by Kyoko Mori
“You’re not?”
“I didn’t go to college two years ago when I graduated from high school. I’m not going now.”
If I were to work at a bar instead of going to college, my father and grandmother would disown me. It would make no difference that Father has been seeing a woman who owns a bar and lives upstairs from it. No girl from a respectable family could work at a bar. A few of the eleventh and twelfth graders at my school wait tables during the summers to earn extra spending money, but only at lunch-places downtown that serve coffee and sandwiches, where the customers are usually well-to-do older women taking breaks from their shopping. It’s different for boys. My friend Mieko’s older brother waited tables last summer, at a place that served cocktails; he was even allowed to work at night. Mieko’s parents would never let her do that. I have noticed this for a long time: Boys are allowed to do more things than girls are—to come home later, to take trips just with their friends during the summer. Still, even if I were a boy, my family—and I’m sure most of my friends’ families—would be very upset if I refused to go to college.
“What about your family?” I ask Toru. “Didn’t they mind your not going to college?”
“Of course they minded. Both my father and grandfather were very, very angry at first. But what could they do? They couldn’t make me go.”
“But they could. They could threaten to kick you out of the house or even disown you.” If my grandmother and father disowned me, my life would be completely changed. I would have to live with my grandfather and mother and be a burden to them. They would blame themselves for being poor, for not being able to give me everything that my father can. The kids from my grandfather’s village don’t go to high school. They quit after ninth grade to work for their parents on their farms and in their weaving cottages. A village girl my age would already be working, spending hours bent over crops or threading looms in dimly lit rooms. Most of them marry young and go to live on another farm or in another cottage just like the one they left. I wouldn’t even be able to do that: No one would marry me if my father disowned me.
Not knowing my gloomy thoughts, Toru tips his head back and laughs. “My father and grandfather did threaten to disown me,” he says. “My grandfather said I couldn’t live in his house if I didn’t go to college. That didn’t bother me. I had a few older friends who lived in rooming houses, so I arranged to move in with one of them. Grandfather came home one night from his chess club and saw me loading my friend’s car. He asked what I was doing, and I said I was moving out. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open. I guess he wasn’t expecting me to take him at his word. I lived with my friend for a month, and then my grandfather and father backed down. I returned to Grandfather’s house because I felt sorry for Takashi, being there alone. I came back to Ashiya for the same reason. I didn’t want my brother to be stuck living with Father all by himself. I want to stay around for a while and make sure he’s going to be all right.”
I wish I had an older brother who would worry about me like that. I don’t mention it, though, because I don’t want to sound self-pitying.
“I’m not going to stay too long,” Toru continues. “I’m already anxious to get out of here, and it’s only been a few weeks.”
“What will you do?” I have no idea what people do if they don’t go to college or settle down to work.
“I don’t know. Travel someplace. I’ve always wanted to go to South America, and maybe India. I want to travel for a while and not be responsible to anyone else.”
No one else I know has ever thought of traveling so far away. If I were to leave my father’s house, I would have no place to go except my grandfather’s, no way to earn a living as Toru does. He is older and more resourceful than I, but he is luckier, I’m sure, in being a boy. Even an older girl does not live away from her home except in a dorm or a rooming house that her parents have found for her. If I left my house, I wouldn’t have a friend to move in with, the way Toru did. Traveling to a foreign country alone is unthinkable. Most women—my mother, for one, and Mrs. Kato, too—would never step out of their houses alone except to go grocery shopping, to take a walk, or to go to church or school. They go together just to shop downtown or to see a movie or eat lunch. Dr. Mizutani is the only woman I know who has traveled anywhere all by herself. I can easily imagine her going to South America or India if those places struck her fancy, but she is definitely the only one.
“I try not to think too much about the future,” Toru says. “At the present, I’m living with Father and Takashi because Father thinks we are old enough to take care of ourselves. We know how to cook and wash our clothes and clean the house, maybe better than he does. And while I’m here, I hope you and I will have a lot of chances to talk.”
“I would like that.” There is so much you can tell me, I think but don’t say, for fear of sounding pushy.
“Let’s get out and walk,” he says, opening the driver’s door.
The empty schoolyard is lit by a few white lamps. The old playground equipment is still here—the see-saws, the slide, the monkey bars, the swing set, all of them painted the same pale green as before. Far off in the north corner, they still have the blue platform where our principal stood to give his short lecture every morning at the school-wide assembly. When I was in first grade, Toru, who was in sixth, was our student council president. Every Wednesday he stood on that platform to give his report, just as I would five years later, when I was the first girl ever to be elected president.
“Did you know I became student council president in sixth grade? I stood on that platform every Wednesday, just like you used to. You and Takashi were in Tokyo by then.”
“I had no idea.” He turns to me and takes my hand. “We’re going to stand up there again,” he says, already beginning to run.
Hand in hand, we sprint across the yard, our shoes kicking up the white sand. At the platform, he lets go of my hand. We climb up the steps and stand side by side on the top. In the dark, I try to imagine the faces of kids and teachers looking up at us. A year ago, I heard that one of our old teachers had died from a heart attack. Now I can’t help thinking about his ghost floating around in the dark. There are hundreds of people, I’m sure, who had once gone to this school and have since died. We could be addressing a huge assembly of ghosts. The tall trees on the edge of the schoolyard begin to close in on us. I imagine them waving their branches, moving toward us. Shuddering a little, I turn to Toru. Our eyes meet, and suddenly, we burst out laughing at the same time.
“You try and catch me.” Tapping him once on the shoulder, I run down the platform, across the yard, to the swing set. He catches up and sits down on the swing next to me, both of us still laughing.
Down the hill, I survey the city lights, looking for Toru’s neighborhood, a few miles south of my house. It’s easy to find—a cluster of white-and-orange houselights near a large, keyhole-shaped forest that is dark. We used to walk with our mothers around the periphery of that forest, which is fenced off because an emperor’s son was buried there in the fourth century. When I was very young, I thought that the whole forest was his tomb; I imagined the prince’s knees under the pine trees, a meadow growing over his mile-long legs. People must have been bigger back then, I assumed. I didn’t think there was anything strange about that. In the Old Testament stories we heard in Sunday School, people often lived to be thousands of years old. Though the Bible stories were set in Egypt and Israel, I believed that all over the world, people had lived much longer back then. No wonder they were bigger, too, I thought, since they had more time to grow. When my mother discovered my mistake, she laughed, but not in a mean way. She laughed the way Toru did at the bar when I told him why I had quit the volleyball team. Their laughter said that there was something about me they liked very much, even though—or maybe because—I had strange ideas.
Toru is moving his swing back and forth. The chains creak. Overhead, bats are flying—zipping out of the pines and cherry trees and sw
ooping near the lights to gobble up some moths.
“My mother went back to live in the country,” I say over the creaking of the chain.
He puts one foot on the ground to stop the swing.
“Did you know? She left in January.”
“I knew. When my brother met Kiyoshi at school, he asked how you were. Kiyoshi told him.”
“He did?”
Toru nods. “I thought about calling you. I drove in front of your house a couple of times last week—I was hoping that somehow you would be out in the front and you would see me. I didn’t ring the doorbell because I felt shy about seeing your father or your grandmother. I’m sorry I didn’t stop. I was just thinking about you this morning.”
Leaning back on the swing, I stare upside-down at the school building.
“You must have felt terrible.”
I straighten up and turn to Toru. In the dim white light of the lamp, his eyes look kind.
“Yes,” I reply. “I was lonely. I still am.” Tears are starting, pricking the back of my eyes like little needles. Squeezing my eyes shut and stopping the tears, I get off the swing and walk to the parking lot, with my eyes only half open. Toru’s footsteps follow behind me. I stop in front of his car and lean back on the hood. Standing beside me, he puts his hand on the small of my back.
“I wanted to see you because I understand. I know how you must feel.”
I nod in silence.
He draws me closer and leans forward to hug me. My cheek pressed against his collarbone, I can smell a faint whiff of soap or shaving cream. He rubs my back slowly, his hand going up and down along my spine, and touches his lips to my forehead before letting go. I step back. My pulse is fluttering in my neck, my heart beating as if I had sprinted a hundred yards. I want to hug him back, stand on my tiptoes to brush my lips against his cheek. I have never felt quite this way about him, or anyone else, before. But my eyes still hurt from pushing the tears back inside, and I am so sad about everything that has happened since I last saw him.
Down the hill, our hometown glitters in the dark. We grew up looking at this same view; we stood on the same platform, sat in the same chairs, learned the same lessons five years apart at this school. I can easily imagine him waking up in the middle of the night now, afraid of God—missing his mother, too. If there was no God, where would Toru’s mother be? What is the sense of her living or dying? How can he stand the thought of her being nothing but specks of dust? I want to say something to break the sadness we both know, but no words come to me. It’s getting late. Soon he will turn to me and tell me that we should get going, that he has to get back to work.
I close my eyes and say the first thing that comes to me when I open them. “Thank you for coming back.” My voice catches in my throat and comes out thin and shaky.
He steps closer and takes my hand.
“I didn’t mean,” I add quickly, my face feeling hot. “Of course you didn’t come back because of me. I didn’t mean to sound presumptuous. I just wanted—”
“It’s okay,” he says, lacing his fingers with mine. “You don’t have to explain. I’m glad to be here for you.” Reaching over with his other hand to pull me closer, he wraps his arm around my shoulder.
As I raise my arm and circle it around his waist, I remember how we used to walk around like this a long time ago, kidding around, pretending to be a four-legged monster chasing Takashi and Kiyoshi in the dark. Even back then, Toru was a head taller than I. He will always be taller and older; I can never catch up.
The wind begins to rise as we stand in silence. The city lights flicker and shimmer below. When I close my eyes, I can see the white dots on the inside of my eyelids, as if a small map had been imprinted in my memory to bring me back, always, to this moment.
Chapter 6
A MOTHER’S SPELL
On Wednesday night, I sit at my desk trying to write to my mother. The spring term is going well. Dr. Mizutani and I are taking care of a crow. The Uchida boys are back in town. One by one, I cross out the sentences and squeeze the paper into a tight ball in my fist. My words sound newsy and cheerful, just like my mother’s. It isn’t how I feel. I know you worry about me, I want to write, but you are worried about the wrong things. School is not my problem. I am not overworking. You are my problem. You won’t even talk to me on the phone. You keep pretending that nothing is wrong. But I remember how gaunt my mother’s face looked on the day she left me. I imagine her lying on her thin futon in her room at Grandfather Kurihara’s, unable to sleep because of my letter. She would get up with dark circles under her eyes, the tiny wrinkles around her mouth a little bigger and deeper.
I take out another sheet of paper, but no words come to me. Elbows on the desk, I lean forward, pressing my eyes into the heels of my hands. My head feels like a terrible burden. It’s as if I had turned into a girl from one of the stories my mother used to tell me at bedtime, back when I was six or seven. A long time ago—the story began—there was a girl whose mother was dying. In the last few days of her life, the mother put their family treasures in a huge earthenware bowl and placed it upside-down on her daughter’s head, completely covering her face. Then the mother cast a spell to make the bowl stick. After her mother died, the girl went to work as a humble maid, despised by everyone for her strange appearance. Even small children threw stones at her or chased her with sticks. One day many years later, when the girl was crossing a busy street while running away from the people who tormented her, a prince’s carriage came speeding around the corner and almost knocked her down. The prince jumped out to make sure she was all right, and being a kind man, he apologized as courteously as if she had been the richest, most beautiful princess instead of a poor crippled girl. His kindness broke the spell. The bowl cracked and fell to the ground, scattering many golden coins and gems. Her wealth, however, was not what impressed the prince. Astonished by the girl’s beauty and gentle manners, he fell in love. In this way, the girl who wore a bowl on her head became a rich and beautiful princess.
I open my eyes and stare at the blank sheet of paper in front of me. I wish my mother had never told me such a stupid story. How could a mother cast a spell on her daughter and turn her into a crippled monster? If the girl had only met cruel people, she would have stayed a cripple for the rest of her life. Her mother should have come up with a better spell—one that didn’t rely so much on chance. There was no guarantee that the girl would ever meet a kind person or that the person who broke the spell would be a prince rather than a sick old man. Things could have gone wrong even if she had met a perfect prince. What if he hadn’t fallen in love with her? He might have politely apologized for the near accident and gone on his way, leaving the girl alone on the street with her scattered treasures.
Just about all the stories Mother told or read to me, I think now, were depressing and unfair. We had several books, big glossy books with beautiful pictures—Japanese Folk Tales, The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, The Fifty Famous Tales. If I hadn’t been fooled by the pictures, I would have seen the unfairness of the stories right away. They were almost always about children whose parents had died; or worse, children whose parents left them in the dark woods because there wasn’t enough food to go around. These children had to do big, heroic things—kill witches, find treasures, become kings or queens—before they could come home to their father or mother or grandparents, who were finally happy to see them. The children who weren’t so good—those who went dancing behind their parents’ backs or stepped on the loaves of bread their mother had baked—had to have their feet cut off or else they sank into marshes. How could my mother read these stories of punishment when she was always telling me to forgive my friends for breaking my toys or calling me names, because we were Christians? Nothing she said made sense, even back then, though I didn’t notice it so much.
I’m glad I don’t have those books she used to read to me. When I was in third grade, my mother and I donated them to a small town in Kyushu, where a typhoon had de
stroyed the school and the library. I was so proud of myself. I used to imagine boys and girls sitting on rafts amid rising rivers, reading my books and smiling. How could I think that anyone would be comforted by those stories? I should have sent comic books and funny stories, something to make the children laugh.
By second or third grade, my mother and I weren’t reading many fairy tales. Instead we studied the Bible together every night, going through the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and then Paul’s letters. The stories in the Bible were no better. If I acted like the five wise bridesmaids in one of the parables, everyone would be disappointed in me. When the bridegroom was delayed and the lamps belonging to the other five bridesmaids—the dumb ones—started going out, the five wise bridesmaids refused to share their extra oil. That didn’t seem fair or particularly Christian. “Always be considerate to people”: I have been taught at home, at church, at school. “Share your possessions with others.” In the Gospels, there is a story about Jesus cursing a fig tree because it didn’t have any fruit when he was hungry. The tree withered. That story makes no sense, either. Maybe the tree had no fruit because it wasn’t the fig season or because the tree was too young. What kind of person would expect trees to have fruit every time he got hungry?
“You are too smart for your own good,” Mother used to tell me when I said that the stories made no sense. “You think too much.”
How can a person think too much? Most people don’t think enough. My mother should have thought more before she left me with my father and grandmother—two people she could not bear to live with herself.
I pick up my pen, but put it down again. I don’t know what to say to my mother in a letter when I can’t see her or even talk to her for seven years. In the fairy tales, the good children could come home after years of dragon slaying and other heroic deeds, to be welcomed by their parents, who were overjoyed to see them. There were big feasts and grateful tears and living-happily-ever-after. But that’s just make-believe. Nothing like that will happen to my mother and me. No matter how many letters we write, we may have turned into strangers by the time I am twenty-two.
