Ai-chan.
She swore her girlfriend’s sigh had her name on it.
Lips curled together; tongues ducked into each other’s mouths. Hands roamed where they willed, including beneath the hem of Aiko’s skirt and the cusp of Reina’s shirt. Soon. In a second they could pry apart long enough to ascend the stairs and roll together in bed until…
A shout, not from a toddler, dumped upon their heated embrace.
Reina’s first thought as she and Aiko disengaged was that the little girl on the bicycle had been in an accident. But after she finished pulling down her T-shirt she saw the horror on Aiko’s face and followed her gape out the wide front window.
Where she met Junko’s equally horrified mien.
A bag of apples plummeted to the street, each round, red fruit rolling toward the window. Junko continued to stand as if time had come to a full stop – aside from apples rolling, Reina may have thought it had.
“Shimatta!” Aiko lurched away and bounded into the genkan. Outside, Junko locked eyes with Reina, her bushy brows slanting into a hideous scowl.
Although a small and stout woman, Junko Takeuchi darted toward the front gate and collided into her daughter in the yard. Voices rose, Aiko’s desperate and Junko’s low and curt. More footsteps clattered into the genkan. Reina realized too late that she should hide.
“Mother, please listen!” Junko marched into the living area with daughter stumbling behind her; Reina backed toward the dining table to give them both ample room to argue. I need to get out of here. This wouldn’t be the first coming out she witnessed, but it may be the first one she didn’t survive. “It wasn’t what it looked like!”
Junko rounded on Aiko, as if she were about to swat a misbehaving child. “And what am I supposed to think it looked like? Huh? Play acting?”
“I was giving her a hug!”
“With your lips?”
Reina didn’t want to deal with this – not the accusations, not the denials, not the lies. Women were always lying about their relationship to Reina. Mio used to do it too… She had an image of Mio telling her own mother they were out to flirt with boys; she then flashed back to when she first met Junko Takeuchi, and was asked if she knew a boy named Ren.
Now she knew why Aiko tried so hard to keep their relationship a secret.
“What is the meaning of this, Reina-san?” Even in her rising anger and confusion, Junko managed to maintain a level of formality with her target. Fingers jabbed in her direction, but all Reina could see was the malice inside Junko’s eyes. “What were you doing to my daughter for the whole world to see?”
What was I doing? Last Reina checked, it took two to nookie. Ai-chan was as all over me as I was her. But no, not the innocent little girl child…not Aiko, the sweet, naïve princess of Junko’s withered loins.
“Are you deaf? Answer me!”
Reina shrunk against a wooden chair. “I was only…”
“Only what?” Junko scoffed. “Practicing?”
Excuse number one.
“I was helping Reina rehearse for a play she’s going to be in! We got a little carried away, that’s all!”
The fuck?
Junko did not relent. She shirked her daughter off her and took another step toward Reina.
“Please listen…” A hand she didn’t even know she controlled appeared before her face. “There was no harm in it.”
“She’s my dear friend, Mother!”
Excuse number two.
“No harm? You know what I see in here?” Junko spun around in a tight circle, eyes wide and wild. “I see two very confused young women who seem to have become a little too close since beginning cohabitation!” She wagged another finger in Reina’s face. “Especially you, Reina-san, have always come off as quite confused!”
“Me?”
“Leave her alone, Mother!”
“Aiko.” Junko’s voice dropped five more levels as she turned to face her frantic daughter. “You must promise to stop this nonsense. Don’t tell me it went on in my house!”
To that, Aiko could not respond without lying to her mother’s face.
“Unbelievable! This is almost like…almost like that…” Junko’s countenance contorted into a mixture of a snarl and disgust. “Like those lesbians I hear about, living in a constant state of confusion…and sharing the same bed…” She paled. “The bed!”
Nobody could catch Junko Takeuchi when she had it in her to fly out of a room faster than a bird. One beat later, Aiko and Reina tore after her, following her ascent up the stairs and down the hallway. She stopped in front of the first door to the right, the tiny spare bedroom everyone claimed would be Reina’s after the move.
Of course, it had become a grimy storage area for old Mrs. Okazaki’s belongings nobody had any use for at the moment. Nor had Aiko gotten around to cleaning it out yet. Cobwebs hung from the hanging light, and the hardwood floor was covered in dusty linens, half-emptied boxes, and a broken nightstand where a futon was supposed to go. The swathe of heat blasting from the center of the room was enough evidence to convince a blind person that nobody had inhabited that room in years.
Junko slowly slid the paper door shut again, lips twitching.
“Mother…”
Yet Aiko’s voice still couldn’t reach her as she pivoted on her wrinkly heels and smashed her way into the master bedroom. Plenty of life abounded in there, from the neatly made bed, Aiko’s new vanity covered in her jewelry and cosmetics…and Reina’s work blazers and trousers hanging up to dry out on the balcony.
Time stopped again. It seemed that Junko would either rip her clothes off and beat a hole in the wall, or begin screaming about the atrocities the evil lesbians brought to the scourge of the earth. But neither occurred. Instead she closed the door as slowly as she had the other one, her throat clearing. She stood in front of the closed door in silence for a long time.
Reina’s heart did not start beating again until Junko shuffled back downstairs without a word, without looking at either young woman huddled against the wall. The moment Aiko lunged forward to catch up with her mother, the front door closed with a loud, deafening bang!
“Iya da…” Aiko slouched against the wall, her hand reaching for Reina’s.
She took it without question, their touch bringing tears to her girlfriend’s eyes.
For a full day Aiko tried to convince herself that nothing happened. She sniffed up her tears and went about her business, cleaning the living room and starting dinner. She ignored the apples baking out on the street until Reina went out and got them herself. Reina. The way she took it in stride, never frowning, never smiling, made Aiko wonder how many times her girlfriend had gone through something like this. Did Mio do that to her too? Great. Now Aiko had two things killing her inside.
She contemplated calling her mother, but knew that would go nowhere. Instead she watched TV and fretted about the consequences: who would Junko tell? How would it affect their relationship? Would she ever speak to her again? Not even Reina’s embrace that night as they went to sleep in their disgusting bed of lesbian debauchery could allay Aiko’s anxiety.
After lunch the next day she decided to face the issue head on – if she didn’t now, she never would, and the last thing she needed was this hanging above the Takeuchi infrastructure. So upon completing the lunch dishes, she told Reina she was going out to get groceries.
From their neighborhood it took almost a half hour to ride to the one where Aiko grew up. Nothing changed in the two weeks since she had last been there, but Aiko could see them: dark clouds of foreboding hanging above her natal home as if they were full of lightning that would pierce her heart and leave her to die. Each step closer to the house was another step closer to doom.
Aiko hoped that her mother would greet her with indifference, maybe a story about the neighbors, or even express surprise for having her daughter visit on a Sunday. But all she got when she entered the house was a derisive glower.
Of course, no one said anyth
ing. Not about that subject anyway. Junko eventually offered her daughter some tea, which Aiko accepted as a peace treaty.
She was then subjected to rants and conspiracies about her eldest sister, apparently on the brink of divorce. In Junko’s mind this was one of the most scandalous things imaginable, right up there with the horror stories of neighborhood girls becoming pregnant out of wedlock – while still in high school. “It wasn’t done in my day.” Junko blew on her tea. “I’m so grateful neither you nor your sisters gave me that heart attack when you were teenagers!”
Aiko bobbed her head, grateful that things were normal between them again.
She knew it wouldn’t last, however.
“Mother,” she said, putting her teacup down. “I came here to talk to you about what happened yesterday.”
Tea slurped past Junko’s lips. “And what happened yesterday, dear?”
So that’s the game! Denial. Lots and lots of it. “When you came to the house and saw…Reina and me…” Kissing. Locking lips. Vertical sex. “Behaving inappropriately.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it.” Junko stood up and went into the kitchen, hand outstretched toward a box of cookies on top of the refrigerator. “You young women today…been so lonely for long! Just think of it as a sign it’s time you two got boyfriends to take out that energy on.”
Aiko remained stationary in the kitchen entrance. “Mother…”
“One of my friends has a son around your age who recently broke up with his girlfriend. Maybe I should introduce you two.”
“Mother.”
“Nani?”
Aiko scrounged for the courage to tell the truth. “Reina and I are in a relationship. We have been for the past five years.”
The box of cookies dropped to the counter. Junko reprimanded her own clumsiness while cleaning them up. Over her shoulder she said, “I know you two have been good friends for a few years. You don’t have to tell me. You two are close.” She stuffed some crumbs into the trashcan.
“No, Mother…we’re in a relationship. Reina is my girlfriend. My lover.”
As that last word dissipated into the humid air, Junko shook her head, the remainder of the cookies easing in and out of the packaging. “Don’t think in my day that girls didn’t spend so much time together too. Especially in high school. It’s perfectly normal to love your friend a lot…” She finally yanked the cookies out with enough force to leave a dent in the stove.
“I know what you mean, Mother. And it isn’t like that. I’m…I mean we’re…lesbians.”
It was the last word Aiko could use to drive her point home. If Junko didn’t acknowledge the meaning behind “lesbian,” then there was never any hope of pushing it through her skull. Do I even want her to understand? Maybe it was safer if Junko continued to live in her delusions.
A part of Aiko just wanted the five-year farce to be over.
“Ai-chan…” Junko’s voice took on a light, whispery tone Aiko hadn’t heard since she was a small child, leaning against her mother’s breast after having a nightmare. “You shouldn’t use words like that. People will think you mean…homosexuals.” Her hands shook as she attempted to spread the cookies around a plate.
Straightening her back, Aiko took in a deep breath and replied, “I do. Mother, I’m a lesbian. I have been for many years.”
Cookies stopped moving against porcelain; the buzz of the air conditioner drilled a hole into Aiko’s temples. On the other side of the kitchen, her mother slowly turned, mouth lopping off the bottom of her face.
“Ai-chan…”
“I love her. I love Reina more than I have loved any boy I ever dated. We moved in together so we can make a life together.”
“Are you crazy?” Junko teetered between guffawing and sneering, as if her face didn’t know if this were a comedy or a tragedy. “You’re talking nonsense. It’s not possible to have that sort of relationship with another woman!”
Aiko’s shoulders slacked and her head bowed, but she did not resign her position. “I can assure you, it is, Mother. Reina and I are in love. And I’ve decided it’s time you finally knew.”
They stared at each other, Aiko dazed and shaking inside while Junko reclaimed a neutral countenance – yet her eyes darted back and forth, calculating a response.
At first Aiko thought her mother would return to denial, and that would be that. In the end, Aiko could say she came out, and at least it didn’t go over badly. There are worse ways for this to end up. So what if Junko decided her daughter and the best friend were fooling around for the want of boyfriends…at least it was better than…
She snapped back to reality the moment her mother laid a hand across her cheek.
“How could you do this to me?” Junko was like the victim of a crime, pleading for an explanation in the middle of a courtroom. “What were you thinking?” Her hands latched onto Aiko’s shoulders and shook her. “Oh, God! Who else knows about this depravity!”
“Ma!” Aiko shook her off, her ponytail whipping them both in the face. “It’s not bad!”
“Not bad?” Now Junko cornered her in the kitchen as if she had caught a mouse in her trap. “How can it be ‘not bad?’ Everyone will think there’s something wrong with this family! Who will go to your brother’s medical practice if his sister is known to be contaminated? How will your father and I face the neighbors? Eh? I ask you, why do this to me?”
Aiko cowered before her mother, her spine slipping against the wall and her knees buckling beneath the weight of Junko’s disproval. “I’m sorry! Nobody has to know! I want you to know that I’m in love!”
“In love? How can you be in love with a woman? How does that even work? How is she going to take care of you? How are you going to get married and have children? You can’t play house like this! It’s time you grew up!”
But Aiko couldn’t grow – not when the floor called her rear down like a siren’s song. She slumped to the sweaty tiles and withheld a sob. “But Mama, I love her! We’ve been together for five years!” She didn’t look at her mother. The first tears fell down her cheeks.
Junko knelt beside her. Before Aiko’s tears could splash to the ground, her mother grabbed her arms. “You listen to me. I don’t know what kind of ridiculous ideas you’ve got shoved into your head, but this is not appropriate behavior! Do you want to be a disgrace? Huh? Do you?” She jerked the arms in her grasp.
“No!” Aiko’s words ended in a wail. “Mama, please!”
“I will only tell you this once. The moment this gets out, you will be ruined. No man will ever want to marry you! And you want to get married, right? Right?”
Aiko hiccupped a sob, her brain immediately going to the first image it had when it heard “married.” Reina, in her cold beauty, holding her girlfriend and saying she would love her forever. If that was all I had, I would be happy until I died. “But, Reina…”
Junko’s mouth dropped open with a pop to her jaw. The voice coming from the depths of her throat was full of cold, hideous malice. “What did she do to you?”
Tremors shook Aiko’s head, her hair flopping like a wet stick. “She never did anything to me I didn’t want!” And I wanted it, so badly.
Releasing her daughter, Junko slithered up and retreated to the other side of the kitchen. Behind her, Aiko fell onto the floor, face holding in a larger, more audible sob. “I knew it.” Junko’s hands wrung together. “I always knew there was something wrong with that girl.”
“Mama, don’t…” Aiko pushed herself up on her hands. “Don’t blame Reina!”
“That style of hers…the way she talks to you…her most unbecoming job. Oh my God. She thinks she’s a man!”
What! Aiko would have laughed at that assertion if she were not on the verge of a breakdown. “She’s not a man! And she doesn’t think she is, either! We’re both women!”
But Junko continued to flutter in her corner, bouncing between feet while her hands pulled at her short, curly hair. “It’s the only explanation for such con
fusion. Because that’s what you are. You’re confused!” She smiled again – a disturbing smile that was like a dagger to the foreboding in Aiko’s brain. “That explains everything! How can I blame you?” She placed a gentle hand atop her daughter’s sweaty head. “This happened after Daisuke, didn’t it?”
Aiko didn’t know how to answer that. Daisuke had been her last boyfriend, a nice boy until he began to exude stalker-like tendencies after their break up. Aiko put a final nail in their relationship coffin by declaring that she now dated women. But that was five years ago…what relevance did it have now?
“My poor Ai-chan…you must have been so hurt by that break up.” The nails Junko dug into her daughter’s scalp felt like needles. “And that she-man took advantage of you!” She plunged her nails further into Aiko’s skin, eliciting a plea for gentleness. “My poor, poor baby. Sucked in by that succubus.”
“Mama…”
“That’s not love, Ai-chan. That’s a confused perversion.”
Aiko placed her burning cheek on the floor, sinuses stuffed. Her chest wracked in tears, and all she could think of was how much she wanted her mother to bend down and coddle her, assuring her it was a dream. But no. Her mother was the source of this pain. The mother she relied on for support. I’m a disgrace.
“Don’t worry, my girl.” That soft, disillusioned voice returned. “I’ll save you.”
That was the fire beneath Aiko to get her to scramble up and reclaim her last shred of dignity. “I don’t need saving.” She intended for that statement to come out loud and proud, but instead it was a whimper, choking her. “I need you to understand who I am!”
Junko scoffed. “And who are you, huh? Because I see a spoiled little girl who has her sexual education jumbled up.”
“I’m a woman who loves other women. And I love Reina more than anyone.”
Kataomoi Page 8
