by Ruth Ozeki
“I was reading about the Jungle Crows,” he said. “Apparently they’ve become a huge problem in Japan. They’re very clever. They memorize the schedules for trash pickups and then wait for the housewives to put out the garbage so they can rip it open and steal what’s inside. They eat kittens and use wire coat hangers to make nests on utility poles, which short-circuit the lines and cause power outages. The Tokyo Electric Power Company says crows are responsible for hundreds of blackouts a year, including some major ones that even shut down the bullet trains. They have special crow patrols to hunt them down and dismantle their nests, but the crows outsmart them and build dummy nests. Children have to carry umbrellas to school to ward off attacks and protect themselves from droppings, and ladies have stopped wearing shiny clips in their hair.”
Ruth spat. “You sound happy about this,” she said into the bowl of the sink.
“I am. I like crows. I like all birds. Do you remember those owl incidents in Stanley Park a couple of years ago? Those joggers that kept showing up in the emergency room with cuts on their heads, complaining about being swooped by owls? The doctors finally put it together. It was fledging season, and the owls were babies, just learning the owling trade. Then someone noticed that the joggers were all balding middle-aged guys with ponytails. Picture it from above, all these shiny pates and flipping rodentlike tails. They must have looked like shiny fishing lures. Irresistible to a baby owl.”
Ruth stood and wiped her mouth on a towel. “You’re a balding middle-aged guy,” she said. “You should be careful.”
She tapped her fingers lightly on the top of his head on her way to the door. The cat took a swat at her hand.
“Yes,” Oliver said, going back to his issue of New Science. “But you’ll notice I don’t have a ponytail.”
Nao
1.
Jiko Yasutani is my great-grandmother on my dad’s side, and she had three kids: a son named Haruki, and two daughters named Sugako and Ema. Here’s a family tree:
Ema was my grandmother, and when Ema got married, Jiko adopted her husband, Kenji, to take the place of Haruki, who got killed in World War II. Not that anyone could replace Haruki, but the family needed a son to keep the Yasutani name going.
Haruki was my dad’s uncle, and Ema named my dad after him. Haruki #1 was a kamikaze pilot, which is kind of weird when you think of it because before he became a suicide bomber he was a student of philosophy at Tokyo University, and my dad, Haruki #2, really likes philosophy and keeps trying to kill himself, so I guess you could say that suicide and philosophy run in the family, at least among the Harukis.
When I said this to Jiko, she told me that Haruki #1 didn’t actually want to commit suicide. He was just this young guy who loved books and French poetry, and he didn’t even want to fight in the war, but they made him. They made everybody fight in the war back then, whether you wanted to or not. Jiko said that Haruki got bullied a lot in the army because he loved French poetry, so that’s something else that runs in the family: an interest in French culture and getting picked on.
Anyway, it was on account of Haruki #1 getting killed in the war that first his sister, Ema, and then my dad got to carry on the Yasutani family name, which is why I’m Nao Yasutani today. And I just want to say that I get kind of freaked out, looking at the family tree, because you can see it’s all up to ME. And since I don’t intend to get married or have any kids, that’s kind of it. Kaput. Finito. Sayonara, Yasutani.
Speaking about names, my grandmother Ema was named after Emma Goldman, who is one of Jiko’s heroes. Emma Goldman was a famous anarchist lady a long time ago when Jiko was growing up, and Jiko thinks she was really great. Emma Goldman wrote an autobiography called Living My Life that Jiko is always trying to get me to read, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet because I’m too busy living my life or trying to figure out how not to.
Jiko named her younger daughter Sugako after Kanno Sugako, another famous anarchist chick and hero of Jiko’s and the first woman ever to be hanged for treason in Japan. Nowadays people would call Kanno Sugako a terrorist because she plotted to assassinate the emperor with a bomb, but listening to Jiko talk about her, you can tell she doesn’t really buy it. Jiko really adored her. They weren’t lovers or anything because Jiko was only a little kid when Sugako was hanged and probably never even got to meet her, but I think she was in love with her the way young girls get crushes on older female pop stars or lady pro wrestlers. Sugako wrote a diary called Reflections on the Way to the Gallows, which I’m supposed to read, too. It’s a great title, but why did these anarchist women have to write so much?
When my dad was little, Grandma Ema used to take him to old Jiko’s temple up north, where she moved after she became a nun, so they got pretty close. Dad said they took me on the train to visit a couple of times when I was a baby, too, but then we moved to Sunnyvale and I didn’t see Jiko again until after they found Dad on the tracks and I learned what kind of man he was.
2.
The Chuo Rapid Express Incident was a major turning point for us, even though we all pretended it never happened. After the incident, Dad started withdrawing from the world and turning into a hikikomori,42 and Mom finally got it that someone in our so-called family was going to have to find a job, and it definitely wasn’t going to be him. She stopped going to the aquarium to watch the jellyfish, got herself a nice suit and a corporate haircut, called up a bunch of her old classmates from university and managed to land a job as an administrative assistant at a publishing house that published academic journals and textbooks. If you know anything about the way Japanese companies work you’d be pretty impressed, because even though the job was an entry-level position and the pay sucked, it was amazing that she got it at all, since she was thirty-nine years old and nobody hires thirty-nine-year-old OLs.43
So now we had Dad hiding out in the apartment, and Mom bringing home the bacon, which left the problem of me. The new school year had started in March, and I had somehow managed to get into the ninth grade, but the ijime was only getting worse. Until then I’d managed to hide all the little scars and pinch-shaped bruises on my arms and legs, but then one night our bathtub broke. It had always leaked and was filled with black mold, but at least we could use it, but when the heating element broke, and the landlord wouldn’t fix it even though he was supposed to be a friend of Dad’s, we had to start going to sento.44
I knew I’d be busted if Mom actually saw me up close and naked, so the first time we went, I was like, No way! Forget it! I’m not taking my clothes off in front of all those old ladies! And I meant it, too. Finally Mom got fed up and left me in the changing room, and eventually I got undressed and followed her in, holding the stupid little crotch towel in front of me and wanting to die. I just remember keeping my eyes on my feet and feeling my face turn bright red when I caught sight of somebody’s nipple by mistake. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my life, going from being a middle-class techno-yuppie’s kid in Sunnyvale, California, to an unemployed loser’s kid in Tokyo, Japan, it’s that a person can get used to anything.
After that first time, I always tried to go while Mom was at work. The nice part of going to sento early is that the tubs aren’t so crowded and you can always find a place at a faucet where you can observe what’s going on. In our neighborhood at that hour, it was mostly just really old grannies and the bar hostesses who were getting ready for work, and they were both fun to peek at.
It was kind of amazing, really. In Sunnyvale, California, you don’t get a lot of chances to see naked ladies, except for porn stars on magazine covers at truck stops, and they’re not exactly what you’d call realistic. And they never show you pictures of really old naked ladies because it’s probably illegal or something, so it was interesting to me in a scientific kind of way. What I mean is, the hostesses were slim and smooth-skinned, and even though their breasts and waists and hips were different sizes, they were all young and looked pretty much the same. But the old ladies . . . om
g! They were totally different sizes and shapes, some with huge fat boobs and others with just flaps of skin and nipples like drawer knobs, and bellies like the skin on top of boiled milk when you push it to the side of the cup. I used to play this game, matching up the hostesses with the old ladies in my mind, trying to imagine which young body would turn into which aged one, and how this cute breast might wither into that sad old flap, and how a stomach would bloat or sag. It was weird, like seeing time pass, but in a Buddhist instant, you know?
I was especially fascinated with the hostesses and all their beauty routines. I used to follow them into the sauna and study the way they scraped dead skin off their bodies with brushes and sticks and shaved their faces with tiny straight razors on pastel-colored wands. What were they shaving? It wasn’t like they had beards or anything. When they walked in, you could tell they’d just woken up, because they yawned a lot and said good morning even though it was late afternoon, but mostly they didn’t talk much, and their eyes were all puffy and bloodshot with hangovers. But after an hour in the bath, they were all warmed up and pink and dewy again, and by the time they were dried off and sitting in the dressing room in their lacy underwear and putting on their makeup, they were laughing and talking about their dates from the night before. After they got to know me, they even teased me about my breasts, which had started to grow, and you’d think I would have been ashamed, but I wasn’t. I was secretly flattered that they even noticed. I admired them. I thought they were pretty and bold and behaved in a liberated way and did exactly what they wanted, which is probably why Mom decided it wasn’t a wholesome environment for me. She started making me wait to go to the baths until after dinner, which is absolutely the worst time because it’s all the boring mothers with obnoxious little kids, and nosy middle-aged aunties with metal-colored hair, who stare at you and make comments about things that are none of their business. And sure enough, one of them noticed my bruises, even though I was hanging back and trying to keep myself covered, and she said in a really loud voice,
“Oh! What happened to you, young lady? Do you have a rash?”
At first Mom didn’t pay any attention, but then the old bitch actually called to her and said, “Okusan, Okusan!45 What is wrong with your daughter’s skin? She’s got butsubutsu46 all over her. I hope she doesn’t have a disease!”
Mom came and stood next to me as I hunched over my bucket. She took my wrist and raised my arm and turned it over, looking at the underside, where the bruises were most dense. Her fingers dug into my wrist bones and it hurt more than when the kids at school pinched me.
“Maybe she shouldn’t be going into the water,” the old bitch said. “If it’s a rash, it could be contagious . . .”
My mom let my arm drop. “Tondemonai,”47 she said. “Those are just bruises from her gym class. They were playing too roughly. Isn’t that right, Naoko?”
I just nodded and concentrated on washing myself and not throwing up or jumping to my feet and running out of there screaming. Mom went back to her basin and didn’t say another word while we finished our baths, but then later on, when we were back at the apartment, she made me go into the bedroom and take off all my clothes again. Dad was still at the baths. The sento was the only outside place he would still go, and he liked to take his time and sometimes enjoy a cold can of beer afterward, so Mom had the whole apartment to herself as she laid into me. She pulled a halogen desk lamp over to where I was standing, and she examined me all over, and for the millionth time I thought I was going to die. She found all the bruises and the little scars and scabs made from the scissor points, and she even found the bald patch at the back of my head where the boy who sat at the desk behind me had been pulling out my hairs, one by one. I tried to lie and say it was an allergy, and then I said it was hair loss from stress, and then I said actually it really was from gym class, and then I suggested it might be hemophilia or leukemia or Von Willebrand’s disease, but Mom didn’t buy any of it, so eventually I had to come clean and tell her what was really going on. I tried not to make a big deal about it, because I didn’t want her going to the school and complaining and making a stink.
“It’s okay, Mom. Really. It’s not personal. You know how kids are. I’m the transfer student. They do the same to everyone.”
She shook her head. “Maybe you’re not trying hard enough to make new friends,” she suggested.
“I have lots of friends, Mom, really. It’s fine.”
She wanted to believe me. I know when we first moved back to Tokyo, she was really worried about me fitting in to a new school, but then she got distracted by the jellyfish, and then by the Chuo Rapid Express Incident, and for a while it seemed like I was the most well-adjusted person in our family. And then once Mom went mainstream and started working a real job, she didn’t have a lot of time to worry about my situation at school, never mind supervise my after-school activities. She didn’t want me hanging out with the hostesses at the baths, but she didn’t want me staying in the house alone with Dad, either, since he was depressed and suicidal. I think she was afraid he might do something crazy like those fathers in America who shoot their children and wives with hunting rifles while they’re asleep in their bedrooms, then go down to the basement and blow their brains out, except that in Japan because of the strict gun-control laws, they usually do it with tubes and duct tape and charcoal briquettes in the family car. I know this because I was already getting into the habit of reading articles in the newspaper about suicides and violent deaths and suffering. I wanted to know as much as possible so I could prepare myself for my dad’s death, but I got kind of addicted to the stories, especially later, when I started reading them out loud to Jiko so she could do that blessing thing with her juzu beads.
Anyway, the point is that compared with what my classmates were doing to me, I knew I’d rather take my chances with Dad after school, especially since we didn’t have a family car, never mind a house with a basement. But Mom wasn’t so sure.
“What about doing more after-school activities?” she suggested. “It’s a new school year. Aren’t you supposed to join a club? Have you consulted with your homeroom teacher? Maybe I should have a talk with him . . .”
You know how it is in cartoons, when a character is surprised and his eyes go zooming out of his sockets like they’re on springs or rubber bands? I swear that’s what happened, and then my jaw hit the floor like the blade of a tractor shovel. I was standing in the middle of our bedroom in my little white cotton underpants and sleeveless undershirt, under the beam of her halogen lamp, and there was this weight in my stomach like a big cold fish was dying just below my heart. I just stared at her, thinking, OMG she’s going to get me killed. She had just examined me all over and seen what my classmates were doing to me, and now she was suggesting that I spend even more time with them after school?
I already thought my father was insane, because this was at a time when I still believed that only insane people try to kill themselves, but at the back of my mind, I guess I was hoping that my mom was normal and okay again, now that she had stopped watching jellyfish and had found a job. But at that moment I knew she was as crazy and unreliable as my father, and her question only proved it, which meant there was nobody left in my life I could count on to keep me safe. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as naked or alone. My knees went all soft as I sank, crouching there, cradling my fish. It thrashed one last time, rising up almost into my throat, and then it flopped back down and just lay there, gasping for air. I held it. It was dying in my arms. I gathered up my clothes from the tatami and put them on, turning away from my mom so I wouldn’t have to watch her face as she stared at my body.
“I’ll be okay, Mom. I’m not really so interested in after-school activities.”
But she wasn’t hearing me. “No,” she said. “You know, I think I will have a talk with your homeroom teacher . . .”
The fish shuddered in the curve of my rib cage. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mom.”
“But Nao-chan, this has got to stop.”
“It will stop. Really, Mom. Just leave it alone.”
But Mom shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t stand by and let this happen to my daughter.” There was something new in her voice, an edge of resolve that sounded very American. It went with her new Hillary Clinton can-do attitude and haircut, and it really scared me.
“Mom, please . . .”
“Shimpai shinakute ii no yo,”she said, giving my shoulders a little hug.
Don’t worry? How stupid is that!
3.
Nothing happened at first, and for a couple of days I thought maybe she’d forgotten or changed her mind. Ever since becoming a hikikomori, Dad had stopped walking me to school, so I went alone, and I’d gotten in the habit of arriving at the very last minute, right as the final bell was ringing. I’d also gotten into the habit of killing time at the little temple on the way, smelling the incense and listening to the birds and insects. I didn’t pray to Lord Buddha because back then I used to think he was like God, and I don’t believe in God, which isn’t surprising given the patheticness of the male authority figures in my life. But old Shaka-sama’s not like that. He never pretended to be anything more than a wise teacher, and I don’t mind praying to him anymore, because it’s just like praying to old Jiko.
In the garden behind the temple, there’s a small hump of green moss with a stunted maple tree growing on top and a stone bench nearby, and I used to sit there and watch the pale green maple buds uncurl into leafy fingers. In the autumn, when the same leaves turned bronze and fell, a monk used to sweep them from the green carpet of moss with a little bamboo broom, and in the spring, he sometimes came out to pick a few weeds. That small green hump was like his own tiny island that he took care of, and more than anything I wished I could shrink myself until I was small enough to live there under the maple tree. It was so peaceful. I used to sit on the bench fantasizing like this until the very last moment when I had to leave the temple’s high walls, where I was safe, and run to school, where I wasn’t, slipping through the gates just as the sound of the last bell faded.