If You Follow Me

by Malena Watrous

“Avoid risky behavior,” I read the caption. “Do you understand?”

  He ignores me as usual, unzipping his jumpsuit and peeling it off.

  “Dame!” I say. That’s forbidden. “Keep your clothes on!”

  “Atsui yo,” it’s hot, he says, and he’s right. The windowless portable classroom feels like a sauna, rank with the mingled smells of B.O., hairspray, and the dried guppies that the boys like to snack on. As usual, Nakajima’s classmates follow his example, stripping to their underwear, sprawling in their seats, fanning themselves with the worksheets I placed on each desk before they got here.

  “Today we are studying safe sex,” I say in Japanese, hoping that I got the phrase right. When I looked up “intercourse” in the dictionary, I found sekkusu, a word imported from the English. I understand why sekkuhara or “sexual harassment” had to be brought over from English, but sekkusu? What did they call sex before?

  “Where’s Miyoshi?” asks Sumio, picking at his infected nipple piercing.

  “He couldn’t be here today,” I say. “He has some important business to take care of.” I stare at Nakajima, wondering if he has any idea what his girlfriend is doing. He takes a plastic pick out of his pocket and begins fluffing out his Afro-perm. His hair, bleached a coppery shade of orange, looks like a dandelion gone to seed.

  “We scared him off,” he jeers.

  “You are not scary,” I say. “But you are dangerous.”

  “Dangerous-o!” the boys repeat after me. This is the one English word they all know, their equivalent of the girls’ favorite word: “cute-o.”

  “Sumio,” I say. “On a scale from one to ten, if one is very safe, and ten is very dangerous, how risky is French kissing?” I approximate this in Japanese.

  “Dangerous-o,” he says. “Ten!”

  “Come on,” I say. “Kissing is not that dangerous. You could catch a cold, or maybe herpes, but it’s a lot less risky than other sexual acts.”

  “Dangerous-o,” he says again. “After you kiss a girl, she sticks to you like rice.”

  All of the boys crack up, Nakajima the hardest of all.

  “Let’s skip to number eight,” I say, standing beside him. His skin looks even darker than usual, tanned from daily sumo practice. “Unprotected vaginal intercourse,” I say. “What does that mean, Nakajima?”

  “Penis without condom comes inside vagina,” he reads in a monotone.

  “Do you know what a penis is, Nakajima?”

  “Yes,” he says, spreading his legs ever so slowly, making the boys laugh again.

  I lean forward, careful not to touch him as I reach into his desk. The banana is still in the bento box, more black than yellow now. From my pocket I pull out a condom that I bought from the vending machine behind the grocery store this morning, while every passing car slowed down to watch. “Please put this on your banana,” I say. He crosses his arms and glowers. “Maybe you can’t,” I push him. “Maybe you don’t know how. Let me show you.”

  I rip open the wrapper, pull out the condom, which is slimy with lube, and try to shove it in his hand. He resists, but I am stronger, forcing his fingers around the condom and the condom over the banana, squeezing so hard that the banana spurts out of its jacket, splattering white goo all over our fingers, my shirt, his Afro-perm. It’s such a stupid moment, the punch line to such a dumb joke, but the boys have laughed at dumber ones, and I’m surprised when they remain silent. Then I realize that they’re looking behind us, where a square of sunlight is spreading across the floor. The classroom door is open, and people are standing there.

  “Miss Marina,” an oddly uninflected male voice says. “We. Have. Visitors. Today. From. America.”

  I turn around to see the Japanese mayor—Miyoshi-sensei’s dad—standing beside a petite blond woman with a baby strapped to her chest, facing out. The baby has her mom’s sharply bowed lips, round face, and blue eyes, but her skin is nut brown and her hair is a wild tangle of coppery curls. Standing next to them is a trim, light-skinned African-American man with a bald, shiny head. He blots his face with a handkerchief as he enters the classroom, followed by a scrawny boy of eleven or twelve wearing pants so baggy that it seems like he could walk right out of them.

  “What’s going on here?” the man asks, looking at the posters with a frown.

  “Nothing,” I say. “We were just in the middle of an English lesson.”

  “What. Are. You. Teaching.” Mayor Miyoshi says. His voice box doesn’t allow for subtleties of tone, but his expression is appalled. The school principal, by contrast, is smiling hysterically.

  “Prepositions?” I say.

  “You’ve got a funny way of teaching English,” the American mayor says.

  “We’re trying to make it useful,” I say. “Useful and fun.” I hope the principal catches these words.

  “I think they used these same posters in my sex-ed class,” says the woman.

  “Sex. Ed.” the Japanese mayor repeats. “You. Teach. Sex. Ed.”

  “I think Hiro got these posters in California,” I explain nervously. “He said that he pulled them out of a trash can at a school in Eureka.”

  “That sounds like Hiro,” she says. “He was always collecting weird souvenirs from the trash, asking me what it all ‘signified.’ What did he used to call them?”

  “Curiosity objects?” I guess.

  “That’s right!” she says. As she laughs again, the baby laughs too, kicking her feet against her mother’s belly. “I’m Kathy,” she introduces herself, “and that’s my husband, Benedict, and Ben Junior, and this little person attached to me is Phoebe.” I introduce myself and she asks where Hiro is. “I can’t wait to see him,” she says.

  “He had to run an errand today,” I say.

  “That’s too bad,” she says. “Can you believe it’s been fifteen years? I wonder if he’ll even recognize me without my big bangs.” She laughs again, glancing at her husband, who is stroking the narrow band of hair encircling his upper lip and chin as he scrutinizes the boys. No, not the boys. Nakajima. I watch him take it all in: the giant Afro-perm, the synthetically darkened skin, the gangsta medallion and the notebook scrawled with the words BLACK FACE over a drawing of a clenched brown fist.

  “I think I’ve seen enough here,” he says.

  When Miyoshi-sensei arrives at my house, he is wearing a small pink gingham backpack and I smile before remembering why he’s here, whose backpack he must be carrying. It takes five minutes for Ritsuko to cover the distance from the car to the door. She is walking like a very old person, but she looks terribly young in her gym suit and pigtails. She bows and says, “Ojamashimasu.” The formal greeting upon entering someone else’s house translates literally: “I’m in your way.” Miyoshi-sensei crouches to untie her sneakers, easing them off her feet, then stashing them in the shoe rack next to his own.

  “How are you?” I say.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” she says.

  But she doesn’t look fine, and I’m scared by the thought of the long night ahead, the two of us alone. I know so few words of comfort in Japanese. Or in English, for that matter. She winces as she sits on the couch.

  “Do you want another blanket?” I ask. “Some tea? A magazine?”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” she insists, tucking her legs beneath her.

  Miyoshi-sensei beckons me into the kitchen. “I brought sushi,” he says, holding up a plastic bag. “So you won’t have to cook. Also, for us, sushi is a kind of comfort food.” He begins to divide the sushi between two plates.

  “Won’t you stay and eat with us?” I ask, not wanting him to leave.

  “I can’t,” he says. “I must dine with my father and the visiting mayor.” I note that he doesn’t mention Kathy. “How was class today?”

  “Well…” I hesitate, “the mayor and his family stopped by for a surprise visit.”

  “I know,” he says, squeezing soy sauce into a saucer.

  “You do?” I ask, assuming that his father must have
told him what happened, and relieved that he’s not more upset.

  “I arranged for this visit. I knew the boys wouldn’t be rude in front of them.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I wish you’d told me.” Warned me, I mean.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I had many things on my mind.”

  “Kathy was sad to miss you.”

  “Mmm,” he nods.

  “She said she’s changed a lot. What was she like before?”

  “Kind of itazurako,” he says. “Like a bad girl. Wild and rebelling. I felt surprised to learn she married a town mayor.” He hands me the soy sauce and leads the way into the living room, carrying the sushi. Then he kneels beside Ritsuko, telling her that she should really try to eat something. She sits up and reaches for a piece of tuna sushi, chewing slowly as if even her teeth hurt.

  “Can I have cup of water?” she says in a small voice. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” I say quickly. “You can have anything you want.”

  “No,” she says. “I mean, is ‘can I have cup of water’ okay English?”

  “You don’t have to speak English,” I say. “Just relax. Speak Japanese.” For the first time since she got here, her eyes fill with tears. Miyoshi-sensei presents her with his handkerchief, its corner monogrammed with the characters for his name. I wonder who made it for him. His mom? “You should say, ‘May I have a glass of water,’” he tells her.

  “May I have a glass of water,” she repeats.

  “Good,” he says. “That’s correct. Very good pronunciation, ne?”

  And this is how he comforts her. He is her teacher, and she is his responsibility, and he takes care of her simply by sitting next to her—beside her, with her—while I slip into the kitchen to get that glass of water she asked for correctly. Only there are no glasses in the cupboard, and none in the sink either. I remember seeing more Mickey Mouse beer steins in the box in storage. But while the box is still there, it’s now filled with uniforms. I call out to Miyoshi-sensei, who joins me in the storage area, and I open one box after another to show him my find. He takes it all in, then pushes aside two boxes and presses his face to a rusted out patch in the aluminum siding.

  “He can see you coming and going,” he says. “He knows when you’re home and when you’re gone, so he can enter without detection…”

  “Nakajima?” I ask, shuddering.

  “No,” he says, shifting the box to block the hole. “Haruki.”

  “Is he still upset because we got him in trouble about the cat?”

  “What cat?” Miyoshi-sensei says.

  “The one he trapped in the broken refrigerator.”

  “Your refrigerator was never broken,” he says. “That is why Haruki got in trouble. For doing this same thing many times. Entering your house. Sometimes unplugging your refrigerator. He wanted to sabotage you.”

  “But why did he take the technical boys’ uniforms?” I ask.

  “Maybe you guessed correctly that those boys bullied Haruki. Maybe he felt relief when they stopped coming to school. Maybe, when they returned every afternoon for your special English class, he blamed you. He hoped that without uniform, they couldn’t come to school anymore. Or you would feel frighten and refuse to teach them. Then they would go away, and he could be a stone again.”

  “They must have treated him terribly, to make him like this.”

  “They did not make him like this,” he says. “When I was a boy, I also received ijime. Bullying. But I am not like this, ne? I am not stone.”

  We are standing side by side, both facing the wall of boxes, when I feel the back of his hand brush against the back of mine. For just a moment we are closer than next to, closer than near. There is a call and response between my body and his body, a language beneath the skin. Then he pulls away. He buries his hands in his pockets, opens the door, and I follow him out of the storage area. In the living room, Ritsuko is already asleep on the couch. He pulls the blanket up over her, tucking her in.

  The sun wakes me up before The Four Seasons. Downstairs, Ritsuko is sitting up on the couch, watching a videotaped ER episode. “Call it,” a nurse yells at a doctor, who is slamming his electrified paddles against a patient’s exposed chest. “He’s gone! Call it!”

  “Good morning,” I say. “Did you sleep well?” Immediately I regret the question. But she nods and flicks the TV off, standing up as if we were in class and I had just called on her. I ask what she’d like for breakfast, offering to make rice and miso soup, hoping she won’t mind that it’s from a package, but she says that she’d like to try American breakfast.

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll make you some pancakes.”

  “I love hottokeki,” she says. “Can you show me how?”

  So I guide her through the steps, measuring flour into a bowl, cracking eggs, adding milk and melted butter, ladling the batter into a pan and telling her to watch for tiny bubbles that break without filling in. It’s fun to cook with her, a relief to have something to do together. Again I almost forget why she’s here. The first hottokeki is sizzling in a pan, turning golden at the edges, when I hear the cell phone start to ring from inside the storage area. I heard he sang a sweet song… I can’t believe that it still has power. Ritsuko freezes at the sound, holding her spatula in midair like a flyswatter.

  “I know this phone,” she says.

  “It’s Nakajima’s,” I say. “I took it from him in English class.”

  “He took it from me,” she says.

  “It’s yours?” I ask, and she nods. “Why did Nakajima have it?”

  “He wants to know who calls me. He is very jealous boy.”

  I go into the storage area and bring her the ringing phone. Next to the number flashing on the digital display are the letters: JYO. I hold it out to Ritsuko, who shakes her head after glimpsing the caller ID. “I don’t want to talk to him,” she says adamantly. Not sure what to do, I return the phone to the box in the storage area. She ladles another circle of batter into the pan and watches it cook. At the back of the refrigerator I find an old bottle of maple syrup, just a crystallized inch remaining, hard as amber. I place this on the table next to a crumb-studded stick of butter and two pairs of disposable chopsticks in their paper sleeves.

  “Is this how to eat hottokeki in America?” Ritsuko asks.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I couldn’t find any forks.”

  She nods, then uses the tip of a chopstick to perforate a bite-sized wedge. “Thank you,” she says, looking down as she swirls the bite in syrup.

  “You made them,” I say.

  “I mean for taking me,” she says. “I could not go home.”

  “It’s nothing,” I say. “I wanted to. I’m glad I could help. And I’m sorry.”

  “Why you are sorry?”

  “I’m sorry for what you had to go through.”

  “Go through?”

  “I’m sorry for what you lost,” I try. “I’m sorry that you had to be alone.”

  “But I wanted to be alone,” she says. “I want to be alone.”

  “Good,” I say. “That’s good.” She is chewing her first bite when I ask the question that’s none of my business. “Was Joe the father?” She finishes chewing, swallows, then takes a long drink of milk.

  “Maybe,” she says at last.

  “Does that mean yes?” I press. “Because if he was, then you should really tell someone. It’s wrong. You’re sixteen years old. And he was your teacher.”

  “Does maybe mean yes in English?” she asks me.

  “No,” I say.

  “Maybe means no?”

  “Maybe means maybe. It’s an expression of uncertainty. Like ‘I don’t know.’”

  “This is what I mean too. Maybe Nakajima was father. Maybe Joe. I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  “Boyfriend was Nakajima,” she says with a sigh. “In December, I tried to end it. But he was so sad. He begged to try again. He said he lo
ves me. If he loses me he will have nothing. He will hurt himself. So I say we can get back together. I don’t want him to be so sad. I think it’s easier to end it when I go to California. But he doesn’t want me to go. He tells me he will die without me.” She stabs at a pancake with the tip of her chopstick. “So I cheated. I did what I wanted. I am very selfish girl. Now I only want to be alone.”

  “You are not selfish,” I say. “You’re young and smart and your life is just beginning. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be alone. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But I feel sad.”

  “I know,” I say. “Of course you do. But you did the right thing.”

  “I know,” she says. “Why are you crying?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  faito: (N.) fight

  On the lawn in front of the museum of nuclear power, a makeshift wooden stage faces tarps spread across the grass in lines neat as ruled notebook paper. High school girls wearing aprons over their school uniforms carry trays of beer and tea, squid threaded onto skewers, and lurid, glistening red wieners. Keiko and her boys are sitting on a tarp toward the back. When I wave, Keiko beckons me to join their little group.

  “You look…” she says.

  “Ridiculous,” I say. Sakura insisted that many women would come to the festival dressed in kimono, but the only other person wearing one is the heavily made-up old lady singing twangy enka ballads on stage. I sit with my legs stretched in front of me, peeling back the kimono hem to show Keiko the shorts I have on underneath. I tell her that I couldn’t put on the obi by myself, and she admits that she doesn’t know how to tie one either. Koji scoots onto my lap, plants his feet on either side of me and leans back. I press my chin against the top of his head and wrap my arms around his solid, warm little body. Fumiya sits cross-legged, clucking his tongue like a metronome, tilting his face to the sun, blinking against the glare.

  “Where’s Yuji?” I ask.

  “New York,” Keiko says.

  “At his medical conference?”

  “Probably playing golf.”

  “I don’t think there’s much golf in New York City,” I say.