“What’s so funny?”
I heard an angry voice behind me. Kazue was standing beside the water fountain staring at me. She’d been watching me for some time, I realized, and the realization left me feeling mildly irritated. I couldn’t help but picture a scraggly tree when I thought of Kazue.
“It’s got nothing to do with you. I was just remembering something funny, that’s all.”
Kazue wiped the sweat from her brow and said with a glum look, “You were sitting there talking to that girl Mitsuru, and the whole time you were staring at me and laughing.”
“That doesn’t mean we were laughing at you!”
“Well, I don’t care if you were. It’s just that it makes me angry to think that someone like you would make fun of me!”
Kazue spit the last words out with particular venom. Realizing that she was ridiculing me, I replied with earnestness, disguising my true feelings with great skill. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. We were not ridiculing you or anything of the sort!”
“Oh, it just makes me furious. They’re so malicious. So childish!”
“Did someone do something to you?”
“It would be so much better if they actually did do something to me.”
Kazue slammed her racket against the ground with surprising force, sending up a cloud of dust that coated her tennis shoes, covering the white laces with dirt. The students sitting along the bench turned to stare at her but then just as suddenly returned their gaze to the ground. Most likely they had no interest in the conversation between two such nondescript gymnosperms (Kazue was also of the somber pine or cedar species, unable to produce flowers). After Kazue had glared at the other students on the bench with pent-up hostility, she asked me, “Do you plan to join a club? Have you decided?”
I shook my head silently. I’d dreamed earlier of being involved in club activities, but once I saw the way things really were at the school, I reconsidered. It wasn’t so much that I minded the petty demands senior members of the clubs placed on their juniors; that was a given in any club. But here the clubs weren’t strictly hierarchical. They had a complicated inner structure that ran along vertical lines as well. There were clubs for the inner-circle students, clubs for the orbiters, and clubs for everyone else.
“No, I live with my grandfather so I don’t need to participate.” Without thinking, these were the words that popped out of my mouth! My grandfather and his friends took the role of upperclassmen, and helping him with his handyman job was my extracurricular activity.
“What do you mean by that? Explain yourself,” Kazue said.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing to do with you.”
An angry look swept over Kazue’s face. “Are you saying I’m just fighting for the sake of fighting? Getting worked up over nothing?”
I drew my shoulders in and shrugged. I’d had enough of Kazue and her persecution complex. On the other hand, if she’d already figured out that much, what point was there in asking the question?
“What I’m trying to say is why does the school have to be so unfair? It’s so sneaky! They’ve already picked the winner before the game’s even been played!”
“What are you talking about?” Now it was my turn to ask.
“See, I wanted to join the cheerleading squad. I turned in my application and before they’d even looked at it they turned me down, just like that. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”
All I could do was stare at Kazue stupefied. She was so clearly clueless when it came to both herself and the school. She folded her arms across her chest in a sulky pout and glared at the water fountain. A steady stream of water was bubbling sluggishly out of the faucet.
“The spigot’s loose!” she shouted angrily.
But she was the one who’d forgotten to twist the tap shut.
I fought back the urge to laugh at her. Not yet adults ourselves, we sought to protect ourselves from potential wounds by turning the tables on our perceived aggressors and being the ones to launch the attack. But it grew tiresome being a constant target, and those who clung to their injuries were surely not destined to live long. So I worked on refining my maliciousness and Mitsuru worked on her intelligence. Yuriko, for better or worse, was imbued from the start with a monstrous beauty. But Kazue…Kazue had nothing to cultivate. I felt absolutely no sympathy for her. How can I put this? To get right to the point, Kazue was supremely ignorant, insensitive, ill prepared, and utterly outmatched by the harsh realities that confronted her. Why on earth didn’t she notice?
I’m sure you will once again feel compelled to note that my assessment is particularly brutal, but it’s true. Even if you allow for the fact that she was still immature, there was in Kazue a violent insensitivity. She lacked Mitsuru’s attentiveness, and she did not have my kind of heartlessness. In the final analysis, there was something about her that was fundamentally weak. Kazue did not harbor any demons; in that sense she was similar to Yuriko. They were both at the mercy of whatever came their way, which I found terribly predictable. I wanted more than anything to plant a demon in their hearts.
“Why don’t you lodge a complaint?” I said to Kazue. “Why don’t you talk about it during homeroom?” The instructor in charge of homeroom didn’t do anything but take attendance and go over the day’s schedule. There was hardly any point to having a homeroom. And it would be very uncool for a student to instigate a debate on some topic and try to get some kind of consensus. But Kazue leaped on my suggestion with alacrity.
“That’s it! What a good idea. I owe you one.” Just then we could hear the chimes signaling the end of the class period. Kazue walked off. She didn’t even say good-bye to me.
I was relieved when Kazue left, and I felt lucky to have gotten through the tennis lesson without having to do anything but chat. The gym and home economics classes at Q High School for Young Women were pretty lax. The instructors only paid attention to those who were eager to be involved.
That was the pedagogical doctrine of the teachers at Q High School for Young Women: independence, self-reliance, and self-respect. Students were encouraged to do whatever they wanted because only they had responsibility for their own growth. Rules were lax and much was entrusted to a student’s own sense of self-determination. For the most part, almost all the instructors were themselves Q graduates. Having been nurtured in the pristine purity here, the pedagogical doctrine they preached was anything but abstract. They carefully instilled in us the belief that all things were possible. A wonderful lesson, don’t you think? Both Mitsuru and I secretly clung to this teaching. I had my maliciousness and Mitsuru her intelligence. Together our good points stretched and grew, and we nurtured them and struggled to stand on our own in this corrupt world.
• 3 •
It was early one rainy morning in July when the phone call came announcing my mother’s death. I’d finished making the lunch I was going to take to school and was just starting to prepare breakfast. Toast and jam with tea. I had the same breakfast every morning.
My grandfather was on the veranda talking to his bonsai, as was his habit. In the midst of the rainy season the bonsai tended to attract both bugs and mold, so they required particular attention. Grandfather was so busy dealing with them—heedless of the rain—that he didn’t hear the phone.
Once the butter melted on the hot toast I had to begin spreading the strawberry jam. It was important for me to spread the jam so that the black seeds were evenly distributed, but I had to be careful not to let the jam drip over the edges of the toast. Timing was everything because it was also essential that I dunk the Lipton’s tea bag into the cup twice and then remove it. I was very busy with my preparations, so I called out angrily to my grandfather when I heard the phone.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
My grandfather turned back to look at me from over his shoulder. I pointed to the telephone.
“Get the phone. If it’s Mother, tell her I’ve already left for school.”
The
sky outside was gray and the rain poured down so heavily you couldn’t even see the top floor of the apartment building on the other side of the complex; it was hidden in mist. Because it was so dark, we’d had the lights on since morning. Neither night nor day, it seemed spooky. It never occurred to me to ask why my mother might be calling me at this hour. The time difference with Switzerland was seven hours; it would have been midnight there. Since they never called this early in the morning, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe Yuriko had died, and my heart leaped with anticipation.
Grandfather finally picked up the phone.
“Yes, this is he…. Oh, hello, it’s been a long time. Thank you for all you’ve done recently.” Grandfather seemed to be at a loss for words. Seeing him so tongue-tied I figured the call was from school. I hurriedly pulled the tea bag out of my cup and placed it on the saucer. The tea was still too weak. I’d misjudged. Grandfather called me to the phone with a puzzled look.
“It’s your father. He says he has something to tell you. I can’t understand a word he’s saying, It’s all gibberish. But he’s saying something about an important matter that he can’t talk about with me.”
I had never once received a telephone call directly from my father. I wondered if he was going to tell me that he wouldn’t be sending any more money for tuition. I braced myself for a fight.
“What you’re going to hear will probably be a shock but that can’t be helped. It’s hard for us, but we’ll get through this—this tragedy for our family.”
Father’s preamble ran on and on. He was usually diligent about getting the order of things right, so his words would have the greatest effect on his listener. But whether it was because he’d been away from Japan and was now used to speaking his native language, his Japanese had deteriorated. Finally, in exasperation, I said, “What do you want to say?”
“Your mother’s dead.”
My father’s voice, melancholy as it was, rose up, unveiling the confusion in his heart. And then things grew deathly quiet at the other end of the line, I couldn’t hear Yuriko’s voice in the background or anything.
“How did she die?” I asked calmly.
“Suicide. I came home just a little while ago and your mother was sleeping. She’d already gone to bed. I thought it strange that she didn’t wake up when I came in, but that’s happened on other occasions. She hasn’t been very talkative of late. When I came closer I saw that she wasn’t breathing. She was already dead. The doctor believes she swallowed a handful of sleeping pills this afternoon and died around seven in the evening, while no one was home. It’s just so sad I can hardly stand to think of it.”
Father stammered this out in faltering Japanese before choking up. “I can’t believe she committed suicide. I suppose it was my fault. She must have done it out of spike.”
By spike, my father meant spite.
“It’s all your fault,” I answered coolly. “You dragged her to Switzerland.”
My words angered Father.
“Are you blaming me because you and I don’t get along? Are you saying I’m in the wrong?”
“Well, you’re not completely innocent.”
After a moment of silence my father’s anger gradually abated and his sorrow seemed to deepen. “We lived together for eighteen years. I can’t believe she was the first to die.”
“I’m sure it’s a great shock.”
“Aren’t you sad that your mother’s dead?” my father asked suddenly, surprisingly.
I was not sad. It’s strange, but I felt I’d lost my mother long ago. I’d done all my mourning while I was little, so I hadn’t even felt particularly lonely or sad when my mother left me for Switzerland back in March. When I heard she’d died, I felt she’d already left for some place far, far away, so feelings of sorrow were quite a different thing for me. But how strange that my father would ask such a thing.
“Of course I’m sad.”
This seemed to satisfy him. Suddenly his voice lost its force.
“I am shocked. Yuriko too; she just got home a little while ago. She’s really upset. I suppose she’s in her room crying now.”
“What’s Yuriko doing coming home so late?” I asked without thinking. If Yuriko’d been home, she might have discovered Mother earlier.
“She had a date—with a friend of Karl’s son. I had a meeting at work, and it lasted a lot longer than expected so I couldn’t get away.”
My father made his excuses. His words spilled out in tangled disarray. I couldn’t imagine my father ever really talking to my mother. Probably she’d been lonely, but I didn’t think anything of it. If people can’t stand being alone, they have no choice but to die.
“We plan to have the funeral service in Bern, so we’ll send you a ticket. But I’m not going to pay for your grandfather’s airfare. I want you to explain this to him.”
“Sorry, but I have my end-of-term exams coming up, and I can’t just leave like that. Why don’t you let Grandfather come in my place?”
“You don’t want to say good-bye to your own mother?”
I had already said my good-bye: a long time ago, when I was a child. “No, not particularly. Wait. I’ll put Grandfather on the line.”
Grandfather, who had gradually figured out what we were talking about, came to the phone with a stricken look. He and my father began to talk about all the business that needed tending to. He declined to go to the funeral. I bit into my toast—now cold—and drank down the weak tea. As I was packing the lunch I’d made from last night’s leftovers into my satchel, Grandfather came into the kitchen. His face was pale and streaked with anger and sorrow.
“He killed her, the bastard!”
“Who?”
“Your father, that’s who! I want to go to her funeral but I can’t. It’s breaking my heart. I can’t even go to my only child’s funeral.”
“Go if you want to go.”
“I can’t. I’m on parole. Now I’m all alone in the world.”
Grandfather sat down on the kitchen floor and wept. “First my wife dies and now my daughter. What a life.”
I put my hands on Grandfather’s thin shoulders and rocked him gently. I knew my hands would smell like pomade afterward, but I didn’t care. That’s right. I felt something akin to love for Grandfather. He always let me do as I pleased.
“Poor Grandpa. But you still have your bonsai.”
Grandfather turned to look at me.
“You’re right. You’re always so calm. You really are strong. I’m hopeless. But you, I can rely on you.”
I had understood this for quite some time. In the four months since I’d begun living with Grandfather, he had begun to rely on me for the housework, the handyman work, and even his interactions with others in the apartment complex. He relied on me for everything. Forgetting himself entirely, he wanted only to care for his bonsai. He wanted this so badly he could hardly stand it.
Meanwhile, my mind was caught in a tailspin. I was trying to figure out how to keep our accounts afloat. What if Father demanded that I move back to Switzerland? How was I going to manage? Or what if Father decided to return to Japan with Yuriko and resume residence here? What then?
But neither scenario was likely. I figured my father and Yuriko would stay on in Bern even without my mother. Surely he wouldn’t want to send for me, knowing I didn’t get along with Yuriko. I could tell from the last letter my mother had sent that she had probably been lonely in Bern, feeling like the only Asian in the family. How glad I was that I hadn’t gone with them. I sighed with relief.
Within minutes, however, I had another phone call, this one from Yuriko.
“Hello, Sis? Is that you?”
I heard Yuriko’s voice for the first time in months. It sounded husky, more grown up, perhaps because she was speaking in a whisper as if worried someone else would overhear. I didn’t have time for this.
“I’ve got to leave for school and I don’t have time to talk. What do you want?”
“Our mother has j
ust died and you’re going to school? A bit cold, don’t you think? I hear you aren’t coming to the funeral either. Are you serious?”
“Why? Do you think it strange?”
“Yes, it’s strange! We’ve got to go into mourning; Father said so. I’m taking off from school for a while, and of course I’ve got to go to the funeral.”
“Do what you want. I’m going to school.”
“But how sad for Mother.”
Yuriko’s voice was full of censure. But my eagerness to get to school had little to do with her or Mother. To the contrary, I was in a hurry because today was the day Kazue was planning to discuss the discrimination she’d encountered when she tried to join the cheerleading squad. I doubt there’d ever been anyone at Q High School for Young Women who had raised an issue like this one. It was a one-of-a-kind happening, and I would be really disappointed if I had to miss it.
It wasn’t that I thought a school event was more important than my mother’s death. That wasn’t the point. But I was the one who had planted the seed, and I wanted to see with my own eyes how Kazue would handle the situation. My mother’s death was over and done with. Even if I absented myself from school, she wasn’t going to come back to life. However, I asked Yuriko about Mother’s behavior of late.
“Was she acting strange lately?” I wondered.
“Yeah, she seemed to be suffering from some kind of neurosis,” Yuriko answered, through her tears. “Even though she complained about how expensive rice was, she cooked up a full pot every day, way more than we could eat. She knew it irritated Father, so she did it just to make him mad. And she stopped fixing his bigos. ‘It’s food for pigs,’ she grumbled. Then she stopped going out. She’d just stay at home sitting alone in the dark without turning on the lights. When I’d get home I’d think no one else was in the house and would flip on the lights and there she’d be, sitting at the table with her eyes wide open. It was creepy. She’d stare at me and say stuff like, ‘Whose child are you?’ To tell you the truth, Father and I began to feel she was more than we could handle.”