The Hole

by Hiroko Oyamada

  There were children inside. Some were sitting on the floor looking at manga, some were rearranging the Q-tips and disposable razors, and others were sticking their faces in the ice cream freezer. As I maneuvered between them to reach the register, I pulled out Tomiko’s pay slip. An older woman with brownish hair, the only employee in the store, took out the store seal, stamped the slip, then asked for 74,000 yen. I took the bills out of Tomiko’s envelope: five 10,000-yen bills, nothing else. 50,000 yen? I immediately opened my own wallet, but I only had another 10,000-yen bill. “Did you say . . . 74,000?” “Uh-huh,” the clerk said, showing me the number on the slip. She was right. The money was going to some company I’d never heard of, but it sounded like it had to be some sort of health food company. “I’m sorry . . . I don’t have . . .” The clerk gave me an annoyed look, having already stamped the slip with today’s date. She had to be as old as Tomiko, maybe a little older. The wrinkles on her neck stood out against her brightly colored uniform. “I don’t have the cash. I’ll need to use the ATM.” She tilted her head quizzically and asked, “You mean right now?” “You have a machine, don’t you?” She smiled a little. “Right there, next to the copier.” It was the usual setup, the same as every 7-Eleven in the city. I pulled out my card and walked toward the machine, but found my path was blocked. In front of the shrink-wrapped manga, a battalion of children obstructed the aisle. They looked like they were probably in the first or second grade, but could’ve been younger than that. They were completely absorbed in their comics, not even noticing me. I don’t know if it was the radio or not, but there was music playing in the store. It was the latest pop music. I had no idea who the singer was, if they were male or female, but it sounded like they were twelve. “Excuse me,” I said to the children. They didn’t move a muscle. I looked to the clerk for help, but she was too busy to notice. “Hello?” Other than their fingers flipping the pages, the children were perfectly still. Their mouths were open, their eyes never left the comics. “Kids . . .” I heard a man say. “See this lady standing here? You’re in her way. She’s trying to get to that machine so she can get money. Give her some room, okay?”

  They quickly turned to look up at me. The corners of their mouths were white with powder. It smelled sour-sweet. I turned to see where the voice had come from. It belonged to a middle-aged man in a white open-collar shirt and black slacks. He was thin, and a little on the short side. He had his hands on his hips, and was holding a comic book that was as thick as a dictionary. Only his face was turned toward me. “Are we in the way?” “Are we in her way?” the children asked in tinny voices as they stood up and swarmed around me. They were all wearing shorts and jumper skirts. A few of them had sandals — more like clogs, really — and their toenails were black with dirt. “Sorry.” Keeping an eye on both the children and the man, I made my way to the ATM. I slid my card into the slot and started typing in my PIN, but the children were right there, watching closely. The guard over the keypad, for preventing others from seeing you put in your code, has no effect on grade schoolers. They’re too short. One of them nestled up under my arm as if we were family. From the way he was looking at the screen on the ATM, you would have thought it was a TV showing some cartoon. “Sorry, can you stop looking, please?” “Whyyy?” Come on, don’t act like you don’t know how ATMs work. Then again, these kids were so young that maybe they really didn’t. Every bit of attention that the children had given to the manga was now directed at me, so I had to use my free hand to cover the keypad as I finished typing in my code. I pressed WITHDRAW, typed in “24,000,” then pressed ENTER. As I grabbed the bills from the machine, it seemed pointless to put them in my wallet, so I walked over to the register, money in hand, when one of the little children screeched. “Sensei!” Sensei? The man in the white shirt nodded, then smiled at me with all his teeth. I nodded back without thinking. “Sensei! This lady’s got a lot of money. That’s a 10,000-yen bill!” The other children broke into laughter. “That’s a lot of money!” The man smiled wryly and said, “It sure is, but we don’t talk about things like that in public, do we? So shush . . .” “Shush?” “Shush!” “Shush!!” The children were practically bouncing off the walls, squealing. The man started laughing and so did the children. I did the same. Only the clerk was expressionless as she grabbed the bills from my hand. She counted them once, then held them up and counted again for my benefit. Well, it didn’t look like I’d have any change for ice cream. I didn’t have much money saved up. I was unemployed now, so dipping into my savings was the last thing I wanted to do, but what choice did I have? What was going on with Tomiko? She’d always been on top of things.

  I nodded at the man the children called Sensei and left the store. As soon as I stepped outside, the cicadas and the heat descended upon me. On the other side of the glass, the children in the store were waving at me with white palms. I waved back, then followed the river home. On the way back, I didn’t see anyone. Every now and then, I’d look down to the riverbank, but didn’t see the animal. I saw no life at all. The river was so stagnant it looked like it was made of gelatin. When I got to Tomiko’s house, Grandpa was outside, still watering. Together with the copy of the stamped slip, I left a note on the desk saying there wasn’t enough money and that I’d covered the difference. After some thought, I decided against writing exactly how much I’d paid. I had to believe that Tomiko would remember how much she’d left in the envelope.

  That night, when Tomiko got home, she came over to apologize. She gave me 4,000 yen. Stock-still, I stared at the four crisp bills as she said, “I must have really been out of it. I’m so embarrassed. You really helped me out, though. I know you couldn’t get any ice cream, so . . . I brought these,” she said, handing me two Popsicles, each as thick as a couple of fingers. As I took the Popsicles, Tomiko shrugged — although I wasn’t sure why. “Save one for Muneaki, okay? This was all they had in stock. But you’ll like them, I promise. They’re from the co-op. The soda-flavored one is really good. It really fizzes when you bite into it. Oh, they deliver, too. Next time, I’ll bring the catalog for you. The co-op catalog.” She kept talking about the co-op and their frozen desserts, but I didn’t know how to tell her that her 4,000 yen wasn’t even close. I thanked her for the Popsicles. Maybe she had no idea how much money she’d actually put in the envelope . . . Or maybe someone had come in when the door was unlocked and skimmed some of the money. Maybe it was Grandpa. Who knows. Whatever the case, we were living rent-free. And it was only 20,000 yen. I had to let it slide. I put the Popsicles in the freezer and waited for my husband to come home. When he got back, it was after midnight. Since our move, that was more or less normal.

  “I saw a weird black animal today,” I said as I set out dinner for my husband. He looked up from his phone and said, “Oh yeah?” His hair was wet from the shower he’d taken. He probably didn’t bother drying it — or maybe he was just sweaty. The back of the blue shirt he always wore to sleep was so wet it looked almost black. As soon as he sent me a text saying he’d be home in a few minutes, I turned on the AC. For me, the room was like an icebox, but maybe my husband was still hot. He put down his phone and picked up his chopsticks. He inhaled his rice, then chased it down with a mouthful of miso soup. I’d made the soup while he was in the shower. “It had black fur and was probably this big.” I held up my hands so he could see. “Was it a stray dog or something?” he asked, finishing his mugicha. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a dog.” “Maybe it was a raccoon. I remember hearing there are a lot of raccoons around here, or at least there used to be.” “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a raccoon.” “How do you know?” “I know what a raccoon looks like.” I filled my husband’s cup with mugicha. He used his chopsticks to lift the omelet onto his rice, brought the omelet up to his mouth, then reached for his mugicha. Now there was ketchup on his rice. “Whatever it was, I followed it into the grass — and I fell into a hole.” “A hole?” He reached for the pickled cucumber and tossed it in his mouth with
the ketchup-covered rice, then finally chewed a few times. I listened to the crunch. I’d already eaten my dinner. I didn’t make an omelet for myself. I just had some meat and a single egg — sunny-side up — over a bowl of rice. Before we moved, my husband never came home this late. I was always working overtime, too, so we’d eat together — even if it was some reheated curry or stir-fry. I never had the energy to go to the supermarket after a long day at work, so we hardly ever had vegetables. We had a few frozen things that we could heat up — fried rice and things like that. Now I never bought anything premade. I made our meals from scratch. This was far better for us, both financially and nutritionally. At the same time, I’d pass out from hunger if I tried to wait for my husband to come home. It’s not like eating together meant that much to me, but when you make dinner twice a day, one of those meals is going to lack heart. Miso soup is best when it’s fresh. Anything pickled is going to get soggy eventually. Fried food mutates into something else when you reheat it. “How deep was it?” “Up to my chest. A little deeper, maybe.” “No way.” You can’t survive on boiled pork or meat and potatoes.

  Maybe there wasn’t anywhere for him to eat around his office. Or maybe he was eating at home for me — for my benefit. Either way, it didn’t matter how late it was when my husband came home. That’s when he ate. For the most part, I was happy with this arrangement. I think I’d feel guilty if he ever said, “I don’t need dinner tonight.” I’d probably feel like something was missing, like I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain. Not long after the move, I asked him if he ever got hungry working that late without dinner. He told me there were snacks at work — nothing substantial, but enough to hold him over. I asked him where the snacks came from, who brought them. He said no one brought them — they were always there, in the office, free for the taking. I imagined my husband, working overtime and digging into a giant bag of chocolates or maybe some manju from a client. The thought of it was too much to bear. “It’s usually just Kameda Crisps, but sometimes we have dried squid.” “Squid?” “Yeah, on sticks. Skewered. They’re just there in the break room — who knows why. Maybe there were a bunch left over from some party or something.” Every workplace has its own logic. At my old job, no one saw squid as an office snack. There’s no way anyone would have gotten away with it. Anyone who dared to eat Kameda Crisps would’ve faced an even worse fate. Why would anyone make that kind of noise when everybody else is trying to finish up for the day? If someone did that at my old job, they’d never hear the end of it. I thought I knew what kind of place my husband’s office was, but maybe I knew less than I realized. It’s not like I didn’t care. He didn’t know that much about my old job, either. Whenever someone asked me what my husband did, I had my answer ready. Still, I have to admit, I didn’t have a firm grasp on how his business turned a profit, or what role my husband really played in it.

  My husband kept an eye on the news as he swallowed the rest of his dinner with inhuman speed. “Sounds dangerous. You’d better watch out for holes. Stay away from those animals, too, whatever they are.” “But I’d never seen it before.” “I bet it was just some weird breed of dog. Dogs come in all shapes and sizes. Or maybe it was a weasel. Seriously, raccoons don’t look the way they do in comics. I’ve never seen one in real life either.” But it wasn’t a dog, and it wasn’t a weasel or a raccoon. Not that I knew what it was. Regardless, I didn’t have any hard evidence to prove him wrong, so I just nodded while his attention returned to the phone in his hand. I watched as his fingers sped across the screen. There was a small, hard lump on my finger where the bug had bitten me. It felt hot. I put a bandage over it and went to sleep.

  It was another two months before it really rained. We’d had brief showers and a little drizzle, but nothing significant. Every day was unbearably hot. If it hadn’t rained so heavily on the day of our move, we probably would have been in a drought. Or maybe the local river and reservoir simply had that much water. The next time it really rained, I went around the house, closing all the windows so the water wouldn’t get in. Looking through the upstairs window on the west side of the house, I could see Grandpa. He was out in the garden wearing a raincoat. I stood there for a little while, watching him, trying to understand what I was seeing. There he was, hose in hand, watering the plants in the middle of the rain.

  In the gray downpour, Grandpa was maneuvering the hose, its green body wriggling in the dark. I wondered if I should go down and say something. But what could I say? Even if I knew what to say, I wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear me. I drew the curtain and headed downstairs. Looking out the garden window, I saw mounds of exposed earth turning muddy in the rain. On the other side of the concrete-block wall, I could still see Grandpa. I closed that curtain, too, then went to the couch and opened up a magazine to look for jobs — not even expecting to find anything reasonable within walking distance. There were a handful of listings for pharmacists and nurses. I found some for truck drivers, too, but I couldn’t drive stick. No office jobs. I couldn’t even find a part-time job working as a cashier. I got up and went to the kitchen. I watched the rain from the small window — the only one where I couldn’t see Grandpa. I had a view of the street. There wasn’t anyone walking or driving past. Every other window in the house was shut, but the sound of rain filled the house. Cicadas are quiet when it rains. It got me thinking: What would a cicada do if it emerged from the earth and there was nothing but rain for days on end? Would it just die without ever making a sound? The doorbell rang. I jumped. When I opened the door, I saw Sera. The rain behind her was falling harder than before.

  “It’s really pouring, isn’t it? I suppose we needed it, but this is a lot of rain.” She folded her black umbrella. It was full-size, the kind that businessmen carry. I invited her in. She took one step inside, then asked, “Are you sure you don’t mind? My shoes are soaked.” “No, of course not. Come in. And thanks again for the other day.” She propped her umbrella against the wall by the door. Sera said her shoes were soaked, but they looked more or less dry to me. She had a cotton bag over her shoulder, but that wasn’t wet either. “Oh, it was nothing. How’s Mune-chan? It looks like he doesn’t get home until pretty late at night. He’s almost like the man of the house, isn’t he?” It took me a second to process, but “man of the house” had to mean my husband’s father, my father-in-law. I had to remind myself how, in her mind, the Matsuuras could only be my husband’s parents. Muneaki was “Mune-chan” and I was his “bride.”

  We were standing in the entryway. What was I supposed to do? Ask her to come in and sit down? Offer her some tea? Would mugicha be okay? Should I give her something to snack on? The house was hardly a mess — it was as clean as it could be — but Sera didn’t seem at all interested in coming inside. “He gets in after midnight a lot, doesn’t he? Is his office far from here?” “It’s a thirty-minute drive, but he’s still getting settled. It seems like they’re keeping him really busy,” I said. Sera put her hand up to her lips and mouthed the word wow. “Amazing. Mune-chan’s a real working man now. Scary how time flies, isn’t it? Ten, twenty years, in the blink of an eye.” It looked like she might have been wearing the same outfit as last time, when she helped me out of the hole. White blouse and skirt. Of course she wasn’t wearing sunglasses this time. I could really see her eyes. They were a little sunken and tired-looking, but her eyelashes were long and beautiful. She must’ve been a real beauty in her day. “What about you? Are you working? What are you doing to pass the time?” I glanced at my feet. I’d painted my toenails the other day when I had nothing else to do. They didn’t stand out — I didn’t have any bright colors like red or blue. I only had a couple of subtler shades: beige and light pink. You could hardly tell I’d done them. I felt a little embarrassed standing there barefoot, but realized it would have seemed weirder if I had been walking around my own house in socks in the middle of the summer. “I’m not working right now. I’m looking, but I don’t have a car, so it isn’t easy getting around.
” Sera nodded sympathetically. She had the same sweet smell as before. “I know what you mean. You need a car around here, don’t you? I don’t even have a license. I can barely ride a bicycle, so I need to rely on my husband wherever I go. I can walk if it’s close enough, or take a bus — but they don’t come here very often. I’m from the city originally. About twenty years ago I got married and came here. A little longer, maybe. Back then, this place was literally the middle of nowhere. I kept asking myself how I’d ended up way out here. In those days, even getting a taxi was hard. If you called the company, they’d tell you it’d take thirty minutes for the car to come. It’s a whole lot better now, but it’s still not like the city, is it? Especially when it comes to finding a job.” “Well, I could try finding something I could reach by bus or train, but . . .” “Free time is a real problem, isn’t it? Who needs a summer vacation that never ends — am I right?” As I nodded, I thought I could feel tears welling in my eyes.

  I didn’t actually hate having nothing to do. I’m sure if I were seriously looking I’d be able to find a place to work that I could get to in under an hour by bus or an hour or two by bike. If I were truly desperate, I could dip into my savings and buy a moped, which would allow me to cast a wider net. In short, I couldn’t really say there were no jobs to be had. I just wasn’t putting much effort into it. It’s not like I was hung up on finding some high-paying gig as a permanent employee. I didn’t feel the need to work. I couldn’t see the benefit. I didn’t need it. I could live without working. My husband’s salary had improved, at least a little, and his commute was covered. Plus, he was collecting overtime on a nightly basis. On the other end of things, we were spending less money than ever before. We weren’t buying convenience-store food or frozen dinners. The local supermarket was a whole lot cheaper than the one in the city. At our old place, I would have to wait every week for the milk to go on sale, but out here it was cheaper than that sale price all week long. It was better milk, too. We could afford to stock up on vegetables here. But more than anything else, we were getting by without paying any rent. My old job in the city paid just enough to cover our rent — and I could pitch in with some of the expenses as long as I was working overtime. Compared to a permanent employee, I probably had it easy there, but that job came with a fair amount of hard work and responsibility. I put myself through that pain so that we’d have a place to stay, but now, through the good graces of my mother-in-law, there was no need to worry about any of that. Endless summer vacation. But it didn’t feel right. My husband was working late every night while I was at home, on my own, with all the time in the world? I had to work. Even if I couldn’t find a job, I had to do something. My body was getting heavier with every passing day. Not that I was gaining weight. On the contrary. But I could barely move. It was as if every muscle and joint, every cell in my body, was stuck. Putting it that way makes it sound like I was blaming my body, like it was beyond my control. I was slipping, and it was completely my fault. It was only a matter of time before Grandpa or Muneaki or Tomiko tore me apart for being so lazy. And they’d be right. Except — would any of them ever say something like that to my face?