Women On the Other Shore (10 page)

She paused a moment before continuing in a flat, measured voice almost as if reading from a prepared script.

"I want you to know, Aokins, that you don't have anything to be afraid of at school. Even if you're right, even if they keep passing the icy treatment from one person to another like you say and it comes round to you, I'll always be your friend, and I'll do everything I can to stand up for you. Even if everybody else turns their back on you, if you always have at least one person to talk to, then you've got nothing to be afraid of, right?"

Aoi continued peering at the sky through her doughnut and said nothing.

"And I don't mean this to be some kind of deal or exchange. I'm not asking you to do anything for me if I'm the one that gets shut out. In fact, I'd rather you brushed me off like everybody else. It's safer that way. 'Cause none of that stuff scares me. Seriously, let them turn their noses up at me and chop up my skirt and say bitchy things and hide my sneakers all they want. None of that can hurt me. None of that stuff matters to me."

Aoi lowered her doughnut to her mouth and took a bite out of it. Then she raised it back in front of her eye to peer through the C-shape that was left. It looked to her like the blue inside the C was melting and pouring out into the wide-open sky.

"Oh, I've been meaning to ask you. Did you ever hear what they say about silver rings?" Nanako said, abruptly changing the topic.

"What? I don't think so."

"If somebody gives you a silver ring on your nineteenth birthday, then happiness will follow you the rest of your life."

"Really? The rest of your life? You mean somebody like a boyfriend, right?"

"If we don't have boyfriends when we turn nineteen, how about 76

we give each other silver rings? That way we'll both be happy the rest of our lives."

"Well, I'm sure you won't have anyone, so I'll give you the ring,"

Aoi cracked, "but I intend to have a boyfriend who'll give me mine."

She let out a guffaw.

"So says the girl who got me one measly package of yakitori this year," Nanako sniffed. She took a sip of beer. "Don't you see 1 was giving you a gentle hint to start saving now so you could give me a proper present by the time I'm nineteen? You should be more grateful!" She pedaled her feet as she laughed.

Their laughter echoed along the riverbank, mingling with the rustle of the flowing water. When Aoi raised her head to peer at the river, it looked to her again like the sky was melting and pouring out onto its surface.

A place opened up for Akari near the end of June. It was at Sayoko's second-choice school, but the opening came much sooner than she had expected. An aging complex of company housing nearby was slated for demolition, and several young families had moved away in quick succession, creating a rare string of vacancies.

Both in the days before Akari started and during her phase-in week, Sayoko thought she might go nuts from all the things she had to do. Getting her daughter properly registered was only the beginning. She needed to make Akari a school bag, prepare several towels with her name stitched to them, and take her shopping for sneakers to use as indoor shoes as well as extra changes of clothes to have on hand. She rode her bicycle from home to the nursery school and from there to the station and back, exploring alternate routes, and she discovered several shortcuts as well as a convenient place to do some quick shopping on her way home.

Meanwhile, work had yet to become a matter of simply showing up and getting down to business each morning. Noriko Nakazato had more things for her to learn with each new job site they went to.

"Lime scale forms when calcium and magnesium salts react with the air and precipitate to form a film on surfaces in contact with water. Agents for removing the scale contain abrasives, surfactants, acids, alkalis, and solvents."

Every so often Noriko would rattle off some such tangle of information, and Sayoko diligently scribbled it down in her notebook like 78

student, adding to her growing collection of notes on different cleaning tasks and which cleanser was best suited to each.

It was supposed to be for t h e sake of her job that she was putting Akari in nursery school, but there were days during this frantic prep-ation period when some requirement from school kept her up most of the night and she went to work half asleep. She sometimes found herself spacing out and losing track of what she was doing, but at least she no longer agonized over whether going back to work had been the right decision. She simply didn't have the time. All she could do was take care of t h e task in front of her, one thing at a time.

I have to consider myself lucky,
Sayoko reminded herself over and over as she scrubbed tiles in t h e bathroom of a vacant condo unit.

The young mothers she'd m e t at the nursery school assured her it was practically u n h e a r d of for anyone to find a place in less than a month. And now, for t h e last two weeks, Aoi and Noriko had gener-ously allowed her to work five short days instead of three full ones.

Even after the phase-in week was over, she was required to pick up Akari at four for a while.

Each day continued to be like Sayoko's first. She rode the At Home Services van to a job site and set to work cleaning a vacant apartment. Either Aoi would go with her, or it would be one of two other Platinum Planet employees—Misao Sekine, who dyed her hair brown and wore trendy-looking clothes in an effort to shave years off her age; or Mao Hasegawa, a younger woman with her short-cropped hair dyed red, officially classified as only a temporary employee.

Junko Iwabuchi had presumably followed through on discussing her alleged back problem with Aoi, for she did not come again.

Sayoko marveled at Noriko's consistent ability to turn up empty apartments that required such astonishing amounts of elbow grease one after the other. From kitchen vent to stove to toilet to bath, the fixtures were of every imaginable type, but the thick layers of grime encrusted on t h e m were always pretty much the same.

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Today's studio unit had apparently been treated with a bug bomb by the movers several days before. The entire place was littered with dead cockroaches when they entered, and Sayoko's first task became to dispose of the corpses. After that she was sent to the bathroom, where she got down on all fours and mutely scrubbed at the black and pink fungus that had taken over the tiles of the washing area next to the tub.

I really do have to count myself lucky,
Sayoko told herself again, not bothering to wipe away the bead
of
sweat that rolled from her temple down to her chin. This was already Akari's tenth day at school, but she had still kicked and screamed that she didn't want to go. Even in her bicycle seat on the way, she sat with her tiny head thrown back, bawling to the heavens. Although Sayoko no longer second-guessed her decision to work, it tore at her heart to see her daughter in such distress.
Poor little thing. It's such a pity...
Her mother-in-law's constant refrain threatened to fall from her own lips.

But her mother-in-law had to be wrong, Sayoko told herself ada-mantly as she scrubbed at the grout with a toothbrush, anticipat-ing that moment when everything in her head would go blank. This very day, Akari could be making new friends and having the good time Sayoko could never provide for her at the park. Where was the pity in that?

Noriko came for her with the van at exactly two o'clock. Sayoko hopped into the front passenger seat and they headed for the nearest station.

"I really appreciate your letting me work short days like this."

"Don't mention it. You make up for it by coming five days anyway."

The woman often joked and laughed with Aoi, but she remained strictly business with Sayoko.

Sayoko eyed the sky as they drove. Murky gray clouds hung low overhead, but so far the rain was holding off. The silence in the van started to feel awkward.

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I understand you have children too, Mrs. Nakazato," she said.

"That's right," Noriko told her with a single deep nod.

"Did you p u t t h e m in n u r s e r y school w h e n they were little?"

This time t h e r e w a s no reply.

Wondering if p e r h a p s s h e ' d said s o m e t h i n g wrong, Sayoko hastily continued. "I n e v e r i m a g i n e d h o w m u c h trouble the school was going to be. T h o u g h I s u p p o s e it's m a i n l y only now, at the beginning. I had to sew a t o t e f o r h e r t h i n g s , a n d a second bag just for her sneakers, a n d t h e n t h e y w a n t you k e e p a diary of all her activities. The other d a y w h e n I w a s w r i t i n g my work diary, I started to put down t h e t i m e A k a r i got up t h a t m o r n i n g and what she had for breakfast."

Noriko let o u t an a m u s e d s n o r t , a n d Sayoko breathed a sigh of relief.

"The t h u m b - s u c k i n g d r o v e me b a n a n a s , " Noriko said with no obvious c o n n e c t i o n , a n d it t o o k Sayoko a second to realize she was talking about h e r o w n c h i l d r e n . "For m e , it was my own mother bugging me, not my mother-in-law. S h e was convinced that the stress of me working all t h e t i m e w a s w h a t m a d e my boy suck his thumb.

Plus I got plenty of grief f r o m t h e p u b l i c h e a l t h nurse, too, lecturing me up and d o w n a b o u t t h e t h u m b - s u c k i n g like I better jump when she says jump. Believe it or n o t , I ' m actually kinda thin-skinned. I thought I was going to h a v e a n e r v o u s breakdown."

Sayoko gazed at N o r i k o in t h e driver's seat. Something maternal had suddenly c o m e over t h e s t e r n - f a c e d w o m a n who never wore any makeup and was s u c h a t a s k m a s t e r on t h e job.

"Then one day Aoi said s o m e t h i n g to m e . She said, 'Relax Nori, did you ever see a g r o w n m a n s u c k i n g his t h u m b ? ' I knew right away she was right, of c o u r s e . I h a d to laugh."

The station was c o m i n g up less t h a n a h u n d r e d meters away.

Sayoko wanted to h e a r m o r e a n d h o p e d against h o p e that the light between t h e m a n d t h e s t a t i o n w o u l d t u r n red.

"These days it's 'Poopy!' and 'Pee-pee!' all the time. Blurting it out anywhere he pleases—in a restaurant, in a department store.

Makes me want to give him a good whack on the head sometimes.

But you know, to paraphrase Aoi, you never hear grown men shouting 'Poopyl' or 'Pee-pee!'" She laughed.

The light did not turn red, and the van sailed right on into the turnaround in front of the station.

"Here we are."

"Thanks so much for the ride. I'll see you tomorrow."

With a quick bow, Sayoko jumped out of the car and hurried into the station.

Akari came bounding over like a puppy as soon as she saw her mother at the gate. Only a few short hours had gone by, but to Sayoko it felt like she'd been separated from her daughter for a week, and she squeezed her tight in her arms.

Just then a woman pushing a bicycle came up to them with a smile. "Hi, there! It's Akari, right? Did you see my Chiemi in the yard?"

Akari stopped smiling and eyed her classmate's mother warily as she worked her way around behind Sayoko.

Tm sorry," Sayoko said. "I'm not sure she's learned everybody's name yet."

"Oh, right, she's still pretty new, isn't she? I read your little article in the Cypress Flier."

"Are we expected to write something every month? It's been so long since I had to write anything, I got a serious case of writer's block."

"I know what you mean. You tense up and forget how to write some stupid kanji. But I don't think you need to worry. O n c e every three or four months should be plenty."

Sayoko stood and talked with Chiemi's mother for several more 82

minutes about the school's newsletter, which introduced the month's birthday boys and girls and printed other brief articles submitted by mothers. She could hardly believe herself. Here she was, standing out in front of the school on a cloudy day, carrying on a perfectly normal conversation with a woman whose name she didn't even know, without being at the slightest loss for words. Yet it was now even harder for her to believe that just two or three short months before this she'd been utterly incapable of striking up conversations with the women she met at the park.

"Well, see you tomorrow." With a wave of her hand, Chiemi's mother headed on into the schoolyard to look for her child.

"Bye," Sayoko waved back, then quickly lifted Akari into the child seat attached to t h e handlebars.

Pedaling toward t h e supermarket, she thought about what to make for dinner and started a mental list of what she would need to buy.

"Who'd you play with today, sweetie?" she asked Akari. She'd been asking her daughter this same question every day, praying for the day when Akari would finally respond with the name of a new friend she'd made.

Akari ignored t h e question and instead began singing a song of some kind under her breath. It was a tune Sayoko didn't recognize.

One of her daughter's favorite tunes was from an anime series she watched on TV, so she thought at first it might be that, but quickly realized it was something else.

"Is that a new song you learned today?" she asked.

Without turning in her seat, Akari gave a single small nod.

"I thought so. You know what, sweetie, I want you to know that even when M o m m y has to go to work, Mommy's always going to be right beside you in my heart, watching over you. No matter where I am, I say to myself, I wonder what Akari's doing now, and I look and see, Oh, she's having lunch, Oh, she's learning a new song.

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Every day, even when you can't see me, Mommy's always there with you, okay?"

Staring straight ahead, Akari gave another small nod.

"Can you sing it louder, so Mommy can hear?"

Sayoko pushed harder on the pedals. A moist breeze stirred the leaves of the trees all up and down the street. She'd been putting off asking Shuji about the party, but she was definitely going to do it tonight.