If You Follow Me (19 page)

After dinner we drive to
hottorando
, or “hot land,” a bathhouse near the nuclear power plant with dozens of hot tubs filled with brightly colored herbal infusions. There's even a tub with an electric current running through it, like the grocery store shock booth. This seems like a bad idea to me, and I never see anyone soaking in it.

The men who work at the plant come in their red jumpsuits, carrying plastic tubs holding soap and razors and folded pajamas, so that they can return to the dorm where they live and slip straight into bed. Grandparents come carrying toddlers, and teenaged girls come in pairs. Carolyn and I follow the example of the most self-conscious teenaged girls, covering our bodies with towels as we get into the hot water, tucking them under our armpits and between our legs. An old woman with a stooped spine tells us not to be shy, but when my towel floats free for a moment, she points at my breasts and says how “
ookii
,” or big they are. Carolyn and I exchange a glance. A young woman walks to the bath holding hands with a long-haired little girl. The woman slips into the tub, the child sits on its edge, her hair forming a shawl around her, the ends dangling in the water.

“Hello, Miss Marina,” the woman says. I smile. I have no idea who she is. “I teach sixth grade,” she says in Japanese.

“Of course,” I say. Once more I have failed to recognize this pretty young woman, although people do look different when they're naked, and it's not polite to stare. I allow myself the quickest of glances, which is all it takes to see that her body is as perfect as I would've guessed: perfect perky breasts, perfectly flat belly, thighs that don't touch. No flaws or charm points here. “Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” echoes the little girl seated next to her in a deep voice.

“Kim-san?” I say, and the child looks up from under her curtain of hair and grins. “How are you?”

“Mmm…,” she thinks for a moment and then replies, “hot.”

I applaud, amazed that she remembered this word, which I only taught her class in passing. The sixth-grade teacher seems equally impressed. She grips the child's foot and says something in Japanese. I catch the words “
hajimete
,” the first time, and “
hanshimashita,
” spoke. In Japanese, she tells me that Kim and her father rent the apartment next to hers, that she brings Kim with her to the baths once a week, but that the girl refuses to soak. She tugs on the girl's foot, trying to coax her in, but Kim shakes her head and says “hot” again, clearly making her point.

“She has no mother,” the teacher says. “
Kawaisou no ko
.” Poor child.

“Kawaisou usagi
,” Kim says. Poor rabbit.

I remember Kim repeating this same phrase after Koji first said it, and I remember how he snapped at her, telling her not to copy him. Someone really needs to tell the little boy that she is not like his brother, that the way she imitates him is a sign not that something is wrong, but that something is right. She is already learning how to do more than just copy words. She's learning how to combine them in new and interesting ways, to make her meaning clear, her self known.

mukou:
(
N
.)
the other side; beyond; far away; the future (starting now)

T
he sun is not just out this morning, it's actually rather warm. Slush covers the elementary school parking lot, stained with rainbows of oil. The kids wear rubber boots as they wade into the school, the slush reaching up to the knees of the littlest ones. Jumping out of my car window, I soak my shoes and splatter my pants. I'm bending over, rolling up my cuff s, when I see the two children disappear around the corner.

The top of the rabbit hutch is covered in planks of plywood but there are gaps between these planks and snow has drifted into the animals' shelter, covering the hay and melting into an icy pool. The fat white rabbit is fine. The metal trough that holds their food has been overturned and the rabbit is reclining on this dry oasis, stretched in a strip of sunlight, hind legs extended. But the skinny gray rabbit is soaked to the bone, shaking in Kim's arms as she attempts to dry it off with her uniform jacket. It looks truly monstrous with its wet fur plastered to its skeleton, teeth carving into its lower lip.

“This rabbit will die soon,” Koji says, just as matter-of-factly as before.

Kim clutches the animal closer to her chest and it scratches at
her, kicking wildly until she's forced to set it down next to the white rabbit on the overturned trough. She picks up a carrot, breaks off a piece and tries to push it into the rabbit's mouth, but it turns its head away and slips off the edge of the trough, sinking into slush so deep that only its ears rise above the surface. Kim picks it up again, once more trying to dry its fur before setting it next to the other rabbit, but again it jumps off, this time swimming through the slush to get away from her. She looks like she might cry.

“Mukoo e ikitai
,” the boy says. It wants to get out.

“Mukoo e ikitai
,” Kim repeats after him.

“Yamero
,” he says, stop it, in the exact same tone he spoke to his brother.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's go.”

“Where?” he asks me.

“To school,” I say, and he tries to jerk his hand free but I don't let go this time, pulling him with me into the facility.

 

During first period, yet another sixth-grade class draws my portrait. Again the kids all turn me into a cartoon version of myself, but this time Keiko doesn't say to look at me more closely, to try and draw my eyes as they really are, to give me a mouth. Her own face is as inexpressive as the cartoon faces on the students' drawings. The scratches on her throat are healing now, fainter than before. Fumiya must have lashed out against her attempts to calm him down, contain his wild energy. She leaves class in the break between periods, returning with a group of third-graders to stand at the back of the room.

During recess she goes out onto the playground, where she sneaks puff s from Kobayashi-sensei's cigarette, the two of them leaning against the swimming pool, passing the cigarette back and forth. As I look down from the second-story window, I wonder if she's tell
ing him about our disastrous dinner, how I refused to tutor her sons. I feel terrible when I think of how I behaved at her house. Maybe she was using me, but she obviously needs help. I don't know what it's like to have an autistic child, but I do know what it's like to try to pretend that everything is normal when it isn't.

Today's lunch is a tuna fish sandwich on white bread, which packs into my hollowed molar. I am trying to write an email to my mom. I want to apologize for calling her in the middle of the night, getting so upset. But thinking about that conversation, and what she sent in her latest care package, makes me upset all over again. I didn't tell Carolyn about the package. I don't know what to do with it. I don't want it around. A shadow falls across my blank page, and I look up to see snow falling outside the window.

“Mo ichi do
,” I mutter.

“Nani
?” the vice-principal says. This morning, he barely greeted me. I hope Miyoshi-sensei didn't tell him about my suspicions that he's been keeping me here for free English lessons. Ooka-sensei is a kind man, and Shika is a small town.

“It's snowing again,” I say.

“And again and again,” he speaks up from behind his freshly polished desk. “This is snow country, Miss Marina. What did you expect?”

 

In the last period of the day, Koji and Kim are among the students who file into the art room to draw my portrait. Koji sinks onto a stool at the back of the room, while Kim hurries to claim the stool next to his. Her long hair is loose today, falling around her shoulders like it did at the bath last night. She swivels to look at Koji but he ignores her. He teeters on the back legs of his stool, staring out the window where snow is falling densely now, in such thick flakes, that the air
looks as white as the sheets of paper that Keiko places in front of each child. They've been sketching for about fifteen minutes when Keiko squats beside Koji.

“You're supposed to draw Miss Marina,” she says.

“I don't like to draw,” he replies. “You know that.”

“Okay,” she says. “How about making another collage?”

“I already made one,” he says. “I don't like copying. I'm not like Kim.”

“Kim's not copying you,” Keiko says. “She's drawing her own picture.”

“I know,” Koji says. “She's copying herself.”

I prop onto my elbow so that I can see. At first I think he's right, that Kim is drawing the exact same picture, but then I notice something new about this drawing. The girl has two long braids and a school uniform, and she is only standing beside one rabbit: the one with the fangs. This is not a picture of me but a self-portrait, a plea for the
kawaisou
, a request for help, I think.

As the bell rings, I linger on top of the table, hoping for a chance to talk to Keiko, when a burst of static erupts from the loudspeaker, followed by the vice-principal's voice. “Because of the storm, everyone is excused early. Please return home promptly and safely!” The announcement is barely finished before Keiko dashes out of the room, leaving me behind.

I slide off the table and rush after her, reaching the top of the stairs just as she reaches the bottom. By the time I get to the bottom, she is pushing through the door to the playground, still wearing her uniform slippers. I'm about to follow her outside when what I see through the window stops me. Kobayashi-sensei is stacking sleds in a pile when she approaches him from behind and touches his back. Their forms are softened by the falling snow. All she does is place her hand between his shoulders. All he does is not move away from her
touch. He seems to lean back against her palm, as if that were all it took to keep his huge body propped upright. Maybe this is why she wanted me to come over for a few hours each week, not just to tutor her sons, but to give her some time alone. Or not alone. With him. I wish she had confided in me. She might have, eventually, if I'd given her the chance. If we had actually become friends. I'm backing away when I hear Kobayashi-sensei call out, “
Dame
!” Stop! He's looking up at the building, his expression terrified. I push through the door, stumble into the snow.

Kobayashi-sensei and Keiko are both holding their hands up, flakes falling through their splayed fingers. I walk across the yard, plunging to my knees in the slush, which is now freezing over, covered with an eggshell crust of ice. When I turn to look up at the school, I see the two children sitting on the ledge of the window, bare legs dangling outside. It's only the second floor of the building, but they are so small that the distance seems enormous.

“Why are you here?” Koji yells.

“Why are you here?” Kim repeats after him.

“This is my home,” he says.

“This is my home,” she says.

“Go away!” he says. “I want to be alone!”

“But I want to be with you,” she says.

“She can speak,” Kobayashi-sensei says to Keiko.

“Yappari
,” Keiko replies. Naturally. She cups her hands around her mouth and calls, “Koji! Go back inside! I'm going to come upstairs now. Mama is coming!”

As he shakes his head, one of his slippers falls off, sailing through the air before landing on the soft mound of snow, which rises higher than the lip of the swimming pool.

“Mukoo e ikitai
!” he says. I want to go…

“No!” I yell, but too late. The boy doesn't jump so much as drop
from the ledge, holding his arms close to his body as he falls through the air with Kim, as always, just a second behind, her hair lifting above her in a black streak. As they land in the pool, first one child and then the other, the white mass seems to swallow them whole. The slush beneath the snow acts like water, yielding too easily, closing over their heads, as if they were never there at all. Keiko staggers toward the pool with me right behind her, but Kobayashi-sensei is faster than us both, diving into the slush and disappearing too. “
Mukoo e ikitai
,” the boy said before jumping. I want to go…Abroad. Far away. To the other side. This is the word his teacher used to describe where Kim and I come from. It's also the word I used to describe where my dad ended up.
Jampu shimashita.
He jumped. I jumped. There are no pronouns in Japanese. The boy wanted to get out.

I don't know how much time passes before Kobayashi-sensei finally resurfaces. Twenty seconds? Five? An eternity and a blink. But when he does, he is holding one child in each arm. They are wet and shivering and gasping for air, but alive. Alive. Keiko takes Koji in her arms. The little boy wraps his legs around his mom's waist and she wraps her sweater around his body, pressing her forehead to his.

“I'm still here,” he cries.

“You're still here,” she cries. She uses her thumb to wipe the snow out of his eyes, his nostrils, his ears, as if he were a newborn just entering into this world, still bearing the traces of the last. Kobayashi-sensei holds Kim like a baby too, on her back in his arms, rocking from side to side.

“Daijoubu
?” he says.

“Daijoubu
,” she replies, and the two teachers huddle closer together, each holding a child, oblivious to me as I slip away.

 

New snow covers every surface in the hutch. At first, looking through the wire mesh without seeing either animal, I assume that someone must have thought to get them out before this storm hit. Then I spot a vibrating mound. I let myself into the cage, and reach under the snow to scoop up the gray rabbit. His body feels almost too hot yet he shivers as I brush off his back, his head and paws. I tuck him into my shirt, under my jacket, close to my heart. I'm glad when he kicks me, relieved that he has a little fight left in him. He's going to need it. His heart is pumping fast, an electric current that spurs me on. I climb into my car and turn on the heater, saying, “
Gambatte, usagi-chan
.”

Fight, little rabbit. Do your best for me.

At the dentist's office, the hygienist shows me into the private room where I close the door before unbuttoning my jacket, reaching into my shirt and setting the rabbit down on the reclining seat. The animal scratches at the paper lining and I keep a hand on his back to keep him from jumping off. He trembles violently and tries to kick me again.

“Nani
?” the dentist says. “What's this?”

“His front teeth won't stop growing,” I say. “He can't eat.”

“Is it yours?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “He belongs to the elementary school. Koji's school.”

“I am not animal dentist,” he says, reaching for the doorknob. “I can't do.”

“Koji loves this rabbit very much,” I say in my slowest, clearest English. “He needs help, or he's going to die.”

“Wakaranai
…,” he stammers.

“You don't have to understand,” I say. “I can pay you. I'll give you free English lessons. I'll do whatever you want. Just please help.”

“Wakaranai
…,” he says again, but he is filling a needle with clear liquid. “You have to hold him,” he says. “Hold him tight.” And so I press the rabbit to my chest, gripping both sides of his jaw to steady it as the dentist slides the needle into his mouth. His mouth softens, opens at last, and he relaxes in my arms.