One day a month later, all my family was out of the house for Kento's Sports Day at school. I busied myself cleaning my room, which was starting to feel small to me. Kaoru had said she wanted to come sleep over, so I wanted to make at least enough space to spread out another futon.
I took some of my junior high textbooks and notebooks off the shelf, wrapped them with twine, and took them to the garage.
As I opened the sticky door, the sticky air hit me. Long-forgotten memories that wouldn't fit in the closet indoors came back to me.
When we were younger, I used to play in the garage all the time with Kento and other kids from the neighborhood, seeing how brave we could be. I hadn't gone into the garage in a long time, and now it was bursting with a passel of memories. The shelves along the wall were chock-full of boxes and suitcases. There was no place to shove anything new, almost more than one person by herself might be able to deal with. Mom and dad were the kind of people who never threw anything away. Everything just piled up, as anyone could see. I guess it was up to me to do it. I decided to get rid of anything we didn't really need to keep.
I put on some cotton work gloves and dug into an old cardboard box that was deep back on the shelf. Unbelievable! In the very first box were my dad's old high school textbooks. Even his test papers. Japanese 50 points, chemistry 40 points... I could not believe the things they had never thrown away.
The books and notebooks in the box reeked of mold. Whose could these be? There was a banana box with 2004 written on the side. Inside were cookbooks just for sweets, recipes with red underlining, papers in foreign languages, all a-jumble. There were some labels here and there, and some printed papers shoved in-between, as if they had been used just yesterday. I pulled out a turquoise folder and opened it. My eyes landed on a paper that said, "Study in France." This must have belonged to dad's sister. She loved to travel. With the paper was a manila envelope.
In the envelope, which was not sealed, was a sheet of stiff paper. On it was written: <TOKYO-PARIS>. It was an airline ticket to France. It was unused. Had the person bought the ticket, and not gone to France? It was dated March/10/2004. The year I was born. Whose could it be?
The light in the garage was not good, and the ink on the ticket was faded. It was hard to read, so I took the ticket outside into the sunlight.
<SHOKO YAMAWAKI>
Yamawaki was my mom's maiden name.
I could feel sweat drip down my spine, and the sound of the cicadas faded far away. I couldn't do any more cleaning in the garage. I started putting things back where I had taken them from, and went back into the house.
In the evening, after the Sports Day, mom and dad came home before Kento.
"I was surprised to see how fast Kento can run now."
"He did better than last year. He really puts his heart into it. He's amazing!"
He came in fourth, but they were so proud of him. They were so happy. After they spent some time telling me how well Kento had done at Sports Day, dad changed into his work clothes and went out into the field, because it had gotten cooler. Mom asked if he wanted her to go along, but he said she must be tired and she should take it easy, and he closed the screen door behind him.
If my parents shared a piece of cake, dad always gave mom the bigger piece. If they ate Korean barbecue, he always put more on her plate. That's the kind of dad he was, and that was why we all loved this family so much.
I could hear the rhythm as she cut the vegetables. I could see her back as she polished the rice. The woman in front of my eyes was my mom, a name she acquired when I appeared on the scene 17 years ago. What kind of person was she before that, before she became a mom? She was beautiful, self-effacing but stubborn, a good cook, good-natured, from Tokyo, and...? And...? What did I know about Yamawaki Shōko?
My mom and dad met when they were in high school. After that they both went to Okinawa, to different schools. Not long after that, I had heard, my mom left school when she had me. My mom seemed so happy, I never had reason to think my arrival had made a mess of her life. She was always smiling cheerfully as she did the housework, and supported dad in his farmwork. But perhaps there had been something else important.
I took the envelope out of my pocket and put it on the table.
"Mom, I was cleaning in the garage today, and I found this."
Mom wiped her hands on her apron, and came to sit beside me. She reached out to the envelope on the table. All the memories locked up in the garage were suddenly pressing in on us. She stared for a while at the ticket, her face a blank, but then her expression brightened.
"Wow, you found it! We really have to do something about that garage. Everything we ever owned is just crammed in there. We don't need to keep this."
"Mom, were you going to go to France?"
"A long time ago, yes. When I finished high school, I wanted to study to become a pastry chef. I had a plan to go to Paris and become an apprentice in a pastry shop."
This was the first time I had ever heard about any of this.
"Aren't you sorry you never went?"
"Not at all. I had you, and that made me as happy as I could ever want to be."
"I see. But you had something you wanted to do. It made me think you might still want to try and do it.
"All along, I have been doing the things I wanted to be doing."
She looked deep into my eyes, as if she were reciting her wedding vows. I could tell she was telling the truth. It made me wonder, though, if there weren't some ambitions buried deep inside, held in by a lid that had rusted tight shut.
"Aren't you the one who's always telling me to do the things I want to do, to live my life the way I want to? Shouldn't that mean you should try again, to do the things you wanted to do?"
"What are you talking about? I am not your age anymore, nor am I in your situation."
"We're different, but we are also the same. Neither of us is a child. We all have to decide our own path. I want you to have your own life too, mom. I want to be able to support you in that."
"Listen to you! You have a lot to say for somebody who hasn't yet even decided what she wants to do with her life!"
And with that, having dodged the question again, she went back to making dinner.
The next day, Kento had the day off, and he was sleeping in, which was unusual for him. As always, mom had gotten up early, and laid out a fabulous breakfast: a stir-fry of bitter melon, and extra-large rice balls stuffed with pork and egg. Yesterday's talk about the airline ticket was like an old dream. I stuffed a rice ball into my mouth, and set out on my bicycle for the harbor.
In homeroom, Ms. Sano told us that this year's Kumiodori would be remote. We wouldn't be having any school trips, or school festival events. This was not really any surprise. She gave out some materials about how to "appreciate" the performance, and some instructions about how to watch the remote broadcast.
At my high school, every year in the fall there would be a trip to the National Theater of Japan [on the main island of Okinawa], to see a performance of Kumiodori, the traditional dance of Okinawa. Back when Okinawa was the Ryukyu Kingdom, Kumiodori would be performed for the emissaries of the Ming and Qing emperors, so it is an art form that incorporates elements of diplomacy.
During break time, I sat down next to Kaoru, who was putting on makeup.
"Every time I watch Kumiodori it makes me sleepy. This year we're supposed to watch it remotely? From home? I'm gonna fall asleep for sure."
"I was really looking forward to seeing it in the theater. I'm bummed we won't be doing that."
"That's amazing. You're the kind of person who's really into the traditional arts. I don't get it."
"I wonder what it really is. I don't really enjoy musicals or theater, because a big reaction seems to be expected, but Kumiodori is a different story. There's not so much action or expressiveness, but instead emotions are turned into music, and I think that's cool. It was originally performed by the samurai class of the Ryukyu Kingdom. That's what I like about it. I like the inner beauty, the elegance."
"You’re amazing. You seem to know an awful lot about it."
Kaoru looked at me as if she were seeing me in a new light.
"Not really. These are just the things I learned from the talk by the people who did the performance last year. They said Kumiodori was something you 'listen to.'"
"They said that?" You must have been paying more attention. Why don't you go into something like that?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
That was another thing the theater people had told us last year: all over the country, the traditional arts are lacking people to carry on their traditions. Of course this was something I enjoyed and was interested in, but I did not think this was a world I could enter easily. Even if Kaoru was right, that I had some aptitude, that was a far cry from having real talent. And how long would I have to train before I could really earn a living in some traditional art? Ms. Sano was always saying you should do something you love, and your dream will come true, but I imagine it would not be so easy.
"Ruri, we're gonna be late. We gotta hurry."
Now that she mentioned it, everybody else was already in science lab. I walked beside Kaoru, matching her pace. I wished this corridor would go on forever.
The same textbooks, same uniforms, same haircuts, leading us to the same rooms, both comforting and discomfiting. In another year and a half we would all be going our separate ways but somehow we were all the same. Our differences made us anxious, our similarities made us dissatisfied. We couldn't even understand ourselves.
On the way home from school, we went to the same old A&W, and ordered the same old things.
"Wouldn't you like me to do your makeup a little?"
Kaoru took some pink blush from her makeup purse. She gazed at me with her beautiful eyes, and her cool hand brushed my cheek. My heart pounded. I couldn't tell if it was love or longing, but either one was okay with me. Either way, I loved her.
"Have a look in the mirror. Pink suits you. I never use this one. You can have it. I don't have a brush for you, but you can put it on with your finger."
Kaoru put the pot of pink blush in the palm of my hand. It was about the size of a 500-yen coin.
It was almost time for the ferry. I ate the last of the fries and headed toward the water. Was this the kind of day that, at some point, I would have to shut up into some corner of the garage?
I could picture my dad and mom in their school uniforms, hurrying toward the sea, just like I was now. It was not so long ago. They were just like me and Kaoru, making their way through their hectic day of classes. The buildings and uniforms might be different, but the sky and the sea and the humid breeze, and the sluggishness in your legs because you feel you could go anywhere but you couldn't go anywhere, those were all the same for us.
Back at home, I found a bunch of cardboard boxes out in front of the garage, and mom sitting in the middle of them, wearing cotton work gloves. Full of nostalgia, full of love, she was going through her old notebooks and recipe books, and sometimes they brought a smile to her face. In her profile I could see the twinkle she must have had when she made the decision to study abroad, 17 years ago. She opened the turquoise "study abroad" folder, and looked at for a long time. Under her breath, she said, "Thanks," and closed it. I gazed at her for some time, saying nothing.
"Oh! Ruri! There you are! Look what time it's gotten to be. I have to fix dinner."
Noticing me, she piled the recipes and the study abroad papers on top of some other books, and got quickly to her feet.
"Are you going to throw that stuff away?"
"Yeah, I don't need it anymore."
If we had been in the same grade, Yamawaki Shōko and I would surely have been friends. I would have supported her in her dreams to study abroad.
"Do you think it's too late for your dreams to come true?"
"There you go again! Just let it go."
"No, I can't. Look how you were just looking at that stuff. It's still important to you!"
"That time is past. There's nothing I can do about it now."
Making a face like she had bitten a bitter bug, mom went back into the house to fix dinner. Surreptitiously, I pulled the turquoise file from the pile of books.
