by Kanae Minato
“Is Koji thinking of marrying that woman?” Seiji asked me along the way.
“I kind of doubt it…”
“Makes sense. She seems okay, but it’d be better if he didn’t.”
It was kind of strange that Seiji, who knew nothing about Haruka’s background, would have that sort of strong opinion. If I had only known her from this one evening, I think I would have welcomed the match. “How come?” I asked Seiji, but he came out with a loud “Wow! Get a load of this!”
“What’s with this parking lot?” he asked. “It’s three times bigger than the whole store!”
So what? I wondered. I couldn’t figure it out. Seiji was raised in the big city, and there’s a ton of things he says that I just don’t get, I was thinking as we went inside the mini-mart.
Seeing all the local people crowding the place, Seiji said, “This has to be the most popular spot in town.” He sounded impressed. He bought the ice cream, some snacks that would go well with sake, cigarettes, and the kind of weekly magazine that office workers read, and the two of us headed back the way we’d come.
Seiji didn’t say anything more about Koji. What did we talk about on the way back?…Seiji was silent, smoking as we walked, and then suddenly he asked about the murder. Nothing all that important, I think. I don’t recall my forehead starting to ache or anything.…
“Akiko, that murderer was the same pervert who stole dolls on the night of the festival, right?” he asked.
I just replied, “That’s right.”
We never displayed any French dolls in our house. Instead, we had a carved wooden bear, a memento from Hokkaido. So until he brought it up, the whole incident of the stolen French dolls had totally slipped my mind.
Dinner ended up more amiably than I had expected, so I think Koji misjudged the situation. The next morning, after breakfast, when Seiji, his wife, and we were all having some coffee, talking about going to the hot springs in the town next door, Koji suddenly blurted out:
“Mom, Dad—Haruka and I are going to get married.”
He wasn’t asking permission but declaring his intention.
“Don’t be stupid!” Mother yelled. She stood up, pointlessly, then sat down again, obviously in a panic.
“How can you think of marrying a person like her?” she shouted. “There are so many better women out there you could marry. Like the Yamagatas’ daughter, who works in the lab at Adachi Manufacturing, the one who went to the same college you did. And then the Kawanos’ girl, who went to music college and teaches piano. Both of them would like to marry you, so why in the world do you want to marry that kind of woman?”
Small point of correction, but it was the girls’ parents who wanted them to marry Koji, not the girls themselves. The neighbor woman who gossiped all about Haruka when she came had actually come to our place to sound out Koji about another possible match. At the time Koji had told her, “I’m not going to marry until I’m thirty.”
“You’re the only one we can count on to carry on after we’re gone. Don’t be carried away by some infatuation!” my father yelled too.
It hurt me a little for him to imply that if I weren’t the way I am he wouldn’t have opposed the marriage, but more than that, I felt apologetic to my brother. Koji had always taken care of me, but here he was unable to marry the person he loved because of me. Haruka’s past worried me, but I felt that if I was ever to repay my brother the time was now.
“I don’t think…that Haruka’s such a bad person,” I said. “And I’ll take care of you, Mom and Dad, when you’re old.…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t the time for a recluse like you to interrupt. I don’t expect a thing from you. As long as you don’t bother others, that’s all we can ask for. So don’t butt in.”
This was from my mother. She was right, but no one had ever put it this clearly before. I’d been so excited about having guests over—we so rarely did—and had half forgotten my status as a lumbering bear.
“Seiji, say something to him,” Mother added. “And Misato—don’t you think there’s something not right about that woman?” And she started filling them in on all the rumors about Haruka.
She didn’t need to say this in front of Koji, I was thinking, but what surprised me was that Koji didn’t deny any of it. In fact, when Seiji asked, “Is all this true, Koji?” my brother silently nodded. And then he said this:
“I feel sorry for Haruka. Ms. Yamagata or Ms. Kawano can be happy with anybody. But the only one in the entire world who can make Haruka happy is me. If you insist on opposing us, then I’ll take Haruka and Wakaba and leave town.”
He spoke quietly but forcefully. My brother had met Haruka again at the service counter at city hall, where he worked. She’d come to apply for support for single mothers and Koji was manning the counter that day. I’m just guessing here, but my brother, always the type to help others, must have done his utmost to advise her, first as a member of the welfare section of city hall, then as a former classmate. Eventually he’d found himself wanting to protect her as a man.
Father sat there stolidly, not uttering a word. Mother’s mouth quivered like a fish gasping for breath. Seiji and Misato were silent, staring at Koji. And I…sat there vacantly thinking, Ah, so Koji and Haruka’s marriage is decided. I looked around at everyone and felt a large hand come to rest on my head.
“Thank you, Akiko, for being on my side.” As he said this, Koji slowly stroked my head, and tears welled up and I couldn’t stop them. That may have been the first time since the murder that I’d cried.
The following month, the beginning of September, Koji officially registered Haruka as his wife. The wedding ceremony was held at a nearby Buddhist temple with just relatives present, and struck me as more like a dressed-up memorial service, but Koji and Haruka seemed very happy. People in town at first wondered why he would marry a woman like that, but Haruka’s parents were decent, upstanding people, Haruka herself was quiet, reserved, and polite, and gradually people started to wish them well. And Koji had an even higher reputation in town, people seeing him now as a man of real character.
Hoping to one day build a home that two generations could live in together, Koji and Haruka rented a unit in a two-story building a ten-minute walk from our house. It wasn’t so tall a building but on the outside was as chic-looking as the Adachi Manufacturing apartment complex.
As soon as Haruka was officially in the family register as Koji’s wife, my parents’ attitude did an abrupt about-face. Perhaps happy that a cute little girl now graced their dowdy home, they’d use any silly excuse—that they’d just gotten some fresh grapes or apples, for instance—to invite Wakaba over and then take her out to the mini-mart to buy whatever sweets or drinks she liked.
Wakaba became very attached to me. One day when she came to visit she seemed unusually dejected, and when I asked her why she replied, “I can’t jump rope.” Jump rope—now, that brought back memories. “Would you like to practice in our yard?” I asked, and she went home and came back with a pink jump rope. They’d bought it for her but she’d never had the length adjusted. It was too long for her, but since she’d gone to the trouble of bringing it over, I decided to demonstrate how to jump rope before we cut it shorter.
Leaping jump, jogging step, crossover step, double hop, double crossover…I hadn’t jumped rope in over ten years and at first kept getting tangled up, but five minutes was all it took to get the feeling back. Did I get out of breath? No way. I mean, I still spent half of each day doing weight training. So there was no way a little jumping rope would tire me out.
“Akiko, you’re great!” Wakaba shouted happily. I think she found it interesting that someone as visibly bulky as me was jumping around so lightly. After that she came to practice almost every day after school. I bought a matching jump rope for myself at the mini-mart and we practiced together.
“Hang in there! Just a little more! I know you can do it, Wakaba!” I told her.
Wakaba practiced unti
l it got dark, and then my mother always invited her to eat dinner with us, preparing the kinds of dishes that would make a child happy, but Wakaba never ate with us. “Yay!” she’d say excitedly. “You mean I can eat with all of you?” But Haruka would always come to take her home before she could.
Mother invited Haruka to eat with us, but she always declined. Even though she knew it would end up like this, Mother still prepared kids’ favorites like hamburgers and fried shrimp, and as she watched frumpy old Father and me chomping away by ourselves, she never voiced any complaints. I think it’s because of how skillful Haruka was in turning down her offers: “I’d like to wait until Koji comes home,” she’d say, “and then the three of us eat dinner together. Because Wakaba loves her daddy.”
One mention of my brother and there was nothing Mother could say. Also, from time to time Haruka would invite my parents and me to dinner with them. As I said, they lived close to our house, but I thought she was really an amazing daughter-in-law to invite her in-laws for dinner even though it wasn’t anyone’s birthday or anything.
At dinner my brother would enjoy some beers and talk about things, like when he went with Wakaba on a school outing to help harvest rice. He seemed really happy, though one thing bothered me. The only dishes Haruka ever made were ones geared to a child’s tastes. At home we’d always eaten mostly Japanese dishes. Not just because Grandfather and Grandmother lived with us. It was because all of us, Koji included, preferred the plain, simple taste of Japanese food.
I figured Haruka should have at least prepared one dish that Koji liked, but everything was geared to Wakaba. Maybe when she saw my mother making children’s dishes every night, Haruka mistakenly thought that was the kind of food our family liked. The idea did cross my mind.
“Come stay with us over the weekend, Wakaba,” my mother said. “Let Mommy and Daddy be alone, just the two of them sometimes. They’re still newlyweds, after all. And you want to have a baby brother or sister someday, don’t you?”
Mother didn’t seem to mind the menu Haruka had made, happily reaching for the curry-flavored chicken nuggets. She loved little Wakaba, but I’m sure she hoped to have a grandchild of her own as soon as she could.
“You shouldn’t talk like that in front of a child,” my brother said, scolding her, though he didn’t seem too upset. Once when he’d stopped by our house he spotted his childhood baseball glove and said how he’d love to have a son someday. However…
“I’m not so sure about that. Wakaba tosses and turns all night.” Haruka seemed genuinely concerned. “I might kick Akiko in the tummy,” Wakaba added playfully. The atmosphere then was quite friendly and warm, but in the end Wakaba never did come to stay overnight with us.
Even after she went into third grade and was already proficient at jump rope, Wakaba still stopped over often at our house. This time she came to practice doing flips on the horizontal bar. We didn’t have a bar at our house, so we went to a nearby park to practice. A forward flip? Of course I can do it. I can do it many times in a row, without kicking my legs, just keeping them straight. ’Cause I trained specially to, when I was a kid.
Time passed, and after the holidays in May something happened that took me by surprise.
Haruka gave me a present of some beautiful shoes. “This is for always taking care of Wakaba for me,” she said. During the holidays she, Koji, and Wakaba had gone to a department store in the city and had bought them there.
These were designer sneakers, not made by a sporting goods company but by a women’s shoe company, with a pink and beige leather patchwork design. Pretty little shoes a world apart from the cheap canvas shoes I normally bought at a supermarket.
“I have this, too, for you, if it’s all right,” Haruka said, and gave me a pair of jeans. “I bought these,” she said, “but I have a pretty large rear end and don’t look good in them, so I’ve hardly worn them.” Haruka is so slim, though, I was sure they wouldn’t fit me.
“Akiko,” she continued, “you have wide shoulders, and your upper body is pretty solidly built, but your legs are slim and very attractive. And your behind is tight, so it’s really a waste for you to wear such loose-fitting pants. I’m sorry, I know I’m being kind of forward. It’s just that I envy you.”
Far from ever comparing my own legs to anybody else’s, I’d never even really examined them closely. But since she was nice enough to give me the jeans, I took off my brown sweatpants and, lo and behold, found they fit my legs perfectly. They might have been a tad short, but if I wore them with the cute shoes it might be better for them to be on the short side.
When Mother came back from taking Wakaba to the mini-mart she was surprised to see this outfit on me. “Come to think of it…,” she said, and got out a black Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt, a souvenir a neighbor had bought on her honeymoon as a present for her, but that Mother had been too shy to ever wear. When I put that on, Wakaba said, clapping her hands, “Akiko, you look cool!”
What stood out now was my loose, disheveled hair, held back in a ponytail with a rubber band. Haruka introduced me to a beauty parlor in the next town, where a friend of hers worked. I went there with Wakaba, who wanted to get a trim. Going to a real beauty parlor, not a barbershop, was a first for me, as was riding with Wakaba, just the two of us, on a train.
I’m still not sure what they mean by teasing out the ends of one’s hair, but they cut my hair short in a casual-looking style, and evened up my eyebrows, too. Koji had given me some extra spending money, encouraging us to have something nice to eat before coming back, and Wakaba and I enjoyed some sweets at a coffee shop near the station.
As I ate the tart, which had some kind of strawberryish fruits on top whose name I didn’t know, Wakaba watched me closely.
“You’re really cool-looking, Akiko,” she said. “Mom told me it would be nice if I had been born a boy, but I think you would look even better as a boy than me.”
“Really? She said that? But if I were a boy, then I would be your older brother or your father.”
“Oh, right…”
“Do you like your papa?”
“Uh-huh, a lot. He came on the outing to plant rice plants, and helps me with my homework. He’s so nice. The other day I kicked him in the middle of the night and he didn’t get angry at all.”
“Hm? You sleep in the same room?”
“Uh-huh. I sleep in the middle between them. Mama says that parents who get along well sleep like that.”
Wakaba sounded really happy as she said this. I’d always thought she must sleep in a separate room, but a third grader is still a pretty young child, and I’d slept in the same room with my brother until I was in fourth grade, so I didn’t find it so unusual.
One day in the middle of June Haruka’s mother collapsed while working their farm and was hospitalized in the city. Haruka was an only child, so she went to take care of her mother, and we took care of Wakaba while she was away.
Still, Wakaba never stayed overnight with us. It was a two-hour trip by train each way to the hospital, and Mother thought Wakaba should stay with us and that Haruka should sleep at the hospital. But Haruka insisted on coming home each day.
She said she couldn’t stand being apart from Koji and Wakaba.
Mother told me, on the quiet, that she feared Haruka had some mental issues. Since she’d been abused by that yakuza guy in Tokyo, even now, when she was living a happy life, she might still be afraid that if she took her eyes off her daughter she would disappear.
I told Mother I was impressed by the way she made those connections, and she said a similar scenario had played out on a Korean TV drama. I could see that. We decided we’d do whatever we could to keep Haruka from worrying too much.
Wakaba came straight to our house right after school let out and did her homework, and then we’d practice like always on the horizontal bars and toss a ball around. Then Koji would drop by after work, we’d all have dinner, and after Wakaba had had a bath she would go back to their apartment with him
.
Mother prepared kid-friendly dishes especially for Wakaba but was happy to see Wakaba gobbling down the Chikuzen-ni soy-cooked vegetables on a plate in the middle of the table—“Delicious!” Wakaba said—and after that Mother made more of the Japanese-style dishes she was good at. I was surprised when Wakaba said she didn’t know nikujaga, a common meat-and-potatoes Japanese dish.
I was thinking maybe Haruka wasn’t good at cooking. Yet the Western-style dishes she made when she invited us over had that special touch and were very tasty, so now I rethought things and decided that Haruka simply preferred Western-style food.
Like a typical overly indulgent grandfather, my father bought tons of sweets for Wakaba every day, which Koji scolded him for, and when in the second-term PE class at school they were going to learn to ride a unicycle, my father bought her one.
I helped her with her homework, and though she managed to get by in arithmetic, it was kind of pathetic the way she could never remember Chinese characters. After we finished homework we’d practice her unicycle and then take a bath together.
I’d never ridden a unicycle before either, and we’d go to the park and practice, having a ball until it got dark. Strictly speaking she was my stepniece, not a blood relation, but the truth was Wakaba was my one and only friend.
And then things started to change.
It was the beginning of July, about two weeks after Wakaba and I started taking baths together, that I first discovered bruises on her body. Her waist was red and puffy and I asked her what had happened. She looked down. “I don’t know” was all she said. “Maybe it was the unicycle,” she said after a while.
I had the same kind of bruises on my knees, so I believed her.
It was a week later, one evening just before summer vacation, when I found out the real reason for her bruises.
The town was abuzz with news about Sae having killed her husband, and about Maki getting caught up in that terrible attack on her students. This town is cursed, people said. It’s been fifteen years since TV crews came here, but suddenly they said—“Hold on! Weren’t both of them playing with that girl who was murdered back then? The murderer hasn’t been caught yet. What is all this?” Little by little it seemed like people in town started to recall Emily’s murder and all that had happened.