There was an instant between the hearing the bone break and feeling the pain. During that moment I wondered if he and I might be the same. Life was so ridiculous to both of us. The only difference was that I wanted to end mine and he wanted to hurt someone.
We were both idiots.
Then there was the trip home from the hospital. The way my mother behaved disgusted me. She was acting hysterical, trying to force me to get into a taxi. I used all the energy I had left to refuse. What would we talk about closed up together in the back of a cab? A train was definitely better. I knew it wouldn’t be crowded at that time of day; my injured arm wouldn’t be jostled around.
But it was on the train that I saw him: a photocopy of myself as I had been in the not-so-distant past, an empty-eyed boy whose mother had just put him on the train. He was still in grade school. He carried a bag filled with homework for cram school. His mother, on the station platform, held an empty fast-food sack and the kid’s school satchel.
I gazed at the black satchel as the train pulled away. The whole scene made me sick. I realized that it was exactly the way I had looked before the entrance exams. My head had been completely filled with knowledge I needed to pass the tests and my stomach full of artificial flavors and colorings. Even then, I still had done everything I could to meet my parents’ expectations.
That was when it hit me. This was how the future of our country was created. This was the life of Japan’s youth. My life.
What was the meaning of a life spent doing nothing but fulfilling the expectations of our parents? What was so fun that anyone would intentionally choose it?
As we sat in the half-empty train car, Mom’s next words just added fuel to the fire.
“He’s just like you were, Kai. You’ve already got what you wanted, though. But you know, you can’t relax just because you got into a top school. We’ve got plans for you for high school, university—I wonder where you’ll end up working.” She smiled just thinking of the possibilities. “You’ve got to keep at it!”
Shut up! The only reason I didn’t say it out loud was because the blood rushing to my head made my arm hurt. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and my arm hurt worse than ever.
What do you mean, what I wanted? Who wanted it? It was you! Not me! What exactly do you mean you have expectations for me? Does it mean that anything Maika does is meaningless because you have no expectations for her? Here Mom was fussing over me, but what about the way she treated her daughter? Was Maika no more than an afterthought? Can you really call yourself Maika’s mother? I wanted to scream.
I swallowed my words and went back to thoughts of how meaningless my own life was. I knew such thoughts put me on the same level as the idiot who pushed me down the stairs, but I was feeling I couldn’t take it anymore. I could see myself going crazy. Wouldn’t it be better to just lower the curtain on it all?
It was the next weekend that we all went to the zoo. I was still depressed and thinking morbid thoughts.
If I got into the lions’ cage, would they rip me apart with their teeth? How about crocodiles? I was sure I’d heard that hippos could be violent. Giraffes not so much probably. Now elephants . . .
I stood staring at one of the elephants near us and thinking about what it might be capable of when Maika spoke up.
“Why is that elephant crying?”
“Is it crying?”
“Yeah, look. It must be sad. It’s so big, it can probably see much more than I can. That must be why it’s sad.”
What was she talking about? I looked over at Maika; tears were streaming down her face.
I was so surprised I didn’t know what to do. Then she spoke again.
“Don’t cry. I’ll cry for you so you can stop,” she called out to the elephant in the cage.
My mother looked over at Maika and clucked her tongue in irritation. But my sister continued to cry.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I’d never known how beautiful tears shed for someone else could be. It was in that instant that I discovered something that I would happily live for. I would protect Maika. If my useless mother couldn’t do it, I would be the one to stand by my sister. I’d be a good big brother.
And that was why I would have to play the good son—at least for now.
Maika cried for a while longer. Whether the tears were for the elephant, for herself, or for me, I didn’t know. But it occurred to me that Maika had been leading a life as miserable as mine. While I was being pushed to achieve, nothing was expected of her. While Mom suffocated me with attention, Maika was dying inside for lack of it. It wasn’t right. I might be the only one who knew it and the only one who could do anything about it.
Even with my arm in a cast, I threw myself into my studies as never before. It wasn’t for my mother; I was doing it for myself. I had to make myself into a man who would always be there for his sister.
Studying for the first time ever because I wanted to, I realized I enjoyed it. Nobody was making me do it. I found I could work for hours on end.
By the time finals rolled around I was able to write again. After the teachers had finished grading, the school ranked all of the students in order by test scores and posted the results. I did better than the guy who had shoved me down the stairs. My scores were up and his seemed to be down. I was standing there when he walked up to look for his own position in the rankings and then mine. He went pale and quickly walked away. I was proud. I could finally say that I was different from him. Looking back now, I can’t even remember his name or what he looked like.
All these old memories came back to me the other night when Maika, now fifteen, knocked on the door of my room as I sat at my desk as usual, now studying for university entrance exams. Her eyes looked as sad as the day she had watched the elephant in the cage. She sat on my bed and began to talk about how she was ready to give up on life—just the way I had felt back then. She was devastated by the way Mom was still treating her. And what was worse, she seemed certain she’d never be anything but a failure. What’s the point of going on? she said. She frightened me. I had to find a way to stop her thinking that way. Without Maika, I wouldn’t have anything to live for. But how can a seventeen-year-old boy say that to his little sister?
In my confusion, I started talking about Isaac Newton. “Newton discovered the law of gravity. We can do the same; we can do anything.” It was a line one of my classmates had famously used in grade school—not that I was sure if anyone else had been impressed by it or could still remember him saying it right before the annual class relay race had begun, when the runners were getting psyched up. I’m sure fewer than half the class even heard it.
But the words had stayed with me. I had mumbled them to myself just before junior high entrance exams began. Now I couldn’t even remember the name of the guy who had said it, nor did I rely on those words the way I used to. But here, trying to encourage my sister, they just came out.
I could see I wasn’t making sense to Maika, so I began to talk about the elephant we’d seen all those years ago.
“Maika, do you remember that day Mom took us to the zoo after I broke my arm?”
Maika shook her head.
“Well, we saw the elephants and you saw one of them with tears in its eyes. You were so sad that it made you cry. You told the elephant that you’d cry instead, so it could stop. You said it must be sad because it could see so much.”
Maika nodded uncertainly. I had to make her remember.
“They’re so big, the elephants. It’s just like you said then. They can see far, far away. They can see things happening over the ocean. And of course the one we saw in the zoo saw you there—and it probably still can see you—and how sad you are. For all we know it’s crying in its cage.”
Maika smiled at me. She was fifteen, and we both knew she wouldn’t believe a story like that, but she seemed willing to go along with my attempts to cheer her up.
“So the elephant can see me here, talking to you?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Maika, I know things are tough for you right now.”
Maika looked up, maybe surprised that I even cared.
“Kai . . .”
“I’m not blind. I see what’s going on with you and Mom. I want to be like that elephant, always keeping an eye on you.
Maika looked at me for a second, almost as if she wanted to believe me. Then she lowered her eyes and frowned. “Mom doesn’t care about me. She’d never let you get away with that.”
I thought about my mother and how, over the years, she’d managed to drive my sister to such desperation. But I didn’t hate her as much as I used to. I was beginning to understand how childish Mom was and why she always took everything out on Maika.
“Maika, do you remember that time Grandma came to visit and she said that you reminded her of Mom when she was young?”
Maika nodded, “Yeah, there was that one time, wasn’t there?”
“Grandma said Mom never did well in school and she was always getting scolded. Don’t you see?”
“See what?” Maika frowned.
“Mom looks at you and sees herself—she never expected anything of herself either. It’s not that complicated. Adults don’t always grow up just because they get older. But you’re not Mom.”
Maika was paying attention now, so I went on.
“Right? It’s true: Newton discovered the law of gravity. We’re the same; we can do anything. No matter what Mom thinks or anyone else says.
“I am going to protect you until you figure out what you can do. One day we’ll look back and laugh at all the awful things that have happened. So don’t cry.”
Maika wiped her eyes and smiled. She looked exhausted as she lowered her head onto my bed. I turned back to my books, and it wasn’t long before I could hear her even breathing. She was asleep. Together we had smoothed over Maika’s sadness. We had done it! And I was prepared to do it again, as many times as it took.
Then I heard her mumble something in her sleep. The words weren’t clear, but it sounded like, “Don’t cry. I’ll cry for you. . . .”
The words that had meant everything to me. She hadn’t forgotten them after all. Just knowing that was enough to make me happy.
The Mountain Drum
by Chloë Dalby
“Hyaku-monogatari-tte, shiteru? ”
Her father sank his weight into his makeshift tree-trunk seat. Besides the haze of the sky above, their lantern was the only light on the mountainside. She didn’t say anything. He asked again.
“Ne, have you heard of the hyaku-monogatari ?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a game everyone used to play. Laborers, aristocrats, everyone liked to get together and tell stories.”
“What stories?” She cut him off. The trees that grew in a twined canopy over their heads gave little heaves side to side as a breeze picked up around them. The lantern’s flame dipped and flickered, and the darkness that surrounded their illuminated circle crept inward.
“Ghost stories.” he answered. “Legends about obake and yokai, tales about the strange, the supernatural.”
“Hardly anyone still believes in yokai,” she said, picking at her fingernails.
Her father continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Everyone would bring a single candle, and light them in a circle. As each person told a story, a candle was extinguished—until it was very late at night. After the hundredth story, when everyone was good and scared, the last candle would be extinguished.”
The trees creaked ten te-ke-ke-ke-ke as a vigorous gust of wind swept up from the wide river at the foot of the mountains. The lantern’s light bobbed wildly.
“And in that darkness you could expect to see something supernatural with your own eyes.”
“Are you trying to scare me or something?” She asked as she stood slowly, trying not to slip on the dead leaves and branches under her feet.
“If I were trying to scare you, wouldn’t I . . . do this?” He reached out to the lantern and, in an instant, snuffed out the wick.
Her screams and his laughter echoed through the trees as Junko and her father ran, slipping and sliding, down the mountain. They didn’t stop until they were back in the house, their voices startling her mother, who had nodded off while sitting at the low dining room table. Junko headed for the stairs to her room, a little out of breath.
“Goodnight! We’ll get started tomorrow?” Junko heard her father call after her.
“A new drum?” she called back from the top step.
“That’s right. Oh, and be sure to turn off the light so you don’t miss any ghosts or goblins.”
Maybe that would scare me if I was, like, five, Junko thought to herself as she shook out a sheet on top of her futon. We didn’t even tell any stories.
The creaks and groans of living lumber sounded in the breeze as the lonely mountainside settled into midnight. Just as Junko was drifting in and out of sleep, a clean rhythm cut through the forest air—pon poko pon pon pon poko—like the sound of a single small taiko drum. Junko turned over, and it began to rain.
By the time she came down for breakfast the next morning, her parents had long since finished. Her mother was going over inventory in the other room, and her father was drinking his instant coffee, watching the morning news. Reception was poor because of the mountainous terrain, and every so often the program would cut out and her father would swear mildly. Junko chewed on the pit of a pickled plum.
“There are reports of mudslides in the mountains above Shimozui, although no property damage has been reported. Please take extra caution in the next few days,” the newscaster said.
“That’s not far from here, dear,” her mother called from the other room. Junko’s father took off his glasses and wiped them with his shirt.
“You’re right. We’ll be careful.” Junko nodded as he switched off the television. “Let’s go.”
Armed with trail markers, onigiri rice balls, and a thermos of tea, Junko and her father set out to find a tree big enough to fill their next commission. The Omura Shrine in Kochi Prefecture had ordered a giant odaiko drum.
To the left of their front gate, the paved road connected them to Shimozui, two kilometers downstream. To the right, the road continued on and up, following the curve of the river and eventually breaking off into wild mountainside. They headed in this direction. Cracked asphalt turned to river rocks, then gravel, and ultimately to slick leaves and earth. Though the going was not particularly rugged, the summer sun was rising and Junko felt the sweat run uncomfortably down her back as she maneuvered around a large rain-filled hole.
“Ne, Junko-chan . . . Did you hear anything last night?”
She shrugged. There had been something, but she was pretty sure it had just been a dream.
“I think the tanuki were having some fun,” he continued.
She shook her head. “That was the rain, Dad. Anyway, no one’s seen a tanuki around here in years.”
“Ah, well. That’s the question, isn’t it? The blood-and-bone tanuki may have left these woods,” he said, grabbing a low-slung branch to help him step around another pothole on the path. “But what about the tanuki who like to play tricks and appear in front of your eyes. Who knows if they’ve gone, too?”
Junko didn’t respond immediately. The sun had reached high noon, and the forest air was thickening with humidity around them.
“Grandpa used to to tell me stories about them,” she said quietly, “when I was really little. Didn’t he say his parents settled here because there was a tanuki family living here too?”
Her father nodded. “There was no better place to build drums on this entire island. For a long time, tanuki and our drums were . . . well, you couldn’t say one without thinking of the other.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“In my grandfather’s—your
great-grandfather’s—day, it was said that the tanuki would help them find the best trees to hollow out and build into drums. And I don’t mean just little drums from forty- or fifty-year-old trees. We’re talking big drums, from ancient trees.”
Junko took a look up the trail. Many of the trees that lined the path were saplings, too slender to become drum bodies.
“How did they do that?”
“Oh, sometimes the tanuki would disguise themselves as tools.” Her father rested his palm on the handsaw slung from his belt. “Tools that pulled whoever held them to the tree. Sometimes they changed the landscape to confuse even the best woodsman, who, when he got really frustrated, would find himself simply standing in an old grove. Sometimes they would help roll the trunks down the mountain, if they were feeling generous. You know, tanuki are known for their big, strong . . .”
“Dad . . .”
“Bellies. What did you think I was going to say?”
Junko rolled her eyes and laughed. The standing tanuki were known for their big male parts.
Though a little out of breath, her father began to sing:
“Iiiiii’m the drummer of the mountain, a forest ta-nu-ki
I beat my belly like a drum, so listen clo-se-ly
poko pon-pon-pon, poko pon-pon-pon
Come play along with me . . .”
“Jeez . . .” Junko laughed and combed her hair back with her fingers.
“Ask my grandmother, and she would tell you—every night before they would find a really, truly magnificent tree, there would be a ruckus in the forest.”
Junko held a hair elastic between her teeth as she twisted her hair into a bun. “A ruckus?”
“Well, like a festival. Usually with lots of—”
“Drumming?” She ventured a guess just as the path hit a dead end. The left fork shot steeply upward, while the right fork meandered along a slight incline. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. But have you actually seen one?” She asked, looking back at him. He shook his head and pointed to the left fork.
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