Hikikomori and the Rental Sister Read online

  “There are different kinds of monsters,” I say.

  I was tested. Until that Saturday morning, I had rolled through life, and my good persona was the aggregate of millions of inconsequential decisions. But my true character lurked, it hid behind the good grades and Valentine’s Day dinners and professional success, and later it lurked behind the words I heard all the time: You’re a good father.

  We’d been over it before, dozens of times—no running into the road. He repeated it back to me. He even pulled on my hand when he saw some other kids running into the street and said to me, “Why don’t their dads tell them it’s dangerous?” I thought he understood. I thought I had been a good teacher. My job was to make sure he survived his mistakes, so that he could learn and grow. But I fell short. My son didn’t survive my failure.

  Everyone told me it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could’ve done. It happened too fast, they said. Even Morris said that it all happened in an instant. But they don’t know that their instant was my eternity. Time stopped. The car, the singing cardinal, my son, everything froze but me. I was free to move about that frozen world at my own pace. I could’ve taken a sip of coffee, stood up, stretched, then strolled into the road, picked him up and scolded him for running into the street, for breaking the rules. I could’ve set him back on the sidewalk and sat down for more coffee. Plenty of time.

  I looked at the speeds and trajectories; I did the geometry, the physics, and it all added up: the car would hit my son. I could’ve acted quickly and decisively. There was time. I would like to excuse myself by saying my muscles refused me. But my muscles stood ready. My mind refused me. And what about my heart? I did not push him out of the way; I did not trade my life for his. I didn’t even scream. Instinct never found me.

  Everyone felt so sorry for us, for me. They came to us; they helped. They said they’d give us whatever we needed. In their eyes we were just as much victims as he was. He had lost, but we had suffered his loss. Their sympathy was overwhelming and touching. Humiliating. I was drowning in a deep sea of sympathy, choking on the salt.

  What kind of father lacks this prime instinct? What kind of husband?

  The girl strokes my arm. “I can’t let it happen again,” I say. “I’m a bad person.”

  “You’re a good person. Bad people never think they’re bad.”

  We are still in bed when my wife returns home. It’s nearly midnight. Megumi suddenly sits up and points to her bare feet. Her face is urgent. I crawl down and plant a kiss on her big toe. Even her toes are soft and fresh. She shakes her head. She stabs again at her feet and whispers into my ear, “My shoes are out there.”

  We whisper behind my closed bathroom door. “I can’t believe it,” she says. “I’m normally so careful.”

  “It’s Morris. You were upset. You forgot. It’s not your fault.”

  “My whole life I’ve come home and kicked off my shoes.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “She saw them. She knows I’m here.”

  We put on our clothes. “Maybe you could go out now,” I say. “You could tell her it’s just a normal visit. Give her a progress report.”

  “I can’t face her.”

  “Maybe she didn’t see them. And even if she did, you’re not doing anything wrong. Maybe she’s just giving us space, letting you do your work.”

  “Then shouldn’t we be talking, making some noise? The quiet is suspicious.”

  We spend the night in harsh silence. The silence is a solid mass, suffocating every space, no room to breathe.

  She falls asleep with her head on my shoulder. When I am sure Silke has also fallen asleep, I sneak out and retrieve Megumi’s shoes. They are small.

  In the morning the sun is shining. I make two cups of microwave coffee. Megumi wears one of my black T-shirts. She asks me to crack open the window.

  “I thought you said you left your shoes by the front door. But you meant my bedroom door.”

  “No, the front door. What are you talking about?”

  “They weren’t at the front door. They were sitting right outside my door.”

  “I didn’t put them there.”

  Sixteen

  What happened to you?” Hamamoto says with the innocent worry of a friend, but Megumi knows that suspicion fuels her concern.

  “I fell and hit a coffee table.”

  “Let me take a look.” Hamamoto inspects her cheek, looking for signs of a lie. Later in the day she asks about Thomas. Megumi gives all the right answers.

  “Can you get him out?”

  “Yes. It will take some more time, but I can do it.”

  “His wife called me. She’s not in a good state. I’m afraid that she . . . Megumi, you need to hurry. Do whatever you can to get him out. I wish we could force him, that’s how bad I think it is with Silke. He needs to come out.”

  When the shop closes, she goes home. Her apartment has never felt so lonely. It is a waste that she and Thomas should both be alone. The worst kind of loneliness is when you’re unable to be where you want to be, where you wouldn’t have to be alone.

  She opens a Kirino novel but can’t read more than a few paragraphs before drifting to his dark, round eyes, an image that is no mere memory, something apart from herself, capable of being remembered or forgotten, kept or discarded; rather, his eyes looking down at her have woven their way into her internal fabric, inseparable from the rest. And last night, in the silence of his room, the distance between them shrank down to nothing. He took care of her the way she once took care of her brother.

  The clock on the wall ticks steadily. She watches the long hand sweep around the dial, not smoothly, but in rests and leaps. Maybe during one of the rests between the leaps Thomas sat paralyzed as the car hit his son. And maybe during one of the rests her brother sliced himself. Do everybody’s rests and leaps align, or are we missing each other?

  Her father calls. “I have the most wonderful news,” he says, and his voice is filled with life. Gone is the begging, the bitterness. Swept away, replaced with light. “It’s about your mother,” he says, and the word stings her throat, a hive of bees, the mother she hasn’t heard from in over three years, who fled Japan in despair. “Here,” he says, “I’ll let her tell you for herself.”

  Tell you for herself? The words don’t even register before her mother greets her in Korean-tinged Japanese, a casual Moshi moshi as though they saw each other just yesterday. “Moshi moshi,” her mother repeats into the silence. “Megumi, are you there?” But her mouth is dry as dust. “Megumi?” Her cheeks grow hot, then numb.

  “Yes, Mother, I’m here.” She says it quietly, respectfully, to this ghost of a mother. Ashen tongue, she nearly chokes.

  “You’re there, but I’m here, so why are you there instead of here?” her mother says with a girl’s giddy brightness.

  “Mother?” She tells her mother that she doesn’t understand. She asks what she’s doing in Japan, why she’s not still in Korea.

  “Your father wanted me to keep it a secret until we were two hundred percent sure. I’ve been here a few weeks.”

  She puts her fingers to her cheeks—still numb and hot. “Until you’re sure of what?”

  “Of each other and you and everything. Megumi, it’s time to come home.”

  “You’re back together?”

  “And we want you to come back.” She always thought her mother’s Japanese was special, her odd grammar mixed with Korean sounds and inflections but at times perfectly correct and natural, a breed of Japanese that only she will ever speak, and now Megumi’s hearing it again when she least expected, when she thought she never again would. She suddenly wonders what Thomas thinks about her own unique English. Is the sound of her English music to his ears? “. . . and we’ve moved into a different home. A fresh start.”

  “Mom, I don’t know, I . . . don’t you still—”

  “You’re my daughter. That will never change.”

  “And I’m supposed to come back
home, just like that?” Three years of loneliness, no family, of hovering between the past and the future, unsure where to land.

  “And there’s one more thing,” her mother says. “You have a new baby brother.”

  Seventeen

  Her intention was to sneak past sleeping Silke. Now she’s not so sure. She sits on the stoop across from his building. His light is on. A cat crosses the road. It makes no sound, paws barely touching the ground, gliding, disappearing into a thin black space between two buildings. She watches, wondering if another might follow. Nothing. She is alone. She fills her lungs with air, holds it for a moment, then lets out a deep, humid breath. She puts her hands together and slips them between her knees. Morris’s windows are dark.

  She didn’t know what else to do, where else to go, she couldn’t keep pacing her apartment, ticking clock, she needed to get out. She ran to the M20 uptown bus. To her right, Central Park was a long stone wall and a black snarl of trees.

  “For so long I’ve been dying to tell you,” her mother said. When she left Japan she didn’t know she was pregnant. She had thought she’d never be able to have another child.

  “And you’ve been raising him by yourself in Korea this whole time?”

  “I’m not going to explain everything now,” she said. “We can talk about it when you come back. We’re a family again. I’ve told your brother all about his beautiful sister. He can’t wait to meet you.”

  Then her father took the phone. “Isn’t it wonderful? Here—someone wants to say ‘Hi.’ He’s been practicing.”

  She almost hung up. Quick, before it’s real, hang up! she told herself. Quick! Now!

  But she waited. She heard her mother’s gentle prompting in the background.

  “Noona?” he said in Korean, and then in Japanese, “Oneesan?” Big sister? An hour later her tears had still not stopped.

  As she sits on a stoop across the street from Thomas’s room, her brother’s tiny voice echoes in her mind. Will he grow up smart? Strong?

  The people in her life, every one of them, have been living these three years separately, apart, alone. Silke, Thomas, her father, her mother and brother, herself. How will the dots reconnect, and in what direction, old or new? She has no true need to return to Japan. Her mother and father are perfectly capable of tending to her brother, of giving him food and clothes and shelter. But—half Korean, half Japanese—who will help him grow up proud?

  The clock ticks in her head. Louder. Louder. Rests and leaps. It’s afternoon in Tokyo. What is her brother, her new brother, doing? Playing? Eating a treat?

  She shivers. Not from the biting air, but from the sudden memory of her older brother on the first day of his first year of high school, when he came home with cuts all over his face and bruises all over his arms and back and chest. A patch of hair was torn out and his head was bleeding. They wanted to send him a message: He’s impure. He’s less. Anyone whose father turned his back on his people deserved to be beaten.

  They were starting dinner and he walked into the kitchen and just stood there. On display. The blood on his face was dried, but on top of the dried blood new shiny blood was oozing out. Nobody at the table moved. Her mom began to push back her chair, but her brother shook his head and motioned for everyone to stay where they were. Megumi was afraid to swallow her mouthful of rice. It might make too much noise. His shirt was torn and stained with dirt and blood and slowly he unbuttoned it. It fell to the floor. Then he turned around slowly and stuck out his arms. His back and chest and arms were swollen and purple. He was lean and muscular but not very big, and she wondered how many people it had taken to do this to him. If he fought back. Or if he just sat there and took the beating. He didn’t say a word.

  Her mother couldn’t look at him anymore. She just stared into her miso soup, at the floating seaweed. Her dad got up but her brother pushed him away and went into the bathroom. She swallowed her rice, followed him into the bathroom, and closed the door. He stood there for a while, looking at himself in the mirror. His eyes didn’t appear to be in focus, and the left one was swollen almost shut. He kept staring into the mirror. He didn’t seem to be in pain. He seemed numb, empty, as though the punches hadn’t hurt him but instead had sucked the life out of him.

  She took some fresh towels from the cupboard and put some warm water in the sink. She sat him down on the floor stool and cleaned up his face and his head, where the hair was torn out. His skin smelled of sweat and blood. Dirt and oil. She looked up to him, but at that moment he was like a baby, helpless. She filled the tub with hot water and took off his pants and socks and pulled off his underwear. Then she took off all her clothes. She gave him a good shower. She scrubbed off all the dirt and blood and oil. It looked like he had been rolling on the ground, like everyone had taken turns kicking him. He stood there while she washed his hair and cleansed his body. She scrubbed everywhere. She was gentle. But she couldn’t scrub off the purple and yellow and red bruises. She heard their parents arguing out in the kitchen, trying to whisper.

  Each member of the family was so different from the others. Mom and Dad on one side, she and her brother on the other. But even Mom and Dad were different from each other. A family of one Japanese, one Korean, and two mutts. It’s strange to be different from your parents, who are different from each other.

  After she cleaned and rinsed him, she led him into the bath. While he soaked, she showered. Sometimes she took the bowl and poured hot water through his hair. He reached his hand out of the water, and she held it. He never said a word. Just before the water turned cool, she guided him out of the tub and dried him with a towel. She brushed his teeth. He did the rinsing and spitting; she did the brushing. He was waking up a bit. He watched her as she bandaged his cuts. She dressed him in his yukata. She put hers on, too.

  She took him to his room and put him into bed. She asked him if he wanted her to stay with him. He took her face in his hands and smiled and shook his head.

  That’s how it started. The next morning he said through the door he was in too much pain and couldn’t go to school. He said he wasn’t going back until he was all healed.

  She didn’t think anything was wrong at first. But then one day when she went to rebandage his wounds he wouldn’t let her in. She left the fresh bandages and medicines on the floor outside his door.

  For a couple of weeks he’d come out only for dinner, but he’d just play with his food, eat a few bites and go back to his room. He wouldn’t say anything and he wouldn’t look at them. The silences were heavy and tense. After a while, maybe a month, they started talking at dinner as though it was just the three of them, as if it was a family of three, plus a pet who ate at the table. Eventually he stopped even coming out. Her mother put a tray at the door for him, like a dog.

  Megumi sometimes went to his door, but all he’d say was, “I’m not healed yet. I’ll come out when I’m healed.” Months and months of the same. Then her mother stopped putting food at the door. He was on his own.

  Thomas’s light is still on. There is no silhouette, just the steady glow. Silke’s window is dark.

  She can’t be alone; she needs more than memories. Alone is harsh. Alone is loud. Thomas is warm and still.

  The stairway up to his fifth-floor apartment has the slightly burnt smell of lingering cooking. She puts her ear to the door. She turns the key. She turns the knob.

  The living room is dark. She suddenly can’t remember the placement of the furniture. She holds still. Her eyes adjust. Shadows begin to form, outlines, delineating objects from empty space. From her purse she takes a scrap of paper and writes a quick note, as best she can in the dark, by feel. She takes off her shoes and holds them. Her bare feet stick to the wood floor. The piano sits silent.

  Silke’s door is open. The hallway seems endless. She does not peek inside as she passes. She slides the note under his door and knocks, barely.

  The strip of light beneath his door vanishes. He opens the door. He pulls her in by the hand. The lo
cks snap tight. He keeps her hand. He kisses her. His lips are warm. She is floating. The whole world is black.

  “Are you okay?” he says into her ear. His voice tickles.

  “I just wanted to see you,” she says.

  The light comes on. The world reappears, solid. Stacks of boxes. Bed, desk, dresser, microwave, refrigerator. Magazines. Two lamps. Television.

  He kisses the tiny button of a bruise. “Can we get out of here?” she says. The room is too small. “Just for an hour. Will you come walk with me?”

  “She’s a light sleeper.”

  “We can make it.”

  He goes to the window and pulls back the shade. Looks the street up and down. “I could use some groceries,” he says.

  The ritual begins. The door open just a crack. The listening, the crouching. He leads her by the hand past his wife’s room.

  Outside, there is no breeze. They walk in silence. He’s not used to walking with another person and sometimes he bumps into her. They walk according to separate rhythms.

  A car speeds toward them, its engine sound increasing in pitch as it closes the gap. As it passes it looks completely mechanical, an autonomous robot creature rolling down the road. The pitch of the engine grows lower as it leaves them behind. “Do you hear that?” she says. “It’s called the Doppler effect. My brother taught me about it. He said that to determine if two bodies are moving farther apart or closer together, all you have to do is listen.”

  This is the deepest part of night, when the day has finally wound completely down, when everything is for a few moments perfectly still before winding back up again. For these few moments the world seems in perfect balance. A lonely sparrow chirps, awake too early.

  “In America they say that birds sing,” she says. “But in Korea they say that birds cry. Do you know why? It’s because of the Japanese . . . how can I say it? Because of all the Japanese soldiers in Korea during the world war.”

  “Occupation.”

  “The story is that Korean birds used to sing, but when the Japanese soldiers came they started to cry. Even now when Koreans hear birds they say ‘Saega ooleo.’ The birds are crying.”