by Misumi Kubo
“When you think about it though, that mugwort had probably been peed on by dogs for all we know. And absorbed loads of exhaust fumes and stuff. I’ll bet it was really dirty.” Even as I said this, all I could think was how I’d have died for one of those sticky green sweets right this moment.
I remembered being a little boy and standing next to my gran beside the steamer, staring down at the plumes of billowing smoke, just waiting for the sweets to be ready.
“You’re just like Yoshio!” my gran said. “He loved these mugwort sweets, too.”
Then she put a spoon of freshly made bean paste, still warm, inside my mouth.
Just then, Akutsu’s cell phone beeped. I saw her pass her eyes over the new message, and then jump to her feet.
“It says someone saw a woman by your gran’s description over by the foot of the bridge.”
We got back onto the bike and headed to the bridge we’d passed before. When we got there, we jumped down onto the flat expanse of riverbed, and started calling out at the top of our voices. We ran the width of the riverbed, passed over the patch of big rocks, and stood right by the river’s edge. Along with the sound of running water, I thought I could hear a voice. It sounded like my gran.
“Over here!” Akutsu said, parting the leaves that stretched far above her head and making her way through them. I sprinted to catch up, but I’d already lost track of her, so I made my own way through the thicket, coming out right in front of the patch where all the goldenrod grew. It was covered in fluff like the artificial snow people hang on Christmas trees. I felt, all of a sudden, like my path had been blocked. Unable to go on, I looked up at the sky instead. I could see a sliver of moon up there. No stars, though.
In truth, there had been another reason why I’d been nicknamed Goldie. As a kid I’d always been dirty, covered in dust, and kind of unkempt, and someone had spread it around that being near me made people sneeze. Just like that goldenrod by the river, someone else had said. Our homeroom teacher had said that you couldn’t get hay fever from goldenrod, but nobody had paid him any attention, and the name had stuck. Had I really chosen this life for myself, like that obstetrician woman had said?
I looked up at the sky. If there really was a god up there, I thought, then it had to be a pretty cruel one. I clicked my tongue, and then spat in its direction.
Then I heard Akutsu’s voice coming from somewhere ahead. Without pausing to think, I plunged into the colony of goldenrod and charged ahead.
Finally, I parted the grass ahead to see the baseball park stretched out in front. On the field, my gran was marching around and around in circles. Where she found that kind of stamina in that wizened old body of hers, I honestly had no clue.
Akutsu and I did our best to take hold of her arms, telling her it was time to go home, but she brushed us off and continued walking. Then she began to sing at the top of her voice. The song was pretty nonsensical, but now and then we’d catch a word or two: birdcage and canary. At first Akutsu and I followed my gran faithfully around and around the field. After a while Akutsu crouched down, breathing heavily.
“Let’s just wait until she tires herself out,” I said.
We sat down on a half-rotten wooden bench overlooking the ballpark. The wind was freezing, and both of us were shivering. For a long time, I sat hugging my knees to my chest, but after a while my hands got tired. When I let my hands sink down on the bench, one of them brushed up against Akutsu’s. It was the same hand she’d once put the stolen chocolates on top of, the hand that had once been covered in brown marks. Her palm felt dry and rough.
Akutsu’s cell phone rang. She held it to her ear and then, looking at my face, said into the receiver, “Ryota.” There was a pause. “Yeah, his gran escaped.”
Akutsu talked to Taoka for a while, then hung up.
“He was worried, apparently. He said you went running out the store today in the middle of your shift. Did something happen?”
I ignored her question and kept silent. Not long after, we heard a car parking by the top of the riverbank and saw Taoka come walking toward us.
“Where is she?” he asked, and we pointed. Taoka went off at a jog toward the moving figure. We watched as he accompanied her around the baseball field a bunch of times, before bending over to whisper something in her ear. Then he hoisted her up on his back and made his way toward us.
Taoka loaded my gran, who was by now dozing off, and Akutsu, who was just about lifeless with cold and exhaustion, into the back of his car, lay a blanket over them, and shut the door.
“As soon I’ve smoked this, we’ll go,” Taoka said, taking a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his biker jacket and lighting one. It was the first time I’d ever seen him smoke.
“I’ll take you to the hospital.”
I shook my head, panicked. “I haven’t got the money.”
“It’s okay. I know someone there. I’ll speak to them and make sure you don’t have to do anything. I told you, when you’re in trouble, you should always come to me first.”
“Yeah, but . . . I know I’ve asked you this before, but why are you so willing to help me out like this?”
Taoka stayed silent for a long time, not answering my question. He smoked his cigarette right down to the butt, breathing out halos of white smoke. Then he crushed the end beneath his shoe and moved his foot back and forth over it for what seemed like way longer than was necessary.
The shrill cry of a bird marked the start of a new day. In the eastern sky, gradually morphing from indigo to purple, I could make out the morning star. Taoka took out another cigarette and put it to his mouth. In the orange flash of his lighter flame, his face looked utterly exhausted.
“There’s parts of me that are unbelievably awful. So unless I make the other parts unbelievably good, I’m done for.”
He spoke so quietly I could barely catch what he was saying. If the wind had been blowing any harder, I probably wouldn’t have.
“I had fun the other day. When we had dinner together and went to the toy shop,” he said.
I nodded, and Taoka brushed off the goldenrod fluff that was sticking to my hair.
“We should do it again,” he said, and grinned. He looked just like a little kid when he smiled like that. I thought back to that weird Sunday drive: the sickly sweet smell inside his car, the dirty old Pikachu on the floor. For some reason I had the feeling that Taoka was going to disappear on me, just like my mom and my dad.
Sure enough, a week after my gran was hospitalized with pneumonia, Taoka was arrested on suspicion of indecent assault.
Ms. Shimizu, the social worker Taoka had introduced me to, had helped me out a lot with the fees and about what to do once my gran came out of the hospital.
“He was going to therapy, taking it very seriously. There’s no way he’d do something like that,” Ms. Shimizu had said angrily, with a frown, when she heard about Taoka. But when we came out of the room at the hospital, she said to me very quietly, “He didn’t try anything with you, did he?”
“No,” I said.
“Okay. Sorry for asking,” she said, a slightly guilty expression on her face.
When I went into my gran’s room, she was sitting up in bed and rubbing cream into Akutsu’s hands.
“She’s been doing it for ages! She won’t let go. My hands are so sticky!” Akutsu said, beaming. My gran kept on and on, stroking Akutsu’s hands as if she were handling something extremely precious.
With Taoka no longer around, utter chaos had descended on the convenience store. I’d been planning to apologize for trying to steal money and submit my resignation, but when I went in to do just that, the manager gave me a tearful look and refused to let me go.
“My wallet fell on the floor, and you were just picking it up. I know, I know! The shifts for next month are up over there, so take a look before you go, okay?” He mopped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, then ran to the registers where there was a line of customers waiting to collect the Christmas cakes they’d or
dered. I opened my locker to see a brown envelope in there. Inside was the book of questions Taoka had created based on Akutsu’s and my feedback.
“Apparently he’d go around offering to help kids with their schoolwork, then drag them into his car, strip them naked and take photos of them!” I heard one of the part-time women saying, sounding almost rabid with excitement. Then everyone else out the back of the shop started talking about him, saying they’d always known there was something suspect about him or how they’d never trusted that glint in his eyes.
On the way back home, I stopped my bike midway up the slope leading to the projects and looked down on the little town below. Watching those lights, I decided to myself that I was going to study like crazy, take everyone by surprise by getting into a prestigious university, and leave this place for good. Then I thought about Taoka, and I directed a single prayer to the cruel old god up above: Wherever he is tonight, please don’t let him be feeling too lonely.
5
Pollen Nation
WHEN THEY MAKE IT this far, it means they’re almost there.
With my surgically gloved right hand I could feel the crown of the baby’s head, all warm and slimy. For a couple of minutes now, it had been popping out of Mrs. Oshima’s vagina, then disappearing back inside again.
“Not long to go,” I said to her. With her arms still wrapped around her husband’s neck, she dropped her eyes to the floor and nodded limply. She was wearing just a pale-pink tank top, kneeling on the tatami with her legs spread wide. I went around to sit behind her, reaching my hand between her legs to support the baby’s head.
At first, it had seemed like the sight of his wife howling like a wild beast had totally knocked Mr. Oshima sideways, but now he’d apparently managed to locate some balls somewhere and was being much more helpful, wiping the sweat from her brow and offering her sips of water.
No sooner had the New Year arrived than the weather had suddenly taken a cold turn. A big freeze had made its way over from mainland Asia, the forecaster had announced on the evening news. From time to time, a strong gust of wind would rattle the badly fitted windows of the old wooden house. I glanced up at the window, whose curtains I’d left open, to see the bare branches of the cherry trees lining the bicycle path rocking and shaking in the wind.
Mrs. Oshima had asked a little while back that I turn off the heating unit as the noise was bothering her, and yet she, her husband, and I were all still dripping with sweat. For some reason, as soon as I’d switched off the heating, the labor had started to go far more smoothly. I don’t know why, but those kinds of semi-miraculous turns of events often seem to happen in childbirth. The patches of sweat staining the husband’s green T-shirt were gradually expanding, and beads of sweat from his hair were dripping onto Mrs. Oshima’s pale, delicate skin.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
Staring right into her husband’s eyes, Mrs. Oshima let out a long, loud yell. The atmosphere in the small room suddenly turned soupy and intense. I felt as if I’d crept in unannounced to their bedroom, and I made myself as inconspicuous as I could. I concentrated all my energies on ensuring there was as little burden on Mrs. Oshima’s body as possible, so that the baby would be more likely to come out in one uninterrupted gush.
“Relax your body. Breathe in short, shallow bursts. Say ha, ha, ha.”
I’d barely finished speaking when there was a sound like a balloon bursting, and warm water spilled out onto my palms. Mrs. Oshima breathed for a while like I’d told her to, then I saw her take a long breath through her mouth, and out popped the baby’s head. I used my fingers to clamp her anus shut, while also supporting the baby’s body that was twisting around as it emerged. The shoulders and the back followed quickly.
There was a moment of silence, and then the baby let out a mewl. I slipped my hand gently under the back of its head and hoisted it up onto Mrs. Oshima’s chest, still attached to her by its umbilical cord. Her cheeks flushed a vivid red, Mrs. Oshima kissed the back of her newborn baby’s head, still wet with amniotic fluid. Her husband wrapped his arms around her from behind: man hugging woman hugging baby. Cradled at his mother’s chest, the baby soon stopped crying and began with closed eyes to seek out her breast.
“Here, it’s here,” Mrs. Oshima said, guiding her nipple into its mouth. Watching how the baby, without having ever been shown how, began slurping away with a noise like a little suction pump, a tear ran down the husband’s cheek. I looked dazedly at the three of them, this freshly created holy family in front of me, and let out a long deep breath from the very bottom of my lungs. Then it began to hit me how hungry I was.
A delicious smell greeted me as I stepped into the kitchen. I lifted the lid of a pan on the stove to find golden dashi stock, glistening in the dim. I dunked a ladle in and raised it to my mouth. There was the patter of slippers making their way down the hall, and then Mitchan came into the kitchen, carrying a great pile of folded towels. She looked at me and frowned.
“Again with the bad manners, Doctor! How many times have I told you about drinking straight from the pan?”
“Your stock is just too tempting, Mitchan. I feel like it’s restoring me to life.”
“If you can just hang on a few minutes more, I’ll make you some soup with it. Go on, have a seat.”
Mitchan transferred some of the stock into a small pan. She took some steamed fish and greens out of the fridge and began chopping them at a furious pace, then tossing them into the pot. I looked up at the clock. It was past midnight.
“As soon as you’ve made that you should go home,” I said. “You’ve barely slept these two days.”
“I really think you’re in more need of it than I am, Doctor. You’ll die at this rate.” With a smile, Mitchan set a bowl of soup and a pair of chopsticks down in front of me.
Mrs. Oshima had come in the morning the day before yesterday, her contractions ten minutes apart. But just when it seemed like things were heating up and starting to look promising, the contractions would slack off again, and in the end the labor had gone on for two full days. There’d been other deliveries taking place simultaneously, too, and as a result, neither Mitchan nor I had slept properly. Mitchan hadn’t even been home but had stayed here the whole time, grabbing the odd moment of shut-eye when she could. This kind of thing was hardly a rarity. I took a sip of the soup and felt it warming my esophagus, all the exhaustion and tension starting to ebb away.
“My God, this is good.”
Mitchan let out a strange cackle. Her hair was cut so short I could see her earlobes turning red.
Mitchan had been working here since the year before last. Not only was she a midwife, but she was also in charge of preparing meals for the women staying at the clinic. She still wasn’t at the stage where I could leave her alone to deliver babies by herself, but when it came to cooking she rivaled most professional chefs. As soon as she’d joined, there’d been a sudden rise in comments on the feedback sheets that the mothers submitted after their stays that the food had been incredible. We served traditional Japanese meals at the clinic, more or less exclusively. Mitchan insisted on extracting her own dashi stock from bonito flakes and kombu seaweed, rather than using the instant stuff. She also eschewed the electric rice cookers everyone else used, cooking her rice in an earthenware pot. Along with rice and soup, there’d be a main dish of either meat or fish as well as two small vegetable dishes and a little helping of some kind of seaweed. All of this she managed to rustle up quickly and efficiently and at minimal cost. To top it all off, at the end of each day, she’d enter a detailed record of the meals she’d cooked into the computer.
Whenever another midwife or I complimented her on her cooking, though, she’d get all embarrassed.
“When I was a kid my mom was always off playing pachinko, right? She didn’t do a thing around the house. Well, I had seven brothers and sisters, and I was the oldest girl, so I just learned. I didn’t think anything of it,” she’d say. Then she’d go on to tell us what a ba
d seed she’d been. “Basically, you name it, I tried it—except murder.”
We’d had a lot of people who started working here, especially younger women, who couldn’t cope with the strain of the round-the-clock job. Mitchan had been here the longest of anyone.
“It went quite smooth in the end for Mrs. Oshima, then?”
“Yeah, the end was surprisingly quick. She was totally exhausted! I think if it had lasted much longer the baby would have got tired, too. We’d probably have ended up taking her to the hospital.”
As I spoke, I pressed my fingers to my throbbing temples. Seeing this, Mitchan said poutily, “Honestly, Doctor! I’ll clear this up. Will you please just go up to bed?”
I went upstairs as I’d been told and knocked on the door to Takumi’s room. No reply. I waited a little before turning the doorknob. Seeping in through the crack in the curtains, the light of the streetlamp shone upon a lump in the duvet. I stepped over the manga, books, and convenience store bags full of trash strewn across the floor and went up to his bed. Quietly, I peeled back the edge of the duvet so his face came into view. His eyelids were firmly shut, not moving at all. I moved the duvet back farther and held my finger beneath his nose until I felt the faint, warm touch of his breath. He was alive. Having ascertained that much, I stood up and walked out of the room.
Without turning on the light, without even taking off my clothes, I dove into the futon left out on the floor of my bedroom. The throbbing in my temples was really bad. The right side of my lower back felt heavy, as if I’d strained it. If this went on, I’d have to watch it not to put my back out like I had before. I felt a shooting pain from the inside of my right shoulder blade, like someone was sticking a needle in. When I closed my eyes, the ceiling began spinning, and I felt gravity pulling my body down, deeper into the futon. Well, at the very least, I thought, as my consciousness began to fade, today had ended disaster-free. There were still plenty of pending problems to be dealt with, of course. I had no idea how long I’d be able to sleep, but I prayed that even just a few hours would be enough to take this exhaustion away.