This is Amiko, Do You Copy?

Grabbing a hand shovel and a plastic bag all crumpled up, Amiko opened the door at the back of the house. It had been raining at night for the past couple of days. The morning after the rain, the path leading to the front yard would get so muddy that the bottoms of her sandals would have to be peeled off the ground as she walked—but this morning, thanks to yesterday's sun, her feet moved forward without any resistance. The mud stuck to the edges of the sandals was hard and gray, and she decided to wash them using the outdoor water faucet after picking the violets. Passing the eaves along the house and walking up the short, gentle slope to the field behind, Amiko noticed an azalea shrub by the side of the road blooming with white blossoms. She stood in the middle of the slope and wondered if she should pick azaleas instead. But she didn’t have a pair of sturdy shears to cut the azalea branches, so she decided to go for the violets after all.
The slope was normally overgrown with weeds, but last week a kind monk at a nearby temple brought over the mower and trimmed the weeds with great skill, scattering them away. Thanks to that, the slope looked fresh and didn’t feel prickly when walking on it. Grandmother gave the monk some sweet green dumplings she rolled by hand.
Amiko walked up the short slope with ease. At the top was a small field, where grandmother tended the cucumbers, herbs, eggplants, and daikon radishes that were planted each season. Snow peas were in season from spring to early summer, and recently they had been appearing in all kinds of dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, from stews to soups to stir-fries. Amiko was getting tired of them. She walked past the thin hanging yellow-green pods, making sure to keep them out of her sight, and continued toward the thicket until she came upon a persimmon tree that bore small fruit every other year. She sat down.
There, violets bloomed on the red-yellow soil laid bare. It was always dim and damp under the persimmon tree, shaded by its branches and leaves, but despite the lack of sunlight—perhaps the soil was full of nutrients—the wild violets grew large with petals that were dark and vivid purple. Amiko wedged her hand shovel into the soil and dug up the violets by the roots. When she tried to scoop them into the plastic bag, she saw that it was still crumpled up and couldn’t find the opening. Her right hand was occupied by the shovel handle and her clumsy left hand was of no use on its own, so she used her back teeth and the tip of her tongue to open the bag. With shaky hands that made the flower petals tremble, she managed to slide the shovel into the plastic bag and slowly pull it out, holding the handle straight up. She adjusted the soil and roots of the violets with sweaty palms over the bag so that the stems would stand up straight. Then, with a rhythmical “One, two three,” Amiko got up.
Coming down the hill, Amiko noticed little Saki walking toward her on stilts. She was so far away that Amiko could barely make out her pea-sized silhouette, but she was sure it was her. What perfect timing. Amiko waved her hand still holding the shovel and yelled, "Heeey!” But there was no response. Perhaps her voice didn’t reach, or it was too far for little Saki to see who was calling out to her. Even if she noticed, she couldn’t wave back because her hands were clutching the stilts. Little Saki was making steady progress forward, but moved so slowly that it seemed like she was stamping her feet on the same spot.
Little Saki was an elementary school girl who lived in the neighborhood. Whenever she came over to Amiko's house, she would appear riding on stilts. Amiko, who didn’t know how to use one, was amazed and rather impressed by little Saki's diligent efforts to slowly make her way to her house, which was more than fifteen minutes away on a child’s foot. The hard-working little visitor was delighted when treated to sweets and juice, or when Amiko gave her flowers she had grown as a souvenir. A few days ago, little Saki pointed to a poisonous flower growing on the footpath between the rice paddies, and said she wanted to take them home. Amiko told her no, but she insisted. "I really want those pretty yellow flowers, please." It was unusual for her to insist, so Amiko had no choice but to cut four or five of them with her shears and give them to her wrapped in newspaper. The next day, little Saki came back— on stilts, as if it were a ritual—with a disappointed look on her face. "My mom got mad at me," she said. Throw away those dirty flowers, she had told her. "And she blamed you for it, Amiko. I'm so sorry…" Little Saki bowed her head, pressing her palms together. Amiko consoled her, telling her not to worry. After all, it was Amiko who had given her those poisonous flowers. The girl was truly sorry, and she bowed her head repeatedly with her eyebrows arched down, thinking she had done Amiko wrong. Looking at her face, which looked ready to burst into tears at any moment, Amiko decided that next time she would give her flowers that would make her mother happy. Hence, the violets.
Amiko felt that she should be good to her friends. Little Saki came to see her whenever she didn’t have school, so she was probably fond of her. Amiko was fond of little Saki too. Whenever little Saki asked her to do something, like make a big grin with her teeth shut tight, she would do it. Little Saki was fascinated by the dark hole that appeared in Amiko’s mouth when she smiled wide. Amiko was missing her three front teeth. To be exact, it was the left tooth of the two middle ones, the one to the left of that, and one more to the left. When little Saki first noticed it, she yelled, "Wowzers!" and laughed so hard she could barely cover her mouth with her hands. Then she asked what happened. Amiko told her that a boy had punched her in junior high school and the teeth went flying. Hearing that, little Saki bent over backwards in surprise. Amiko added that the boy who punched her was named Nori and that she had been in love with him since she was much younger. Little Saki, who apparently had a crush on a soccer boy, wanted to know what it was like to be punched by a boy you were in love with.
It was difficult for Amiko to explain. She wanted to, but all of that had happened before she came to live with grandmother, when she lived in a house far away. She didn’t remember much from those days.
“Boooring,” little Saki complained. But she seemed captivated by the gaping hole in Amiko’s face and moved her own face closer. This was easy enough. Amiko could show her the dark hole as much as she wanted. Yeeee, she opened her mouth wide.
 


Chapter One
 
Amiko was raised as a daughter of the Tanaka family until the day she moved out at the age of fifteen. She lived with father, mother, and a delinquent older brother.
When Amiko was in elementary school, mother ran a calligraphy class at home. The "classroom" was a small and simple one with just three rectangular desks lined up in a Japanese-style room about eight tatami mats in size. The room faced the veranda, and it was said that mother's mother used to sleep there. Now, the floor was covered with a red rug from corner to corner. Next to the classroom was the so-called Buddha room, where the family Buddhist alter was placed. Across the hall was the kitchen and dining room. The students of the calligraphy class would take off their shoes and enter directly into the classroom from the veranda. Mother wanted it this way. If the students were to enter from the front, they would have to walk past the Buddha room and the kitchen, and that would allow them to look into the family's living spaces. In front of the veranda was a small yard, where father parked his car. When the car was parked, students had to slide in sideways and weave their way through the gap between the car and the concrete wall to reach the veranda where they removed their shoes. One side of father's navy-blue car was often scratched by the metal fittings on the school bags from the local elementary school, as if white lines had been drawn on it. When that happened, father would take a square sponge, apply a tube of cream, and quickly dab at the scratches. He never complained. “It’s a magic sponge," he would tell Amiko. The wound dabbed by the sponge quickly faded and vanished without a trace. Amiko begged father to give her the role of using the magical sponge, and from then on, would find a scratch before anyone else and erase it with great zeal. Thanks to her efforts, the navy-blue car always glistened, but there were also some that just wouldn't go away. If the scratches were deeply etched with a hard object, there was a limit to what the power of magic could do. AMIKO, THE FOOL—was one of them. The light sometimes made it look like the words had disappeared when seen from another angle, but they were never completely gone.
“I almost got it…” Amiko would say, using her arm muscle to rub the scratches again and again, unwilling to give up. Amiko was a first grader and could read her own name, but not the kanji character for "THE FOOL" that followed. When she asked father, he simply pushed up his glasses with his fingers and replied, "Hmmm… I don't know.”
The next day, the navy-blue car was covered with a thick rain cover, which remained in place regardless of the weather.
Amiko missed the joy of erasing scratches, but there were plenty of other fun things to do. Peeping into the calligraphy class was one of them. Amiko called it "the red room" because of the red rug covering the floor. Mother strictly forbade her to enter her classroom, so she could only peek in from behind the sliding doors to avoid being discovered. How exciting this was. Yelling "Pee! Pee! Pee!" in a loud voice, Amiko would pretend to go to the toilet and sneak into the adjacent Buddha room, hold her breath to avoid making any noise, and pry open the sliding doors with her fingers to create a tiny gap. Peeking into the room with her left eye, the first thing she would see was the back of mother's head with her black hair pulled tight into a ponytail. Beyond, she could see children facing her way, a little older than she was, sitting upright with their legs tucked under in a proper manner. Among the students holding brushes was her brother Kota, two years older than she was, facing the desk with good posture. Amiko didn't recognize any other face besides her brother, but she couldn't resist the temptation of their quiet whisperings and the alluring smell of ink and newspaper mixed together. The smell somehow made her want to pee for real, and she would end up having to go back and forth to the toilet after all.
One summer day, Amiko stood behind the sliding door as usual, repeatedly going to and from the toilet.
At one point, Amiko went into the kitchen and returned with a piece of corn that mother had boiled for her. As she got into position and began eating the sweet corn, peeling off one kernel at a time with her front teeth, she suddenly noticed that one student was looking at her. That boy was sitting perfectly still with a brush in hand, looking intently at Amiko with his big round eyes as she ate the corn. The glass door that was slightly open creaked and crackled, and the faint evening breeze blew in through the screen and ruffled the boy's bangs that glimmered in the western sun. The only audible sound was the crunching of the yellow kernels, which echoed deeply inside Amiko’s ears.
The boy put down his brush. He picked up the calligraphy sheet from the desk and raised it to his face. On the sheet was written the characters, "Koméこめ,” meaning rice. Neatly arranged on the white paper, the handwriting was beautiful, so much more than Amiko's. Then—perhaps the boy had soaked his brush in too much ink—a drop began to form on the bottom edge of the character of "Ko こ". It looked like black drool was trickling down from the edge of a smiling mouth. As Amiko looked on, the corn in her hand grew hotter and hotter. Her overgrown fingernails dug into the kernels and broke the husk. Sweet juice oozed out, mixing with sweat and becoming sticky. In contrast to the force of her fingers, her mind became foggy and filled only with the boy who sat before her. Then, suddenly, someone shouted her name.
“It's Amiko!”
The students looked up all at once.
“Amiko is watching!”
“Ms. Tanaka, right behind you!” One of the boys stood up, full of energy. He straightened his arm and pointed the tip of his brush toward Amiko. Mother's black head whipped around, and in the next moment, her two eyes, narrow and pointed, captured her.
As mother slowly approached, Amiko looked up at the mole under mother's chin. “I didn't go into the room," Amiko defended herself, “I was just watching!”
Mother closed the sliding door behind her and let out a deep sigh. She said to her daughter, "Go and do your homework in the other room.”
"Whaaaat?"
“Don’t complain. Hurry up and do as I say.”
“But I wanna learn calligraphy too.”
“You will not.”
“I will too!”
“No one can learn calligraphy until they finish their homework.”
“Then I'll watch.”
“You will not. If you can do your homework, go to school every day, get along with your friends, listen to your teacher, and behave yourself, then you may learn calligraphy. Can you do that, Amiko? Can you promise not to sing in class or scribble on the desk? Can you promise not to do boxing, pretend to be Barefoot Gen, or play “Indian”? Can you do that? Can you?" After saying all that in one breath, mother quietly opened the sliding door to the red room where her students were waiting, went inside, and slammed the door in Amiko’s face.
It was a long time after when Amiko learned that the boy she had seen in the red room that day went to the same elementary school as she did, and was in the same class. The boy who had written "Komé” and showed it to her. Amiko often skipped school so she hadn’t noticed. When she recognized him one day at school, she got excited. “Oh, it’s the boy with the drooling letter!” she exclaimed, pointing her fingers at him. He fixed his round eyes on Amiko, then turned his face to the side.
Later, it occurred to Amiko that maybe, on that day, the boy was showing his finished work to mother, his calligraphy teacher, rather than to Amiko herself. But at the time, she understood it as a gaze of passion that was meant for her only, accompanied with the beautiful handwriting next to it. During recess, Amiko went to ask her homeroom teacher how long the boy had been in the class. “Nori? He’s been here before you transferred into the school,” the teacher told her. “He was here from the very beginning.” Amiko had no idea. Nori, she said the name aloud.