Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Sensing my presence, Mrs. Utagawa said, “Yoko, this is Fumiko. Say hello.”

The shape under the quilts was a little girl. She turned her thin neck to look at me but said nothing. “Hello,” I said. She returned my greeting by glaring at me with her feverish eyes. It almost made me recoil.

Either Mrs. Utagawa had lost her sense of smell or her headache was so bad that she couldn’t move about, for the room stank of sweat, fever, and stale air. The way the girl’s frizzy hair was matted on the white pillow looked filthy; her skin was dark and coarse; and her gaze, with the white of the eye fully exposed, had a look of savagery. It was hard to believe this creature had been among the pretty girls with ribbons in their hair who danced and fluttered like butterflies at the Saegusas’ place that day. Why did I have to end up in a house with a child like this? I felt doubly betrayed. First this house, and then this girl … Though I was used to babysitting, I wasn’t one of those people who just indiscriminately loves children. And yet I’d actually been looking forward to those pretty little girls.

There was disbelief, but also something closer to anger in me. I just wanted to run, get out of that house, leave the old woman and child behind. Quilts, tatami mats, sliding doors—everything swirled in a taunting circle around me …

But I suppose taking care of a sick child had long since become second nature for me. Even while trying not to cry, trying to push my heartache down, I also began to see what needed doing, one thing after another, and before I knew it, I was scurrying around, straightening the covers, opening the windows to let in some fresh air, adding ice chips to the cold compress, wringing out the wet cloth and replacing it on the girl’s forehead, wiping down her sweaty arms and legs, even changing her underwear. I also tidied up the round tray near the child’s pillow, putting the glass, thermometer, and medicines in order. Mrs. Utagawa seemed relieved to see me taking charge. She sat by Yoko’s pillow and chatted with her, while also explaining to me where I could find the things I needed.

Yoko, apparently muddled by her fever, was babbling on continuously. “There’re lots of fish. Lots and lots of them. And there’s a fisherman on the boat. See? Fish are all jumping in his net. All jumping and shining …” Her eyes wide open, she was dreaming even though she looked awake.

After a while, Mrs. Utagawa stood up, leaving the child, who kept on babbling.

“Thank you. I think it’s time we had some tea.”

I helped make the tea in the kitchen, and by the time we headed for the sofa in the main room, it was past four o’clock. As soon as we sat down, we heard an awful wheezing struggle for breath; it sounded like someone suffocating. I almost jumped. With a loud “Oh, no!” Mrs. Utagawa stood up instantly, which startled me even more. I had little choice but to follow her back to the tatami room, where I found her stroking the child’s back nervously. It turned out Yoko suffered from chronic asthma, and they were always afraid there might be an attack when she had a cold. When she stopped gasping, Mrs. Utagawa still sat with her. Red from the choking spasms, Yoko glared into her grandmother’s face, then mine, with the whites of her eyes exposed, just as she’d looked before. She seemed to want to talk but couldn’t let herself, in case it made her gasp again.

“Yoko, be a good girl. Try to go to sleep, even if it’s for a short while.”

Hearing her grandmother’s words, she closed her eyelids only to open them again.

“Try, just try, even for just a bit,” Mrs. Utagawa repeated, with the same result.

After saying this again a few times, the old woman held her kimono sleeve back with one hand and spread her other hand over Yoko’s face, her middle finger and her thumb on the child’s eyelids to close them. It was like closing the eyes of someone who’s died, so it was horrible to me, but it must have been a ritual between the two of them. Her fingers still on Yoko’s eyelids, she began to sing a lullaby. Her voice was so low it was nearly inaudible, almost as if she were murmuring to herself.

Nennen korori yo okororiyo

Joya wa yoi ko da nenne shina .

(Hushabye hushabye

Good little girl, go to sleep.)

Maybe that was all there was to it or maybe she only knew the beginning: she sang the same words over and over. After the third time, she took her fingers from the girl’s face, and again Yoko’s eyes opened. Perhaps that was part of the ritual, to repeat the lullaby three times for this child who was so resistant to sleeping. The expression on Mrs. Utagawa’s face as she stood up seemed more resigned than dismayed.

When the two of us returned to the wood-floored room, the tea was not just tepid but cold.

The hands on the clock pointed past five. There was no sign of Natsue, or of her other daughter.

“When will Yoko’s sister be home?” I asked, thinking that it might be rude to ask directly about Natsue’s whereabouts.

I thought I detected a slight note of displeasure in her reply. Yoko, sleeping over there, she explained, was still in kindergarten, but her elder sister Yuko was a second grader at Seijo Academy. At this time of day, she would still be in Seijo with her mother.

Hearing this, my gloom deepened: I would be spending most of my waking hours with an uncommunicative old woman who suffered from migraines and a little girl who was not only sickly but bad-natured.

It was then time to start preparing dinner, and the two of us got up to work in the kitchen. Dusk had descended and it was getting dark in the house. I washed the rice in semidarkness. The running water on the tin-lined sink sounded forlorn. Even Mrs. Utagawa’s knife thunking monotonously on the cutting board sounded gloomy. Once in a while, she would put the knife down and go to talk to Yoko. I could hear the murmur in the surrounding emptiness. Back on the farm, I had spent plenty of evenings alone in the house with the rest of the family gone, but I had never felt as lonely and desolate as I did that evening.

But then Natsue came home, with Yuko in tow.

“Why is it so dark in here?” her voice rang out. Despite everything, I wanted to make a good impression. I hurried to the front hall, wiping my hands on my smock, and found Natsue stepping up into it. It was like the sun coming up. Yuko, wearing the standard red leather backpack of grade-schoolers (red for girls and black for boys), peeked out from behind her and offered a bashful hello. The dimple on her pale cheek looked just like her mother’s. With these two home, Seijo’s brightness revived again.

As Natsue made her way through the house, she turned on each and every light, from the entrance to the parlor to the kitchen. Her voice and glowing face dispelled the gloom. Though it was obvious Mrs. Utagawa didn’t feel altogether comfortable with her daughter-in-law, even she was visibly relieved to see her home. Yoko called out, “Mama! Mama!” from her futon. “Just a minute—I’ll be right there,” Natsue replied before emptying her string shopping bag. “Look what Grammy bought for us at Kinokuniya in Aoyama,” she said, pulling some meatloaf, croissants, and brioches out of the bag, like a magician taking one thing after another out of a hat, and putting them on the Formica table. “At long last, you can buy this kind of food in Tokyo again,” she said. Even on the base I’d never seen goodies like these. Shortly after Natsue mentioned that she expected her husband home early, he walked in the door.

Then it was time for dinner. Yoko’s fever had conveniently subsided with her mother’s return, and she appeared at the table, a red cardigan over her pajamas. Gone was the peevish child earlier; here now was an ordinary, skinny little girl with kinky hair. I assumed that I would eat separately from the family, but Natsue smiled and said, “Of course not! And besides, where else could you possibly eat in this little house!”