by Kanae Minato
We were playing volleyball in the shade by the gym when a man in work clothes came over and asked if one of us would help him check the ventilation in the pool changing rooms. He took Emily off with him. We went on playing for a while but when the six o’clock music, “Greensleeves,” started playing and she hadn’t come back we went to check on her. That’s when we found her lying in the boys’ changing room.
The policeman listened intently, taking notes in a pocket notebook.
The ambulance arrived soon after, and a patrol car from the prefectural police, and people in the neighborhood started coming to see what was going on.…The area around the pool was soon swarming with people. Sae’s mother ran up in a panic and carried her home on her back. Right after, Akiko’s and Maki’s mothers came, and I remember Akiko’s mother being really upset, saying, “My daughter came home bleeding from her head.” Maki’s mother loudly called out her name, looking for her. But things were in such an uproar neither one of these mothers stood out from the crowd.
In the midst of all this I was left all alone. I was one of the people directly involved in the murder, yet no one paid any attention to me. The local policeman reported to the prefectural police who’d arrived what I’d told him.
Maybe the murderer is among the crowd here, I thought, and might take me away without anyone realizing it. There were so many people milling about, yet no one would rescue me.…Could anything be more frightening?
Wanting the policeman to pay attention to me, I tried my hardest to think if there was anything else I could report. I retrieved the volleyball from in front of the gym and handed it to him, telling him there might be fingerprints on it, and reenacted in the girls’ changing room next door how Emily had been lying on the ground. I was desperate to be noticed.
As I was doing all this, the prefectural police came over to me and asked a lot of questions about the murderer. I was overjoyed that someone finally noticed me, and tried my best to recall, though the details, especially about the man’s facial features, totally escaped me. It was less that I couldn’t recall than that, as I said earlier, with my bad vision I hadn’t seen much to begin with. As we tried to reach one hundred passes in a row, I was the one who blew it and sent the ball flying toward where the murderer stood. If I’d been wearing my usual glasses I would have seen his face better—maybe not down to little moles or scars or anything, but at least the main outlines of his features. But I hadn’t and it frustrated me no end.
I was angry at my mother—the one who always told me to stand up on a chair and wipe down the dirty shelves because it was too dusty for my sister to do. And angry that, while half the town seemed to have gathered at the school grounds, my mother still hadn’t shown up. Our house was in the West District but was pretty far from the school, and maybe she’d only just found out about this terrible event. She should be here any minute now, I thought, and was waiting for her. I was upset at her, but I still loved her a lot.
The investigation went on until late at night, but around 9 p.m. the policeman took me home. When I opened the door and my mother saw the policeman she looked sheepish.
“Oh, I’m so sorry you had to go to all this trouble,” she said. “I was just about to go get her. Mrs. Shinohara phoned me that something terrible had happened at the school, but the thing is, my older girl hasn’t been feeling well since this morning. Yes, she has very bad asthma. She couldn’t eat a bite, but in the evening she said she might take a bit of vegetable soup, and I was just preparing it for her. It’s my special cold potage that she manages to get down no matter how poorly she’s feeling. And my husband is the eldest son, so as you can see we’re pretty busy with relatives on Obon.…”
A person had just been murdered, yet Mother could smile and carry on like this. I started to cry. I’m not sure if it was because I felt miserable, or sad.…I remembered you, sobbing loudly as you held your dead daughter. If my sister had been killed I’m sure my mother would sob like that too, but if it was me who was murdered she probably wouldn’t even show up.
My father? He’d been drinking with male relatives all afternoon and by evening had basically passed out. If he had been up, I doubt whether he would have come to get me either. “Too much trouble,” I can imagine him saying. He was the heir in the family and had been excessively indulged growing up, but when it came to any child who wasn’t going to be his heir, especially his disappointing younger daughter, it seemed as if he couldn’t care less. Not that he had a ton of money to pass on—he certainly didn’t.
As I kept on crying, Mother hit me with an additional verbal blow.
“You’re in fourth grade,” she said. “You should have come home on your own.”
Then I wouldn’t have been so embarrassed, I heard a voice inside me add. It didn’t matter to them if I was alive or not. And if my parents were like this, it was like my own blurry view of the world—nobody else was about to notice me either, no matter how good their vision.
As I was thinking all this, the policeman beside me said to my mother: “I’m the one who kept her from coming back. Please accept my apology.”
He turned to me, bent his huge frame over, and gave me a pat on the head.
“You must have been scared,” he added. “So thank you for telling me all about it. Let us policemen handle everything else now. You go and rest up.”
His large, rugged, warm hand nearly enveloped my whole head. I never forgot what it felt like. And ever since that day I’ve been searching for a hand that would make me feel that way.
The biggest change after the murder was my sister’s attitude toward me.
My mother, perhaps feeling bad that she was the only mother who hadn’t gone to get her daughter, started being unusually kind to me. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Is there anything special you’d like to eat? Shall I go to the video shop in the next town and get a fun video for you?” That’s about the size of it, but it was a first, her being this solicitous.
“Okay, then I’d like gratin,” I told her.
But that night on the dinner table were cold noodles, steamed chicken, and a shredded dried plum salad. “Your sister can’t eat hot things,” Mother explained, “they make her asthma act up.” And as to the video, my sister hated noisy anime, so in the end Mother didn’t rent one for me.
So it was all about my sister. I mean, everybody figured it would have been better if the one who’d been killed was me.
Unable to stand it anymore, I knocked over the bowl of noodles and screamed. I’d never acted like that before. I’d always thought my sister had it bad and I tried to be patient. But now it was clearly me who was having a hard time. And that set off my sister, who burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s all my fault. If only I were healthier Yuka wouldn’t have to feel this way. And I could have made gratin for Yuka myself, since she’s feeling so down. I wish I hadn’t been born like this, with this body.… Why do I have to be the one who suffers like this? Why, Mom? Tell me.…”
As she tearfully complained to Mother, Mother said, “I’m so sorry, Mayu. Forgive me,” and held my sister to her tight and burst out crying loudly. This was the day after the murder.
After that, whenever I had to go with my mother to be interviewed by the police, my sister’s symptoms would act up and Maki’s mother would take me instead. News about Emily’s murder was on TV, and when my father asked me what the police had questioned me about, my sister would say it was all so awful she’d lost her appetite, and lay down her chopsticks. Gradually the murder became a taboo topic since it upset Mayu. Just as before, she was the one everyone worried about, and I was basically a nonentity.
I knew complaining about it was pointless, but that didn’t mean it didn’t affect me. Far from it. I grew more anxious by the day. I was sure the police would soon catch the murderer, but there was no sign of any impending arrest. Which may have been, in a sense, because of us. We were just children, but still there were four of us witnesses and yet all
four said we couldn’t remember the man’s face. I could understand how Sae, basically a coward, and Akiko, who was always kind of spacey and now had a head injury, might not recall. But I couldn’t believe that Maki, too, wouldn’t remember. I mean, even I could remember everything I’d been able to see.
But I don’t think that was the sole reason the investigation hit a snag. The day of the murder had been Obon. If the murderer had come to town by car, normally someone would have noticed an unfamiliar vehicle. But during Obon families came in droves, more of them in cars than by train, the town filled with out-of-town license plates and rental cars, so I bet there weren’t many reports of suspicious cars.
Plus, even if people saw someone they didn’t recognize walking in town, unless they were blood-spattered or something they’d just think it had to be somebody’s relative visiting. So even if the murderer had changed out of his work clothes and stuffed them into a Boston bag, people would only put him down as an out-of-town relative visiting for the holidays.
Until the year before, people might have wondered who a stranger was if they happened to run across him on the street, even during Obon. But after the Adachi Manufacturing plant was built, the town was crawling with people we didn’t know, so I think fewer people paid attention to strangers. Sort of like the indifference of city folk.
Maybe being indifferent feels good once you’re used to it, but I was yearning for the opposite: someone to pay attention to me. What came to mind then was the policeman who took me home the night of the murder, Mr. Ando. I knew if anyone would, he would listen to everything I had to say, and protect me from the murderer. I began to desperately think of excuses to visit the police substation.
Someone like you, who’s friendly and sociable, might wonder why I had to have a reason to visit. You would just stroll in, say hello with a smile, and chat about school or other topics. But that was beyond me. If I’d taken a step inside and he’d asked, “What’s the matter?” and I’d been unable to answer, I think I would have run out the door. Apart from the way they treated my sister, since we were a farming family, ever since I can remember, even on Saturdays I was told, “We’re busy, don’t bother us.” There was no one to teach me that I didn’t need a special reason to want to act a little spoiled sometimes, to want to have people pay attention to me.
At first I visited the police station to report on things I thought might be clues in the murder. For instance, though I couldn’t remember the murderer’s face, his voice reminded me of that of a certain actor. And the fact that though there were twenty-some homes in the West District that had French dolls, the ones that were stolen were all from our ten best list. Not the kind of information that would be very helpful, and in less than five visits I’d run out of material.
I went to the police station, too, when I found coins dropped along the road. But that didn’t happen so often, so I started using hundred-yen coins from my own purse. Now that I think of it, it’s like one of those host bars, paying for a man to be with you and talk with you. And actually about ten years after this I was really into that kind of bar for a while. It’s only now, really, that I realize why I wanted to go to those places.
You know, I truly hate you, and I can’t say I’m enjoying this, but when I talk with someone I begin to realize things I wouldn’t on my own. After the murder the four of us didn’t play together again and never once talked together about the murder. But maybe if we had talked more all these awful things wouldn’t have happened.
Awful things in my case means…It was six months after the murder when I shoplifted for the first time.
Oh, it hurts.…Please give me another five minutes.
I ended up estranged from the girls I’d played with every day, and my sister, always so kind to me, now treated me as an enemy. I was convinced all over again that my parents didn’t love me, and eventually I ran out of reasons to visit the police station. I was truly, truly lonely.…
One day I needed a special 4B pencil for school, for drawing class, but all I had in my purse was ¥30. “I need a pencil for drawing class,” I told my mother, and she said, “I just gave you your allowance. Use that.” I didn’t tell her the truth and went to the stationery store, only to find that the pencil cost ¥50.
The stationery store was a small shop near school, run by an older lady. The pencils were in an upright plastic cylinder display, and I took one out and thought, What should I do? What should I do? clutching the pencil tightly.…And I slipped it into the sleeve of my jacket. I couldn’t believe what I’d done and turned away toward the door to hide from the shopkeeper. I nearly screamed. There beyond the glass door stood my sister, facing me.
When she stepped inside she said, “You came to buy a 4B pencil, right? I have one, so you could have used that. Did you already buy one?”
Silently I shook my head.
“Good. I came to buy a mechanical pencil. Why don’t I buy one for you, too? I doubt any other kids at elementary school have one. You can brag about it. Let’s get the same kind, but in different colors. Which would you like, pink or light blue?”
My sister smiled and held out two cute mechanical pencils to me, each one costing ¥300. This was the first time she’d smiled at me since the murder and it puzzled me, so I just stared silently at the pencils. Why was she being so nice to me today? Did something good happen to her? Hesitantly I was reaching out for the light blue pencil when I felt something hard jab against my arm. The pencil inside my sleeve.
Maybe she’d seen me steal it and planned to tell Mother about it when she got home. If my shoplifting came out they’d fawn over her even more, and act even more disgusted with me. My sister could hardly wait for that. Should I take out the pencil from my sleeve, tell her I didn’t need the mechanical pencil, and ask her to buy this one instead? But I had no idea what she would say if I took the stolen pencil out.
As I agonized over this, my sister was browsing through the selection of erasers and colored ballpoint pens, and unable to stand the guilt—or rather the feeling of despair—of my sister having caught me red-handed shoplifting, I ran right out of the shop. I didn’t go home, and having no friends I could visit, before I realized it I was heading toward the police station. It’s a little strange to go to a police station right after shoplifting, but I understood that was the only place that would take me in.
I got to the police station but did hesitate about going inside. Mr. Ando, though, spotted me and called me to come in.
“Hello there, Yuka! Sure is cold today, isn’t it. Come inside and warm up.”
It wasn’t Why did you come here? What’s wrong? Did something happen? Just Sure is cold. I took the pencil out of my sleeve. “I stole this,” I said, “I’m so sorry,” and burst out crying. I didn’t do that in order to be forgiven or anything. He could have gotten angry, that was okay with me. In fact, that’s what I wanted.
But Mr. Ando wasn’t angry. He sat me down in the chair next to the kerosene stove and took out a clear plastic bag from his desk drawer. Inside were close to thirty ¥100 coins.
“These aren’t coins people actually lost, are they,” he said. “I think you were concerned about how the investigation was going and brought them here, pretending someone had dropped them. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to find the murderer. I know that’s made you scared. You don’t need to do something like that—you can come here anytime you like. You don’t need a special reason. Now, take this and go pay for what you took. Tell the shopkeeper you forgot your purse and went to get it and she’ll forgive you.”
Mr. Ando put the bag of coins into my hands. His large hand covering mine and the bag felt as reassuring as it did the day of the murder. It made me feel I wasn’t alone. I thanked Mr. Ando and went to the stationery shop, but the lady who ran it told me my sister had paid for me. The lady hadn’t noticed I had shoplifted, and my sister had told her everything and apologized for me. “What a wonderful sister you have,” the lady said.
When I got home my mother
met me at the door and wouldn’t let me in. Instead, she locked me inside the shed. “Children who steal stay inside here until morning,” she said. There was no light there, or bedding, but when I took out the coins from the plastic bag and recalled the feeling of the policeman’s hand, I wasn’t frightened or sad at all.
What did make me sad was Mr. Ando leaving the following month. He’d passed his exams and was being reassigned to the prefectural police headquarters, a promotion for him but a terrible blow for me. On the day he was to leave I was standing there mute, head hung, outside the police station, unable to think of a nice way to say goodbye. When he saw me Mr. Ando said, “A veteran policeman will be taking my place, so come see him anytime if anything is worrying you.” The man who took his place, though, an older, stooped-over man with a family of his own, didn’t look very reliable, so I never visited the police station again.
And that’s why—and this might sound self-serving, I know—I frequently shoplifted after that. I didn’t do it because it was fun, or because I didn’t have enough spending money. I just wanted somebody to pay attention to me. They hadn’t come to get me when there was a murder, but I figured if the police called my parents to come to the station to get me, they’d have to. But maybe my dexterity worked against me, for hardly any of the shop owners ever noticed I was shoplifting. The only ones who did notice, and talk to me, were a group of junior high school kids who hung around town till late at night. Finally I had a group to be with.
This was a year after the murder. It was two years after that when you called us all to your home.
Three years after the murder you called the four of us, now thirteen years old, to your place and told us something unbelievable. Girls that age, even if they’re living completely ordinary lives, are full of doubt and anxieties about their identity, but you called us all murderers. And told us we must either find the man who murdered Emily or else perform an act of penance that would satisfy you. Otherwise, you’d get revenge.