Coin Locker Babies (31 page)

He stuck his tongue out again. When he shut his eyes he felt that his whole body had become a tongue. Opening the scissors as wide as they would go, he put the tip of his tongue between the blades. The cool metal soothed the burn. Among the stories the nuns had read him when he was a child at the orphanage was one about a sparrow. He remembered that an old woman had cut the sparrow’s tongue out and that afterward the bird had had its revenge, but he couldn’t remember exactly how. He tried for a moment to dredge up the memory. No luck. Next he tried to stop his jaw from trembling. Not much better. Watching his tongue twitch between the blades, he waited for it briefly to be still and then snapped the scissors shut. The little mound of slimy flesh slid along the blades beneath his nose, and when it dropped away blood began to gush. Hashi immediately stuffed his mouth with gauze. Blood was everywhere, flowing in great gouts that frightened him almost more than the pain. His whole body began to shake as he shoved piece after piece of gauze between his lips. Finally, his head so full of bloody cotton that he couldn’t breathe, Hashi staggered to his feet and spat the whole mass out onto the floor. He tried biting on an aloe leaf and dabbing the thick sap on his tongue, but the blood was still pouring out. He noticed the scissors on the floor, the tip of the tongue he was now treating still resting on the blades. Suddenly he remembered
how the sparrow got its revenge: the old woman was sent a box that appeared to be a present, but when she opened it there were hideous goblins inside. As he stood pressing the remaining gauze against his mouth, waiting for the bleeding to stop, Hashi thought long and hard about whom he would send a goblin box.

Anemone was waiting for the bus. It was the end of the working day and a long line had formed. In front of her was an old woman with a bandage over one eye; behind stood a woman with two small children in tow. Checking her watch against a timetable, the old woman turned to Anemone.

“Late, eh?” she clucked.

“Must be traffic at the station,” Anemone suggested. Nodding, the old woman fished out a cigarette case from her brown bag. The children, in a protracted battle for a model airplane, bumped into Anemone from time to time. When she looked around, the mother apologized. A shopping bag dangled from her arm, with a ball of wool and a shock of celery leaves protruding from the top.

“You smell good,” said the old lady. She lit a cigarette, then removed the bandage to wipe her eye with a square of gauze. The crusty, red-rimmed eye left an amber stain on the corner of the pad. “Like milk or something. You work in a dairy?” Anemone sniffed at her arm. “Won’t do any good. You can never tell what you smell like yourself. So which dairy?”

“It’s a bakery—the one next to the department store.” The old woman nodded again, tossing the gauze into a trashcan. The inflamed skin under the bandage had reminded Anemone of Gulliver on the highway. The police had scraped up what was left of him for Anemone to claim after the inquiry, but no crematory
in the area had agreed to do anything with her garbage bags full of bits of crocodile. The Bronco had been too messed-up to keep, so she’d sold it to a junkyard, packed up her clothes and the diving gear to send on ahead, and bought a ticket on the next train north. Unfortunately, the train had hardly left the station when the plastic bags started to leak, sending blood and gore trickling down the aisle and leaving Anemone no choice but to get off at the next station, before the conductor came through and discovered the mess. She ended up taking a taxi the rest of the way to Aomori and tossing the bags of rotting crocodile off the end of a pier. On the ferry from Aomori to Hakodate she came across an article in a newspaper that made her boil: “Giant Croc a Highway Headache.”

She stayed in a hotel the first night in Hakodate, but she was so jumpy she couldn’t sleep, and the next day she made a reservation to fly back to Tokyo. They wouldn’t let her see Kiku anyway, she told herself, so she might as well go home. But on her way to the airport the cab passed a long, high gray wall, and when the driver told her it was the Juvenile Detention Center, she asked to get out. She walked around the perimeter of the prison for a long while; Kiku, shoulders bent and head hanging, was behind that wall. She decided to stay at least another day.

Trembling slightly, Anemone approached a guard standing by the gate to ask about visiting privileges. The guard explained that she could apply at the warden’s office, so, screwing up her courage, she plunged into the ill-lit building. In the corridor, she passed a prisoner carrying a bucket of disinfectant. He stopped to stare at her, his shaven head glistening in the dim light.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a guard yelled at him, and he moved on.

The man in the warden’s office also stared at her, at the
Chinese slippers, the leather pants, and the long crimson fingernails, before saying, “So you’ve no occupation and no fixed address at present. Is that correct?” His uniform smelled of sweat. “Unfortunately, given the circumstances, we could only permit a visit if you were a blood relative.”

“You mean I could see him if I got a job and a place to live?” The officer nodded.

The bus came at last, and the line of people waiting pressed forward to get on. In front of the old woman was a man with a suitcase that was so large it made him stagger when he lifted it. As he tottered back, he bumped the old woman who in turn grabbed Anemone to keep from falling, inadvertently planting her cigarette on her arm. Anemone screamed and her arm shot up, hitting the child behind her in the face, making him drop the model plane he was holding and breaking its wings. Stamping out the cigarette, the old woman apologized to Anemone, but as Anemone turned to get on, rubbing the sore spot on her arm, the mother behind her called out:

“Just a minute, lady.” One arm wrapped around her screaming child, the mother was holding out the shattered plane. “You broke it,” she was saying, but Anemone ignored her and turned back to the line. “Wait! Where do you think you’re going?!” As Anemone hesitated, the rest of the people queuing up pushed past, including the old woman, who glanced back for a moment before disappearing inside. The driver revved the engine, filling the air with a cloud of exhaust. Anemone began to feel a bit sick.

“How much did it cost?” she asked. “I’ll pay for it.”

“I don’t want your money, I want an apology to this child.” At this point, the bigger boy kicked Anemone in the leg, and instinctively she raised her hand to hit him. It was the bus driver who caught her arm in midair.

“What the hell d’you think you’re doing? He’s just a kid,” he told her. By now the passengers were leaning out the windows of the bus.

“It was my fault! My fault!” piped the old woman, poking her head out through the door.

“What kind of person goes around breaking children’s toys?” the mother clucked. Leering, the driver was still holding tight to Anemone’s arm. Someone inside the bus shouted for them to get a move on, and the horn sounded.

“Don’t touch that horn,” the driver bellowed. Twisting out of his grip, Anemone pulled her wallet from her purse, extracted ten thousand yen, and held it out.

“What’s that supposed to be for?” the woman said, turning to the driver. “Can you believe her?”

“Must be crazy,” he agreed, beginning to laugh as he headed back to his seat.

“Say you’re sorry,” the boy who’d kicked her kept saying, until his mother grabbed his hand and pulled him on board.

“We’re going,” the driver yelled. “You getting on?” Anemone made no reply.

“Oh dear! It really was my fault. She didn’t do a thing. Dearie! I’m so sorry!” The old woman was still waving from the window as the bus drove away. Anemone walked home.

On her day off Anemone bought a sewing machine and some material: a print featuring cartoon crocodiles. She wanted to make some curtains. The machine took a bit of getting used to and she made several false starts, but she went on sewing through the night. At dawn, a faint pink line appeared behind the hills across the harbor. It was the first time Anemone had been awake at this hour of the day. In the distance the surface of the sea
merged with the sky in a seamless cast of gray. Beyond the long, low breakwater, the tiny ships’ lights slid across the harbor, the wake dissolving the barest reflection of the clouds. As the dark sky faded to blue, the lights melted gradually into the day.

Anemone rubbed her eyes. Shafts of sunlight broke through the clouds, showering half the harbor in brilliance. As the day began to warm up and the sky turned white, she hung her curtains in the window. The hem may have been a little crooked, the pompoms slightly uneven, and here and there she had missed some wrinkles, but Anemone was delighted. With the sunlight streaming through the cream-colored fabric, she thought they were the cutest curtains in the world. Suddenly she wanted to show them to someone… to show them to Kiku. The wind ruffled them, revealing a stretch of silver roofs reaching down to the water.

Anemone thought she would go easy on her makeup for the occasion. It took, she knew, no more than fifteen minutes to reach the detention center even in some traffic, so she planned to leave her apartment at precisely 1:45; if she arrived early she would have to hang around in that dark, hateful building. She’d had some trouble deciding what to wear, but in the end had settled on a white silk blouse and a red flared skirt with a light coat to wear over the outfit. For shoes, she decided on gray flats. Everything had been bought recently, after a bit of careful study, to fit in with the other girls at the bakery. Kiku had never thought much of her other clothes anyway, telling her more than once that what she had on was loud or cheap-looking. His tastes seemed to run more in the direction of the uniforms bank tellers wore. This should suit him just fine, she thought, giving herself one last inspection in the mirror. The alarm clock, set for 1:43, went off. Anemone ran a
comb through her hair and dabbed just a hint of perfume at the nape of her neck before charging out the door.

Fifteen minutes later, a young guard was ushering her into a dim-lit room divided down the middle by a rusty wire screen. On either side was a single metal folding chair.

“This is the second-class visitors’ facility,” said the guard apologetically. “Another year and he’ll qualify for the first-class room—there’s no screen in there. Guess you can’t do much kissing through this,” he laughed, apparently trying to help her relax.

As soon as he’d gone, Anemone fumbled in her purse for a scrap of paper on which she’d written some notes: “If Kiku’s smiling, say ‘You’re looking great’; if he’s moody, just say, ‘Hi, honey,’ really sweetly; if he looks sad, don’t say anything, just pat him on the shoulder.” She hadn’t figured on the screen and now found herself desperately trying to come up with something to say in case he looked sad. But everything that occurred to her sounded dumb; and anyway she could hardly concentrate when she knew that any minute now the steel door opposite her would open and Kiku would come through it. Her heart was pounding, her palms sweaty, and her throat had gone dry. As she sat twisting her handkerchief into knots, she reminded herself that she wouldn’t be much use to him at all if she couldn’t get a grip on herself. When she pictured him, she saw only the timid, hangdog figure in the courtroom.

She took a deep breath and tried again to calm down, deciding she would tell him to “cheer up,” regardless of whether he was smiling or glum. Drawing a mental picture of Kiku seated across the way, shoulders drooping and eyes downcast, she began to rehearse quietly. “Cheer up, Kiku.” No, it sounded forced; it needed a lighter touch. “Cheer up, Kiku.” This time it came out a bit cold, schoolteacherish. “Cheer up, Kiku.” That wasn’t
it either; she sounded like she was scolding a naughty child. No, she needed to sound warm and natural, yet firm, all at once. “Cheer…,” she was just trying again when the door swung open, bringing with it a familiar smell of male sweat.

“Anemone!” Kiku cried, throwing himself against the screen and shaking it. Reddish dust showered down around them, and the wire creaked as though it might give way.

“Hey, get off there!” barked the guard who had followed him into the room.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it,” Kiku muttered, finally letting go of the wire and sitting down. Pressing his nose against the grill, he sat grinning at Anemone who was grinning back. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.

“You’re looking great,” she managed, fighting back tears. Kiku nodded slightly. “I made some curtains,” she said, starting in on the first subject that came to mind in order to keep from crying. “I got a job in Hakodate in a bakery called Guten Morgen—that’s German for ‘Good morning.’ Strawberry shortcake’s our biggest seller, but seems like people are finally getting tired of it; some days the kiwi or the peach shortcake does a lot better. I made a friend, a really nice girl called Noriko, we’ve been twice now to the movies together. She likes to read a lot and is always lending me books, but you know me and books—I fall right asleep. They’re all good ones, though, by famous writers, and one’s by the wife of this famous painter. What do you think, Kiku, you think I should be reading these books?” Anemone knew herself that she was talking nonsense, but she chattered on, afraid she might scream if she let herself just look at him. Kiku gazed at her and smiled. “Next door to the bakery is this department store and on the fifth floor there’s a watch shop. The son of the guy
who owns it has been trying to hit on me. The guy’s a real creep, drives some lousy foreign car—even gets in it to go a few meters to our shop. He’s always rattling on about some dumb thing or other, how his father gave him half the stock in the company, how he has these three dobermans and the police are always giving him some certificate of merit, how he’s friends with a guy who’s a professional kick boxer, blah, blah, blah. He kept after me so long I finally agreed to go out with him once just to shut him up. We went to this cafe, and as soon as we got there I told him I had a boyfriend who was in jail and if he ever touched me I couldn’t be responsible for what would happen to him. What do you think he said? He told me I was a juvenile delinquent… I laughed right in his face.”

Kiku was still staring at her but he didn’t seem to be listening.

“How’s Gulliver?” he asked suddenly. “Still growing?” Anemone wet her lips.

“He’s dead,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.

“That so?” he muttered absently. “Poor baby.”

“Yeah. But it’s all right now.”

“What’s all right?”

“I mean, I’ve got used to it.” Again Kiku fell silent. He was studying her hair, her hands, her breasts.

“Kuwayama, you got another five minutes,” said the guard from the corner of the room.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Kiku without taking his eyes off Anemone.

She was looking at her watch, suddenly realizing that
twenty-five
minutes had passed and they hadn’t really said anything.

“Anemone,” he whispered, too low for the guard to hear, “could you do something for me? Could you stick the end of your tongue through the screen?” As soon as her tongue was through the hole in the wire, he fastened his mouth on it and stayed that
way for several seconds. When he pulled away, a fine strand of saliva hung in the air between them. “I’m going to start training to be a sailor…” he started to say.

“Time’s about up,” announced the guard.

“Just a few seconds more,” said Kiku, going on in a rapid whisper: “You still have some money?” Anemone nodded. “Then listen carefully. Before long I’m going to be going on this practice shakedown cruise for the sailing program. I’ll write you somehow and let you know where we’ll be heading. You just be sure to follow us on land and meet the boat when we put in to shore. You got that?” By now the guard had come too near for him to continue, but as he rose and walked away, Anemone just had time to shout after him: