Child of Fortune

by Yuko Tsushima

  When she had finished her meal, she went to the telephone at the cashier’s desk and lifted the receiver. In the middle of dialing her sister’s number she glanced up at the wall clock: it was 7:30. She pictured Kayako staring, mouth half-open, into the bright store windows of the downtown shopping district. It was still too early, she decided – Kayako would take a good hour to wander the streets. Now that she thought of it, the last time Kayako had been to Ginza after dark she would have been just an infant, too young to remember. Kōko had the impression that she dragged her child around to all sorts of places for her own convenience, more so than other parents, but when she stopped to think about it she was sharply reminded how little Kayako knew of the world.

  True, when Doi was there they had taken her out. Even so, they never went to the beach in the summer vacation, or on hiking trips. After Doi had gone, with Kayako already in the third grade, she tended to leave her in charge while she went out. When they did go out together, they mostly went shopping, and then only at a local supermarket. Before Kōko realized it the area around her home had become Kayako’s whole world.

  Kōko put the phone down and left the restaurant. She walked to the subway station and went straight home to the apartment. No Kayako. She lit the heater and washed a teapot and cup left in the sink – Kayako must have been drinking tea earlier in the day – then she called her sister’s house. At the sound of Kōko’s voice her sister almost snapped at the receiver.

  ‘What on earth has happened to Kaya? She went to see the exam results and still isn’t back.’

  Kōko automatically checked the clock on the refrigerator. Almost an hour had passed since she looked at the time in the Chinese restaurant.

  ‘She should be back there very soon, I think …’ Kōko filled in what had happened, starting with Kayako’s phone call during the day and ending with her bolting out of the restaurant.

  ‘But why ever did she do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She seems to have taken the failure very hard …’

  ‘Oh … goodness, do you think everything will be all right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘As long as she comes home safely … I wish she’d learn to understand that people are worrying about her.’

  ‘She understands, in her own way,’ Kōko retorted quickly. ‘I appreciate your concern for my daughter, but it’s becoming more of a burden to her than a help.’

  She wanted to shout wildly – never mind whether it made any sense – Kayako is mine!

  ‘What are you talking about? You’d better calm down a little. Kaya is bound to be all right. She’s a good deal more sensible than you. Listen, why don’t you come over and wait for Kaya here? How about it? I’d feel happier, too, if you were with us …’

  ‘No, I have to wait for her here, she was talking about coming back home soon, for good.’

  ‘What? … But that’s nonsense.’

  ‘Why? Why is it nonsense?’

  ‘Oh, surely you realize …’

  Shōko’s voice was relaxed. Kōko remembered how her sister had laughed at her once for crying over something – when she was in junior high, perhaps? She’d been sad because a pet dog had taken sick and died, and her sister had said –Silly! What’s all the fuss about?– She realized that she’d only wear herself out if she lashed out now; her blows would fall on thin air. Her sister’s voice sounded undaunted.

  ‘Anyway,’ Kōko said, ‘if she turns up, would you tell her, please, to contact me at once? I’ll be waiting here.’

  ‘Of course I’ll tell her, but … I hope this makes you think about what’s best for Kayako for a change. Kaya’s lonely. She’s got no father, and you care more about your own feelings than Kaya’s. There may be nothing wrong at present, but what if she really takes to brooding some day, what if she even goes and kills herself? Give it some careful thought, once more, will you? Come to us, both of you. We’ve got your rooms waiting. I can just see how thrilled Kaya would be.’

  ‘… Thanks. I’m sorry to have worried you.’

  Kōko put the phone down. She looked at the clock again: it was four or five minutes before nine. She tried to remember what she’d said in the Chinese restaurant. What was she in the middle of saying? She remembered her disappointment when Kayako announced she wasn’t coming back with her – her own mother. Confident that Kayako was returning home at last, she’d been reviewing the situation quite seriously: now that that’s settled, she was thinking, what should I do next? First, she had decided, I’ll have to go and collect Kayako’s belongings.

  The curtains were still open. She closed those in her own room, then crossed to Kayako’s. She could see neon lights in the main street: signs advertising a sewing machine, a hotel, a confectioner’s, a coffee shop, a sauna; too many to count. They should have sparkled brightly, but most of the view from the seventh floor was of dark sky, and perhaps this made the dots of light seem so poignant. They were like a luminescent moss clinging feebly to life in the depths of a marsh.

  This is what Kayako looked out on night after night, she thought. Her gaze returned to the room itself. Lying on the desk was a small, worn pair of scissors that Kōko had bought her before she started school. Kayako’s clever hands had made all kinds of things with them: a rabbit mask, dolls, a mouse in a suit of clothes. She was always busy with one project or another.

  Kōko sat down at the desk and went back to watching the neon lights through the window. She wanted to hear Kayako’s voice; but to her horror she could do nothing but wait. She had no idea what might happen next. This time Kayako might have gone for good. In the same breath she was fretting over what to say to the girl when she phoned from her aunt’s house – as she might at any moment – and flinching as she felt Kayako’s very being slip further and further from her touch. She had no concrete terms such as ‘death’ or ‘runaway’ in mind. It was simply that when she closed her eyes she could see Kayako’s body being swallowed up, out of her sight, into a mass of people.

  Once, after she began seeing Doi again, she had a dream in which she left Kayako with a total stranger to go on a journey with a boy, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old who seemed almost like a girl. The two of them rode a bus along a mountain road. There were no other passengers. At the boy’s insistence they got off, though they weren’t at the end of the line, they were in the middle of nowhere. There was only the road, the mountainside, and the glowing evening sky. Kōko stood at the cliff’s edge and gazed toward the setting sun. She felt a numbing loneliness. The boy spoke at her side. –What are you doing here?–

  The sound of his voice brought Kōko to her senses: if she didn’t go and pick up Kayako before it got dark she would never see her again; but she couldn’t reach the town from there before the dead of night, no matter how fast she traveled.

  In an unknown town, someone – she didn’t know who – had said to her: –It’s all right, I’ll look after your child. We’ll be waiting here, at the same place, around six o’clock.– The speaker had seemed kind, and so, against her better judgment, she’d gone off leaving Kayako behind. The same place, at six o’clock: it was her one remaining link with Kayako. But she couldn’t make it in time. She had no way of getting in touch, either, since she didn’t know who the person was. She would never see Kayako again. Kōko began to tremble. Kayako was growing more distant now with every moment. Why had she ever let go of her hand?

  The boy asked: –What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to sketch?– Kōko had a large sketchbook under her arm.

  –But … my child … – Kōko swallowed the words she’d been about to say. It was too late. Already, she had no child.

  –Child? What child?–

  –It doesn’t matter.–

  Shaking her head tearfully, Kōko opened her sketchbook. She had to admit it was a beautiful rose-colored sunset.

  When she awoke, Kōko had been afraid all over again. She knew the self whose image she’d just seen, the woman poised for flight, ready to dump her child a
nd set off with the boy alone; that had been her real self, wanting to recapture the time she’d had alone with Doi when they were students. It made an ugly sight: a mother who cursed her child’s existence. And it seemed pure luck that she had kept afloat so far without seeing Kayako sink out of sight.

  There was that time when Hatanaka took three-year-old Kayako away to his home town and didn’t return for over a week.

  And the time when Kayako was one, and running a high temperature, with an ear infection after measles.

  Once she began to remember, it seemed she’d always been haunted by the fear of having Kayako taken from her. For all her usual irresponsibility – or maybe because of it – the slightest thing would bring on an anxiety that darkened her whole outlook: I won’t be allowed to raise a child safely, after all. With Kayako’s feverish body like an overcooked carrot in her arms, she’d felt too weak to get her to a doctor.

  It was past ten o’clock when the phone rang at last in Kōko’s apartment. Kayako had wandered about the shopping arcades in the station building and then made one complete circuit on the Yamanote Line before going home. Kōko said only: ‘Apologize properly to Auntie for all the worry you’ve caused her,’ and hung up. Kayako’s voice was so unchanged that it made Kōko’s head swim. It was as if nothing had ever happened. She was exactly the same Kayako as before. If Kōko could actually have seen her she might have been able to accept this with thankful relief, but a reunion with only the sound of her voice left her uneasy, as if it might have been some sort of trick.

  After several drinks, Kōko got up toward midnight and headed for the phone. She dialed Michiko’s number. She wanted to tell her what she planned to do, and hear her say in turn, ‘You must be out of your mind, get an abortion straight away.’ Michiko was the kind of person who might go with her, might drag her all the way to a clinic. Kōko was afraid that unless she could be deflected by some external force she’d just go right ahead and have the baby.

  The ringing signal continued until, on the fifth ring, she hung up. Then, reeling from the alcohol, she turned off the kitchen light and heater and went into her room.

  She changed into a nightgown and, lying down at last, was seized immediately with nausea. She bent over the washbasin, tears springing to her eyes. In her drunken wretchedness, Kōko forgot all that had happened that day.

  4

  Kōko was on a boat. A tightly sealed little ark. Thick glass panes were set into the ceiling and portholes, the passengers were so crowded together they could barely move, and the air was hot and close. Kōko was staring at the deep red that spread away beyond the fogged panes. It was dark on board, almost too dark to distinguish faces. She wasn’t sure whether there was someone with her on the boat; if there was, perhaps it was some stranger she’d just met on board. Or it might be someone she’d promised many, many years ago to meet there. And yet she didn’t remember any such promise, nor could she think who it might be.

  Being on the boat felt exactly like being in a town where she’d once lived: at any moment she expected – nervously, but wistfully, too – to meet someone who recognized her. Then when she steeled herself to look over the crowd once more, there was nobody she knew.

  Outside the portholes stretched the crimson twilit sea. The horizon made long sweeps like the needle of an instrument. The water that lay ahead was suffused with a deeper red. The sleekly undulating surface continued its vast, endlessly recurring motion, its shores long since forgotten. Was there a storm? The vessel was riding the waves up and down, dipping and rising, like an elevator, and all at sixty miles an hour. Kōko was surprised to hear this murmured among the other passengers – could she really be inside something traveling at that speed? – as the sea appeared almost unchanging, neither merging with the dusk nor flaring more brilliantly red. There was no sign of land. Just think how vast the sea must be, Kōko told herself as she stared steadily out of the window …

  Kōko had this dream in early April. The color of the sea and the lurching of the boat stayed with her for some time afterward.

  She was still puzzled by that obscure feeling about the passengers in the dream: who was it she’d expected to find there with her? Doi seemed the most natural answer, but surely if he’d been there he would have shown up clearly. She’d never gone anywhere by boat with Doi, though they had once looked at a travel poster for a hovercraft that could do sixty miles an hour.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t identify her companion. Though this was only to be expected of a dream, Kōko wasn’t satisfied. Before she’d finished she even began to fancy that the man’s baby had been in her arms. She was sure she’d been holding something warm and breathing.

  April was the fifth month since Kōko’s fetus first breathed. By now she could no longer hope to hide the bulge. Not only was her belly swelling, but she was so fat she’d developed a double chin. Of course she’d put on weight with Kayako, too, but nothing like this. She thought there might be something wrong, but she had yet to see a doctor. She continued to put it off – even with the fetus stirring faintly now. The thought of having the baby was terrifying, but the thought of an abortion was more wretched than she could bear. To choose to give birth at least offered a release from facing such wretchedness directly.

  She had only seen Kayako once since the day the exam results were announced. Kayako had told her over the phone that she wanted to stay a while longer at her aunt’s. She was going to join the family on their spring trip to Nara, and planned to get in some piano lessons as well during the vacation.

  Kōko asked when school was due to start, and reluctantly allowed her to stay until it did. Immediately afterward, she enrolled Kayako at the local junior high – where they’d agreed she was to go – and bought a school satchel and regulation clothing, which she told Kayako to come and pick up. For a treat she had a shortcake ready: the sight of it on the table raised the only smile to be seen from Kayako that day. It was a special favorite of hers that Kōko bought twice a year, on her birthday and at Christmas.

  Kayako departed quickly, however, without touching on what Kōko was waiting to hear. Kōko stuck to the subject of getting ready for school, and Kayako seemed so ill at ease she didn’t try too hard to keep her.

  She hadn’t seen Kayako since. In the month that had passed, the bulge had grown distinctly bigger. There was nothing for it but to tell her, the next time they met, about her mother’s untimely pregnancy. Kōko expected this would be on the day the school opened, the tenth of April. She did want to go to the opening ceremony, for Kayako’s sake. And it was only days away.

  She continued her daily round at the music store. In the past she would have been afraid to show herself; she might have taken to her heels and hidden; whereas now (and this made her aware of her age) she went to work out of force of habit and got away with it, though only just, blunting speculation with evasions and pretense. The sheer effrontery of it made her blush. At twenty she’d had an abortion, without a moment’s hesitation, solely because she feared for her reputation. There had hardly been any concrete reasons against her having the baby: she would probably have carried it off a good deal more gracefully than she could now. Doi would have been aghast – he was almost as young as Kōko – but ultimately he’d have stood by her and the baby. He would have grumbled at the mess she’d landed them in, but he might have registered a legal marriage with Kōko, also for appearances’ sake. As a student he’d been timid and sensible enough to do that, and Kōko, on her side, wouldn’t have dared take advantage of his timidity. In fact, she had never even thought that she might one day have a child. She had found the idea uncanny, almost unimaginable.

  At this point, no one who worked with Kōko had linked her size with pregnancy. They were all worried about her, suggesting something might be wrong, that it might be a sign of some malignant disease. Not even the woman in the office suspected the truth.

  ‘It can’t be healthy, whichever way you look at it. Take your hands: look how the veins stand out. I
t’s tiredness catching up with you, if you ask me.’

  Whenever people talked like this, Kōko would appear concerned for a moment or two, then laugh it off. ‘Oh, it must be the menopause, it’s that time of life.’

  This would make them laugh, and for the time being they’d take their eyes off her body. Kōko would feel a moment’s scorn – they were so blind, the lot of them. Later, when she was alone, she was always disgusted with herself: what an idiotic reason to feel superior!

  Nevertheless, there was a limit to how long she could hide her pregnancy at work, and time was running out.

  Every night Kōko would resolve: I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll have Kayako come, I’ll tell her about my condition, and I won’t give her a chance to catch her breath this time. I’ll tell her to leave her aunt’s house and come back to her mother. By the next morning, though, she’d be reluctant to stir up such a fuss; anyway, she hadn’t entirely made up her mind yet. And she would drift through another day like all the others.

  The day before Kayako’s school ceremony, however, her sister phoned. Would she mind coming over later, because she had something special to discuss? ‘Well,’ Kōko replied, ‘it’ll have to be in the evening, but yes, I will come. There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk about, too.’

  When she put down the receiver, Kōko’s legs started to shake. She could see how it would turn out now: one thing would quickly lead to another, and she’d end up having the baby. Kōko wasn’t sure if she was pleased or frightened that things had been set in motion so casually. The dark red sea of her dream floated up at eye level. Its surface heaved. Kōko closed her eyes. Sixty mph … 120 mph. The boat. The boat was flying through the air. It wouldn’t stop. Nobody would stop it. The surge of acceleration almost whirled her bodily away. She wanted to be sick.