by Lily Chan
My bad points. Being lazy. Sometimes I lie and hide things from Mother.
I eat the cakes in the café.
Toyo’s favourite place was the pantry: it was packed with white boxes of cakes, of truffle
apricot
gingernut
peach
raspberry almond
plum nectarine
white black brown chocolate
scrolled cream sponges lined with fresh jam and honey syrup glaze. The white boxes opened like flowers, the lids folding back like petals to reveal the sweet centres underneath. Toyo could not resist. She cut a slice of each new cake.
“Yoshi, have you noticed a mouse nosing about the pantry?” Mother asked her niece.
“A mouse with long black hair,” Yoshino laughed.
“It nibbles at all the cakes but very neatly, so that it only takes one slice from each.”
“It must be a clever mouse.”
“Unfortunately I’ve never caught it.”
“Neither have I.”
Toyo licked the cream from her lips behind the closed door. She was relieved they did not suspect her.
Toyo ate handfuls of sweets and pretended she had brushed her teeth. She professed ignorance when Mother asked why her room was still messy. “I cleaned it up before, I really did!”
She was fussy and petulant about the way she dressed. “I don’t want to wear that dress,” she would announce, when Mother brandished it in front of her. She didn’t like the way a collar sat on her neck or a sleeve lining itched her skin.
Toyo’s fussiness and gradual accumulation of lies annoyed Mother. Impervious as an ice god, she motioned Toyo upstairs into the tatami room. Toyo did not like the tatami room. It was small and dark and smelled like musty incense.
Toyo watched as Mother withdrew a ruler from the cupboard. The usual conversation followed.
“What did you do wrong?”
“Nothing, Mother.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Yes.” Lips shaking, knees trembling.
“Hold out your hand.”
Mother hit Toyo’s hand with the ruler. Toyo flinched at each blow. Her palm stung and she clenched it tightly as Mother closed the sliding doors.
“Reflect and repent, Toyo.”
Toyo began to sob and curled forward, hiding her face in the tatami mat. She sobbed and sobbed until her tears ran out and all she had left were gulping, empty hiccups. She kept the hiccups going for a while, listening to the echo in her chest, experimenting with tones and vibrations. The different sounds comforted her.
Much later she lifted her head in a daze, her hand throbbing slightly, the weave of the mat imprinted on her cheek. It seemed her sobs had eased her into sleep. She felt Mother tucking the corners of the sheets around her feet, pausing with a soft hand on her forehead.
As Toyo sank into a dream featuring pink dogs and slices of watermelon, she remembered that the painter had varnished the woodwork in the café that day. He had layered a chocolate-brown tint over the walls. It looked good and Mother had praised his work as she handed over the yen notes. But he looked at Mother in a merciless, piggy way, his eyes slits in his pouchy face. Mother did not bow when he left. She reserved her bows for customers.
In Toyo’s dream the painter turned into a pig. He danced up to her and oinked.
the katana man
The Katana Man sold ornamental katanas in a shop across the road. The blades were made of steel and the sheaths engraved with curlicues. Every now and then he shouted, across the road: “Toyo-chan! Come and look at the new katanas!”
Toyo was afraid of the swords hanging in rows like teeth; she imagined a blade falling, puncturing her like an orange. The Katana Man’s wrinkled smile and his wrinkled wife greeted her. They poured her a cup of hot tea and patted her cheeks. Toyo looked like a miniature doll; her thick black hair framed a petite face and watchful eyes. The old couple exclaimed at her perfect manners. She was proud of her manners. Her mother was proud of her manners. She could pretend she wasn’t afraid of the swords. She delivered elegant ceramic plates and was proud that her hands did not tremble.
“A gift from my mother,” she said, as instructed.
They ooh-ed and sat her down to eat a bowl of sticky rice balls immersed in red-bean soup. Toyo loved the soup. Her throat ached with the sweet tang. The red beans clustered at the bottom of the bowl came swimming up on her spoon, and merged with the chewy fragments of rice balls in her mouth.
One night Toyo heard footsteps and something being dragged across the floor. She scrambled out of her futon to see Mother painting strange characters over the walls in black ink, a bucket at her feet.
“Mother …? What are you doing?” Toyo grabbed her mother’s arm and was thrown to the ground with a hard-boned strength. “Mother, stop! What are you doing?”
Mother’s elbows were weapons and she erupted in angles, the characters slashed over the wall like wounds. She did not hear Toyo; her face was blank. She covered the whole wall along the corridor in black characters and walked back to her bedroom.
Toyo stared after her with clotted fear rising in her throat. She filled a bucket with water and scrubbed. She did not read the dripping, lopsided characters; she washed the ink stains off her hands, hoping the spirits would disappear, that they would lose their hold on her mother. Toyo discarded and replaced the water in the ceramic cup offered at the shrine as she had been taught; the old water would be cast out with impurities, and the new, blemishless water would sanctify the house. She prayed that the incense sticks placed at the entrance would smoke out the ghosts nestling under her mother’s skin.
“Good morning, Mother,” Toyo greeted her warily the next day.
Mother set out bowls of miso soup and rice and pickles for breakfast.
“Morning. Why is the floor damp? There are wet streaks across the walls.”
“Well, don’t you remember? You woke up in the middle of the night –”
“No, I didn’t.”
“ – and painted stuff on the walls.”
“That’s odd. I don’t remember doing that. Why would I do that? Are you sure? Maybe the roof is leaking?”
That night Toyo couldn’t sleep. She kept listening for Mother’s footsteps. The next morning she visited the local shrine and offered kaki fruits bursting red against their skins. She prayed for the spirits to bother them no more. There was nothing that night. Nor the night after. Toyo slept thankfully, sinking into her futon.
Toyo didn’t like the dark, the cold, the hot or anything that made her sweat. She developed headaches and nausea and noisily blew into tissues just before swimming class. She sat by the pool happily watching her classmates splash about in the water.
Mother appeared at the pool and shot sharp looks at her daughter, crouched on the concrete pavement. Toyo knew there was no escape. But her efforts were half-hearted: she flinched when she entered the water; she paddled in the shallow end and hid behind friends. Diving into water meant she would be enveloped by dark liquid and she did not know if she would emerge. She never learned to swim. The water gleamed. It was deep.
kabuki
The neighbour’s son popped his head over the fence and sang:
Nanjing
pumpkin girl
Your ma’s belly button
it pops out!
Nanjing
pumpkin girl
Your ma’s belly button
it pops out!
Toyo stuck out her tongue at him and quickly let herself into the house. She didn’t understand the song, but she was shaken. His face was scrunched up and leering.
“I’m going to the kabuki!” Mother shouted from her bedroo
m, and emerged in a blue kimono with white flowers scattered at the hems, her eyes alight.
Toyo nibbled her lip. “Can I come too, Okaasan?”
Mother smoothed a loop of hair under a clip. “When you’re older, Toyoko.”
Toyo was a glut of disappointment. She wanted to see the kabuki. She wanted to ask what “Nanjing pumpkin” meant. The boy’s words puzzled her. Mother’s belly button did not pop out. Toyo had seen it at the baths and it was neatly folded in an indent, tucked away from sight.
When Mother returned, she looked at her pouting daughter. “Come here. Your hair is growing longer, isn’t it?”
As she braided Toyo’s thick hair and tied the end with coloured ribbons, she told Toyo about the wooden clappers beating twice to start the show. The sound of a footstep punctuated by a drumbeat. The naga uta chorus chanting the long history of the emperor’s reign, then a young woman waiting at the dojoji temple, and warriors seething with discontent, sharpening their swords. Staccato hand beats marked the turn of a face, the lifting of a foot, the rush of pink confetti blown across the stage, cherry-blossom petals. A red kimono enveloped the girl. She burst the paper umbrella open like a firework. The white planes of her face were carved ivory, catching the light.
Toyo forgot to ask about the Nanjing pumpkin boy.
At the baths Mother leaned over and tugged Toyo’s nose. “You’ve got a nose with such a high bridge,” she laughed. She seemed pleased. “If you keep tugging it up, it should stay that way. You look like a doll!”
Their voices rose up, muffled through the steam of the hot baths:
Mother was so tall she could meet men’s eyes without tilting her head, and she dropped her shoulders so she would appear shorter. She was always immaculate in a hand-made kimono. The seamstress added an extra length to it so her ankles were covered. She played jazz and blues in the café when jazz and blues were forbidden. The music came from the same place as those rare nights where she covered the walls with kanji, her face as blank as a scroll. It came from somewhere Toyo did not know.
Father sent them money every month. Money day made Mother happy. She smiled more. She went to see kabuki with her friends. She bought a lacquer shelf with a doll set of the royal court for Toyo, with cushion-like garments, pointed black hats and expressionless faces. Toyo lined the tiny dolls up on Children’s Day. She was allowed to invite three friends to admire the exhibition; they sipped green tea and ate glutinous rice cakes sliced into diamonds.
Toyo made sure her friends knew about her father: he was working overseas, he would be back soon, he had two white dogs, and once she had twisted the mole on the side of his chest and he had laughed at her because it tickled. Another time he had taken her to a shopping emporium and she had tap-danced with her tall, handsome brother across the floor as he clapped. He was a wonderful father.
She practised writing Takahashi Toyo. This was her father’s name; she was her father’s daughter.
“That is your real, true name, just as my true name is Takahashi Kayoko,” her mother said, tracing the characters on the paper.
Toyo copied the characters over and over again. One day, when he visited, she would show him her calligraphy.
gotoretto (i)
When Toyo was nine years old, Mother took her to Gotoretto. They boarded a boat from the port of Nagasaki. Toyo jiggled on her feet and leaned into the sea spray.
“Mother, look! The waves, the waves!”
Gotoretto appeared as a clump of rocks on the ocean’s horizon and Mother pointed out the five major islands. “That one’s Fukue, see, that’s where I was born.”
Mother’s home island came closer and closer, spinning into view like a discus. The fishermen floated around the bay in their boats like wooden bowls. They hauled nets over brown shoulders, their faces wrinkled from the sea. They sliced the guts out of the silver undersides and laid the fish in rows.
The house where her mother had lived was small and clean. It did not smell of fish. A curtain of pink coral hung in front of the door. Mother clasped a handful of hard pink granules, carved into teardrops and strung together, and offered it to Toyo. “My family dives into the sea to get this coral. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
The pink coral strings cascaded through Toyo’s fingers and made a musical clacking sound. As if she had been summoned, a tiny woman as neat as a chestnut emerged from the next room. Her eyes sparkled. “Kayoko!” she called, wiping her hands on her apron.
Toyo was struck dumb. Her grandmother gave a little gasp when she saw Toyo and gathered her up in warm arms.
“Oh!” She looked at her daughter. “Why don’t you stay here, Kayoko? We have enough room. You should stay.”
Toyo wanted to stay. Her grandmother smelled like fresh linen.
Her mother smiled. “Okaasan, we are Osaka folk now. We belong in Osaka.” She leaned towards Grandmother’s ear and whispered, “And Oniichan would be furious if I stayed any longer.”
Toyo discovered she had several cousins. They darted in and out of the room, peering at her as if she were an exhibit. She blushed and held her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers together. She was suddenly aware of how white she was, how brown they were.
One boy was taller and older than she was. He did not stare.
“Can you swim?” he asked.
She shook her head. He took her twisty hand and led her to the ocean.
“It’s easy. Watch me!”
He splashed into the waves like a seal, turning and diving until his skin gleamed. She watched him in awe. She rolled up her pants and waded in tentatively, feeling for sharp pebbles under her toes. Further out, the dark waves were clotted with seaweed and threatened to swallow her up. He dived under for so long that she was afraid he had drowned. She clenched her hands together. Then he emerged laughing, shaking the water from his dark hair, holding a clump of pink coral.
“This is for you, Toyo-chan!” he shouted.
He taught her how to polish the clumps of pink coral so they did not discolour, how to wipe the strands with oil and a cloth. It was the most beautiful gift she had ever received. She held it reverently.
At dinner her grandmother said, “I suspect the sea urchins have been sneaking out and imitating the divers,” and the boy looked at Toyo and winked. His father reached out and tousled his hair.
Another of Toyo’s uncles was tall and dark. His brow furrowed when he looked at Toyo. He shouted at Mother. There were words Toyo didn’t understand, like “honour” and “disgrace” and “disowned”, but she knew they were bad, that when they were shouted in the house, bruises appeared on her mother’s face.
Toyo was both glad and sad when they returned to Osaka. She was glad to be away from the scary uncle with his furrowed brow and dark words. But she missed her cousin who held her hand firmly and swam like a fish. She missed her small, sweet grandmother, who held her as if she were something precious.
As they had left to board the boat back to Nagasaki, her grandmother had cupped Toyo’s face in her creased hands and said, “Everyone’s been saying that nobody as beautiful as you and your mother have ever visited Gotoretto.”
the painter
The painter with the piggy eyes lurched into the café like a hurricane. The waitresses scattered before him as he overturned tables and chairs.
“Madam! Madam! Where is she?” he shouted. His face was red.
Toyo noticed with distaste the sweat stains under his armpits. The barista cowered beneath the serving counter, bobbing up and down to avoid his eye.
Toyo piped, “Madam is not here.” Kayoko was at the bakehouse ordering next week’s stock.
“Where is she, then? You her daughter, heh?”
He looked like the red-faced customers on New Year’s Eve who ordered pitcher after pitcher of sake.
“She’s not here at the moment,
” Toyo replied.
“Where is she?”
Toyo hesitated.
“You’ve no tongue, you little shit. I’ll tell you where Madam should be if she isn’t already – in hell!”
“It’s late, sir,” Toyo replied. For some reason the angrier he became, the less scared she was. Her hackles rose. “It’s pretty late, sir, and we’re about to close. You’re scaring away the customers.”
“Why should I care about the café or its customers? This place should be empty, it’s cursed. And I want to speak to Madam!” He knocked over a pot plant to emphasise his point. It shattered.
Toyo peered up the stairs to where Yoshino motioned furiously, panic in her eyes. Toyo, come upstairs now. He might hurt you!
But instead of running to Yoshino, Toyo walked past the cowering barista and pressed the alarm underneath the counter. The sound of splintering furniture was painful. Mother was going to be angry.
Two policemen marched the painter off the premises. Shingo-san, the owner of the sushi bar next door, rushed over at the commotion and she told him what had happened.
“You brave girl. I would have skewered him with my knife had I been a little earlier!”
When Mother returned, Toyo was treated to a thick slice of chocolate cream cake sprinkled with cinnamon.
The next day Toyo’s mother took her to visit the local station and make a statement.
“How old are you, Fukuyama Toyo?”
“Nine years old.”
“What happened yesterday afternoon at the café?”
For a moment Toyo was terribly afraid that she’d done something wrong and would be locked up. Mother squeezed her hand: “Go on, Toyo.”
Toyo was fine until the very end and then she burst into sobs. “It was r-really sc-scary …!” she hiccuped, red-faced with shame.