by Kanae Minato
The French Doll Tour had introduced a little awkwardness into our relationship with Emily, but that soon passed and we were all friends again. One reason may have been Emily’s enthusiasm for playing Explorers, which was popular then.
The pool was closed through the Obon holiday, so we played volleyball in a corner of the school grounds, in the shade next to the gym. All we did was form a circle and pass the ball back and forth, but we were really into it, aiming to pass the ball a hundred times without missing.
That’s when that man appeared.
“Hello there, do you girls have a second?” we heard a voice ask.
A gray work shirt with yellowish-green tinge, work pants, a white towel wrapped around his head.
The sudden voice threw Yuka, who was out of form that day, and she missed a pass. The man picked up the ball, which had rolled toward him, and came over to us. Smiling broadly, he said the following quite clearly:
“I’m here to check the ventilation fan for the changing rooms in the pool, but I totally forgot to bring a ladder. We just need to tighten a few screws, so could one of you ride piggyback on my shoulders and help out?”
Nowadays elementary school pupils would have been on their guard in a situation like this. Schools are not necessarily seen as safe places. If we had been aware of that, I wonder if we would have avoided what happened. Maybe we should have been taught to scream and run away if a stranger talked to us?
In our small, rural town, though, the most we’d been warned was not to get in a stranger’s car if he told us he’d give us gum or candy, or told us our parents were sick and he’d take us to them.
So we weren’t at all suspicious about this man before us. I don’t know about Emily, but I think that’s how the others felt. In fact, when we heard the words help out we vied to be the one chosen.
“I’m the smallest, so you could piggyback me easiest,” one of us said.
“But what if you can’t reach the fan? Shouldn’t I go since I’m the tallest?”
“But can either of you tighten screws? I’m good at it.”
“What if the screws are hard to turn? I’m really strong, so I think I should do it.”
Those are the sorts of things we said, I think. Emily didn’t say a thing. As if sizing us up, the man looked from one to the other.
“Can’t be too small or too big…,” he said. “And if your glasses fall off, that’s no good. And you might be a bit too heavy.…”
Lastly he turned to Emily.
“You’re just right,” he said.
Emily glanced at us with a slightly worried look. Maki, perhaps disappointed that Emily had beaten her out, suggested we all help. Good idea, the three of us agreed.
“Thanks,” the man said, “but the changing room is kind of small and if everyone comes it’ll be hard to work, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt. So could you all stay here? It won’t take long. I’ll buy you all ice cream afterward.”
How could we object to that? “Okay, then,” the man said, took Emily by the hand, and led her across the school grounds. The pool was beyond the spacious grounds, and we went back to playing volleyball before the two of them had disappeared.
We played for a while, then sat down in the cool shade of the steps at the entrance to the gym and chatted. They’re not taking me anywhere for summer vacation. I wish my grandpa’s house were a little farther away. Emily’s going to Guam next week. Is Guam part of America? Or a country called Guam? I don’t know.…Emily’s so lucky. She has on a Barbie dress today, too. Her face is so pretty, too. You call those kind of eyes almond eyes, right? She looks so cool. And her father and mother look like goggle-eyed aliens. Her miniskirt is so cute. Emily has such long legs. Oh, did you hear? Emily’s already started that. What do you mean—that? Sae, you really don’t know?
That was the first time I’d ever heard the word menstruate. The girls in school were assembled to hear about this the year after, in fifth grade, and my mother hadn’t talked to me about it yet. I didn’t have an older sister or any older girls among my relatives, so I was clueless about what they were talking about.
The other three either had older sisters or else their moms had told them about it, and they began explaining it to me as if displaying some astounding knowledge.
Menstruation is proof that your body’s able to have babies, they said. Blood drips out from between your legs. Huh? Are you saying Emily’s able to have a baby? That’s right. Your older sister, too, Yuka? That’s right. I’ll probably start mine soon so Mom bought me some underwear for that. What? You, too, Maki? Girls who are big start in fifth grade, they say. But you, Sae, you won’t start till junior high. By high school everybody has it, they say. You’ve got to be kidding. I mean, no junior high girls have babies. That’s because they didn’t make them. Make them? Sae, are you saying you don’t know where babies come from? Oh, yeah—when they get married. Honestly! Girls do dirty things with boys, that’s how.
I hope all this stupid stuff I’m writing won’t make you rip this letter up.
Caught up in our conversation, we suddenly noticed that “Greensleeves” was playing, the signal it was 6 p.m.
“My older cousin’s coming over with his friend today so they told me to come home by six,” Akiko said. It being Obon, we decided it best to all go home early, and we went off to fetch Emily. As we crossed the grounds I turned around and saw that the shadows had lengthened considerably since we’d been playing volleyball. I suddenly realized how much time had passed since Emily had gone, and grew concerned.
The pool was surrounded with a wire mesh fence but the gate was unlocked, just shut with a wire. I think until that year it was always like that in the summer.
From the gate you walked up some stairs and there was the pool, with two prefab buildings, changing rooms, beyond. The one on the right was for boys, the left for girls. As we walked next to the pool I thought how very quiet it was.
The changing rooms had sliding doors, and of course were also unlocked. Maki, in front, was the one who opened the girls’ room.
“Emily—are you finished?” she called out as she slid open the door. “Huh?” she said, tilting her head. No one was inside.
“I wonder if they finished and she went home,” Akiko said.
“Then what about the ice cream? Maybe he only bought Emily some,” Yuka said, peeved.
“That’s not fair,” Maki added.
“What about this one?” I pointed to the boys’ changing room, but there was no sound from inside.
“She’s not there. There’re no voices. See?”
It was Akiko, still facing us, who reluctantly slid open the door to the boys’ changing room. The other three of us held our breath. “Wh—?” Akiko said, turning around and then letting out a scream.
Emily, head pointed toward the entrance, lay on the drainboards in the middle of the floor.
“Emily?” Maki ventured fearfully. Then all of us called out her name. But Emily lay there, unmoving, eyes wide open.
“Oh my God!” Maki shouted. If at that moment she’d said “She’s dead!” we might have been so terrified that we’d have dashed right home.
“We have to tell people,” Maki said. “Akiko, you’re the fastest runner, so run to Emily’s house. Yuka, you go to the police station. I’ll look for a teacher. Sae, you keep watch here.”
As soon as Maki told us what to do, the others ran off. That was the last time the four of us acted together. I don’t think what I’ve said differs much from the testimony the other three gave.
The four of us girls were interviewed together many times about what preceded the murder, but we weren’t asked in detail about after we found the body. And we haven’t talked much with each other about the murder, so I don’t know that much about what the others did after this.
What I’m going to tell you now is just what I did.
Alone in the changing room after the other girls left, I looked over again at Emily. She had on a black T-shirt with a p
ink Barbie logo written across the chest, but the shirt was rolled up so high you could barely make it out. I could see her white stomach and the slight swell of her breasts. Her red checked pleated skirt was rolled up, too, and the bottom half of her body, with no panties on, was exposed.
I was asked to guard her, but I felt like if any adult were to come they’d yell at me for letting her body be exposed like this. “The poor girl!” they’d scold. “Why didn’t you cover her up?” I hadn’t done this to Emily, yet I felt as if I’d be the one they’d blame. So hesitantly I stepped inside the changing room.
The first thing I did was use my handkerchief to cover up her open eyes and mouth, which had liquid dripping out. And, avoiding looking at Emily, I held the T-shirt with my fingers and rolled it down. There was white, sticky stuff all over her stomach, though at the time I had no idea what it was. I rearranged her skirt, too. As I crouched down I saw her panties, all crumpled up and tossed aside at the lowest row of lockers.
What should I do with her panties? I wondered. I’d been able to rearrange her shirt and skirt without touching her body, but that wouldn’t work with her panties. I glanced at Emily’s long, white legs, spread apart, and saw blood flowing down her thighs from her crotch.
That’s when I got scared and ran out of the changing room.
I think I was able, even realizing she was dead, to rearrange her clothes because she’d been strangled and there wasn’t any blood. The second I was out of the changing room, though, the pool in front of me frightened me, and I froze. In a short space of time the sun had gotten really low and the wind had come up. I stared at the tiny ripples on the surface of the pool and felt as if I were going to be dragged in. They say that during Obon—the festival for departed spirits—if you go swimming the dead will grab your leg. Every year I heard this warning, and now it rattled around in my head and I had the sudden illusion that Emily was going to arise and, to take me with her to the land of the dead, push me into the pool. I closed my eyes and crouched down, head in hands to stop up my ears, and kept on shrieking so loud it felt as if my throat would burst.
Why couldn’t I lose consciousness? If I could have made myself faint, the situation I find myself in now might be very different.
I’m not sure how long I stayed like that, but the first one to appear on the scene was you, Asako. I’m sure you remember what happened after that, so here I’ll simply write about what happened with me.
Yuka returned with the local patrolman. Then right after that my mother showed up, worried that I hadn’t come home and aware that something had happened. She put me on her back and carried me straight home. I cried for the first time after I got home. I think I cried even more loudly then than when I was screaming by the pool.
My mother didn’t press me at first about what had happened. As I lay down on some zabuton cushions, she gave me cold barley tea, gently rubbed my back, then murmured, “I’m glad it wasn’t you, Sae.”
As her voice sank deep into my head I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
What I’m writing here isn’t much different from the testimony I gave right after the murder. I think all four of us gave pretty clear testimony, considering the kind of incident we’d witnessed.
Even now, though, I feel regret about the one thing we couldn’t say for certain, the one thing none of the four of us could recall.
I can see all that happened that day very clearly in my mind, like images on a TV screen, but for some reason the one thing I can’t recall is the man’s face.
“The man had a white towel wrapped around his head.”
“He was wearing gray work clothes.”
“Weren’t they a light greenish color?”
“How old was he? He looked like forty, or maybe fifty.”
Though we had an overall impression of the man, we never could recall his face. Was he tall or short? Heavy or thin? Was his face round, or more narrow? Were his eyes big or small? What about his nose, his mouth, his eyebrows? Did he have any moles or scars? Even when his appearance was broken down into details like this, all we could do was shake our heads.
One thing, though, was for certain. We’d never seen him before.
For a time the murder was the sole topic of conversation in our small, rural town. Once a relative of mine came by to ask me more about the murder, just out of curiosity, and my mother chased him away. People started talking about the French Doll Robbery and linking the two incidents. Maybe, they said, there’s some pervert in our town or nearby who likes young girls. Whoever stole the dolls maybe wasn’t satisfied with them and murdered a cute-as-a-doll young girl. People whispered these rumors as if they were entirely plausible.
The police started questioning people in the places the dolls were stolen from again, so almost everyone started to see the two incidents as the work of one criminal, a pervert who liked young girls.
But I wasn’t convinced. Because I was the one whose appearance would best be described as that of an innocent young girl.
Ever since the murder, if I let my attention wander I start to visualize Emily’s dead body. It’s a black-and-white image—only, the blood trickling down her thighs is bright red. And in my mind my face gets superimposed on Emily’s and my head starts to ache. And as I hold my throbbing head, one thought runs through my mind.
Thank God it wasn’t me.
I’m sure you find this an awful thing to think. I have no idea what the other three girls thought. Some of them might have been so sad for Emily, and some might have been wracked with guilt, wondering why they couldn’t have saved her. For me, though, it was all I could do to worry about myself.
What came after Thank God it wasn’t me was Why Emily? And I had a clear answer for that. It was because, of the five of us, she was the only one who’d reached adulthood. It was because she was a grown-up that that man did awful things to her and murdered her.
That man—the murderer—was looking for a young girl who’d just become an adult.
A month passed, then half a year, then a year, and still the criminal hadn’t been found. I believe it was three years after the murder that you moved back to Tokyo, Asako. I wonder if you realize I am writing this letter because of the promise we made then.
Time passed, and as people in town spoke less of the murder, the fear grew stronger within me. Even if I didn’t remember the murderer’s face, he might remember mine. He might think we knew his face and come to murder me and the other girls. Until now adults around us had kept an eye on us, but they were gradually slacking off. Perhaps he was waiting for us to start doing things on our own again, without any adults around.…
I had the constant sensation that the murderer was watching me. Through gaps in a window, from the shadows of a building, from inside a car.
I was terrified, absolutely petrified. I didn’t want to be killed. And in order not to be, there was one thing I had to avoid at all costs.
I could never grow up.
Still, as time passed, even though I’d occasionally sense someone watching me, the murder faded from my mind a little, too. In junior high and high school I was in the wind instrument ensemble, and the intense practice sessions kept me so busy practicing every day, I had little time to consider the past.
This doesn’t mean that I was mentally and physically ever free of the murder. I realized this—was made to realize it—when I was seventeen and a junior in high school.
Seventeen years old and I still hadn’t had my first period. I might have been small, physically, but that didn’t explain why I hadn’t started menstruating. Maybe I was still within the acceptable age range for a first period, but my mother suggested I have a doctor examine me, so I went to the gynecological department at the prefectural hospital in the next town over.
It takes a lot of courage for a high school girl to go to an OB-GYN clinic. But I realized that up till then I hadn’t given any thought to menstruation, and though I had an idea why this was the case, I imagined that couldn’t be the reason I ha
dn’t yet had a period. It would be terrible to have some kind of actual gynecological problem, I thought, so I steeled myself and went.
There was a private OB-GYN clinic in our town, but the last thing I wanted was for people in town to spot me going there. I’d barely talked to any boys, let alone gone out with any, but couldn’t stand the thought of ugly rumors flying around. So I went to another town to get checked out.
The tests showed nothing out of the ordinary, and the doctor said it might be psychological. “Are you experiencing any kind of stress at school or at home?” he asked.
When I learned that periods can start, and stop, because of psychological reasons, it made sense. If I become an adult I’ll get killed, I thought. If my periods start, I’ll get murdered. I had been suggesting this to my body all along, at first consciously, then gradually unconsciously. Even if I didn’t consciously think of the murder very often, it had still been constantly at work in the deeper recesses of my mind.
The hospital recommended counseling and regular hormone injections, and I said I’d talk it over with my parents. That was the last time I went to the hospital. I reported back to my mother that they’d found nothing wrong and that I was just a little late.
I was praying even more now that my period wouldn’t start before the statute of limitations on the murder ran out.
Even if I left the town, got lost in the crowds in Tokyo, and lived among people who knew nothing of the murder, who knew but that I might run across the murderer again? But my body, still not that of an adult, would keep me from harm. That’s the sense of security I sought.
I didn’t hope so much that the murderer would be arrested, and the murder brought up all over again, but more that the statute of limitations would come quickly and I would finally be freed from the past.
This had nothing to do with the promise I made to you, Asako.
Still, I never dreamed I would ever see you again.
After graduating from a women’s college with an English degree, I was hired by a medium-size company that mainly dealt with dyes. Whether you’d graduated in the sciences or the humanities, all new employees spent the first two years assigned to the laboratory. They did this to teach us what kinds of products the company was dealing in.