Women On the Other Shore (9 page)

"There's something I wanted to ask you, Aokins," Nanako said, breaking the silence. "Did you ever watch
Anne of Green Gables
on TV when you were little? The cartoon?"

"No, I never saw that," she said. "I read the book, though."

"Then at least you know about Diana, right—Anne's best friend, the pretty one? Their houses are way far apart, but their rooms face each other, and since they didn't have phones in those days, there's this scene where Anne and Diana stand by their windows at night with oil lamps, and they hold books in front of the lamps to send signals to each other—you know, to make it look like they were flashing on and off."

Nanako's voice was soft and steady.

"I don't remember that."

"Well, I don't know about the book, but they did that on TV. Anne 68

and Diana stood by their windows watching each other's lamp9 flash on and off in the distance."

"Hmm," Aoi grunted, falling silent again. Nanako was quiet too.

Nothing but silence traveled back and forth between them for several moments. Aoi looked up at the window of her unlighted room, Beyond the window she could see only the darkened sky. Several stars glinted in the blackness.

wish we could do that between our houses," Aoi finally said.

"Like with flashlights or something."

"Now we have phones, silly," Nanako said, laughing.

Suddenly Mrs. Narahashi was yelling up the stairs: "I wish you wouldn't tie up the phone, Aoi."

Aoi quickly covered the mouthpiece, but not before her friend could hear.

"I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then. After school, at the usual place. Bye-bye," Nanako said lightly and promptly hung up.

Aoi listened to the beeping line for a few moments, then opened her door and returned the handset to its cradle. She could hear a man and a woman arguing furiously about something in the thriller her mother was watching downstairs.

In October the entire student body switched to their navy blue winter uniforms, and about that same time Aoi sensed a subtle change in the atmosphere that had hovered over her classroom since April. She couldn't tell how many of her classmates might also have noticed, but her own sharp sensors had picked up a disturbing vibra-tion. It gave her a bad premonition.

And then it happened.

One day at lunchtime, Kana Hirabayashi went to the school store to find something to eat, and while she was away Haruka Shindo approached Aoi's group.

"Don't you think Kana's kind of weird?" she said. "When she 69

found out I had Ozaki's new record, she asked to borrow it, but that was a long time ago and she still won't give it back. I mean, if she's, such a big fan, why doesn't she just buy it herself?"

Haruka belonged not to Aoi's inconspicuous circle but to a group of five or six considerably more outgoing girls. They ignored the ban on colored lip creams, used band-aids to hide their piercings, and tinted their hair just enough not to draw attention; they'd recently shortened their skirts en masse, and made a habit of changing into navy blue knee socks as soon as they left the school grounds each day. Just being approached by someone from this crowd set off a series of nervous glances between Keiko Nozawa, Mamiko Takano, and Natsue Shimodaira in Aoi's group.

"Her parents are cheapskates," Keiko said, and Aoi looked at her in disbelief. Her face was flushing, but this didn't stop her from going on with uncharacteristic vehemence. "They won't even get her new sneakers." She let out a scornful titter.

"So that's why she keeps wearing those ratty shoes. Their smell'll take your nose right off. My shoe cubby's right over hers, so I know all too well." Fiddling with a lock of her hair, Haruka glanced toward the door. "Oh, here she comes. Just say something to her, okay? Tell her I want it back. Since you guys are her friends."

She rejoined her own circle at the back of the room, and a moment later a burst of laughter rose among them. Keiko and Mamiko and Natsue exchanged uneasy looks again. For a brief second Aoi had the illusion that everything in her field of vision was rapidly receding into the distance.

"Crap," Kana said as she approached with a bag of potato chips in her hand. "The filled buns were all sold out, and the only thing left was chips. Boo hoo." She laughed.

Aoi expected someone to pipe up right away that Haruka had come to ask for her record back, but no one said a word. Kana seemed to sense a certain awkwardness in the air.

70

"Is something wrong? Sorry I kept you waiting. Let's eat," she said breezily and sat down.

"You suppose they were really sold out, or she just didn't have the money?" Keiko muttered out of the corner of her mouth. Aoi could carcely believe her ears. "Come on, girls, we'll eat in the courtyard today." It had the sound of a command, and Keiko immediately started for the door, ignoring Kana. Mamiko and Natsue followed as if this had been planned all along. Aoi stood gaping for a moment, but then shook off her astonishment and hurried after the others.

Glancing over her shoulder as she passed through the doorway, she saw Kana sitting alone at her desk looking stunned.

This was exactly what she had feared, thought Aoi, staring blankly at the blackboard during fifth period. Even so, the abruptness of Keiko's transformation had been a shock. This was the girl who had done nothing but talk blissfully about anime all these months. It made Aoi wonder if she hadn't experienced the sting of ostracism before. Feel that sting once, and you would do anything to avoid a repeat. Like Aoi herself making sure never to speak with Nanako at school.

Aoi looked away from the blackboard toward Nanako, seated a little behind her next to the window. Nanako was gazing out the window with her chin in her hand, staring intently at something Aoi could not see. Aoi studied her profile as if she were looking at a painting or a photograph, admiring its purity of line. The sound of their teacher reading a passage from a novel came to her from somewhere far away. Then, perhaps sensing Aoi's gaze, Nanako turned and looked at her. Their eyes met. Nanako playfully crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

"Things have been kind of touchy in class lately, don't you think?"

Aoi said.

They'd spread a beach mat on the grass by the river, and Nanako 71

was laying out the packages of yakitori, octopus balls, doughn chocolate bars, and other goodies they'd picked up on their way '

Aoi's ominous premonition had come true. In the days followin the lunch incident, no one would talk to Kana anymore. Haruka'

group made fun of her to her face, while the other students snick ered from afar. Her former friends stopped including her in anything they did and acted as if they'd never even known her.

But this treatment lasted only about ten days for Kana, after which Keiko was labeled a sourpuss and became the new target. Their classroom's notorious bad-girl group, who signaled their membership by wearing their skirts extra long, started bullying her viciously, cutting up the hem of her skirt with scissors and sticking duct tape in her hair.

Aoi trembled in fear. First Kana, and now Keiko—both from her own group of friends. Might she be next? But to her great relief, the focus shifted a few days later to Masako Aihara of the bookworm crowd. Aoi was almost ashamed of how relieved she felt.

"Why? What do you mean?" Nanako said, reaching into the brown paper bag from the small general store by the bus stop where they got off and pulling out two cans of beer. Nearly everything in the store had been covered in a thin layer of dust. She looked at Aoi.

"If you're talking about all that dire stuff Hitomi's been saying about colleges, forget it. She just likes to hear herself talk. Tenth grade is way too early to be worrying about entrance exams." She flashed Aoi an innocent smile and handed her one of the beers. The can was wet with condensation.

"Tell me," said Aoi, making no effort to hide the irritation in her voice. "Do you do that deliberately?"

She was in fact annoyed with Nanako. No one could have remained oblivious to the malignant atmosphere that had taken over their classroom ever since the Kana Hirabayashi affair. Yet Nanako continued to flit from group to group as if nothing had changed, 72

neither attaching herself to any single clique, nor turning her back on them altogether a n d going it alone.

"Do what deliberately? O h , let's have a toast.
Hap-
py birthday!

Oops, I guess t h a t ' s n o t for me to say," she bubbled, thrusting her can at Aoi's.

"Happy birthday," Aoi e c h o e d , pulling on t h e pop top. The warming beer p u s h e d f o a m f r o m t h e opening, which Aoi hastily covered with h e r m o u t h to t a k e a sip. "That's nasty," she gri-maced, and it was obvious f r o m Nanako's look that she shared the sentiment.

"Happy ice cream!" she said nonsensically.

They slapped e a c h o t h e r on t h e shoulder and burst into gales of laughter.

"Nobody told me b e e r tasted so bad."

"I was sure it'd be good. I guess we should've gotten can cocktails instead. Those are s u p p o s e d to be sweet."

"We must be late b l o o m e r s — g e t t i n g our first taste of beer at this age."

"And sneaking d o w n to t h e river to do it."

They laughed s o m e m o r e .

"Let's eat, let's eat," N a n a k o said. Tearing open the package of yakitori and removing t h e lid f r o m t h e octopus ball tray, she began tossing the bite-size pieces into h e r m o u t h , one after another.

"Yummy-yum-yum," she yelled wildly, throwing herself back on the mat and flapping h e r legs. H e r w h i t e thighs flashed beneath her skirt and Aoi quickly looked away.

"Lately it's b e e n like t h e whole class is playing a game of who can we pick on next," Aoi said b e t w e e n bites of yakitori from a skewer sticky with sauce. "You c a n ' t tell me you haven't noticed. It started with Kana, and n o w it's Masako. Everybody treats them cold and mean, and sometimes t h e y really cross t h e line. Like when they cut up Keiko's skirt. People are going around terrified, wondering if they might be next, whispering stuff behind each other's backs life they're the secret police or something."

The river flowed ceaselessly before them, mirroring the tall blue sky. The grass that had grown so wild and thick during the summe was now withered, stirring drily in the passing wind.

"We're in high school, not kindergarten!" Aoi cried in exasperation

"Talk about infantile. It's ridiculous. I guess I was right. It really
is a
dumb school. This'd never happen at a proper prep school, that's for sure." In an odd sort of way, her own words were emboldening her and she went on. "Just look at Kazuyo Ube and her gang. Wearing those long skirts in this day and age—they look like peasants. Some nerve they have, thinking they can make fun of others. At the junior high I used to go to, they'd be the first to get the cold shoulder."

"Of course it's a dumb school!" Nanako erupted. "I got in, didn't I?" She let out a shriek of laughter.

"I'm trying to be serious," Aoi said icily, her irritation rising again.

"Well, if you don't like it," Nanako said, suddenly turning serious herself, "then just don't be part of it. It's as easy as that. Kazuyo and Masako are both perfectly nice people, in case you didn't know."

Still on her back, she stabbed an octopus ball with a toothpick and dropped it into her open mouth.

Aoi heaved a deep sigh and fell back onto the mat with a skewer of yakitori in her hand. The blue expanse overhead was interrupted by only a few scattered wisps of cloud. "You're so lucky, Nanako.

You're totally fearless. I bet you had a totally happy childhood, didn't you. You probably never had anyone take a dislike to you, always got along with your sister, your mother was a complete angel, and everything always went the way you wanted."

Nanako neither confirmed nor denied this. She wrinkled her nose and let out a little chuckle as she sat up and took another sip or two of the beer she'd practically spat out before. Raising her knees, she wrapped her arms around them and hugged them to her chest.

"From t h e time I was in kindergarten...," Aoi started to say, but then fell silent for several minutes as she tried to decide whether she really wanted to go on. If she did, she might turn Nanako against her. But if she didn't, t h e gulf between her and her friend who'd lived such a c h a r m e d life would just keep growing wider and wider.

"From the time I was in kindergarten, I was always getting picked on, and I never had any friends. Never." She felt herself choking up, but desperately held back t h e threatening tears in order to continue. "In junior high, I couldn't face school anymore. It was just way too scary.

I suppose you can't even imagine. T h e thing is, I knew there was something wrong with me. I knew that. But nobody would talk to me, so I could never figure out what I had to do to fix it. That's actually why we moved here. So I wouldn't have to go to high school in Yokohama. My m o m really didn't want to come, but I insisted. No way was I going a n y w h e r e I might run into my old classmates."

Aoi paused as what she'd said only moments before about her new school and classmates went through her mind. She stared at Nanako's back, realizing t h a t if she was going to do like her mother and look down her nose at their n e w town just to make herself feel better, she deserved every bit of abuse and ill will people heaped on her.

"You know, all those people that picked on you?" Nanako said without turning around. "They were probably just jealous. Because you had something they didn't have. Because you had so much."

"That's okay, you don't have to say that. I know perfectly well there's something wrong with me."

Aoi held a d o u g h n u t up and peered through the hole. A thin wisp of cloud was crawling slowly across the sky. Then suddenly the patch of blue was replaced by Nanako's eye in the doughnut hole.

"Ack! You startled me!" Aoi cried, and Nanako rolled back onto the mat in a fit of laughter.

Nanako raised a d o u g h n u t in front of her eye like Aoi. "Well, anyway, you can't really judge things like that by yourself," she said. "But in the end, I'm glad they picked on you. Otherwise we'd never have met."