – that’s her view on the matter now.
When the child falls asleep, exhausted from all her playing, she gives the room a cursory clean-up and waits for the mother to come home. She looks around the room that she shares with the child. She sees boxes crammed with stuffed toys and picture books, walls plastered with crayon drawings the child has made, a somewhat dingy balcony where their clothes have been hung out to dry.
She’d like to show them this place. She thinks the same of all of the homes she visits. Here is a place where two people go about their lives. A place where two people are living, striving to keep going. What right do they have to badmouth her when they’ve never even stepped foot inside her life? They should save it for when they’ve seen it from the inside. Then they can badmouth all they want. Honestly, who do they think they are, pretending to be so clever when they lack the skills to come in, look around, walk about? They should all just die – and then come back again. She can’t understand them at all.
She’s done all there is to do and is sitting very still watching the baby’s sleeping face as the woman comes home. She kicks off her shoes at the door and rushes straight to the back room where the child is sleeping.
She doesn’t notice her sitting there. But she doesn’t go out of her way to alert her to her presence. There is no need to rush things. As the days go by, she will come to notice her gradually. She will come to sense her presence in the emotional stability of her child, in the tidiness of her flat, and then she will be ready to accept her. When that happens, she can proceed to the next level, and make herself seen. She will be able to openly help her in all aspects of her life. The woman will be freed from the game of Russian roulette, and at some point, a friendship will begin to blossom between the two. It has always been that way in the past.
She can make her and the child happy. That’s the thing she feels the most proud of. It’s something that they can’t do, something they don’t even attempt to do. But she can do it, and she will do it. That’s what sets them apart. She is relieved by how little resemblance there is between her and them. She watches her as she squeezes the child’s hand and lets out a big sigh, and she nods in satisfaction.
She touches her hand very gently to the child’s cheek, and then starts to change out of her work clothes. The slinky dress falls to the floor in a puddle, so she appears to be standing in a pool of still water. Her day’s work is over.
As one of them vanishes, the other takes a shower, burrows her squeaky-clean face next to the child, and falls asleep.
Enoki
At first, Enoki was utterly confused.
It started suddenly. Without any forewarning or explanation, people suddenly began visiting. They came in droves to find her. Initially, Enoki had no idea what they had come for. When she finally understood, she was flabbergasted.
Yes, she was aware that there was something a little unusual about her body. Specifically, she had two largish burrs on the lower section of her trunk. But she thought nothing of it. Everything and everyone has an idiosyncrasy or two, including hackberries like herself. It’s hardly anything to marvel at. Nowadays, people term it ‘individuality’. In any case, the lumps were no big deal to Enoki, and she didn’t give them much thought. Burrs were just burrs.
And yet, people said that Enoki was special. People took her knobbly, rounded outgrowths for something extraordinary. They stood in front of them and prayed, and carried off the resin oozing out of them. What on earth was going on? Their behaviour bewildered Enoki. It seemed to her a kind of madness.
The women were particularly strange. Watching all these desperate women as they joined their hands in prayer and bowed their heads to her, Enoki felt like she was missing a trick. It was something she never truly got used to, but at the beginning, when she was particularly unused to it, she would feel the rage bubbling up inside her. What the hell are you people playing at?
When it first occurred to Enoki that people saw her burrs as breasts and her resin as milk, she shuddered. Even now, when she recollects on that day, there is only one word to describe her feeling, and that word is disgust.
Allegedly, the ‘sweet dew’ that was Enoki’s resin had special properties. If mothers with trouble lactating rubbed the resin on their breasts, they would start producing milk. Give me a break!
Allegedly, Enoki’s ‘sweet dew’ was no different from human breast milk, so if the rubbing proved fruitless, you could feed the resin directly to your babies and they would grow up healthy and strong. Give me a break, guys!
Every time she heard people around her in the shrine grounds spouting this crazy nonsense, Enoki would shout the same thing in her mind, flapping her leaves in frantic resistance, but nobody noticed. Everyone was so obsessed by her burrs and her resin, they had no time for anything else.
People loved to see things in other things. Enoki knew that very well. You could even say that this was the starting point for all religion, and moreover, that it wasn’t always a bad thing. But when people saw the burrs on her body as human breasts, Enoki felt a strong discomfort. Her burrs were just plain old burrs, and her resin definitely wasn’t ‘sweet dew’. In fact, she sometimes found herself worrying about the adverse effect it might have on the human body if ingested. Surely you really shouldn’t be feeding young human bodies that stuff? But the humans were just that eager to depend upon Enoki’s special powers – powers that Enoki herself didn’t believe in.
After years mulling over her inexplicable sense of disgust, Enoki concluded that what she truly objected to was the way in which humans used their own yardsticks to affix meanings onto things that had nothing to do with them. They did this to objects around them, and even to elements of nature. People would pick vegetables that looked like parts of the human body, then feature them in TV news items about how ‘obscene’ they were, when really, the only thing making those vegetables ‘obscene’ was the gaze of the people looking at them. A firm udon noodle was, for some reason, compared to the tautness of the female body; varieties of fruits were assigned women’s names. When she put together all the information she’d accumulated over time, Enoki had no choice but to conclude that human beings derived joy from twisting things and attaching a sexual meaning to them. It was pathetic. Were they idiots, was that it?
And then to cap it all, they turned to Enoki, who wasn’t even a mother, and their mouths formed the words ‘breast milk’. Enoki hated the very sound of it: breast milk. There was a precariousness to it. It could ruin you if you weren’t careful. She couldn’t explain it, but Enoki knew that instinctively. She hated that she’d been dragged into all of this – that parts of her had been dragged into all of this.
And yet, the sadness those women felt – that was different. That was real. Enoki can still vividly recall the faces of all the women who came to visit her. She feels awful for women who lived back then, before formula milk existed. Of course, nowadays, with the humans’ deep-rooted devotion to the religion of breastfeeding, women still suffer a lot, but the invention of formula must have improved the situation at least a little. There is a big difference between having something to serve as a replacement when the chips are down, and having no such thing. Having other options is crucial. Women suffered in the past because they had none.
Speaking of which… Once upon a time there was a woman called Okise. She was raped by a man who threatened to kill her baby if she refused to have sex with him. He continued to rape her, then killed her husband and assumed his place as her new spouse.
That’s barbaric enough as it is, but it gets worse, because from that point on, Okise stopped producing breast milk. Her new husband suggested that if she couldn’t produce milk of her own, she ought to give her baby away to be looked after by someone else. Unable to nourish her own child, Okise had no choice b
ut to hand over her beloved baby boy to someone else. If only there had been formula milk back in those days!
‘It’s okay, I can just use formula,’ Okise would have replied coolly, clasping her son close. The husband, realising how unfeasible his suggestion was, might have dropped the subject immediately.
Anyway, it turned out that the old man to whom the baby was entrusted had been instructed by the husband to kill it. Fortunately, though, he was won over by the adorable baby, and decided to raise the child in secret.
Funnily enough, the thing that the old man struggled most with was securing breast milk for the baby. As an old man, there were no strings he could pull in that regard, so he had little choice but to rely on the goodwill of various women he met to feed the boy for him. After just about scraping by that way for a while, the old man caught wind of a rumour that was circulating, and not long after, he appeared in front of Enoki. That was how Enoki came to know of Okise.
The baby drank the ‘milk’ coming out of Enoki’s ‘breasts’ and grew up to be healthy and strong. Of course, this only consolidated the myth of Enoki’s magic, and so she became a bona fide legend. Yet Enoki still finds the whole thing very suspicious. It was just too outlandish to believe. The old man must have been feeding the baby something else as well. In any case, Enoki wants to believe that he was, because she definitely doesn’t have such powers.
Okise, on the other hand, subsequently gave birth to the child of her new husband, but because she couldn’t produce milk, the baby died. Not long after, a mysterious growth appeared on Okise’s breasts, and she went crazy and died too. Why is it that a woman who was repeatedly raped, then had her child stolen away from her, had to meet with such a cruel fate? Why did a series of such awful things have to befall her breasts? Well, gods? Don’t you think that’s overkill?
And the tale of Okise was just one example. The pain and the sadness that women felt when it came to breast milk reached depths Enoki could not fathom. Enoki’s sticky old resin was the last ray of hope for those women. So they clung to her. Through her thick bark, she sensed the enormous determination coming off their bodies. She felt, too, the tenderness and the strength of their breasts. How different they were from Enoki’s hard, knobbly ones. She felt like it was an insult to these women to call her organs by the same name. Enoki couldn’t bear it. These women were doing all they could to be saved by her non-existent supernatural powers, and she couldn’t do a thing for them. She knew that it was hardly her fault, but still she found it tough.
