Country of Origin

by Don Lee

  “This isn’t a birth certificate,” Kenzo said.

  “It’s a Certificate of Acceptance of Notification of Birth.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what’s used when the baby’s illegitimate and stateless.”

  “Stateless?”

  “No nationality.”

  “Who issued this? The hospital?”

  “We did.”

  “How did you determine she was stateless?”

  “I didn’t determine anything.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The clerk peered at the certificate. “There’s a reference number here, but it’s not one of ours. It’s a Registry number. Go back down to Registry.”

  Kenzo showed him Lisa Countryman’s photo. “Have you seen this woman? Did she ask you or anyone here about Mayu Kaneda’s adoption?”

  The clerk barely gave the photo a glance. “No,” he said, but when Kenzo was almost out the door and into the hallway, the clerk said, as an afterthought, “That wasn’t her.”

  “What?”

  “There was another woman asking about the adoption.”

  “Who?”

  “A private detective.”

  This made sense. Lisa Countryman had known that, as a gaijin, the local government bureaucracy would not release any information to her, so she had hired a private detective. Smart of her. “What was the detective’s name?”

  “You really expect me to remember?”

  “She didn’t give you a namecard?”

  “Sure, I keep all of them in a box, organized by—”

  “Didn’t she have to sign a request form to examine the file?”

  “You know the date she was here?”

  “No.”

  “We keep the request forms by date. Unless you can narrow down the date, it’ll take me forever to find it.”

  “Listen,” Kenzo said, “you’re the one who saw the woman, not me. You’re the only one who can narrow down the date.”

  The clerk looked at him, then laughed uproariously. “Hey, you’re right. But that doesn’t help you, does it?”

  Kenzo went back downstairs to the Family Register Subdivision and spoke to the original clerk, who checked the Registry reference number and discovered another file. There was no koseki for Mayu Kaneda, but there was a joseki, a canceled koseki.

  “Okay, it looks like she was first issued a birth certificate at the hospital,” the woman clerk said. “It was assumed her mother was Japanese, so she was given citizenship and a koseki, but then her legal status was rescinded, and she was disqualified from citizenship. She became stateless.”

  “Why was she disqualified?”

  “It doesn’t say. Maybe they’d know something at the children’s home?”

  The Nonohana-no-ie Children’s Home was a three-story, state-sponsored orphanage with forty charges, both boys and girls. Kenzo strolled around the cement playground with the director, who had run the home with his wife since its inception after the war. Although he didn’t know what had altered Mayu Kaneda’s legal status, he remembered the girl. She had been left at the front door to the home when she was five days old and had lived there until she was four years old.

  “She was very, very lucky to have been adopted,” he said. “She would have had a very tough life had she stayed in Japan as an ainoko.”

  The director told Kenzo it was unlikely she would have found a sponsor to become naturalized, and, with her black blood, no Japanese would have adopted her. Stateless, Mayu Kaneda would have been stuck in legal limbo. Since she wasn’t a citizen, she couldn’t get a koseki. Since she didn’t have a koseki, she couldn’t get a juminhyo, a certificate of residence. Since she wasn’t an official resident, she would not have been eligible for schooling, health care, any kind of public assistance. As far as the government was concerned, she wouldn’t have had the right to exist. She would have been a social outcast, shunned and derided. On her eighteenth birthday, she would have been expelled from the orphanage, left to fend for herself, almost certain to turn to prostitution to subsist. Sadder yet, she wouldn’t have been able to leave the country, perhaps to America to seek a better, more equitable life: without a nationality, there would have been no way for her to obtain a passport.

  Several wives from the naval base had volunteered at the orphanage, Lenore Countryman among them. “As I said, Mayu was lucky Mrs. Countryman took an interest in her. This is what she looks like now?” the director asked Kenzo, holding the photograph. “She turned out to be very pretty. She looks white. When she was a baby, her skin was very dark. I wouldn’t have recognized her.”

  “She didn’t come to visit the home a few months ago?” Kenzo said.

  “No, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. She wouldn’t have had good memories of this place. Even here, the children taunted her without mercy.”

  The only place left to go was the hospital where Lisa Countryman had been born, and at the records department, Kenzo encountered another snooty male clerk. After an incessant wait, the clerk excavated Mayu Kaneda’s file, which corroborated that the hospital had initially processed a birth certificate for her as an “Illegitimate Child,” “Mother: Unknown Japanese,” “Father: Unknown Non-Japanese.”

  “But why was it revoked?” Kenzo asked.

  “The mother gave a false name,” the clerk said.

  “Yes, well, that’s obvious, isn’t it, since the mother was marked as unknown.”

  The clerk glared at Kenzo.

  “I’m sorry,” Kenzo said. “I apologize for my rudeness. Does it say anywhere why she was disqualified?”

  “No.”

  “What about the particulars of the birth?”

  “The mother was brought here in an ambulance, and they had to do a C-section in the surgical ward, then she spent two nights in the ICU and another in the maternity ward.”

  “Who were her doctors and nurses? Are any of them still working here?”

  The clerk examined the names and hanko—circular red kanji stamps—on the charts, cross-referenced them to a directory of current hospital staff. “There’s one doctor and one nurse.”

  The doctor wasn’t on duty, but the nurse was. She had been in the maternity ward at the time, but was now assigned to the pediatrics ICU. She was in her mid-fifties, a strong woman, stumpy, a barrel.

  “I already went over all this with the private detective,” the nurse said.

  “Oh?” The orphanage director and the records clerk had not been approached by the private detective. This lady detective seemed to be two steps ahead of Kenzo. “Please tell me what you told her.”

  “I remember the baby because she was a daburu.” Double, half and half. “There weren’t very many back then, especially half kurombo.” Half-nigger. “Now, of course, it’s a different story. It’s not so unusual to see these dojin babies.” Earth people. “The whole area is practically polluted with them.”

  “Do you know what happened with the birth certificate?” Kenzo asked. “Why was the baby denied citizenship?”

  “Her mother wasn’t Japanese.”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “Oh, she did her best to pass herself off as Japanese, but I could tell something wasn’t right. Then I heard she was a zainichi Korean, a bargirl yariman.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I don’t remember now. Maybe another nurse.”

  “That was enough to disqualify the baby? Just a single rumor? No one ever investigated?”

  The nurse crossed her thick arms. “Why does it matter? She was half kurombo,” the nurse said. “What’s this about, anyway? The private detective never said.”

  “Did the private detective give you her namecard?” he asked the nurse, repulsed by her, not wanting to talk to her anymore.

  She rooted through a drawer in the nurses’ station and produced the namecard: Ako Abe, Abe Detective & Research Office, Tokyo.

  “YUMIKO.”

  His wife was standing in the checkout line
at the National Azabu Supermarket, and Kenzo could see from her shock, her utter dismay, that she had not expected to run into him like this—not in a million years. She asked him to wait for her next door in the 31 Ice Cream shop while she put her groceries in her car, and when she met him in the ice cream parlor, she was still pale and wide-eyed with dread.

  They each ordered a cup of peach melba and sat down at a table. Timidly, they exchanged pleasantries, remarked at how little the other had changed, at least physically—such was the superiority of the Japanese physiology. He asked her questions, and she answered. She spoke softly, her Japanese stilted now as if she were a gaijin, just as his had been when he’d returned to Japan from St. Louis.

  She told Kenzo that for her first seven years in America, she had lived in Garden Grove, just south of Los Angeles, and had worked as a bookkeeper in a small electronics firm while attending classes at Whittier College, Richard Nixon’s alma mater. After finally getting her degree—Kenzo had to admire Yumiko’s resourcefulness, going to university and getting a degree as a single working mother—she was offered a job in Glendale at an IBM branch office, moved to an apartment in Silver Lake, and obtained her CPA. Then—here she lowered her eyes—she remarried and relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. Her husband—eyes still lowered—was a gaijin who spoke fluent Japanese. He was always traveling to Japan for business, and his company had been pressuring him to live in Tokyo. With several important product launches in the offing, he couldn’t really refuse, so here she was, back in Japan for one year.

  Kenzo decided to come right out with it. “How has your son adjusted to being here?” he asked.

  She gasped.

  “It’s all right,” Kenzo said. “I know all about him.”

  “You do?”

  “I know everything.”

  She burst into tears. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” she moaned.

  He patted her hand. “It’s all right. Please don’t cry.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I forgive you.” He gave her his handkerchief, and she blew her nose noisily. People were looking over at them, but he did not feel embarrassed. He felt liberated.

  “How did you find out?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m a cop.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. You’re a cop.”

  “It must be very difficult for Simon right now. I’m sure he’s confused.”

  “You have no idea. When Doug accepted the assignment, I thought it would be a great opportunity for Simon to learn about his heritage, but he hasn’t shown the least bit of interest. He doesn’t care. He’s refusing to even take Japanese classes at his school.”

  “He’s at that age when all boys begin to rebel, and with all this, on top of everything else, it’s understandable why he might act out.”

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

  He watched Yumiko eat her peach melba. She was relaxed now, her confession after all these years cathartic and invigorating. “What have you told him about me?” he asked her.

  “Told who? You mean Doug?”

  “No, Simon. Have you told him yet, or have you been waiting to get in touch with me first? Because I’m all right with whatever you want to do. I’ll accede to your thoughts on how best to proceed. You know more about these things than I do.”

  “Huh?”

  “One thing I’ve been thinking about, though, is I’d like to put Simon on my koseki. Then we can establish his Japanese citizenship and get a passport issued for him. However, I looked into this, and I found out that he can only keep his dual citizenship until he’s twenty-two. At that time, the Ministry of Justice will make him choose a nationality.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know you’re worried, but I really think everything will be fine once he meets me. He’ll feel legitimized. A great weight will be lifted from him once he knows I’m his real father.”

  “But you said you knew.”

  “I do.”

  Yumiko put down her plastic spoon, squeezed the bridge of her nose between her fingers, and closed and opened her eyes. “Your ignorance has always been your gift,” she said. “You’re not Simon’s father. I had an affair.”

  “An affair?” It was unfathomable.

  “It was a mistake. It was only two times. I was so ashamed.”

  “Who was he?”

  She mentioned the section chief of the billing department where she had worked as an OL, and he had a vague recollection of a tall, heavyset young man. “You’re lying,” Kenzo said.

  “No.”

  “You’re trying to keep Simon away from me.”

  “No.”

  He noticed a dot of ice cream on Yumiko’s chin. “You never had any integrity,” he told her. “You’ve never known the meaning of duty. Just like my mother.”

  She sagged her head. “You haven’t changed. You were so intolerant. You excluded me. You never let me in.”

  “How do you know for sure I’m not the father?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He could be my son.”

  “No.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “I think you were infertile.”

  “What?”

  “I tried to get pregnant with you, Kenzo. I didn’t tell you.”

  “I want a paternity test. The three of us—you, me, and Simon—will go to a clinic and get blood tests.”

  “What would be the point? You know I’m telling you the truth. Besides, Doug is his father. He adopted Simon.”

  “If you won’t agree, I’ll hire a lawyer and go to Family Court.”

  “Please don’t. I beg of you. Please don’t.” The ice cream was still on her chin.

  He stood up, gave her his napkin, and gestured to his own chin. “You’ve always been such a messy woman,” he said.

  HE DIDN’T hear the alarm, he didn’t smell the smoke, he didn’t see the flashing strobe lights. He was asleep when the fire broke out, and Miss Saotome shook him awake. He opened his eyes, and she was pushing on his chest and moving her mouth wordlessly. He removed his special earplugs—given to him by the ear specialist he had seen for his tinnitus. “Get up, get up!” she screamed. “There’s a fire!”

  The clock said 3:53. He spit out his mouthguard—given to him by the dentist he had seen for his teeth-grinding—and ripped off his wrist brace—given to him by the neurologist he had seen for his thumb twitch. He and Miss Saotome ran down the hallway, banging on doors, using her master key to open them and yell inside for everyone to evacuate. They did this on each floor until the building was empty, all the residents on the street, watching the firemen come in their silver suits and hoods to extinguish a small fire in the boiler room.

  “Are you all right?” Kenzo asked Miss Saotome, who looked as if she was about to faint. “Here. Come over here and sit down.” He led her to a blue Nissan and had her lean her backside against the hood. She was wearing a robe and a San Francisco 49ers jersey, and she was barefoot.

  “What’s that on your neck?” she asked.

  It was the cream given to him by the dermatologist he had seen for his psoriasis. “It’s a special moisturizer,” he told her.

  “What did you do to your room? What was that on the walls?”

  He had been hoping that, in the chaos, she hadn’t noticed. He had done a little remodeling to his bedroom. He had weather-stripped the windows and door and covered every inch of the ceiling and walls with acoustical tile. “I’m sorry. It’s a special wallpaper,” he said. At least she hadn’t spotted the wig hanging on the hook—the wig she had used to disguise herself as a man and had thrown at him that night in Kabukicho.

  “Why do you have my wig on the wall?” she asked.

  She was really quite homely without makeup, and her teeth were terrible. “I’m sorry. I was waiting for a good time to return it to you,” he said.

  “Why haven’t you called me?”

 
; “I’m sorry?”

  “You never asked me out on another date. Why didn’t you call me? I thought things went well. I thought we had a good time.”

  “But you’re going out with Yamada.”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Inspector Yamada?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “I saw you get into his car.”

  “He wanted to hire me as a matchmaker. For his brother.”

  “Oh.”

  “He wanted me to find his brother a wife, but his brother refused.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re the biggest moron in the world, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am,” Kenzo said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Shut up,” she said, and grasped his head with both hands like a melon, and, in front of all the apartment dwellers and neighbors and firemen and policemen, she kissed him.

  THE ABE DETECTIVE & RESEARCH OFFICE was in Akihabara, on the second floor above a shop that sold blenders—only blenders, blenders of every shape and type. Ako Abe was a cheerful woman in her late thirties, and could have been considered pretty were it not for several large moles on her face.

  They compared notes, and Kenzo learned that he had been on the right track. He was sure that, in time, he would have reached the same conclusions that she had.

  Ako Abe had found and interviewed the other nurse who had spread the rumor about Mayu Kaneda’s mother being a Korean bargirl. The nurse, now retired, admitted the statement had been an exaggeration. The nurse had seen her at a bar, Club Zoo Fly, that was frequented by American sailors, but the woman wasn’t a bargirl. The nurse was fairly certain that the woman was a zainichi Korean, and although she never knew her name, she was pretty sure the woman worked on the Navy base. Ako Abe did some legwork and narrowed down the woman’s place of employment on the base to the Office of Naval Intelligence.

  “She was a spy?” Kenzo asked.

  “No, no, a secretary,” Ako Abe said. “So then I went to the Human Resources Office at Yokohama Navy Base. All I needed were the names of the foreign nationals who worked in Naval Intelligence in 1955. Anyone would have sufficed. I could track them down and figure out who Lisa Countryman’s mother was. She must have taken an unexpected leave of absence that summer. But I got totally stonewalled. I got nowhere with them. They said those records were confidential. National security.”