Grotesque (25 page)

Kijima stared at me until his red face drained entirely of color.

“Besides, your son is my pimp. Did you know that?”

Kijima slipped deeper and deeper into silence until finally he drew in a deep breath.

“No, I didn’t know. I’m very sorry.”

Kijima bowed in apology and then turned and walked away. I watched his back as he retreated. I realized that he was going to have to expel both me and his son. I didn’t tell Johnson that part.

In May, a month after beginning my senior year, I met up with Kijima, the son, outside the school gate. The navy-blue blazer of his school uniform was open, revealing a bright red silk shirt. He had a gold chain around his neck and was driving a black Peugeot. All were items bought on the sly from the money I’d earned. Kijima was born in April, so he’d just gotten his driver’s license.

“Yuriko, get in.”

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I slipped into the snug seat alongside him. The girls on their way home from school glanced at us, their eyes flashing with envy. They weren’t jealous of the car or of Kijima and his flashy clothes. They were jealous because Kijima and I were able to enjoy ourselves so freely, both inside school and outside it. And at the top of the list of jealous girls was Kazue Sato.

Kijima lit a cigarette angrily and took a deep drag before he turned to me and said, “What the hell did you say to my father? You bitch! We’ll probably get expelled, you know. They’re going to meet over the holidays and decide what to do with us. My father told me about it last night.”

“Is your father going to resign too?”

“He might.” Kijima turned away with a disgusted look. His expression was the spitting image of his father’s. “What’ll you do now?”

“Well, I could get a job as a model. The other day a scout showed up and gave me his business card. And there’s always prostitution.”

“Can I stay on with you then?”

“Sure,” I nodded, staring at the girls who were walking in front of the car. One turned around and looked back at me. It was my sister. Bitch.

She formed the words with her mouth without making a sound: bitch, bitch, bitch.

Johnson all of a sudden climbed on top of me and started to strangle me.

Stop! I shouted and flailed away at him in an effort to get out from under his heavy body. But he pinned my arms and legs down and brought his mouth up close to my ear and shouted, “Professor Kijima likes Yuriko!”

“Probably.”

“He’d be crazy to get mixed up with a girl like Yuriko. A firstclass idiot.”

“You’re right. But it’s too late. Professor Kijima has already gotten us both kicked out of school.”

“What the hell?” Johnson let go of me as he spoke.

“We got caught. Me and Professor Kijima’s son. We have to withdraw.

And it looks like Professor Kijima’s going to resign.”

“Have you embarrassed Masami and me, Yuriko?”

Johnson’s face flushed red, and not just from the bourbon. He was 1 5 4

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angry. I lay there waiting for him to do whatever he would. If he wanted to kill me, then that was that. Why is it that men who crave the flesh are so incapable of seeing the heart? Johnson was out of control. He knocked the bottle of bourbon over on the bed and I watched as the liquor seeped over the sheets, leaving an ever-widening brown stain. And not just the sheets—I was sure it was going through to the mattress as well. I was afraid of being scolded by Masami and grabbed for the bottle, but it fell to the floor with a thud

“You’re just a heartless whore. A cheap slut. You make me sick!”

Johnson threw me down and started climbing over me violently, spewing out insults in a low voice. Was this a new game for him? I couldn’t tell. I just lay back and looked up at the ceiling. I wouldn’t feel anything.

Ever since I became an old woman at the age of fifteen I haven’t felt a thing, and ever since that night when I was seventeen I’ve been frigid.

All of a sudden there was a loud knock on the door.

“Yuriko-chan? Are you okay? Who’s in there?”

Before I could answer the door burst open and Masami flew in with a golf club in her hand. She screamed when she saw me naked on the bed, a man savagely straddling me. But when she realized the man was her own husband, she collapsed on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Just what it looks like, dahling!”

Johnson and Masami stood at the side of the bed shouting insults at each other while I lay faceup, looking at the ceiling, naked.

I had just entered my senior year—and I had been living in Johnson’s house for two and a half years—when I was advised to withdraw from school. It was the same for Kijima. Professor Kijima, assuming responsibility for his son’s dereliction, resigned his own teaching post. I hear he became the superintendent at some company dormitory in Karuizawa. I imagine he’s spending his time collecting all kinds of insect specimens.

But I wouldn’t know. I’ve not seen him since.

After Kijima and I withdrew from school we’d still meet up at the same cafe in Shibuya. Kijima would wave me over to where he sat in a dark corner of the restaurant. He’d always have a cigarette in one hand and a sports paper in the other; he never looked like a high school stu-1 5 5

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dent. He looked more like a young tough who’d lost his gang. Kijima would fold his paper up with a rustling snap and stare at me.

“I’m going to transfer to another school. A man can’t get by these days without finishing school. How about you? What’d Johnson say?”

“He told me to do whatever I wanted.”

And so I had to live off the sale of my body, with no one to look out for me. Just as I do now. Nothing has changed.

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lease listen to my side too. I can’t let all the lies Yuriko wrote go uncontested. That wouldn’t be fair, would it? You don’t agree? But Yuriko’s journal is so filthy I can’t bear it. After all, I have a respectable job at the ward office. You have to let me try to explain.

I’m sure someone impersonating Yuriko wrote that journal of hers.

I’ve already noted on a number of occasions that Yuriko didn’t have the cleverness to organize her thoughts or write any kind of extended composition.

Her schoolwork was always sloppy. I have an essay she wrote when she was a fourth-grader. Let me show it to you.

Yesterday I went with my older sister to buy a red goldfish, but the goldfish store was closed on Sunday, so I couldn’t buy a red goldfish and that made me sad so I cried.

This is all she could manage as a fourth-grader. But just look at the handwriting. It looks like a grown-up’s, doesn’t it? I suppose you’re thinking that I wrote this and am now trying to pass it off as Yuriko’s. But that’s not the case. I found it the other day tucked in the back of my 1 5 7

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grandfathers closet when I was cleaning out his apartment. I used to correct every single one of Yuriko’s wretched compositions, rewriting each word for her. I did everything I could to cover up the fact that my younger sister was dim-witted and morally corrupt. Now do you understand?

Well, then, shall I tell you more about Kazue in high school? I mean, since Yuriko wrote about her in her journal, I think I should. When Yuriko was admitted to the junior high division of the Q School system, even the girls in the high school went ballistic. Their excitement was only natural, I suppose, but it still posed considerable difficulty for me, as her older sister. I remember it very clearly.

Mitsuru was the first to ask about her. She came over to my desk during our lunch break carrying a large reference book. I had just finished eating the lunch I’d brought: stewed radishes with fried bean curd. It’s what I’d fixed for my grandfather the night before. How can I remember such minute details? Well, I remember because I accidentally knocked the container over and the stew spilled on my English notes. Mitsuru looked at me sympathetically as I madly blotted away at my notebook with a damp handkerchief.

“I hear your little sister has entered the junior high division.”

“So it would seem,” I said, without looking up. Mitsuru tilted her head to the side, startled by the iciness of my answer. Her eyes grew wide and lit on me with bright alacrity. Mitsuru really was just like a squirrel! I was very fond of her, but at the same time I thought her rodent ways were often just too ridiculous.

“So it would seem? What kind of answer is that? Aren’t you the least bit concerned about her? She is your sister.” Mitsuru smiled warmly at me, flashing her big front teeth.

I stopped dabbing at my notebook and said, “No, actually I’m not the least bit concerned.”

Mitsuru s eyes grew wide again. “Why? I hear she’s very pretty.”

“Who told you that?” I shot back. “And who cares anyway?”

“I heard it from Professor Kijima. Apparently your sister’s in his group.”

Mitsuru waved the book she was holding in front of my nose. It was a biology reference book written by a Takakuni Kijima. In addition to being in charge of the junior high division, Professor Takakuni Kijima was our biology teacher. He was a nervous type who wrote on the chalkboard with letters that were so perfectly square you’d have thought he’d 1 5 8

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measured them with a ruler. I couldn’t stand the way he always looked: so proper, everything so perfect. I hated him.

“And I really respect him,” Mitsuru said, without even waiting to hear what I had to say. “He’s brilliant and he really looks out for his students.

I think he’s a great teacher. He was the one who took us on our overnight field trip when I was in junior high.”

“What did he say about my sister?”

“He asked me if the older sister of a junior high transfer student was in my class. When I said I didn’t know anything about it, he said that wasn’t likely. So when I asked him for more details I finally figured out he had to be talking about you. It was such a surprise.”

“Why? Is it hard to believe?”

“Because I didn’t even know you had a younger sister.”

Mitsuru was too smart to say that she found it hard to believe that I had a sister who looked so little like me, a sister who was so incredibly beautiful she looked like a monster. Just then we heard a commotion down the hall. A great crowd of students came pressing into the corridor, clamoring to look into the classroom where we sat. They were clearly from the junior high division. There were even a few boys among them, hanging back in the rear and looking a litde sheepish.

“I wonder what’s going on?”

But when I turned toward the door, a hush fell over the crowd of students.

A large girl with curly hair dyed a reddish brown pushed her way through the crowd and stepped into the room. She was clearly the ringleader.

From the haughty self-assured way she carried herself it was also clear that she was an insider, and the insiders in my class called out to her familiarly. “Mokku, what’re you doing here?” This girl, Mokku, strode confidently into the classroom without answering and planted herself in front of my desk.

“Are you Yuriko s older sister?”

“Yes, I am.”

I didn’t want any dust to get into my lunch box, so I snapped the lid down. Mitsuru clutched the biology reference book to her breast, looking uneasy. Mokku gazed down at the stain that had seeped over my English notebook.

“What did you have for lunch today?”

“Stewed radish with bean curds,” the student next to me answered.

She was affiliated with the modern dance club and was a complete witch.

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Every day she looked over my shoulder at what I was eating and snickered, screwing her face into a smirk. Mokku paid her no attention, completely disinterested. Instead she fixed her sights on my hair.

“Are you and Yuriko really sisters?”

“Yes, we really are.”

“I’m sorry but I just don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”

I had no interest in talking to someone so presumptuous. I stood up and stared Mokku straight in the eye. She flinched and took a few steps back. I could hear the sound her big behind made as it bumped into the desk of the student in front of me. Everyone in the room was staring at us. Mitsuru, who was so short she barely managed to come up to Mokku’s shoulder, grabbed Mokku by the arm and admonished her in a fairly sharp tone. “Stop poking your nose in other people’s business and go back to your own classroom!”

Mokku turned back toward the corridor, still in Mitsuru’s grip. Then, with an exaggerated flourish, she shrugged her shoulders and stomped out of the room. I could hear the students behind her sigh loudly with collective disappointment.

It was a good feeling. Ever since I was young I have loved bringing Yuriko down more than anything else. When people see a beautiful woman, they expect her to be perfect; they want her to remain beyond their reach. They feel she’s safer that way, more adorable. So when they find out she’s crude and unrefined, their admiration turns to scorn and their envy turns to hatred. Maybe the only reason I was born was to quash Yuriko’s value.

“Wow, I can’t believe he showed up too.” At the sound of Mitsuru’s voice I returned to my senses.

“Who?”

“Takashi Kijima. He’s Professor Kijima’s son and he’s in his group.”

One boy still lingered behind in the corridor after all the rest had left.

He stood at the door to the classroom peering in at me. He looked exactly like his father: same compact little face, same slender build. His features were so nicely balanced you couldn’t help but call him pretty.

And there wasn’t a hint of strength to him. Kijima’s son’s sharp eyes locked onto mine. I stared at him until he looked away.

“I’ve heard he’s a problem kid,” Mitsuri said.

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She still clutched the biology book to her breast, brushing her fingers softly over the binding where Takakuni Kijima’s name was written. I could tell from her gestures that she was in love. I wanted to say something mean to her, something to shock her back to reality.