Kumiko and Noboru had not been the only children in the Wataya house. Between them there had been a sister, five years older than Kumiko. At the age of three, however, Kumiko had been sent from Tokyo to distant Niigata, to be raised for a time by her grandmother. Kumiko's parents later told her that this was done because she had been a sickly child and they thought she would benefit from the clean air of the countryside, but she never quite believed this. As far as she herself could remember, she had never been physically weak. She had never suffered from any major illnesses, and no one in her Niigata home seemed overly concerned about her health. I'm sure it was just some kind of excuse, Kumiko once told me.
Her doubts had been reinforced by something she heard from a relative. Apparently, there had been a long-standing feud between Kumiko's mother and grandmother, and the decision to bring Kumiko to Niigata was the product of a truce they had concluded. By offering her up for a time, Kumiko's parents had quelled her grandmothers rage, and by having a grandchild in her possession, the grandmother had obtained concrete confirmation of her ties with her son (Kumiko's father). In other words, Kumiko had been a kind of hostage.
Besides, Kumiko said to me, they already had two other children. Their third one was no great loss to them. Not that they were planning to get rid of me: I think they just figured it wouldn't be too hard on such a young child to be sent away. They probably didn't give it much thought. It was just the easiest solution to the problem. Can you believe it? I don't know why, but they had absolutely no idea what something like that can do to a small child.
She was raised by her grandmother in Niigata from the age of three to six. Nor was there anything sad or twisted about the life she led in the country. Her grandmother was crazy about her, and Kumiko had more fun playing with her cousins, who were closer in age to herself, than with her own brother and sister. She was finally brought back to Tokyo the year she was to enter elementary school. Her parents had become nervous about the lengthening separation from their daughter, and they insisted on bringing her back before it was too late. In a sense, though, it was already too late. In the weeks following the decision to send her back, her grandmother became increasingly overwrought. She stopped eating and could hardly sleep. One minute she would be hugging and squeezing little Kumiko with all her might, and the next she would be slapping her arm with a ruler, hard enough to raise welts. One minute she would be saying she didn't want to let her go, that she would rather die than lose her, and the next she would tell her to go away, that she never wanted to see her again. In the foulest language imaginable, she would tell Kumiko what a terrible woman her mother was. She even tried to stab herself in the wrist with a pair of scissors. Kumiko could not understand what was happening around her. The situation was simply too much for her to comprehend.
What she did then was to shut herself off from the outer world. She closed her eyes. She closed her ears. She shut her mind down. She put an end to any form of thinking or of hoping. The next several months were a blank. She had no memory of anything that happened in that time. When she came out of it, she found herself in a new home. It was the home where she should have been all along. Her parents were there, her brother and her sister. But it was not her home. It was simply a new environment.
Kumiko became a difficult, taciturn child in these new surroundings. There was no one she could trust, no one she could depend upon unconditionally. Even in her parents embrace, she never felt entirely at ease. She did not know their smell. It made her uneasy. She even hated it at times. In the family, it was only toward her sister that she began, with difficulty, to open up. Her parents despaired of ever breaking through to her; her brother hardly knew she existed. But her sister understood the confusion and loneliness that lay behind her stubborn moods. She stayed with Kumiko through it all, slept in the same room with her, talked with her, read to her, walked with her to school, helped her with her homework. If Kumiko spent hours huddled in the corner of her room in tears, the sister would be there, holding her. She did everything she could to find a way into Kumiko's heart. Had she not died from food poisoning the year after Kumiko returned from Niigata, the situation would have been very different. If my sister had lived, things might have been better at home, Kumiko said. She was just a little girl, a sixth grader, but she was the heart of that household. Maybe if she hadn't died, all of us would have been more normal than we are now. At least I wouldn't be such a hopeless case. Do you see what I mean? I felt so guilty after that. Why hadn't I died in my sisters place? I was no good for anybody. I couldn't make anybody happy. Why couldn't I have been the one? My parents and brother knew exactly how I felt, but they said nothing to comfort me. Far from it. They'd talk about my dead sister every chance they got: how pretty she was, how smart, how much everybody liked her, what a thoughtful person she was, how well she played the piano. And then they made me take piano lessons! Somebody had to use the big grand piano after she died. I didn't have the slightest interest in playing. I knew I could never play as well as she had played, and I didn't need yet another way to demonstrate how inferior I was to her as a human being. I couldn't take anyones place, least of all hers, and I didn't want to try. But they wouldn't listen to me. They just wouldn't listen. So to this day, I hate the sight of a piano. I hate seeing anyone play.
I felt tremendous anger toward her family when Kumiko told me this. For what they had done to her. For what they had failed to do for her. This was before we were married. We had known each other only a little over two months. It was a quiet Sunday morning, and we were in bed. She talked for a long time about her childhood, as if unraveling a tangled thread, pausing to assess the validity of each event as she brought it forth. It was the first time she told me so much about herself. I hardly knew anything about her family or her childhood until that morning. I knew that she was quiet, that she liked to draw, that she had long, beautiful hair, that she had two moles on her right shoulder blade. And that sleeping with me was her first sexual experience.
She cried a little as she spoke. I could understand why she would need to cry. I held her and stroked her hair. If she had lived, I'm sure you would have loved her, said Kumiko. Everybody loved her. It was love at first sight.
Maybe so, I said. But you're the one I happen to be in love with. Its really very simple, you know. Its just you and me. Your sisters got nothing to do with it.
For a while, Kumiko lay there, thinking. Seven-thirty Sunday morning: a time when everything sounds soft and hollow. I listened to the pigeons shuffling across my apartment roof, to someone calling a dog in the distance. Kumiko stared at a single spot on the ceiling for the longest time.
Tell me, she said at last, do you like cats? Crazy about em, I said. Always had one when I was a kid. I played with it constantly, even slept with it. Lucky you. I was dying to have a cat. But they wouldn't let me. My mother hated them.
Not once in my life have I managed to get something I really wanted. Not once. Can you believe it? You cant understand what its like to live like that. When you get used to that kind of life-of never having anything you want-then you stop knowing what it is you want. I took her hand. Maybe its been like that for you till now. But you're not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. Its simple. Its your right... right?
Her eyes stayed locked on mine. Mmm, she said. Right. A few months later, Kumiko and I were talking about marriage.