by Misumi Kubo
Eventually, after about an hour, Machiko said, “I think of you as my daughter, you know, Satomi. So I want you to think of me as your real mother! If there’s anything you ever want or need, don’t even hesitate to ask!”
Then she hung up.
Machiko often came out with that kind of stuff. The truth was, though, I had no memory of asking my real mother for anything, so I didn’t really know how to do it. If we really were mother and daughter, for example, would it be okay to say, “There’s an anime program I really want to watch, so do you mind if I go now”? I wasn’t sure if that was allowed.
After I put the receiver down, I breathed a long sigh. Machiko was very kind and treated me well, but speaking to her for extended periods of time left me totally exhausted.
I opened the door to Keiichiro’s room as quietly as I could and peeked inside. He was lying on top of his duvet snoring, his bedside lamp still on. Keiichiro was naturally baby-faced, but those gray circles under his eyes gave him the look of a middle-aged man, exhausted with life. I guessed his job must really be tough. With that wide, domed forehead and those thin lips, Keiichiro was the spitting image of Machiko. I had the feeling that if I ever got pregnant, my baby would come out looking exactly like that. As I stood there watching, Keiichiro turned his face away from the light. On the left side of his neck was a diagonal scar about ten centimeters long, stretching from his earlobe down toward his collarbone. I’d once asked him what had happened, if he’d been involved in some kind of accident, but he’d just replied, “I was bullied at school, too.”
He didn’t elaborate. Whenever I spoke about my experiences with bullying, Keiichiro would pat my head and say, “I just put a curse on your bullies to bring them bad luck, so it’ll all be okay now.”
I was grateful to him for saying it, but seeing him come home every day looking so ground down, I couldn’t help suspecting that he didn’t have the strength to curse anyone.
Keiichiro said he finds it hard to sleep well when he’s sharing a bed with another person, so from the very first we’d slept in separate rooms. On weekends, Keiichiro comes to my room in the evenings to have sex. He gives me a few peck-like kisses, squeezes my boobs, and fiddles with my clitoris some, and then, still lying down, enters me from behind, and comes after a few thrusts. I don’t make any noise or feel any pleasure. The doctor at the clinic said Keiichiro has a low sperm count and that his sperm aren’t very energetic, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s related in some way to how lifeless our sex is. I kind of suspect the important task of passing on your genes to the next generation might be just too much for a person like Keiichiro. I’ve no complaints about our sex life, but sometimes I can’t help thinking back fondly to the wild times I used to have with my various guy friends in college, where I felt as though they might devour me right then and there.
On Saturday, as I was putting together a late lunch, the doorbell rang. On the intercom monitor I saw Machiko standing there in a matching fuchsia jacket and skirt.
“Guess where I’ve just been!” she said. “The morning farmers’ market in the square in front of the town hall. Just look how fresh these vegetables are! Let’s get them down you right away!”
Machiko set down a heavy-looking paper bag and some of the soil sticking to the daikon leaves fell onto the floor.
“Have you not eaten yet? It’s late to be having lunch, isn’t it?”
“We both slept in today.”
“These sandwiches look nice,” she said as she peeled back the bread with her finger to look inside. “But not half enough vegetables. Hold on a minute. You just put your feet up and watch TV for a while now.” And as she said this, she pulled an apron from her purse and began washing the mud-caked vegetables in the sink.
Thinking the sandwiches would dry out, I hurriedly wrapped them in cling wrap. Machiko hummed to herself as she stood there, busying herself in my kitchen. I found myself rooted to the spot, unable to speak, just staring at the broad back of this woman who had come bursting in on us and our day. Still, I realized there was nothing to be done. I took a seat on the sofa and stared at the TV, though it was totally impossible to relax.
“Lunch is ready!” Machiko eventually called out in a singsong voice.
Keiichiro came traipsing into the room, face still swollen with sleep.
“I thought I recognized that smell,” he said, as he put his hand up inside the hem of his faded sweatshirt and scratched his belly.
“What time do you call this, young man? Go on! Off you go and wash your face,” said Machiko, with obvious delight. The table was laid with bowls of steaming vegetable soup and daikon salad.
Keiichiro always claimed that the only thing he could stomach when he’d just woken up was coffee, but now he practically threw Machiko’s soup down his throat, commenting on how good it was. Neither Machiko nor Keiichiro touched the sandwiches I’d made. But I couldn’t deny that Machiko’s soup and salad were far better, so it made perfect sense.
“Oh, yes! I’ve brought something for you,” she said, pulling a small box out of her purse. “This, my dear, is egg vinegar. They make it by pickling the eggs of silkie hens. So healthy. A friend of mine told me her daughter drank this and got pregnant almost instantly! I thought it might be the thing for you.” She opened up the bottle and poured out some of the liquid, the color of milky coffee, into a small plastic measuring cup.
“You only need a little. Here, give it a try.”
It didn’t seem as if I could refuse, so I drained it in one go. It wasn’t as sour as I’d expected it to be, but it had a very strange taste that spread out right across my tongue. I hurriedly took a sip of tea.
“So, you just drink that every day from now on. It’s ever so good for you.”
Next, Machiko brought out of her bag several Tupperware containers containing various nutritious salads like simmered hijiki with soybeans, and sautéed lotus and burdock roots.
“If only your mom had been alive, of course, you’d have been able to eat all these healthy foods when you were going through puberty, when your body really needed them.”
At this, I felt a prickly, stinging feeling in my chest. Machiko seemed more formidable than ever today. What was she trying to imply about my body? Was the idea that if I’d eaten more seaweed and root vegetables when I was younger, then I’d have been pregnant by now? Her uninterrupted stream of conversation leapt from one thing to another. One moment it seemed the topic was her friend’s daughter who had a shotgun wedding at the age of twenty after getting pregnant unexpectedly, but then before I knew it Machiko was speaking about which nursery schools had the best teachers, and then to how tough elementary schools were these days. Finally, she landed upon what seemed to be the heart of the matter: how her friend had been terribly shocked by suddenly finding herself with a grandchild. I listened and made appropriate noises as best I could, but somewhere along the line I must have zoned out because I heard Machiko say, “I really do,” and then stop speaking entirely. She reached out and grasped my hand, and I looked up in surprise. Noting the expression on my face, Machiko repeated herself.
“I was saying, I think it’s worth trying IVF, Satomi, I really do. I know that money is a concern for you, but I’ve got the savings that Keiichiro’s father left, and I’m sure that up there in heaven, he wouldn’t be against my using it to give him grandchildren. Let’s give it a try, eh? As many goes as it takes. People with excellent genes like you two are the ones who need to be passing them on, not all these hopeless parents with the DNA of stray dogs. Trust me, it’s better to give birth before you turn thirty. Children prefer a young and beautiful mother.”
Keiichiro had disappeared off to the sofa, where he was stretched out reading the paper. I was sure he could hear what Machiko was saying, but he didn’t make any comment on any of it. My heart was thumping in my chest, and I started to say, “Actually, we’re not entirely sure if—”
Machiko gripped my hand and started to speak even more loudly.
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“You know, in the past, men were told that if their wives didn’t give them children within three years they had to leave them. I hate to say this, but we really should have had you checked at the hospital before you two got married. If we had, then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this—this—”
I could feel her great booming voice vibrating inside my ears. Hearing Machiko begin to snivel, Keiichiro looked up in surprise from behind his newspaper. I really hoped he would say something at that point, but, after a moment, he returned his gaze to the print. Machiko removed her tinted glasses, sank her large body down onto the table, and began to cry in earnest.
A voice inside me was saying, I really can’t be bothered with this, but I did all I could to push it down to the bottom of my chest. I’m not very good at dealing with these kinds of situations, and my impulse was just to run out of the apartment, but I knew the minute I left I would lose my right to ever return. It concerned me that the people next door would hear Machiko’s wailing. It went on and on, and though I didn’t really feel sorry, I figured that if I didn’t apologize she’d be there wailing forever, so I rubbed her back and said, “I’m sorry, Machiko.”
She lifted her face, her makeup ruined with tears, and said with a smile, “So you’ll give IVF a try, then?”
I heard a drop of water fall from the tap into the sink.
No sooner had I begun preparations for IVF than I understood how much of a step up it was from artificial insemination. They may both have been classified as infertility treatments, but IVF was in a different league from anything I’d tried before. I had to have daily intramuscular injections to ensure my ovaries were producing healthy eggs. The injections themselves were painful enough, but worse was the dull pain in my stomach and the nausea that came on afterward. I would lie in bed, and Machiko would bring meals around for me. Once, seeing me lying there green-faced, Machiko said: “If you’re suffering this much, it’s guaranteed to work!”
When several of the follicles that contained the ova had reached the right stage of development, a needle would be inserted into the ovary to suck them out, the doctor explained. Just hearing the phrase “insert a needle” was enough to make me feel faint. Yet everything that had to be done was done quietly, and without incident. One of my eggs that had been artificially matured was successfully fertilized inside a culture vessel with Keiichiro’s sperm, which he’d had to masturbate in the clinic to produce. After this, the cleavage stage began. Two days later, when the fertilized egg would be returned to my womb, Machiko showed up unannounced at the clinic. Right before I entered the treatment room, she handed me a talisman of brocaded silk, saying, “You’ve nothing at all to fear!”
The talisman had come from a shrine just outside town, where people went to pray to the god of children. I had never been.
Even after the fertilized egg was inserted into my womb, I had to continue taking hormones. It was two weeks before they would tell me officially whether I was pregnant or not, but Machiko was behaving as if her grandchild bun was already in the oven, buying cute baby clothes and bringing them around to our apartment along with her homemade meals.
The first IVF attempt failed, as did the second. The third time, the fertilization was successful, but then the cells suddenly stopped dividing. My guess was that the zygotes made up of mine and Keiichiro’s DNA were somehow too weak to make it. It really seemed as though the gods had determined that our children were not supposed to be born into this world.
The late summer day I found out at the clinic that the third attempt had also been unsuccessful, there was a huge typhoon, and the water level of the river rose dangerously high. Even after dark, I could hear sirens racing all around town, and it made me feel very on edge.
Machiko had told me to let her know as soon as the results were in. I picked up the phone a few times to call her, but I found I didn’t have it in me to tell her when I was alone, so I decided to wait for Keiichiro to come home. The truth was, I was kind of hoping he would make the call, but it was clear the moment he came in the door late that night that he was in a terrible mood. I guessed he must have had a bad day at work again, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him.
“It was unsuccessful again,” I began to say into the receiver, and then the line went dead. Not long after, Machiko turned up at our apartment, soaked to the skin. There must have been some wind out there, because the flower-print umbrella she was holding was turned completely inside out, its wires all bent. Not stopping to take off her olive-colored raincoat, Machiko came flying through the door at me, forcing me backward down the hall.
“Why do you find it so difficult?” she yelled, as the raindrops leapt from her coat in all directions. “I never wanted him to marry you in the first place, but he insisted! He insisted, so I turned a blind eye to your situation!”
Machiko wasn’t crying, but in her excitement her eyes had turned bright red.
“S-Situation?”
“A little money can get you anything, you know! Pay someone to do some research, and it all comes out of the woodwork! You can find out anything! Anything you like! Oh, yes, I know all about your student days, all those immoral sexual relations you had!”
I’d been called a slut plenty of times before, but this was the first time anybody had ever accused me of having “immoral sexual relations.”
“But Keiichiro was determined to marry you, and I thought to myself, well, as long as you’ll give him children, then, it doesn’t really matter what kind of girl you are. I just want grandchildren. That’s it! It’s very simple! So tell me! Why isn’t it happening?”
With these last words, Machiko was yelling, and the yell tuned into a scream that sounded as if it were being wrung from the back of her throat, and then she put her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry.
“It’s not just my fault we can’t get pregnant,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever spoken back to Machiko. It took all the energy I had to say those words, ever so quietly. I could hear my own voice shaking like crazy.
Machiko glared at me.
“What are you trying to say?”
“They found problems with Keiichiro, too,” I said, but I couldn’t get the words out to tell her about Keiichiro’s low sperm count or his general lack of interest in sex.
“Don’t talk nonsense! Just look at how Keiichiro is working himself to the bone just to keep you fed! If you’d only put some effort into the food you make him, there’d be no problems with his body whatsoever! From the day he was born until the day he married you, I poured every ounce of love I had into bringing him up properly. He was my treasure. But you! Just look at you! You hang around the house not doing a thing, and you can’t even cook! And now it turns out, you can’t even get pregnant! Do you know there are women in this world who work full-time, do all the housework by themselves, and still manage to raise three or four kids? I don’t know how you managed to trick him into this! He really drew the short straw with you!”
With every new line Machiko came out with in that booming voice of hers, I felt like I was being sucked farther and farther inside some cheesy soap on TV, and it drained all the strength away from my body. Machiko had her own storyline all figured out. In it, she was the poor woman who had brought up her son with such loving care, only for him to be stolen away by a stupid bitch incapable of doing any housework, who couldn’t even conceive. In her story, Machiko had the starring role and I was the villain; while for me, Machiko was like the last boss who showed up at the end of a game, the hardest enemy to defeat. If I did manage to finish her off, I wondered vaguely to myself, would my marriage and my life come to an end, like they did in computer games? Keiichiro was still sitting on the sofa, staring at the floor, not moving so much as a finger. Was he my enemy, too? If he was, I felt like he was one of the minor ones. Even I could take him down in an instant.
“It’s because you don’t try hard enough,” Machiko was saying. Apparently, she still wasn’t done with abusing me.
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br /> Since elementary school, I’d always struggled with things. Whether it was kickovers on the bar in gymnastics or sewing on buttons in home economics, it took me at least twice as long as other people to master new tasks. Even when I was trying my best, my fingers and my body just wouldn’t move in the same way as other people’s. I remembered all those tough times I spent after school in the classroom or the playground trying to complete some activity, and how the teachers and my classmates who were watching me would call out, “Come on, try harder!” as if by just trying harder I would miraculously become able to do the thing. It was the same now. I wasn’t about to go and get pregnant just because someone told me to make the effort.
It seemed as though the storm outside had begun to rage even harder, and from time to time a gust of wind sent the rain whipping loudly against the balcony door. Leaving Machiko shouting and raving and Keiichiro still sitting silently in the living room, I ran into my bedroom and locked the door. Machiko came stomping after me with that great big body of hers, twisting the doorknob frenziedly and pounding on the door.
“Open up right now!”
I covered my ears with my hands to shut out her screams. Then I heard the muffled sound of someone’s body—I didn’t know whether it was Machiko’s or Keiichiro’s—slamming against the door.
I looked toward the door and said, “I’m sorry. I just need to rest a bit.”
After a while, Machiko changed tack.
“Now listen, Satomi,” she began. “Don’t go getting any funny ideas in there, okay?”
First, I was thoroughly abused for being the way I was, and then I was told not to think anything “funny.” What on earth did Machiko want me to do?
Eventually, I must have passed out. I slept very deeply, curled right up in the duvet, and when I woke, both the bed and I were drenched in sweat. I got up to change the sheets, and when I opened the closet I found my MAGICAL GIRL✩LILLICA cosplay outfit there on its hanger. Lillica is one of my favorite anime characters, and I’d bought her costume, along with the cat-eared wig and magic wand, just to have rather than to actually wear. Now though, on a whim, I took off my sweat-soaked clothes and tried the costume on. The outfit, which was modeled around a sailor-style school uniform, had an incredibly short skirt, and I could feel the air skimming my thighs. It was supposedly “one size fits all,” but the waist was very tight, and though I just about managed to do up the buttons, it seemed as though it would pop off at any minute. I put on the wig with the attached cat ears, and then stood in front of the full-length mirror. No, I thought. It wouldn’t do for Lillica to have a face like this, like a regular downtrodden housewife. I spread out every item of makeup that I owned across the floor and began to do myself up. I never usually wore foundation, but now I daubed it on carefully and evenly, adding mascara to lengthen and thicken my eyelashes, making my lips shiny with gloss, and finally applying a light dusting of blusher to my cheeks. Then I stood in front of the full-length mirror again. The person standing there wasn’t Satomi, the fat, ugly, stupid, infertile housewife. Anybody looking from a distance would have taken her for a slightly plump Lillica.