to meet you.’ Then one that began with ‘Sorry’. They are scrunched up, near the bin on the other side of my room. I am a lousy shot.
Hot summer, isn’t it? I knew it would be when the rainy season didn’t happen. (I suppose it is still raining in Yakushima, though. When doesn’t it?) So, you’re nearly twenty now. Twenty. Where do all the years go? Want to know how old I’ll be next month? Too old to tell anyone. I’m at this place receiving treatment for nerves/drinking. I never wanted to come back to Kyushu, but at least the mountain air here is cool. My therapist has advised that I write to you. I didn’t want to at first, but she is even more persistent than me. That looks wrong – I want to write to you, but after all this time it’s so, so much easier not to. But I have this story (more a serial memory). My therapist says I can only stop it hurting me by telling you about it. So if you like, I’m writing out of selfishness. But here goes.
Once upon a time I was a young mother living in Tokyo with infant you and infant Anju. The apartment was paid for by your father, but this story isn’t about him, or even Anju. This is about you and me. In those days, it looked like I was on to a good thing – a ninth-floor split-level apartment in a fashionable quarter of the big city, flower boxes on the balcony, a very rich lover with his own wife to wash his shirts. You and Anju, I have to admit, were not part of the plan when I left Yakushima, but it seemed that the life I led twenty years ago was better than the life of orange farming and island gossip that my mother (your grandmother) had arranged (behind my back, as usual) with Shintaro Baba’s people to marry me into. Believe me, he was every bit as much a slob and a yob a quarter of a century ago as I’m quite sure he is now.
This isn’t easy to write.
I was miserable. I was twenty-three, and everyone told me I was beautiful. The only company young mothers have is other young mothers. Young mothers are the most vicious tribe in the world if you don’t fit in. When they found out I was a ‘second wife’ they decided I was an immoral influence and petitioned the building manager to have me removed. Your father was powerful enough to block that, but none of them ever spoke to me afterwards. As you know, nobody on Yakushima knew about you (yet), and the thought of living with all the knowing glances was too much.
Around that time your father began seeing a newer-model mistress. A baby is not a sexy accessory on a woman. Twins are twice as unsexy. It was an ugly ending – you don’t want the details, believe me. (Maybe you do, but I don’t want to remember them.) When I was pregnant, he swore he’d take care of everything. Naïve young petal that I was, I didn’t realize he was only talking about money. Like all weak men, he acted all confused and presumed everyone would forgive him. His lawyers took over and I never saw him again. (Never wanted to.) I was allowed to live in the apartment, but not to sell it – it was during the bubble economy, and the value of the place doubled every six months. This was shortly after your first birthday.
I was not a well woman. (I’ve never been a very well woman, but at least now I know it.) Some women take to motherhood like they were mothers even before they were mothers – I was never cut out to be a mother, even when I was one. I still hate little children. All the money your father’s lawyer sent for your maintenance I spent on an illegal Filipina nanny so I could escape the apartment. I used to sit in coffee shops watching people walk by. Young women my age, working in banks, doing flower arranging, shopping. All the little ordinary things I had looked down on before I became pregnant.
Two years passed. I got a job in another hostess bar, but I was jaded. I’d already caught my rich patron, and every time I went home you and Anju reminded me where rich patrons leave you. (Nappies and bawling and sleepless