Kataomoi

by Hildred Billings

  “Hello,” Aiko’s sister said. “You brought a guest to obon?”

  Both she and Aiko’s sister-in-law exchanged looks before staring at Reina as if she carried a plague – Reina stayed close to Aiko and kept her head down. I can feel her nerves fraying. Could also have been the static electricity in the air, if the thunderstorm forecast meant anything. “You remember my friend Reina, right?” Aiko struggled to maintain a pleasant demeanor. “I didn’t think she should be alone on obon.”

  “Oh?” Her sister raised a curious eyebrow. “Does she not have any family?”

  Aiko could not remember if Reina’s mother was in town, but it didn’t matter – they hadn’t spoken to one another since Reina moved out. From what Aiko gathered over the past few years, there was no love lost between them.

  Reina grunted her displeasure at the situation, forcing Aiko to excuse them both and lead her girlfriend inside. The genkan was crowded with a plethora of sneakers, high heels, and sandals, but they managed to find a tiny corner to shove their own shoes in. Aiko arranged them into a neat line and stood up…

  …looking directly into Junko’s perplexed face.

  “Ma!” Aiko took the plastic bag Reina held and offered it to her mother. “So nice to see you! We brought cookies!”

  Junko took the bag, her eyes never leaving Reina’s outline.

  “Konnichiwa.” To her credit, Reina did not say anything else.

  Junko cleared her throat but did not respond. She scuttled to the kitchen, cookies drooping from her hand.

  “Ai-chan, can we please go home?” Reina brushed against Aiko’s arm. “This is so uncomfortable for me. It was bad enough before anybody knew how we were related, but your mother? Besides, who brings a friend to obon?”

  Aiko waved her hand around as if a mosquito bothered her. “Don’t over think it. See? She wants to ignore you. This could be worse.”

  “Hey!” Shizuka barreled out of the living area, her stomach announcing her arrival before her voice could. “I didn’t expect to see the both of you here today!” She rubbed her belly as if it were gold. “How are you, Reina?”

  She grunted again, eyes downcast. Shizuka made a face akin to a child not getting to play with its favorite toy. Aiko stepped in and made a comment about her cousin’s humongous size before things could get any more awkward.

  For the most part, the obon festivities comprised of a potluck dinner and lots of sports talk around the extended table. Junko did her best to ignore both Aiko and Reina as she served the mid-day supper to a chorus of compliments from her other children and family. Some people continued to look askance at Reina, but everyone was too polite to ask any further questions. By mealtime, she completely clammed up and sat in a reserved manner next to Aiko, who insisted on piling her plate full of fried squid and steamed vegetables. Even here, she relies on me to keep her fed! She would be lying if she said she didn’t like that job.

  Conversation at dinner turned to the usual weddings, births, and funeral topics that dominated almost every family gathering. Everyone had a name suggestion for Shizuka’s baby, and everyone had dating advice for Aiko. “It’s your turn to get married now,” her aunt Noriko insisted. “Maybe next year you can bring a boyfriend instead of a girl.” She said it with an apologetic smile to Reina.

  Junko peered at them both, her eyes darting to the way they sat so close and practically ate off the same plate. She scrunched her nose as if she smelled something foul.

  The rabble at the table broke off into two sections – one end argued over baseball while the other discussed the latest dramas on TV. Caught in the middle, Aiko did her best to nod politely at everyone while Reina continued to take little food and made no effort to eat it.

  “So, Ai-chan,” Noriko said, her mouth full of squid. “How’s my great-aunt’s house?”

  Aiko did her best to ignore the baseball conversation while gently goading Reina to eat. “Oh, it’s lovely! We are still cleaning out some of the smaller rooms, but overall, there are no complaints.” Besides nosy mothers peering through the windows.

  “Ah, yokatta. I’m glad. Last time I was in that house, it smelled like old woman. Now it can smell like young women and their belongings again.”

  Reina and Junko both cleared their throats at the same time.

  “Have you found a job yet?”

  Squid fell from Aiko’s chopsticks. “No, not yet. Right now Reina is supporting us both until I can find a job to pull my own weight.” Or so she would tell her family. Although Reina lost her promotion, she had said nothing to Aiko about a part time job.

  Noriko blinked her eyes as if she had half a log jammed in them. “Oh, what kind of job do you have, Reina-san?”

  Shuffling on her folded legs, Reina kept her head down. “I work full time in an office.”

  “Are you a secretary?”

  She asked casually, since the idea of Reina being anything but a secretary in an office seemed preposterous. Reina sucked in her breath, the wheels in her head turning to either come up with a lie or a half-truth. “No. I do the same work as my male coworkers.”

  “Well that’s different.”

  Coming in on the tail end of the conversation, Shizuka interrupted her mother with a big grin and loud voice. “Leave poor Reina alone! She works a lot harder now than she did at the theater! Eh?”

  Nobody said anything, least of all Junko who was drowning herself in miso soup.

  When Noriko finally broke the silence again, the world nearly ended. “And do you have a boyfriend, Reina-san?”

  Shizuka choked on her squid while Aiko’s muscles tightened. Junko pretended to not care.

  “No, I can’t say that I do.”

  “Kawai sou!” Noriko shook her head. “Two young women living together…neither of them with boyfriends! Perhaps our great-aunt’s house is cursed, eh?” She elbowed her sister. “Our aunt became a widow at a young age. Everyone told her to remarry but she never did, saying she preferred living alone. Can you imagine?” She chewed on a squid leg. “Who do you make that home nice and cozy for if not a family? I regret not having more than one child.”

  Shizuka rolled her eyes. “I never wanted siblings anyway, Ma.”

  “Says the woman who keeps getting fat.”

  “It’s okay, we’re still young.” Aiko forced an uncomfortable laugh. “Neither of us is in a hurry to find a boyfriend.” Well, it was true.

  “But it’s better to get married young! How else can you have many children? Uwaa, I feel sorry for you two.”

  Reina refrained from replying by finally sticking food in her mouth. That, at least, relieved Aiko. She gets really moody when she’s hungry. Although she doubted Reina was hungry in the presence of prying strangers.

  “Aiko isn’t interested in fulfilling her destiny,” Junko mumbled between bites.

  “Eh? What was that?” Noriko poked her.

  After a few seconds, Aiko decided to ignore them and instead tend to her girlfriend’s unease. “Daijyoubu ka?” she asked with a soft voice, her fingers brushing against Reina’s knee under the table. “You should eat more. Nobody will be offended if you actually eat.”

  One last grunt eked from Reina’s throat. She attempted to put a squid leg in her mouth, but it slipped from her chopsticks and fell into her lap.

  “Ara ara, you’re so clumsy.” Without thinking, Aiko snatched the squid leg from Reina’s lap and held it up to her mouth. “What am I going to do with you?”

  She didn’t understand why Reina didn’t bite the leg out of her fingers.

  The rest of the table did, however, as they stopped eating and watched them together. In a strange turn of events, Reina blushed, chopsticks clattering to her plate.

  “Ah!” Aiko put the squid leg down. “Sorry! Just an inside joke.” Nervous laughter bubbled from her stomach.

  Junko glared at them.

  Gradually the table went back to conversation. Reina pushed her plate aside and sat in silence. Aiko had never been so embarrassed on
her girlfriend’s behalf before. I didn’t even think. I have to be careful.

  “Ai-chan,” Noriko said after considerable silence. “There’s a young man on my street who is looking for a wife. If you don’t mind, I could schedule a meeting with him.”

  “Come on.” Shizuka butted her chopsticks into her mother’s space. “Leave her alone.”

  “Leave her alone? Do you think I would’ve left you alone if you were still single?”

  “Well, I’m not single, now am I?”

  “No, thanks to a little accident.” Somewhere at the other end of the table, Ren cried for more juice. “And I would hope that if you ever have a daughter some day, that you won’t let her get past the age of twenty-five without a boyfriend. In my time, we had a term for women single after twenty-five.”

  Aiko shuddered. She knew that word. Christmas cake. Nobody wanted to eat it after the 25th. And I’m not single. But she couldn’t tell her aunt that. She wouldn’t understand.

  “I would prefer to be with someone I have an attraction to,” Aiko said, shoving the last piece of squid around her plate. “Someone I’ve met by chance.”

  “Chance! Who has time for chance? Both your mother and I were married by your age! You really are a modern woman!”

  “Saa, Ai-chan,” Junko finally interjected. “You should take your aunt up on the offer for a meeting. You never know, you might like him.”

  I might. But it wouldn’t make any difference. While Aiko’s dislike for men romantically and sexually were not at the level of Reina’s absolute abhorrence, she was still firm in her feelings as a lesbian. “I will think about it,” she said, carefully.

  That was enough to appease Noriko, who went back to munching on squid and throwing baby name ideas at her daughter.

  However, Junko only contemplated her plate, her eyes whirling in unknown thoughts.

  Aiko ignored them both, focusing on her girlfriend and how stiff she was. Reina refused to reply to any of her inquiries, head bowed, hands holding each other like a vice. Aiko had never seen her like that before.

  It was an eerie calm before a storm.

  “Reina,” she said lightly, taking her hand beneath the table. “Are you sick?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Ah. Do you want to go home?”

  Reina replied in the affirmative.

  “Poor Reina.” Aiko’s voice drifted into that of a sympathetic mother as opposed to a supportive girlfriend – she couldn’t help it, since it was her nature, especially when Reina displayed any type of vulnerability. Yet her voice plummeted into a whisper, poking into her girlfriend’s ear while the rabble continued around them. “You know I love you, right?”

  Finally, Reina smiled a little.

  “Enough!”

  From across the table, Junko’s deep, thundering voice sent a shockwave through the dinner. Family members dropped their chopsticks and gawked in her direction from both sides; an unnatural silence fell upon them like a blanket made of lice. Aiko stared at her mother’s furrowed brows and wrinkling mouth, aware she had never seen such putrescence since the day her oldest sister announced she was pregnant but not getting married.

  “Oneesan…” Noriko reached for her sister’s shoulder.

  Junko rose from her seat, eyes boring into Aiko’s heart. “This has gone on far enough!”

  A polite cough came from one side of the table. Junko ignored propriety.

  “Mama…”

  “Do you think I am stupid? Do you think I am blind? Do you think you and your disgust for what is right can come into my house, my family and walk all over it and we’ll let you?” Who was she talking to? She glowered at Aiko, and yet her words seemed to affect Reina far more, who huddled in her seat, shrinking until nobody could see her anymore.

  Now the hush fallen over the family went from awkward to curious, every pair of eyes turning toward Aiko and Reina. Even Shizuka’s face, pale in horror, silently urged them both to get out before it was too late.

  Nobody moved.

  Until Junko reached across the table and slapped Reina, a triumphant relief puttering from her mouth.

  “Get out,” she growled, carefully curled locks falling before her face. “Get out and stay away from my daughter, you parasitic she-man.”

  Reina launched herself from the table and disappeared out from the room in a single, dizzying blur. Uncles craned their heads to peer after her, and aunties blew their noses with comments of, “That was a woman?” Noriko’s eyes bulged as she leaned in toward Shizuka and asked, “Did you know about this?”

  As the sound of the front door sliding shut echoed in the living area, Aiko attempted to get up and follow her girlfriend. Yet the moment she bent her knees, Junko reached over and snatched her wrist.

  “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare.”

  Aiko looked to her aunt, but only met a defeated expression. She then looked to Shizuka, the only one in the room who had ever supported her relationship.

  She nodded.

  “Oh, my, I think I felt a really big kick!” She patted her stomach. Her face scrunched as if in pain. “Oh, no, I think it’s…oh, I’m going into labor!” She flung her hand over her forehead and lowered herself onto the floor. “Help!”

  Noriko squealed, her hands flailing in circles as she shouted for somebody to get a car ready to take her daughter to the hospital. Slowly, Aiko’s oldest brother, a doctor, emerged from the far end of the table to look at Shizuka. While panicked revelry replaced the defeated silence from earlier, Junko continued to hold Aiko back, teeth snarling.

  “Mama, please let me go.” Aiko held back her tears, determined not to cry this time. “I have to go check on Reina. You were really rude!”

  “Rude? Rude is insulting me in front of the entire family! Didn’t I raise you any better?”

  “This isn’t about you!”

  “Seriously, having a baby over here.”

  “Let me go!” Aiko yanked her wrist from her mother’s grip and stole out of the room.

  She found Reina in the street, leaning against a lamppost and smoking a cigarette. Tiny raindrops fell from above; thunder rolled in the north. Aiko reached for her girlfriend.

  “Don’t,” Reina said, turning around the lamppost.

  “What is it? I’m sorry for what my mother said! But don’t punish me for it!”

  “No, it’s just…” Reina gestured to something behind Aiko.

  Family was spilling out of the Takeuchi house, most of them shouting to each other about Shizuka supposedly going into labor. But in the lead was Junko, her eyes still locked on the Sapphic scourge polluting the street.

  “Aiko! Get back here!” She stomped her foot as if her daughter were five.

  Snatching her girlfriend’s free hand, Aiko took a step back and shook her head. “No! You can’t brainwash me anymore!”

  “Me? Brainwash you? It’s that devil who’s brainwashing you!”

  “Shit! I broke my water all over your tulips! Sorry, Auntie Junko!”

  “We’re leaving!” Aiko called over her shoulder. “And we won’t come back until you accept us!”

  “Fine! Leave! Follow her into the bowels of Hell! You’re no daughter of mine!”

  “The head is crowning!”

  While Shizuka distracted a bulk of the family, Aiko yanked on Reina’s arm and dragged her down the street. By that time other families were peering through their windows and approaching their gates to see what was going on. Aiko had known most of them all her life, from the time she was a toddler learning to ride a bike, until she strolled down the street in a pink furisode for Coming of Age Day. Now they looked at her, wondering why Junko Takeuchi, the proud matriarch, would threaten to disown her good little girl.

  Heavier raindrops fell and obscured Aiko’s tears.

  When Yatsumi asked why Aiko looked so sullen, it took every nerve to keep from crying.

  They met in La Lune Café, the only lesbian-owned eatery in Ni-chome. The t
wins could not make that week’s meeting, so Yatsumi decided that she, Mio and Aiko should have lunch that Wednesday instead. “Just an informal thing,” she had said.

  Thus Aiko felt terrible for bringing their mood down.

  “You can tell us, Aiko-san,” Yatsumi said through her cape of blond hair now tipped with purple. “It’s unlike you to look so down.”

  I can’t tell you. Aiko drank some water so she wouldn’t meet Mio’s curious gaze. She’s probably hoping that Reina and I have broken up. No, although Aiko had feared it upon returning from the family party that previous weekend. She kept waiting for Reina, who transformed into a robot, to break up with her for “her own good,” but their relationship continued. Passionless, but alive. Even Reina had not been in the mood for lovemaking those past few days, although she clung to Aiko in the middle of the night.

  “Ah, it’s just…” She mangled her napkin in her lap. “A bad experience at obon.”

  “What happened?”

  She bit her lip before unloading, in discrete detail, what had happened with her mother. After all, they already knew about Junko’s discovery – why not add an extra level of shame? When she finished, the only sound was the far away laughter of other patrons.

  Yatsumi let out a low whistle. “Shit, that’s rough.”

  Aiko took another drink of water. Above the rim Mio averted her eyes, contemplating her friend’s bulbous rings. “Did she really disown you?” she asked in a whisper.

  “No. I mean, I’m not sure.” They hadn’t spoken since that fateful day. Aiko figured if they ever spoke again, it would be another week yet. I didn’t do anything wrong. She couldn’t laugh at the fact Shizuka returned from the hospital that day, still pregnant. The best Aiko could do was call her cousin at home and thank her for the diversion.

  “It’s hard to say when it comes to being gay.” Yatsumi crossed her arms on the table. “Parents want to support and love their children, but some things cross their lines…”