A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

  Next to the video was a link to a burusera fetish141 site where hentais could bid on my blood-stained panties. The auction was scheduled to last for a week, and the bidding was fast, but this time I didn’t feel any satisfaction at my rising hit count. I shut down the computer, remembering to clear the cache in case my dad happened to get curious.

  We still only had the one computer, so I had to share it with my dad. For a long time he never went online, but after his whole obsession with the Falling Man started, he was on all the time. And once the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, that was it. He put away his philosophers and his origami bugs and spent all day following the war, which was really inconvenient because I was dealing with this highly sensitive burusera material, and I didn’t want him snooping on me when I was monitoring the price of my panties. It gave me the creeps. He would lurk around behind me, waiting for his turn, until finally I had to ask him to leave so I could have some privacy. But even then he’d poke his head into the bedroom like every five minutes.

  “Just let me know when you’re off, okay?” he’d say, until finally I gave up and let him have a turn, at which point he’d hog it for hours. When Mom asked him what he was doing, he lied and told her he was looking for a job. She pinched her lips together and turned away before the cutting words escaped from her mouth. She didn’t believe him, and neither did I, because we’d both been checking out his browsing history and we’d seen the websites he was hanging out on. Weapons technology pages. War blogs. Military fan sites. Al Jazeera. Missile footage that looked like first-person shooter games, only grainy and dark. Bombs exploding. Buildings collapsing. Beatings. Bodies.

  2.

  It was me who found him.

  I stopped going to school after the Panty Incident, while the auction was in progress. Instead, I left the house dressed in my school uniform and went to an Internet café, where I could change into street clothes, and either I’d hang out there and watch the bidding and read manga if the weather was bad, or take the train into the city and look at the shops. Then I changed back into my uniform and came home in time for supper.

  The days were getting colder and the leaves on the ginkgo trees that lined the streets were turning to gold. It was raining a lot, too, and the rain knocked the leaves to the ground where they lay plastered on the wet black asphalt like little gilded fans. Ginkgo trees remind me of Jiko, and it always makes me sad to see the leaves and nuts getting crushed under people’s shoes and turning into yellow smears that look and smell like dog shit or vomit.

  On the day the auction was ending I don’t know if I was depressed or nervous, knowing that some disgusting hentai would soon be rejoicing over my panties. It was not a nice feeling, kind of heavy and dirty and blue, so I went to the DIY craft shop in Harajuku to cheer myself up. And it was lucky I did, because that’s when I found my beautiful À la recherche du temps perdu diary, and I remember feeling cheerful on the train home, like as long as I had a secret diary, I could survive.

  But as soon as I let myself in the door with my key, my optimism vanished. I knew something was wrong on account of the smell. The apartment smelled like stinky ginkgo trees. It smelled like the alley on a Saturday morning after the hostesses brought their dates home drunk. It smelled like garbage and throw-up.

  I took off my shoes and stepped up into the kitchen.

  “Tadaima . . . ,” I called. Have I mentioned tadaima? Tadaima means “just now,” and it’s what you say when you come in the door to your home. Just now. Here I am.

  Dad didn’t answer, because, just then, he wasn’t.

  He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the living room. Volume I of The Great Minds of Western Philosophy was sitting on the table, and the television was off. This was a detail I especially noticed because he always had the television tuned to CNN or BBC so he could catch the latest breaking news about the war. But the screen was blank and the room was silent. He wasn’t in the bedroom, either.

  I found him in the toilet. He was lying on the floor, facedown in a puddle of vomit, and I wish I could tell you that I rushed to his side to help him, but I didn’t. I walked in and saw him and gagged on the smell, and then this big empty space opened up in time when everything was quiet and still. I think I may have said “Oh, sorry” or something stupid like that and then backed up and closed the door behind me.

  I stood there for a while, staring at the door. It was like I’d walked in on him while he was taking a dump and caught sight of his penis or something. I can’t explain it. It felt so private and personal, him lying there, and I just knew he wouldn’t want me to see him like that, so I backed across the hallway and sank down against the wall until I was sitting on the floor.

  “Dad?” I asked, but my voice sounded like it was coming from another person who lived far away. “Dad?”

  He didn’t answer. I had my keitai on a chain around my neck so I called 911, and then I remembered that in Japan the emergency number is 119, so I called that instead, and then I sat there until the ambulance came. The paramedics put him on a stretcher and took him away. I asked if my dad was dead, and they said no. I asked if he was going to be okay, but they wouldn’t tell me. They wouldn’t let me ride with him. They wanted to call for a policewoman to keep me company until my mom came home, but I told them I was almost sixteen and used to being alone. The apartment was really quiet when they were gone. I stared at the card in my hand. The paramedic had written the name of the hospital where they were taking him on it, but I didn’t know how to get there by train. I called my mom’s number but just got her voicemail, so I tried leaving a message.

  “It’s me.”

  I hate talking to machines, so I hung up and texted her instead.

  “Dad vomited and passed out. He’s at N—Hospital in T—Ward.”

  What else was there to say?

  I was thirsty. I went to the refrigerator to get a glass of milk, but the smell from Dad’s throw-up got mixed up with the taste of the milk so I had to pour it down the sink. The milk made a thick white puddle on the stainless steel that trickled down the drain, leaving a pale film. I turned on the taps to rinse it off with water, and then washed the glass and wiped down the sink. I thought maybe I should clean up Dad’s mess while I was at it, so I got a bucket and a mop from the balcony. The smell was still sick-making, so I tied a clean dish towel around my mouth and nose and went into the toilet.

  The vomit was clear but kind of yellowish, with melting white lumps in it that looked like little sugar candies. One of the paramedics had noticed them, too. He’d put on rubber gloves and scooped up a whole bunch of them with a little scraper from his kit and put them into a tube with a stopper.

  “Is your father taking any medications?” he asked me.

  I didn’t know. The other paramedics were trying to get my dad and the stretcher down the narrow hallway. The man looked quickly around the base of the toilet and then in the trash can.

  “Do you know where he kept his medicines?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to get Dad in trouble, so I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s important,” the paramedic said.

  I pointed to the medicine cabinet and he opened it, but there was nothing inside except for the usual stuff: aspirin, Band-Aids, some laxative and hemorrhoid cream, and a bunch of my mom’s hair products.

  The other medics were wheeling my dad out the door.

  “Where’s the bedroom?”

  I led him down the hallway. The curtains were drawn, so the room was pretty dark. The only light was coming from the computer in the corner and my Hello Kitty screensaver that was making everything pinkish. The pinkish futon was lying on the floor, neatly laid out, like someone had just gone to bed and then gotten up again because they’d forgotten to turn off a light. Next to the pinkish pillow was a glass, and a half-empty pitcher of water, and an empty bottle of pills. The paramedic put the bottle into another plastic bag and headed toward the door. He turned back and gave me the card and then looked at me closely.


  “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said in the faraway voice that didn’t sound like mine. I tried to smile at him, but he was already out the door and running down the corridor.

  The vomit on the floor had dried up a little. I went back into the kitchen and got an empty guava juice carton from the trash and cut it open with a pair of scissors, and then I used the edge of the cardboard to scrape the goo off the floor and into the toilet. I’ve seen enough cop shows on TV to know that I was destroying evidence, but I didn’t need evidence. I knew what had happened, and I knew everyone would be happier if we just pretended like it was an accident. Silly Dad. Careless Dad. Accident-prone Dad. Then I thought of something else.

  I put the guava juice carton in a plastic bag and went downstairs to throw it in the garbage can on the street. When I got back to the apartment, I locked the door behind me. Volume I of The Great Minds of Western Philosophy was sitting on the table, but he had finished the Hellenists a long time ago, so I knew something was wrong. I found the note tucked inside the chapter called “The Death of Socrates,” on a sheet of my Gloomy Bear stationery, folded neatly in thirds. I pulled it out. There was no name on the note, so I wondered if he meant for me to find it, or Mom, or both of us, or maybe he just wrote it for himself. I didn’t want to read it just then, so I folded it back up and put it in the pocket of my school blazer.

  Here is what I thought: If I read this note and he is already dead, then I will know that he was serious this time and really meant to die, and it was my fault for being harsh and mean to him. And if he isn’t already dead, then reading the note might kill him, and it will still be my fault.

  It made no logical sense, but that’s what I thought at the time, and I knew that whatever I did, I would feel crummy. I was still wearing my school uniform. I went to the bedroom and changed into jeans and a hoodie, transferring the note to my sweatshirt pocket, and then went back to the toilet to finish mopping up. Two nasty Toilet Incidents in one week. Weird.

  Mom called from her office. She’d been in a meeting. She made me describe what had happened and exactly what I’d seen, and then she made me read the name of the hospital and the address and phone number off the card. Then she asked me if I was going to be okay by myself.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Did Dad leave you any food?”

  “I’m not hungry.” Probably I would never eat again.

  “I’ll call you from the hospital. Wait for me. Don’t go out.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  I wanted to tell her about the note but I didn’t know if I should.

  “What is it, Naoko?” Her voice was strained. She wanted to get going.

  “Nothing.”

  We hung up. I took the note out of my hoodie pocket. Maybe I was wrong. It wasn’t addressed to anyone, so maybe it wasn’t a note at all. I unfolded it. There were two sentences on it in my dad’s passionate manic handwriting. The first one said this:

  I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and hugged it when it has no more to offer.

  I recognized the sentence. It was what Socrates said to his friend Crito just before he drank the poison hemlock. Crito was stalling, trying to get Socrates to hold off a little longer. He was like, “What’s the big hurry? There’s still lots of time. Why not hang out and have some dinner and enjoy a couple glasses of wine with us?” But Socrates was like, “Forget it. I don’t want to feel like an idiot. Let’s get this over with,” and so he did. Dad really liked that story and told it to me one afternoon. He had some theory about how it exemplified the Western Mind, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. I just remember he pronounced Crito like Kuritto, and I liked the way it sounded. Like a cracker breaking in half, or crickets in the grass.

  Underneath the first sentence was a second.

  I should only make myself ridiculous in the eyes of others if I clung to life and hugged it when I have no more to offer.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. I went back into the bedroom. Hello Kitty glowed pinkly at me from the screensaver, but when I woke the computer up, Hello Kitty disappeared, and I was staring at the bursera hentai website, at the page with my panties for sale. I had forgotten to clear the cache in the web browser. He must have seen it. The auction was over. Someone named Lolicom73 had won. I looked at the bidding history. It had reached a peak and flattened out, but in the final hour, a new bidder named C.imperator had jumped in, and there was a flurry of raising and counter-raising, but with just two seconds to go, Lolicom73 beat C.imperator’s last bid.

  Lolicom73 was the proud owner of my panties. C.imperator had lost. I went to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet and threw up, but at least I did it neatly into the bowl.

  I went back into the living room. The note was still sitting on top of the book where I’d left it. I picked it up and crumpled it in my fist and threw it across the room, but it just bounced off the sofa and landed on the rug. I wanted it to be a rock or a bomb. I wanted it to blow a huge hole in the middle of our living room or blow up the whole stupid building. But I didn’t have a bomb, so I picked up Volume I of The Great Minds of Western Philosophy instead and heaved it at the glass balcony door. It was a heavy book, but the glass was strong, and the book bounced off and landed facedown on the floor. This made me even madder, so I picked it up again, only this time I opened the sliding door before I threw it. As I watched the Hellenists go sailing out over the balcony rail, pages fluttering like the underfeathers of the last archaeopteryx, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I listened for what seemed like many moments for the tiny thud to come.

  “Hey!”

  I froze. The voice was coming from the street below.

  “Hey! Don’t try to hide yourself. I know you’re up there!”

  It was a young female voice and it didn’t sound too angry, so I stepped onto the balcony, and peered down over the rail. A pretty round face looked up at me. It was one of the hostesses who lived in the neighborhood. I recognized her from the public baths. She always had a smile for me, and now she recognized me, too.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She was holding the book in her hands. “You drop this?”

  She looked uninjured so I nodded.

  “You should be more careful,” she said, like it was no big deal. “You could kill somebody.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. My voice still wasn’t working very well, so I don’t know if she heard me or not.

  “I’ll just leave it here, okay?” She placed it on the low cinder-block wall that ran between the sidewalk and the building. “You better come down and pick it up or someone might take it.” She looked at the title. “Or maybe not. Anyway, I’ll just leave it here, okay?”

  “Thank you!” I whispered, but she had already rounded the corner and disappeared.

  They pumped Dad’s stomach to make sure they got all the pills out, and he didn’t die after all, and in fact, it wasn’t even close. Mom got home from the hospital and told me he was going to be fine. I didn’t tell her about the note in Socrates.

  When Dad was discharged, we all sat down in the living room for another heart to heart, or maybe you could call it a family debriefing. Dad spoke dully, like he’d memorized his lines and didn’t believe them. He apologized to me. He said it was an accident, that he was so tired, but he couldn’t sleep. He lost track of how many pills he had taken. It wouldn’t happen again. He didn’t mention the note or the auction.

  My mom watched his performance carefully, and when he got to the end, she sounded so relieved. “Of course it was an accident,” she said, appealing to me. “We knew that, didn’t we, Nao?”

  She turned back to Dad and started scolding him. “Silly Papa! How could you be so careless? From now on, Naoko and I will keep all your medications safe for you and you must ask us if you need a pill. Isn’t that right, Nao-chan?”

  Don’t drag me into this, I thought, but I just
picked at my split ends and nodded. I couldn’t bear to look at either of them. After the debriefing was over and Mom went to bed, I handed Dad a sheet of Gloomy Bear stationery, folded neatly in thirds. It looked exactly like his Socrates note, and he turned pale and opened and closed his mouth like a dying fish.

  “You better read it,” I said.

  He unfolded it and read. It was two sentences long. When he finished, he nodded and folded it up again. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right.”

  Here’s what my first sentence said:

  Your uncle Haruki #1 would not keep screwing up like this.

  And here’s the second:

  If you’re going to do something, please do it properly.

  Sometimes you have to say what’s on your mind.

  That night, when my parents were finally asleep, I sneaked into the bathroom with a pair of scissors and the electric clipper my mom bought to give Dad haircuts when he still cared about grooming and personal hygiene and employment and stuff. In the cold bathroom light, I chopped off my hair in chunks. It took me a long time to cut it all off until it was short enough to buzz. I plugged in the electric clipper and turned it on. It was so loud! I switched it off quickly and listened, but there was no sound from the bedroom, so I closed the door and wrapped the clipper in a towel to muffle the sound of the motor. When I was done with the buzzing, I cleaned up all my long hair and hid it in a paper bag in the trash, then wiped the sink with toilet paper. I covered my bare head with my hoodie and crawled back into my futon. It was such a weird feeling, and I had to keep reaching up to touch my head.

  I sat zazen under my covers for the rest of the night, and as soon as the sky grew light, I got dressed and left the apartment. I was wearing my hoodie under my school blazer, which is totally against the rules, but I had to hide my naked head. Since it was so early, I bought a can of hot coffee from a vending machine and went to sit on the stone bench in the temple garden to kill some time. The monk came out to rake the gravel. He glanced up and saw me. Maybe he understood what I had going on under my hoodie because something passed between us and he nodded to me. I set my can of coffee on the bench and stood up and pulled my hood off, and then I bowed to him, a proper Buddhist bow, with my palms pressed together, nice and deep like Jiko taught me. When I straightened up, I saw he’d stopped raking and was returning my bow properly, too. That made me feel good, and it’s why I like monks and nuns so much. They know how to be polite to everyone, regardless of how fucked-up she might be.