“That’s no way to talk about your little sister!”
Mother pinched my arm hard under the water. The pain caused me to scream again, even louder.
“If that’s what you think, you’re the one who’s creepy!” she said, with palpable loathing. Mother was angry. She had already become Yuriko’s slave. By that I mean she worshiped her beautiful daughter. She was utterly intimidated by the fact that fate had given her such a lovely child. If Mother had admitted Yuriko’s creepiness to me, I wonder if I would have been able to trust her. But Mother’s outlook was different. I didn’t have a single ally in the family. That’s the way it looked to me when I was in junior high.
That night there was a big New Year’s Eve party at the Johnsons’ cottage. Usually we girls were not permitted to attend the adult parties, but since we were the only children in the entire mountain resort that night, we were included. Yuriko, my parents, and I headed along the dark path to our neighbors’ house. Snow was falling lightly. The trip took several minutes, and Yuriko, who loved festive displays, skipped the whole way, kicking happily at the snow.
Johnson was an American businessman who had not owned the cabin long. His face was handsomely chiseled, his hair a golden brown. He was the kind of man who looked good in a pair of jeans, like the actor Jude Law. But I’d heard that he had a few screws loose.
For example, he took an ax and chopped down the saplings that had been planted in front of the bedroom window because, he said, they blocked his view of Mount Asama. He whacked a few miniature bamboo stalks off at the root and stuck them in the ground where the saplings had been, not even bothering to plant them properly. The community landscaper was furious. Johnson, of course, was delighted with the way the bamboo looked. I remember hearing my father scoff. “Well, leave it to an American to be satisfied with short-term remedies!”
Johnson’s wife was a Japanese woman who went by the name of Masami. It seems she had met Johnson while working as a flight attendant. She was a beautiful and vibrant person, but she still found time to be friendly to Yuriko and me. She was never without her perfectly applied makeup or her humongous diamond ring, even when she was out in the middle of the mountains. She wore these like armor—behavior that struck me as downright odd.
When we got to the party, I found that the Japanese wives had left the main room where the party was and were squeezed into the tiny kitchen, a habit I found peculiar. One by one they were bragging about their own cooking. It almost sounded like they were quarreling with one another.
Occasionally foreign women would visit one of the families in the resort. When they did, they would sit on the sofa in the living room, conversing elegantly, while the white men stood around the fireplace drinking whiskey and speaking in English. It was weird to see each group forming such perfectly separate spheres. Only one Japanese wife would ever enter the circle of laughing men: Masami. She’d stand at Johnson’s side, and occasionally I’d hear the cloying trill of her high-pitched voice cut across the monotonous murmurs of the men.
When we got inside, Mother immediately headed toward the kitchen, as if eager to claim a spot. The men called my father to the fireplace and handed him a glass of liquor. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so, at a loss, I trailed after Mother to the kitchen, squeezing my way into the circle of housewives clustered there.
Yuriko latched on to Johnson, leaning against his knees as he perched in front of the fireplace. She was doing her best to play up to him. Masami’s diamond ring sparkled as it caught the glow of the fire and shot flecks of light across Yuriko’s cheeks. Just then I was struck by a wild fantasy. What if Yuriko wasn’t really my sister? What if she was really Johnson and Masami’s daughter? They were both so handsome. I can’t explain it clearly, but if it were true, I could accept Yuriko. Even her monstrous beauty would take on a more human dimension. What do I mean by human? Well, that’s a good question. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it would have made her ordinary, as if she were just a sneaky little pest, like a mole or something.
But—unfortunately—Yuriko was the offspring of my own mediocre parents. Wasn’t that the very reason she had become a monster who possessed a too-perfect beauty? Yuriko glanced over at me with an air of self-satisfaction. Don’t look over here, you freak! I thought to myself. I had a sick feeling. When I lowered my head and let out a sigh, Mother shot me a sharp look. I imagined her saying from deep in her heart, You don’t look a thing like Yuriko, do you!
Without warning I began to laugh hysterically. When I didn’t stop, the women gathered in the kitchen all turned to stare at me in shock. It’s not that I don’t look like her! It’s that she doesn’t look like me, isn’t it? This response, I felt certain, was the perfect counter to my mother’s statement. Yuriko’s existence had forced my mother and me to take up enemy positions. I laughed when I realized this. (I have no idea if my junior high school laugh was the same low laughter that Mr. Nonaka of the Sanitation Bureau referred to or not.)
After the clock struck midnight and everyone toasted in the New Year, my father told Yuriko and me to head home by ourselves. My mother was still in the kitchen and showed no signs of budging. She looked so imbecilic I was suddenly convinced that, if she was clamped to the spot, she would be able to live forever right where she was. I was reminded of a turtle we’d kept in our classroom when I was in elementary school. It would always stretch its crooked legs out in the muddy water of its tank, raise its head, and sniff the dust-laden air of our classroom with a stupid look on its face, the nostrils in its big nose quivering.
The mind-numbing Year Out/Year In TV show had started as I searched for my muddy boots from among the piles of shoes that had been cast off and scattered across the floor of the wide entry hall. When the snow melts, the roads up in the mountains turn to mud, so even foreigners followed the Japanese practice of removing their shoes when they came inside. My old red rubber boots were as cold as ice when I slipped into them. Yuriko started to pout.
“You can’t call our cabin a cabin. It’s just a stupid old ordinary house. I wish we had a fireplace like the Johnsons’. That’d be great.”
“Why?”
“Masami asked if, next year, we could have the party at our house.”
“Well, too bad. Daddy’s too stingy.”
“Johnson was really surprised about that. He couldn’t believe we were going to a Japanese school. Why do we have to live like the Japanese when we look so different from everyone else? It’s just like he says. I’m always being teased and called gaijin and asked if I can speak Japanese and stuff.”
“Yeah, well, no use crying to me.”
I yanked the door open and stepped out ahead of Yuriko into the darkness. I don’t know why I was so angry. The cold air stung my cheeks. The snow had stopped falling, and it was pitch-black. The mountains were there looming over us, pressing in around us, and yet they had dissolved into the darkness of the night and were completely invisible. With no light but a flashlight, Yuriko’s eyes must have turned into those black pools again, I thought. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I became frightened just by the knowledge that I was walking alone through the darkness with a monster. I gripped the flashlight and started running.
“Wait!” Yuriko shrieked. “Don’t leave me!”
Eventually Yuriko stopped screaming, but I was too scared to turn around. I felt as if I were walking with my back to an eerie pond, and something was crawling up out of it and chasing me. Angry to have been left behind, Yuriko was running after me. When I finally turned around, her face was directly in front of me. I gazed slowly over the white sculpted features of her face, now illuminated in the light reflected off the snow. Her eyes were the only features I could not see. I was scared.
“Who are you?” I blurted out. “Who the hell are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a monster!”
That made Yuriko angry. “Well, you’re a dog!”
“I hope you die!”
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br /> And with that I took off. Yuriko snatched at the hood of my jacket from behind and pulled on it so tightly she made me bend backward. But I still managed to give her a hard push. She was smaller than I was, and I caught her off guard. She let go and tumbled backward, arms flailing, into a snowbank along the roadside.
I ran home without looking back again and, once inside, I locked the door. After a few minutes there came the sound of pathetic knocking, just like in a cartoon version of a fairy tale. I pretended not to hear.
“Please! Open the door. It’s cold out here.” Yuriko was crying. “Open the door! Please. I’m scared.”
“You’re the one who’s scary! It serves you right!” I ran to my room and crawled into bed. I could hear Yuriko banging on the front door hard enough to break it down, but I pulled the blanket over my head. Just let her freeze to death! I thought. It’s true. I longed for this from the very bottom of my heart.
I fell asleep before long, only to be awakened by the unpleasant smell of sour liquor. What time was it? I wondered. My parents were standing at the door to my bedroom arguing. My father was drunk. Because of the light pouring in from behind them, I couldn’t make out the expressions on their faces. My father wanted to get me out of bed for a scolding, but Mother stopped him.
“She wanted to let her little sister freeze to death,” he complained.
“No, she didn’t. Besides, nothing happened.”
“Well, I want to know why she’d do such a thing.”
“She feels inferior to her sister, that’s all,” my mother argued, her voice low. Listening to what she said, I wondered why I’d been born to such a family, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying.
You wonder why I didn’t refute my mother’s claim, don’t you? But maybe I couldn’t deny feeling inferior. I didn’t understand my feelings at the time. And maybe I didn’t want to admit that I truly hated Yuriko. I mean, she was my little sister; wasn’t I supposed to love her? For so long I had been in the viselike grip of this sense of duty—a sense telling me that I was indeed morally obliged to love her.
And then the spectacle I beheld in the bath that night and again at the party liberated me from the pressure I had been feeling. I couldn’t put up with it any longer. I just had to say what I felt.
The next morning there was no sign of Yuriko. Mother was downstairs pouring kerosene in the stove, a sour look on her face. My father was sitting at the breakfast table, but when he saw me approach he stood up to meet me, his breath reeking of coffee.
“Did you tell your sister, ‘I hope you die’?”
When I didn’t answer immediately he slapped me hard across the face with his thick palm. The smacking sound the slap made was so sharp it made my ears burn. My cheek stung with pain. I covered my face with both hands to ward off future blows, but I’d fully expected this kind of reaction. He’d been hitting me ever since I was little. First he would beat me and then he’d unleash a torrent of verbal abuse. It was often severe enough to require medical treatment.
“Reflect on your sins!” he ordered.
Whenever my father chastised Mother, Yuriko, or me, he always ordered us to reflect on our sins. He didn’t really believe in apologies.
At kindergarten I’d learned that when you did something wrong, you said, “I’m sorry.” And then the aggrieved party would answer, “That’s all right.” But this was never the way it worked at my house. Those words didn’t even exist for us, so punishment always escalated into a major production. Yuriko looked creepy—so why the hell should I be the one “reflecting on my sins”? I suppose my indignation showed on my face, because my father slapped me again with all his might. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed my mother’s pinched profile as I toppled to the floor. She didn’t try to come to my defense. Instead, she pretended to concentrate on pouring the kerosene into the stove so as not to spill a drop. I scrambled to my feet, fled upstairs, and locked myself in my room.
Later that afternoon a deathly silence stole over the house. It seemed that my father had gone out somewhere, so I tiptoed out of my room. I didn’t see Mother. Taking advantage of the moment, I slipped into the kitchen and ate the leftover rice right out of the container, scooping it into my mouth with my fingers. I took the orange juice out of the refrigerator and drained the carton. Then I found the pot with the bigos that had been left over from yesterday’s lunch. The fat from the meat had solidified on the surface in white gobs. I spit into the pot. My orange-juice-laced spit clung to the shreds of overcooked cabbage. I was pleased. My father especially liked his bigos with overcooked cabbage.
I looked up when I heard the sound of the front door opening. Yuriko had come back. She was wearing the same jacket she’d worn last night and a white mohair cap I’d never seen, which had to be one of Masami’s. It was a little large for her and came down low on her forehead, almost covering her eyes. Masami’s stinky perfume filled the room. I glanced again at Yuriko’s eyes, to confirm my earlier discovery. This beautiful girl with her creepy eyes. Yuriko made not the slightest attempt to speak to me before she bounded up the stairs. I clicked on the TV and settled down on the sofa. I was watching a New Year’s comedy quiz show when Yuriko came into the room, toting a backpack and her beloved Snoopy dog.
“I’m going to the Johnsons’. I told them what you did, and they said it was too dangerous for me to stay here and I should stay with them.”
“How nice. Now you don’t ever have to come home again.”
I was relieved. In the end, Yuriko spent the entire New Year’s vacation with the Johnsons. Once I came across Johnson and Masami on the road. They both waved and said “Hi,” their faces wreathed in smiles. I said “Hi” right back with a big smile of my own. But in my heart I was thinking, Johnson, you idiot! And what a stupid cow you are, Masami!
I couldn’t care less if Yuriko never came home. She could become the idiot child of the idiot Johnsons for all I cared.
• 4 •
The following year, my father’s shop went under. Well, no, it wasn’t just his shop, it was his entire business. As the Japanese grew more affluent, so too grew demands for imported confections of higher and higher quality, and consumers began to ignore the cheap candies that were my father’s specialty. Father closed his shop. He had to sell off everything in order to meet his outstanding debts. Obviously, he had to let the mountain cabin go. He even had to sell off our little house in North Shinagawa, our car, everything.
Once he closed his business, Father decided to return to Switzerland to try to make a new start. His younger brother, Karl, had a hosiery manufacturing business in Bern and needed help in managing the accounts, so it was decided that we would all move to Switzerland. This decision came just as I was preparing for the high school entrance exams. I had set my sights on entering a top-level school, the kind of school that would never enroll a dimwit like Yuriko. I’m talking about the school that Kazue and I attended. Let’s just call it Q High School for Young Women, shall we? It was the elite preparatory school affiliated with Q University.
I asked my father to let me move in with my mother’s father, who lived in P Ward, so that I could at least try to pass the high school exam. And if I did pass, I could commute to school from my grandfather’s place. At any rate, I was determined to foil any attempt to ship me off to Switzerland with Yuriko.
Father frowned at my request at first, complaining that Q High School for Young Women was expensive and would cost way more than we could afford. But since Yuriko and I hardly spoke to each other—ever since the incident at the cabin—he decided my plan was the best course to follow. I had him sign an agreement stating that if I made it into the school of my choice, he would promise to provide the funds I would need to cover the cost of my schooling up through graduation. Even though he was my father, he couldn’t be relied on without a written agreement.
It was decided that I would continue living in P Ward with my maternal grandfather, who lived alone in a government-funded apartment complex. He was s
ixty-six years old. A short man, his arms and legs were delicate and his physique small. There was no mistaking him as my mother’s father. He was the kind of person who struggled to appear fashionable, even though he had no money, so no matter where he went he always wore a suit, and he slicked back his salt-and-pepper hair with pomade. The smell of pomade so permeated his tiny apartment, it almost made me choke.
I’d never really seen much of my grandfather until then, and I was nervous about the prospect of living with him. I had no idea what to say to him. But once I actually moved in, my fears became moot. My grandfather talked nonstop in a high-pitched voice all day long. It wasn’t as if he needed me around for conversation, he mostly just talked to himself.That is, he repeated the same thing over and again, chattering on and on. I suspect he was delighted to share his home with someone as taciturn as myself. I was nothing more than a receptacle for his endless prattle.
Surely my grandfather found it inconvenient to have a granddaughter suddenly deposited on his doorstep. But there can be little doubt that he was grateful for the allowance my father provided. At the time, my grandfather was living off his pension. From time to time he’d make a little extra cash by doing odd jobs around the neighborhood; he was a sort of resident handyman. But I suspect he hardly had enough to live on.
What was my grandfather’s occupation? Well, that’s hard to say. When we were children, my mother told us that when Grandfather was young he’d been good at catching watermelon thieves, so he decided to join the police force and be a detective. That’s why I was certain he’d be strict, and I was afraid of him at first. But in fact, the opposite was true. My grandfather had not been a detective. What had he been? Well, that’s what I’ll explain next. It might take some time, so please bear with me.
“It’s not easy for us to go visit your grandfather, because he’s a police detective,” my mother would say. “He’s very busy. Besides, he’s always got a lot of people around him who have done bad things. But that doesn’t mean your grandfather is bad. No indeed. It often happens that bad people are drawn to good people. Well, for example, people who’ve broken the law will come by your grandfather’s place to apologize and to talk about how they plan to mend their ways. But there’s always someone who’s just bad to the bone. That person might hold a grudge against your grandfather for arresting him, so when he comes to visit he comes for revenge. It would be dangerous for children to be around if that happened.”