Lion Cross Point

by Masatsugu Ono

  Being Field Day, the hubbub in the classroom was louder than normal, so her voice was almost completely drowned out. Her face was bright red, her breaths short and trembling. Takeru began to worry that the heat from her face and breath would steam up her glasses.

  His own face was probably just as red as hers, his breathing just as awkward. He kept his eyes down. His ears pounded, his brain burning like an overheated motor. But he heard what she said:

  “Take it. It’s from my mother. She told me to give it to you.”

  For a moment Takeru couldn’t think at all. No, not just for a moment. It lasted much longer than that. Looking back, he couldn’t recall much from that day. He couldn’t remember what place he came in the race (probably last), or whether he’d managed the dance steps correctly (he wouldn’t have), or even what team he was on—red or white.

  One thing he did remember though was that someone else had also been given a lunch box. Takeru saw Haruka take a similar bundle to Takuto Watanabe, a boy whose mother was from the Philippines. She didn’t seem to get quite as red when she gave the bundle to Takuto. People said Haruka went to church every Sunday, and Takuto wore a crucifix pendant—maybe that had something to do with it.

  There was a little jizo shrine on the main street, where the cherry trees were beautiful in spring. In most places jizo—stone Buddhist figures that look like child monks—are given plain red bonnets and aprons. But at this shrine, somebody dressed them in pinks and yellows, with Hello Kitty or Miffy patterns. (Takeru would have preferred to see the jizo dressed in Pokemon patterns—Pikachu or Piplup.) Takeru heard that the shrine was on land owned by Haruka’s family. They own everything around here, he thought. Perhaps they owned the church too. It seemed strange to Takeru that a church and a jizo shrine might be associated in that way. To him they seemed like things that had no connection whatsoever. It was much later, in the graveyard by the sea, that he imagined a jizo with a crucifix around its neck. The idea made him smile. There were no bonnets or aprons on the jizo in that graveyard—just dull green lichen and scabies-like patterns on their bodies and heads formed by wind and rain. Their faces were flat and featureless.

  Another thing he clearly remembered about the field day was that he’d hardly been able to eat any of the food he’d been given. Had he been full? No chance of that. He was always hungry. Children whose families were with them had lunch in the school yard or gym. Those with no visitors—like Takeru and Takuto Watanabe—ate in the classrooms. Takeru opened the bundle that Haruka had given him, thinking he should leave some to take home for his brother. He must have had an inkling, though, of what he’d find. His bundle was bigger than Takuto’s. It was twice as thick. He must have noticed that. And when he opened it he discovered not just an ordinary lunch box, but one that had two layers. Both layers contained the same food—most of the space on each layer was taken up by two large sushi rolls, the remaining third by a combination of fried egg, fried chicken, sausage, asparagus wrapped in bacon, and broccoli. It looked fantastic. An amazing lunch! But Takeru had no appetite. Some strange, heavy lump was blocking his throat, his stomach. He stretched quietly across to take a look at Takuto’s box, but it was too far away to see. Maybe his sight was blurred by tears. Still, there must have been the same food in Takuto’s box. But Takeru had been given two portions, specially wrapped up in a single cloth. Give this to Takeru, Haruka’s mother had told her. That was obvious. Like Takuto, Takeru was one of the smallest and thinnest children in the class. Did he look like someone who would eat so much? Maybe he did! Someone who ate endlessly, but stayed thin. No. Takeru was just kidding himself. Nobody would think that. The truth was staring him in the face. But how had Haruka’s mother known about his brother? Chopsticks motionless in his hand, Takeru stared down at the layered box, but he didn’t really see it. Somebody was thinking about his brother. Did this make him happy? Was that why he was crying? Or was it despair? Despair that something that shouldn’t be known, something that mustn’t be known, something that his mother probably, no, definitely, was trying to hide, had not been successfully concealed?

  Still holding the chopsticks, Takeru wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up. Takuto was staring at him anxiously. The moment Takeru caught his gaze, Takuto hurriedly turned his large eyes away and carried on eating, as though nothing had happened.

  It can’t have been easy for Haruka to come to school carrying bundles for Takuto and Takeru (and his brother) in addition to her own things. Takeru tried to imagine how he’d have felt if it had been him doing that. He’d have been on edge, worried that other children might ask what the bundles were for. Haruka Yuasa wasn’t like that, though. She didn’t cower. She may have been red in the face and her breathing may have been awkward, but embarrassment didn’t defeat her. There was always something wrapped around her, something big that accepted her and supported her when she faltered.

  It wasn’t her family’s big house. It wasn’t all the land they owned. It was something much bigger than either of those, so big it didn’t even stand comparison. It must be Haruka’s mother, Takeru thought. And it must be something in the church they went to together on Sundays. If Takeru had been told to take lunch for one of his classmates he’d have refused, thinking it was stupid, that he’d look stupid. But luckily (was it really lucky?) he didn’t have the kind of mother who’d prepare lunch for his classmates and make him bring it. In fact, he didn’t even have a mother who made lunch for her own child. Not having that kind of mother, Takeru didn’t recognize that big thing at all. He had no way of knowing. It’s reasonable to say that, isn’t it? Because to Takeru this big thing was maternal, something that was bound up with motherhood.

  But Takeru was wrong. The big thing didn’t have to be in a mother (though of course it could be), and it wasn’t always necessarily linked to a church. You could say it was connected in a way to the jizo shrines, but also unconnected. Takeru would realize all this after he went to live with Mitsuko in the village by the sea. Mitsuko’s beliefs in God or Buddha were no stronger than anyone else’s, but this thing was always with her.

  In fact, the little village was full of it. So why had Takeru’s mother said she hated the place? Why had she wanted to get away as soon as she could?

  And the big thing wasn’t only in this narrow stretch of land by the sea. No. It was everywhere. If it wasn’t, why had Sasaki and Joel helped Takeru and his brother? Why, simply living next door, did they reach out their hands—those hands so different in shape, color, and size, yet, in the care they showed to defenseless things, identical? Maybe this thing was not just in the atmosphere, wrapping itself around people—perhaps it could come and go freely in people’s hearts. It was surely this that had made Haruka’s mother notice Takeru and his brother. It was this that had brought to Joel’s attention the apartment in the next-door building, the clear signs of habitation there, even though the lights were never on, even at night. It wasn’t by chance that Joel and the boy saw each other that day. After getting off work early Joel had spent time watching the open window next door, as though waiting for little animals to come out of their burrow. He had bread, drinks, and fruit—not much, but some. Maybe for him it was like feeding animals. Or maybe it wasn’t.

  Did Takeru realize that Joel watched over them?

  One late afternoon, Takeru was sitting on a broken bench in the overgrown backyard of the apartment block. He was reading a magazine he’d found lying around somewhere. He looked up. The sky above the orchard to the west was tinted orange. He noticed a shiny black car pull up on the road by the orchard fence. Normally he didn’t pay attention to what cars were parked nearby, but this time he did. He felt a kind of premonition. Maybe the big thing was telling him something. The moment the man got out of the car, Takeru’s blood froze. He felt cold sweat streaming down his back.

  It was him.

  Takeru’s mother called him Kazuhiro—and sometimes “Kazuhiroh,” extending the final syllable in a wheedling, girlish voice. Taker
u would think of this nightmare of a man when, in the village by the sea, he first heard the cry of a deer, kani-hiro-. It was like his mother’s voice when she called Kazuhiroh. According to Mitsuko, though, the cry was that of a buck calling to a doe, not the other way around.

  Kazuhiro didn’t look frightening in the least. In fact he almost looked kind. He was slim and muscular, with narrow hips. He had short spikey hair, and his eyebrows were neatly plucked and trimmed, his eyes deep-set. Sometimes there were Band-Aids around his eyes. Takeru remembered him—or was it his mother?—telling him that he boxed or something. He had a gold necklace, a large black shiny watch, and bracelets. He wore chunky rings on his fingers.

  He was always very neatly dressed. If he came inside their apartment in Momono he’d immediately start to look uncomfortable, checking the bottoms of his socks.

  If he saw any dirt or dust he’d click his tongue. “It’s filthy in here,” he’d say. “And it stinks of garbage. Do some cleaning!” “Sorry Kazuhiroh!” Takeru’s mother would say. Or “I know, I’ll do it properly next time!” But she’d never done it properly before. And she wouldn’t now.

  One day, Kazuhiro’s patience snapped. His eyes flashed with rage. He leaned down and picked up a wooden hanger from a pile of laundry that had been lying unfolded on the floor for days.

  “How can I get it into your head? I told you to clean up, so clean the fuck up! How many times do I have to say it, you stupid whore?”

  He spat out the words in a fury and then, as Takeru’s mother wearily pushed the laundry together with her foot, he brought the wooden hanger down on her head with a crack. The boys were right there. Takeru saw it. Did his brother? Did he understand what he saw?

  Takeru’s head swam. He didn’t know if his brother was tense. He can’t recall what expression was on his mother’s face, but then he doesn’t remember her face at all. He does remember her sinking silently to the floor though, her hands clasped to her head, crimson oozing from the gaps between her fingers. Did Takeru hurl himself at Kazuhiro to protect his mother? He couldn’t move. His knees were shaking. He was petrified. He imagined the hanger being brought down on his own head. He felt he was about to pee. Maybe he did pee. With Takeru in such a state, wouldn’t it have been reasonable for his brother to cry out? Wouldn’t it have been reasonable, with spittle still dribbling from his mouth, for him miraculously to face up to the man who’d injured his mother? But of course that is a miracle that didn’t happen.

  The violence continued. Takeru’s mother was hit by a glass and an ashtray thrown across the room. She was punched by a thick-ringed fist. She was kicked in the belly and back as she cowered on the floor, unable to speak out of fear and pain. Even then no miracle happened. Maybe Takeru wanted to punish her. Why? Because whenever this storm of a young man came or left, it was as though their sudden fights had never happened. She would nestle up to him. “Kazuhiroh,” she’d say in that wheedling voice—a doe calling to a buck. She spent hours happily making herself up for him, putting on her favorite clothes. There was no space to walk on the floor; it was always strewn with crumpled tissues and tester packets of makeup, so many that he wondered where they came from. There were bottles of mascara and nail polish; tubes and jars and powdery brushes both big and small; clothes she’d ultimately decided not to wear, coils of discarded tights. Sometimes she wore big showy sunglasses, like locust eyes, to hide her bruises. She’d leave a thousand-yen note by the door, telling Takeru to get some prepackaged meals at the convenience store, and then she’d run downstairs to meet the man waiting outside in his fancy foreign car. The low hum of its engine welled up from the depths of the earth, making the air tremble. The thousand-yen note stank of her perfume, though it had only been in his mother’s hand for a moment. The smell spread to Takeru’s fingers and he put them under his brother’s nose. Did his nostrils flinch? Was there a change in his eyes? Any flicker of happiness or disgust?

  He would think of his brother’s eyes the day Hii-chan took him out to fish on the floating quay that stretched a hundred meters out into the bay.

  “There’re some sea turtles in there,” said Hii-chan, pointing down into the fish pen. “Someone caught ’em.”

  Takeru looked excitedly into the fish pen, but the water was dark and he couldn’t see to the bottom. He couldn’t sense any movement, but as though trying to convince himself that he could, he pointed to the corner of the pen.

  “Looks like there’s something over there,” he said to Hii-chan.

  The water wasn’t showing him what he wanted to see. It’s my brother’s eyes, he thought. It reflected the sky and hills, and along with them the quay, the boats, and Takeru himself. Yes, his brother was staring up at him, seeing him as part of this land—the land his mother hated, detested.

  “You must be sick of living in this pigsty,” Kazuhiro said to Takeru once, when he’d grown tired of shouting at Takeru’s mother.

  Pigs are very clean was what Takeru wanted to say. Had he been too frightened? He didn’t know whether that was true or not about pigs—it was something he’d heard someone say on TV.

  Later, living with Mitsuko in the village by the sea, he’d remember that day and be glad he hadn’t said it.

  Hii-chan wanted to take every opportunity to show Takeru things he wouldn’t have been able to see in Tokyo.

  He took him all over the place. Takeru would hear a small truck pull up behind Mitsuko’s house, then the sound of footsteps on the gravel, and he’d know it was Hii-chan. One day Hii-chan took him to visit a friend who kept pigs on the edge of the village. The pigsty was in a grove of cedar trees sloping upward behind the friend’s two-story concrete house. The pigs’ fat bodies were covered in mud, feces, and urine. As Takeru covered his nose and mouth to keep out the stench, he felt very relieved he hadn’t told Kazuhiro that pigs were clean.

  “Your fucking mother amazes me! She just doesn’t get it. You’re at school now, so you’re old enough to help her. You have to do it—she’s too fucking dumb.”

  Kazuhiro glanced across the room at Takeru’s brother. He shook his head, his mouth twisted in a smile of bafflement and contempt.

  “No point telling him. He wouldn’t understand a fucking word!”

  “I’ll kill you!”

  Takeru felt like he’d shouted it, but the words just reverberated inside his head. He hated hearing his mother insulted. Of course he did. But maybe what he really couldn’t stand was having his brother spoken of like that.

  “I’ll kill you!”

  The shout inside him was so loud he thought his eardrums might burst. He wanted to shout like Kazuhiro and his mother did when they were arguing, hurling abuse back and forth so loud he wondered if their throats might rip apart. But all that shouting meant nothing. That was clear. Because after Kazuhiro and his mother abused each other with the foulest possible language—the types of words that his teacher said made dictionaries weep—they always ended up lying happily side by side.

  One day, when Takeru got home from school, he heard his mother gasping and shouting in pain, a man swearing frenziedly. Takeru’s heart beat against his ribs. As he came down the hallway he could hear violent breathing from the tatami room where the family slept (no…his mother hardly ever slept with Takeru and his brother). There was a narrow gap between the sliding door and the frame. Takeru caught a glimpse…thought he caught a glimpse of them, biting and tearing like animals, bodies entwined, “Kill me!” his mother screamed. Her voice seemed cornered by despair. “Kill me!”

  Takeru was terrified. He ran out of the apartment and down the rusting staircase. His mouth was dry. He retraced his route toward school, still carrying his backpack.

  Then he remembered.

  What about his brother?

  He’d left his brother in the apartment. The blue sky lurched toward him. The ground shook at his feet. The sky and earth were attacking him. What terrible scene had his brother witnessed? Had he been caught up in the killing?

  But Takeru c
ouldn’t go back right away. He walked as far as Zebra Park, a playground next to the public housing he passed on the way to school. Children called it Zebra Park because of a plastic zebra for toddlers next to the swings. There was a plastic horse and a plastic giraffe as well. Some children called it Giraffe Park, but nobody called it Horse Park. Some boys, mostly older than him, were playing football. He leaned against an iron post and watched them for a while. He thought he should go home, but decided to wait until one side scored again. But neither did. Three of the boys started arguing about which one of them was Lionel Messi. Two were wearing Messi’s Barcelona jersey, but the third was dressed as a Japanese national player. It would be nice if Messi played for Japan, thought Takeru vaguely. The PA system broadcast the five o’clock chimes. The game broke up without the goal he’d been waiting for—perhaps it was time to stop, or maybe the boys were just getting bored. The blue sky above the public housing was deepening toward purple. Takeru left the park and came out onto the sidewalk. There was a flicker above his head and the streetlight came on. He could smell cooking coming from the houses as he walked sluggishly down the street. Was his brother all right? For some reason he thought of his brother first, not his mother. He was angry with himself for having abandoned him.

  He sighed as he reached for the doorknob—a sigh so harsh and heavy that it hurt. He nervously turned the knob, but the door was locked. He took the key that hung on a string around his neck and put it into the keyhole.

  The apartment was silent. He stepped toward the room from which he’d heard the terrifying voices of his mother and the man entwined together (he probably knew what was really happening). He peered in. His brother was lying on his stomach, half on and half off a futon, sheets and covers in chaos. But there was no blood. Takeru’s own breathing was so loud he couldn’t tell if his brother was breathing or not, but he could see some movement in his brother’s back. His cheek was squashed against the tatami, his lips puckered. Takeru put his hand against his brother’s mouth and felt warm, damp breath.