by Kanae Minato
I didn’t go into much detail about what had happened at Emily’s house right after the murder, and the police didn’t question me about it very much. I didn’t even tell my brother about Emily’s mother shoving me aside like that. People might have blamed Emily’s mother then, and that would have been cruel. Anybody would have flown into a panic if they’d just heard their child had died. It was my fault I got hurt. I shouldn’t have been standing there clumsily blocking the door. So when they asked about my injury I told them I was rushing and fell down. Nobody doubted this, since it happened right after we discovered the body.
But more than my own injury, don’t you think that Parthenon-like ornament being broken was tens of thousands of times a bigger loss? You know, I hadn’t thought of this until now, but maybe the stinging I get sometimes is from a fragment of the ornament that got lodged in my forehead. It certainly feels that way. Too late to take it out now, though. Still, even if I’d known at the time that a porcelain fragment remained in my forehead, I doubt I would have gone to the hospital.
I mean, bears don’t go to hospitals, do they? There are vet clinics, of course, but a bear wouldn’t go to one on its own, would it?
A bear knows the way a bear’s supposed to live. The one who didn’t know that was me.
You have to know your station in life.
I’ve heard my grandfather say this ever since I can remember.
You shouldn’t think that everyone’s equal. Because some people are given different things from the time they’re born. The poor shouldn’t try to act like the rich. A stupid person shouldn’t try to act like he’s a scholar. A poor person should find happiness in frugality, and a stupid person do his best with what he’s capable of. Seek something above your station and it will only lead to sorrow. God is carefully watching us all and will punish you if you reach too high.
My grandfather always ended there, but one day when I was in third grade he added the following:
“So, Akiko, that’s why you shouldn’t care about being plain-looking.”
Can you believe it? Where did that come from? Maybe he said it to make me feel better, but don’t you think a statement like that would have the opposite effect? I was big and sturdy, that was true, but I’d never thought my face was that bad. And though I wasn’t good at schoolwork, at least I was athletic. Most of the other kids around me weren’t much different, so I’d never thought life was unfair. So when my grandfather said that, I just thought There he goes again! and didn’t pay much attention.
It was only after Emily moved to town that I began to understand what he meant. She was beautiful, with a cute figure, and was smart, athletic, clever, rich. It really wasn’t fair. If I compared myself to her I’d feel miserable, but if I put it down to the two of us simply having been given different gifts, it didn’t bother me so much. Emily had her life, I had mine. I don’t know how the other kids felt about her, but from the first I liked her because she was from a totally different world.
But that day I felt different. I was wearing a cute designer-brand blouse that Emily envied me for, and was happy that my parents had said the same thing to me her parents had said to her. I wanted to be even better friends with her.
I tried to reach beyond my station, and punishment came crashing down.
My Pink House blouse was proof of that. We sent it out to the cleaners, but the brown bloodstains remained and I could never wear it outside again. Some cute girl might have worn you and taken good care of you, I told the blouse, but because a bear who didn’t know her place did, all it took was one day to permanently stain you and ruin you. I am so very sorry, I apologized to the blouse. I clutched it to me, crying and apologizing over and over. Forgive me…forgive me.…
And Emily—forgive me. Please forgive me, I said.
Because a bear like me, who should have known better, wanted to be friends with a girl like you. That’s why you were murdered.
My life after the murder? Seek something above your station and it will only lead to sorrow. Emily was murdered because of me, so how could I go on doing the things I’d done before the murder—going to school, playing with friends, eating sweets, laughing? I felt as if I wasn’t allowed to anymore.
Being with people would only cause trouble for them. Even if I didn’t have a relationship with a person, it felt as if just my presence alone would cause trouble for anyone I happened to be with.
I was worried that at school, if I moved at all I’d bump into somebody and knock them over and injure them, so except for trips to the restroom during recess I stayed glued to my seat.
Before long I started waking up with an upset stomach, or feeling listless, and would skip school.
My parents and teachers didn’t say much about my absences, figuring it was only natural considering what I’d been through in fourth grade, but when I got into fifth they seemed to think enough was enough. Even if a murder takes place in their own town, after half a year people not directly involved see it as some distant, past event.
It was my older brother, Koji, who encouraged me then.
“Akiko,” he told me, “it might be scary for you going outside, but I’ll protect you, so keep your chin up!”
Koji started walking with me to my school in the morning before going on to his junior high, though it was out of his way. Saying we should both work out so even if a criminal attacked us we could fight him off, he fashioned barbells out of unused farm tools in our shed, and we did weight training together.
Though I felt a guilty conscience about going to school, I enjoyed the training. You’d expect a bear to be strong, and I was really into it, thinking that someday I’d be able to get revenge for Emily.
The days passed and Emily’s parents were soon moving back to Tokyo and the four of us were asked over to Emily’s place to talk, one more time, about the day of the murder.
Other than the missing Parthenon ornament, the foyer was the same as before, and as soon as I took a step inside my forehead began to sting. But Maki did most of the talking and I was able to get through it.
But then Emily’s mother said this:
“I will never forgive you, unless you find the murderer before the statute of limitations is up. If you can’t do that, then atone for what you’ve done, in a way I’ll accept. If you don’t do either one, I’m telling you here and now—I will have revenge on each and every one of you.”
It was my fault Emily died, so I felt bad for the other three girls, but I knew from the start that Emily’s mother blamed me, so it didn’t frighten me to hear she’d take revenge. What seemed strange to me was that she hadn’t said anything up till then. I figured finding the murderer would be hard, since I could remember hardly anything about the incident, so I chose to do penance instead.
Penance? Never reach for anything beyond your station. This thought never left my head after the murder, and on that day I pledged again to follow that stricture.
I ended up not going on to high school. My parents tried to persuade me to at least graduate from high school, but even if I took the exams I had no confidence I could make it through three more years of school.
My brother was the one who convinced my parents to let me be.
“High school isn’t compulsory education,” he argued. “If she doesn’t want to go outside but still wants to study, she can always still get a GED by correspondence, and then take college entrance exams. I’ll go out and be a success, so let Akiko do things at her own pace.”
That’s what he told them. And true to his word, he graduated from a nearby national university, took the civil service exam, and was hired at the local city hall, where he became a well-respected staff member in the welfare section. People saw him as a wonderful, devoted son, and he made my parents proud.
Koji always liked to help people. That’s why the person he married was a woman with a dubious past.
Don’t get taken in by some sketchy man, get knocked up, and come back home in tears now.
Kind of
a cliché parents and relatives always tell their daughters when they go off to school or to work in the big city, but my brother’s wife, Haruka, was a perfect example of all the terrible things that can happen to a woman alone in a city.
She got a job in a printing company in Tokyo but could barely get by on the modest salary this small company paid her, so she started working part-time at a bar to earn some extra spending money. There she got involved with a low-level yakuza. The man got her pregnant but didn’t marry her, and she quit the company, had the child, and somehow managed to raise her on what she earned working at bars. Meanwhile, the yakuza guy started seeing another woman and vanished. On top of that, the man had gotten into heavy debt to some shady loan company, and loan sharks threatened her that if she didn’t pay it back by the following month they’d put her in concrete and toss her into Tokyo Bay. She barely escaped their clutches and ran back to our town.
It’s hard to know how much of this story was true, but a month after Haruka had come back, the whole town knew all the juicy details. Even someone like me, who never ventured outside her home, had heard about it.
I was sitting with my mother and a neighbor woman who’d come over, and listened in on what she said, just as if I were one of their cronies. In a know-it-all tone the woman reviewed the rumors about Haruka, sounding, though, as if she couldn’t believe that Haruka had turned out that way. I found it hard to believe too.
I don’t know if it was to pay back those loans, but Haruka’s family did sell off some farmland and land they owned in the hills, and it was true that Haruka had a child.
Still, what I found hard to believe was the question of—image, I guess you’d call it? She might be held up as a bad example, but in this town her story took on the outlines of a heroic saga. People who didn’t know her were curious to see what kind of beauty could have gotten into such a fix, right? But Haruka was a modest, quiet person, and not really much of a beauty by any standard.
She and Koji were former classmates, and our houses weren’t far from each other, so I’d known her since she was a child. At that point I still hadn’t seen her since she’d come back from Tokyo, and kind of expected the big city must have turned her into a sophisticated woman. But three months after I heard these rumors about her, my brother brought her over to our house and I found that, though she’d matured, as you’d expect, with the passing of years, she really hadn’t changed at all.
This was on Obon last year, on August fourteenth.
Ten years ago my grandfather and grandmother passed away, one after the other, so other relatives don’t gather at our place anymore, but on that day one of my older cousins, Seiji—my aunt Yoko’s son who’d just come back after five years abroad for work—was coming to stay over with his wife. So my mother and I prepared all kinds of good food—sukiyaki and sushi—and we waited, along with my father, for them to arrive. My brother had been out since morning, and he phoned to say that, with Seiji visiting, he’d like to use the opportunity to introduce us all to his girlfriend.
It was news to me that he had a girlfriend. Same with my mother, who was rattled, wondering whether she should change her clothes, or maybe go out and buy a cake. But when Seiji and his wife arrived my mother shelved that and focused on entertaining my cousin and his wife.
My parents were the only ones from our family who had attended Seiji’s wedding in Tokyo eight years before, so I think this was the first time I’d ever actually met Seiji’s wife, Misato.
“I’m so happy you would come all this way to the countryside to see us, even though Grandfather and Grandmother are no longer with us,” my mother said. To which Seiji replied, a bit apologetically, “Of course we want to pay our respects at their graves, but this place also has a lot of memories for the two of us.…
“I know this is an indiscreet thing to say,” he continued, “so I’ve never mentioned it before, but if that incident hadn’t taken place we might never have gone out with each other. So we’ve been hoping to pay a visit here, the two of us, someday.”
By incident he meant Emily’s murder.
Seiji, who’d been a junior in college in Tokyo back then, had been in the tennis club and had had his eye on one of the other members from a women’s college, Misato, who was a freshman. There were many other rivals for her attention, and he found it hard to shed the role of upperclassman mentor. But one day, when the club members had gone out drinking and they were talking about going back to their hometowns for Obon, Seiji had bragged, “My hometown’s got nothing to recommend it, though it does have the cleanest air in Japan,” to which Misato said, “I’d like to go there sometime.” Misato and her parents were all from Tokyo, and she was enchanted by the idea of going home to the countryside. Spurred on by a few drinks, Seiji said, “Well, would you like to go together?” and Misato smiled and nodded her assent.
Like everyone in our family, Seiji is a serious type who likes to take care of others. Here was a chance to stay overnight with a girl he liked, but the plan he made was, after they ate with us, to just stay over one night in our house and then go straight back to Tokyo. Seiji would stay in my brother’s bedroom, Misato in my room. Even I, pretty ignorant of anything to do with love, was surprised that he didn’t take advantage of being with the girl he liked.
The two of them arrived at the railroad station just before 6 p.m. and walked to our house, arriving after six. They put down their luggage and took a short rest, then my mother said, “Well, we’re all here now, so I’ll get the sukiyaki ready.” But she couldn’t find her children and just as she was complaining, “Now where did the kids get to?” I appeared, my brother leading me by the hand. I hadn’t noticed that Seiji and Misato were there.
My mother flew into a panic then and raced out. There were police sirens wailing outside and one of my uncles said, out of curiosity, that he’d go see what was up. By this time the whole West District was in an uproar.
This wasn’t the time to be entertaining guests, naturally, and Misato told us not to mind about them. Aunt Yoko booked a place for them in a Japanese inn in a nearby town and Seiji and Misato moved over there. This nearby town isn’t much of a place, but it does have hot springs, and with the crowds home for Obon only one room in the inn was available.
Misato was understandably shaken by the news that a murder had just taken place in this country town she was visiting for the first time, but Seiji told her, “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” which she found comforting, and that was really the start of their relationship. I think that even if the murder hadn’t happened they would have gotten together. I mean, no matter how clean the air might be, or how much a person might want to visit the countryside for the holiday, do you really think she would go to the house of the relatives of someone she didn’t even like? But I would agree that the murder heightened their feelings for each other.
Fast-forward fourteen years. I don’t know the reasons, but Seiji and Misato didn’t have any children. But eight years had passed since their marriage and I envied how much like newlywed lovers they remained.
As I watched how close they were my mother said, buoyantly, “Koji’s bringing a girl over today.” Koji was her pride and joy, and having him bring a girl over to visit had her all excited. Maybe, seeing Seiji and his wife, she was thinking how much she wanted Koji, too, to have a happy marriage.
Seiji and Misato were just saying they wondered what kind of person Koji’s girlfriend was and how they looked forward to meeting her when Koji appeared. With Haruka and Wakaba, too.
Wakaba is Haruka’s daughter. She was in second grade then.
Mother greeted them pleasantly and showed them into the living room. She then took me into the kitchen and said, “It’s…it’s—her, right?” Meaning that the woman he’d brought home to meet us was none other than the Haruka everyone was whispering about. I was pretty surprised myself, but seeing Mother pace back and forth in the kitchen in a panic, it actually made me calmer.
“Yes, that’s her, all ri
ght. But they’re former classmates, so maybe that’s all it is. Don’t get so worked up. It’s rude.”
I gave Mother a nudge and she went back to the living room with a bottle of juice and as many bottles of beer as she could carry.
I thought my father was downing the beers a bit faster than usual, but this was because of Seiji and his wife being there, and dinner proceeded smoothly. Haruka sat modestly next to Koji, almost hiding behind his large frame, and barely ate a bite, though she was very attentive, pouring beer for the others, serving them sushi, stacking the empty plates up.
If I’d done the same thing it would have been so slow and inefficient that someone would have told me to stop “helping,” but Haruka did it all so naturally and unobtrusively you almost didn’t notice. She had on what was no doubt her best outfit, but it was the cheap kind you could buy in a supermarket in the next town over. As if I should talk—my usual outfit was a brown sweatshirt and sweatpants.
Watching Haruka, I felt as if she’d lived her whole life here, and that the rumors were just so much nonsense.
At first my mother acted sulky, serving up the sukiyaki without a word, but when Wakaba told her “Thank you!” with a cute smile when Mother broke a raw egg into her bowl for her, Mother finally smiled herself and made sure the little girl got plenty of meat to eat. When he saw this, my father said, apropos of nothing, “I can break an egg with one hand, you know,” breaking an egg into a bowl. When Father saw how happy this made Wakaba, he told me to go out to the mini-mart and buy some ice cream for her.
This was the only mini-mart in town, built three years before near the elementary school. Seiji said he’d run out of cigarettes and went with me.