Alice-Miranda in Japan 9 (5 page)

 

Having served breakfast to the twenty elderly residents and washed up for the first time in her life, Kiko spent the next hour upstairs in the bedrooms rolling up futons and sweeping the
tatami
. She had expected to see yet more squirrels but the bedrooms were almost bare. The house was eerily quiet.

She tapped on the door at the far end of the hallway and slid it open.

‘Sumimasen!'
She bowed her head, surprised to see an old man sitting in a lounge chair. He was staring out the window and across the alley, with a leather-bound book perched on his knees.

Kiko looked at his bedding at the other end of the room and wondered what to do. ‘May I tidy your room?' she asked quietly.

The man nodded.

Kiko rolled the futon and placed it into the cupboard as she had done in every other room. Then she retrieved the straw broom from the doorway and swept the matting. She was about to leave when the man spoke.

‘You are new,' he said quietly.

‘Hai,'
she replied. She couldn't remember seeing the man at breakfast.

‘Boy, haven't you finished yet?' Obaasan screeched from the bottom of the stairs. ‘You are slower than those old people getting up and down the stairs, and that can take all day.' She cackled to herself. ‘Time to do the washing.'

‘She has a sharp tongue but a kind heart.'

Kiko realised that he was talking about Obaasan.
‘Hai.'

Kiko hesitated. She wanted to ask the old man if there was a way out of the house.

While she'd been cleaning, Kiko had investigated each room. Every window was deadlocked and there seemed to be very few external doors. Surely Obaasan would leave the house some time – and then Kiko would make her escape.

‘You had better go, or her tongue will get sharper,' the old man said.

Kiko bowed and left the room.

In the hallway below, Kiko could hear shuffling and mumbling voices. A fresh smell replaced the fug that had clouded the dining room and Kiko realised that the residents had been bathing. She wondered why the old man upstairs had not gone down too, but then she remembered that his room seemed to be the only one with an ensuite.

Kiko scurried down the stairs and stopped in the doorway of the sitting room, where hundreds of squirrel figurines stared at her from every angle.

Obaasan was directing an old woman with wiry black hair to a seat. ‘You sit there and I will get some tea.' Most of the chairs were occupied and several of the men and women were reading. Others were sleeping and some simply stared into space.

Obaasan walked over to her. ‘There you are, boy.'

Without thinking, Kiko blurted the question she had been pondering all morning. ‘Who
are
all these old people?'

‘Aha! I knew you were not stupid. You do speak. They are my friends.'

‘All of them are your friends?' Kiko frowned. She didn't know what it was like to have one friend, let alone twenty.

‘Hai!'
Obaasan curled her lip at Kiko. ‘What? You think no one wants to be friends with an old lady like me. Bah! I am a spring lamb compared to that lot.'

Kiko found that hard to believe.

‘They have no one to look after them, so I do it,' Obaasan continued. ‘Some people collect
kokeshi
dolls or, even better, Itoshii Squirrel. I collect old people.'

‘And Itoshii Squirrel,' Kiko said.

‘I don't collect that silly rodent. I create him,' Obaasan said proudly.

Kiko was impressed.

‘I know. I am sooo clever,' said Obaasan. ‘And wait until you see what I have planned for him next.'

Kiko couldn't help thinking that, despite her gruffness and demands, Obaasan was very kind and generous to look after all of those people. And she was clever too: the squirrel was cute.

The old woman pulled a piece of paper from her apron pocket and passed it to Kiko. ‘What do you think?'

Kiko unfolded the page and had to stop herself from laughing out loud. It was a picture of a house with a giant flying squirrel on the roof.

‘Or I could build him at the market.' The old woman reached out and turned the page over. Kiko recognised the bell gate, and beside it a giant squirrel was standing guard.

‘Well, do you like it?' Obaasan asked.

Kiko nodded.

‘It will be my special monument. But enough about squirrels. We're going to the laundry.' Obaasan shuffled along the hallway and stopped at a door beside the room Kiko had slept in. She pushed it open to reveal a small staircase leading to a basement. She pushed Kiko's shoulder. ‘Off you go.'

‘But what do I do?' the girl asked. She'd never done laundry in her life.

‘You work it out. You're not as stupid as you look.'

Obaasan gave her a hefty shove and Kiko stumbled down the stairs. A bare globe cast dull yellow light around the room. A basket filled with clothes sat in one corner next to a rusty machine with a large stone tub beside it. A lone tear welled in the corner of Kiko's eye. She brushed it away and shook her head.

She'd known that running away would have consequences. That her life would change forever. But it was better than having to deal with her cruel aunt any longer, or a father who did not seem to care for her at all.

On the night before she left, Kiko had opened the cage door for her beloved canary, Mari. The little yellow bird had ventured to the entrance and hopped back inside the safety of her gilded home more than ten times before she flew to the windowsill. Down below, the garden beckoned and further away, the city seemed to spin around their oasis of calm. Mari sang a haunting song then turned once more to Kiko, before flying out into the world and disappearing forever. Kiko knew that the very next day she would do the same.

Now, the girl walked around the laundry room, looking for anything that might help her work out how she was to complete Obaasan's chore. A pair of scissors, a scrubbing brush and a large box of white powder sat on a long bench. Kiko peered at the writing and realised that this was soap for washing clothes. Then she turned her attention to the machine and read the faded characters around the dial.

She began to pull the clothing out of the basket and load it into the machine. When it seemed full, she fiddled with the controls and was surprised and pleased when water began to pour in. She added a large scoop of powder and then another two for good measure. She watched the machine like a hawk, jumping every time it clanged and banged.

After a little while, Kiko noticed froth escaping from around the lid. She didn't want to touch the contraption while it was in motion but the bubbles began to run down the front of it and onto the floor. Kiko froze. The bubbles were multiplying and the space around her was filling fast. She could barely see the machine any more and had swallowed a few bubbles too, which were burning her throat.

The door at the top of the stairs opened and Obaasan screeched, ‘Are you finished down there?'

Kiko scurried to the stairs and called back, ‘Soon.' She hoped that the old woman couldn't see in the dim light – although she wasn't sure Obaasan could see much at all, especially without her glasses.

‘What are you doing? Not washing by hand, I hope. That's why I have a super-fast, modern machine – at least it was when I bought it thirty years ago,' Obaasan cackled. ‘Are you really going to make an old woman come down there?'

‘No!' Kiko called back. ‘I just spilled some water.' Around her the bubbles that had threatened to engulf the whole room were fizzling away.

‘Then come up here. You are lazy. I have more jobs for you to do,' the old woman shouted.

‘I'm coming.' Kiko ran up the rickety staircase and into the hall.

‘Did you separate the washing?' Obaasan asked.

The girl gulped. She didn't know that she was supposed to do that. She wondered how she would separate it anyway – into what?

‘Idiot boy.' Obaasan shook her head. ‘If everything comes out pink you will not be popular.'

Pink? Kiko had no idea how she could possibly turn all of the clothes pink. That sounded like magic and she knew after years of trying to cast a disappearing spell on her aunt that she had no such powers.

‘You hang it up to dry?' Obaasan asked.

‘The machine was still going,' Kiko stammered.

‘Go back later – don't forget or Ojiisan will not be happy. He has a cane and he does not mind using it.' Obaasan pulled a face that made her look even more like a dried prune than usual.

Kiko wondered which Ojiisan she was referring to. There were many grandfathers in the house and Kiko did not want to encounter any of their canes.

‘Come, I have a new job for you.' Obaasan shuffled along the hall and into the kitchen. Kiko followed and was surprised to find a plump boy sitting at the kitchen table.

‘Hey, fat boy, this is Yoshi.' Obaasan pointed at Kiko. ‘Fat boy is Taro. He has the right name, don't you think?' Obaasan scoffed.

Kiko shrugged, wondering what she meant.

‘Taro – it means eldest son who is fat. I know, I am so funny!' the old woman hooted.

Kiko kept her eyes low and tried not to look at the boy. Fortunately he was too busy shovelling food into his mouth to be interested in the new arrival. Kiko glanced from the boy's bowl to the huge pot of noodles boiling on the stove. It must be close to lunchtime, she realised.

Obaasan motioned for Kiko to sit at the table. A tall stack of letters bound by an elastic band leaned precariously next to the boy called Taro. ‘Your next job.'

Kiko was surprised. She had expected to be serving noodles again.

‘You open these for me and sort into piles,' the woman said. ‘One pile is for payments for the old people, the other is for bills. Tick them off against the names here.'

Taro looked up. ‘But that's my job.' A dribble of liquid ran down his chin and he sucked a noodle through his teeth. It disappeared like a beach worm into the sand.

‘I am trying someone new,' the old woman said. ‘You are too slow and too stupid.'

Kiko sat on the chair opposite the hungry lad and looked at the mound of mail. She'd never opened a letter in her life. There seemed to be a lot of names on the list. Kiko had only counted twenty residents plus the man she had found upstairs earlier in the morning. She wondered if Obaasan had another house full of old people somewhere else.

The old woman shuffled over to the bench and returned with a long, sharp object. Kiko flinched. Obaasan pulled the first letter from the pile and slashed it open. Kiko breathed again.

‘You put money coming in here.' She slapped her hand on the table. ‘And bills go here.' She pounded her palm on the opposite side. ‘And don't mix them up. My son says that fat boy is always wrong.'

Kiko unfolded the first letter. She scanned the page, reading it as quickly as she could. At the bottom was an amount and it looked like the person named at the top was to receive this money. She placed it to her left, then opened the second envelope and repeated the action. Soon there was a stack of papers to her left and just a couple to her right. The payment statements were all from the government and when Kiko mentally added them together, it seemed like a very large sum of money.

Obaasan stopped stirring the pot on the stove and nodded. ‘You are good at sorting.'

Taro looked up just as Kiko did. He stuck his tongue out at her and pulled a monster face.

Kiko couldn't help it. She laughed. It only made Taro madder.

‘Give me that.' Taro snatched the last page from Kiko's hand and looked at it. He added it to the payment pile.

Kiko shook her head. As she picked it up and moved it to the other side, her eyes came to rest on what she thought was a date of birth. Kiko pondered for a moment before realising just how long ago it was. She studied the form and wondered who it belonged to.

‘Obaasan, how old is the oldest person in the house?' Kiko asked quietly.

‘Mmm, one of the Ojiisans is turning one hundred and two next birthday. He is old enough to be
my
grandfather.'

Kiko glanced up at her. She didn't think that could be true. Kiko looked at the birth date on the page. This person would be turning one hundred and fourteen.

‘Is his name Sato-san?'

Obaasan wrinkled her nose. ‘Sato-san went years ago.'

A man with a pockmarked face walked through the kitchen door. He looked at Kiko and the papers beside her, then strode over and snatched up the pile. He walked back to the stove where Obaasan was standing. ‘What is he doing?' he hissed at the woman.

‘Sorting,' Obaasan replied.

‘Are you stupid?' the man snapped.

‘Watch your tongue, my son. This boy is smart and you said yourself that Taro makes too many mistakes.'

‘This boy is not family. How do we know we can trust him?' the man demanded.

Kiko kept her head down but stole glances in their direction. The man walked back to the table and sat down heavily. ‘Who are you, boy?'