Baachan had greeted me at the door when I returned home from school, as she always did. She prepared dinner, and we ate. After cleaning, Baachan watched me study. She couldn’t read but was always encouraging as I worked. “You’re so clever,” she’d say when I wrote a complicated character. “Wow, you make it look so easy.” Sometimes her solicitousness annoyed me. How she hovered so close I could feel the soft, peach-like skin at her elbows; could smell her faintly sour breath. But usually, I appreciated how she rooted for me. How much enthusiasm she could muster for even my mundanest accomplishments.

After homework, we took a bath, Baachan scrubbing my back and washing my hair. I didn’t always let her—“I’m nine; I’m not a baby,” I’d say—but that night I did. I liked it when she washed my hair. I liked the sensation of her fingers on my scalp. The way she’d create small circles with the white moons of her nails. Most of all, I liked to close my eyes and be cared for.

After the bath, I brushed my teeth. Baachan wasn’t strict about much, but she was firm when it came to my oral hygiene. She said if I didn’t want to lose my teeth like her, or else have rotted teeth, like my father, I needed to brush them nightly. Then, no more eating.

Before bed I asked when Otousan and Okaasan would be home. I always asked. I didn’t see them as much as I wanted to, and I missed them.

I realize now that though Baachan always answered—saying “soon,” or “an hour,” or “long after you’ve gone to sleep”—she wouldn’t have known any more than I did.

*

“Akiko, come, we’re getting ice cream.”

Otousan had just come from the restaurant. I could smell it on him—the sesame oil and pork fat; the lemon cleaner same as we used at home. And above that: cigarettes, moth balls, and his special occasion cologne—woody and sweet.

I’d asked what time it was. There was a small window in the room, but even on the brightest days it emitted no more than a spectral glow.

“It’s time for ice cream,” he said. This was one of his jokes, but he didn’t laugh. He seemed harried; he tugged my arm.

“I’ve already brushed my teeth,” I said. Baachan was asleep beside me, but even if she weren’t I was loyal to her teachings.

“Fine, I’ll go without you.” Otousan stood and with three long strides was out of the room. I yelled for him to wait. I hated being left, though I should have been used to it by then. I slipped off my pajamas and grabbed my blouse from the end of my futon. As I zipped my skirt, I saw that Okaasan wasn’t in bed, though her futon was laid out.

“Is Okaasan still at the restaurant?” I asked Otousan once I’d gotten outside. Okaasan often stayed late to clean or pay bills. I didn’t know our exact financial situation because Okaasan didn’t want to “burden me with financial concerns,” according to Baachan, but I knew we were very poor, and that Okaasan spent much time worrying over it. I sometimes heard her whispering to Otousan at night, about how something had to be done.

Otousan climbed into the van and told me to get in.

“Is she back soon?” I asked. I’d begun to feel desperate. Because I noticed finally his suit—overlarge and brown as a slab of wood. I’d seen it only once before, two years prior, for a funeral.

“She’s sleeping,” he said. “Now come; it’s getting late.”

Otousan started the car, and like a sleepwalker—dead to the world—I made it around the other side, climbed in, and shut the door. The radio was tuned to a late-night talk show, and under cover of raucous laughter I cried for my mother and for myself.

After thirty minutes—when the tangled knots inside me started to loosen, and I could unstick my tongue from where it cowered behind my teeth, still minty from when I’d brushed them with Baachan—I asked where Okaasan was, and if we were going to her.

“What? She’s sleeping. I told you that.”

“She’s dead, you mean.” I’d meant to be stoic, like Otousan, but was nearly inaudible through sobs.  

Otousan began to cough. I looked at him, fearful that this was the start of his own breakdown, which I’d never seen before and recognized, only then, that I didn’t wish to see, but then the coughing got closer together, and louder, and he threw his head back and smiled, and I realized it wasn’t a cough at all but the raspy cackle of a chain smoker.  I had never seen him so gleeful. I cried harder, feeling disoriented and alone.

“You have some imagination,” he said.

I looked at him in disbelief. “She wasn’t in bed.”

“She was in the bathroom.”

“But you woke me in the middle of the night.”

“For ice cream,” he said, slapping the steering wheel with another hacking laugh.

“Your suit. I thought—” My voice faltered as I recognized the foolishness of arguing for something I didn’t want. But I was still riled up. My shoulders bunched to my ears. My hands gripping one another like clamps.

“I need to make a quick stop for work,” Otousan said.

I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Good.” I leaned into the window and smiled.

Asleep! Just in the bathroom! And now Otousan and I were getting ice cream! I thought of the shop with its four walls of freezers. Of the paipai I loved most of all—those chocolate and vanilla balloons that were sweet and creamy and squeezed out in thick ribbons. They weren’t actually called paipai—I didn’t know the real name—but we called them that for their resemblance to breasts. Though I didn’t think they looked like breasts. Not mine and not my mother’s. Or I could get the melon or peach sorbet I thought. The plastic containers they came in were shaped and colored like the fruits themselves, and I liked to use them to hold my erasers. But maybe I’d get a new one entirely. Maybe one Okaasan liked. And I could surprise her with it when we got home. The idea excited me, I remember. The thought of returning to Okaasan with a gift.

I asked Otousan if we could get two kinds. “Would that be alright? If it isn’t too expensive?”

“You can get two,” he said.

I looked at Otousan and smiled. My Otousan, with his scratchy chin and wild hair. Okaasan was always badgering him to brush it, but he never would. “Why should I? I’m only in the back cooking,” he’d say. “You’re the one out front.”

It was always so early—their arguments—and I had school. So I was never able to muster the energy to be with them. But it made me warmer in bed just to hear their voices, to know they were near.

When another ten minutes had elapsed I asked Otousan if we hadn’t gone too far. I no longer recognized our surroundings. And though I’d only been to the shop twice, I remembered it being closer.

“We’re making a stop for me, remember? It’ll only be a few minutes. You can say hello to one of Otousan’s colleagues. Make friends. Would you like that?”

 “I think I’ll get the paipai. And the chocolate cone because Okaasan likes that one too,” I said.

“They only have paipai at the wholesaler.”

“Aren’t we going to the wholesaler?”

Otousan looked at me as if I were stupid. “It’s nighttime, Akiko.”

I was only disappointed for a little while. Because soon we arrived at a large black building with a round wooden door and a sign reading “Shota.”

Our town wasn’t wealthy; my classmates were the children of farmers and fisherman. A few owned small shops or restaurants, like Otousan, but none like the one we stood before now. Shota had eight rooms and bottles of sake costing ¥15000. My best friend Saori went once with her family, for oshogatsu. Her rich uncle paid. She wouldn’t stop talking about it for months.

I followed Otousan inside. I was excited. And even more so when we were greeted by a hostess wearing indigo kimono and geta. I hadn’t heard about the hostess, so seeing her I felt the place would be even fancier than Saori let on.

Otousan told the hostess we were there to see Yamada-san. She bowed graciously, but not before stealing a glance at me. I looked down at my uniform, self-conscious, wondering what Saori had worn.

We followed the hostess as she clacked across wooden floorboards, past a dimly lit dining room and down a long hall. When she reached the end, she knelt and slid open a pair of fusuma decorated with red crowned cranes and bamboo. Behind the doors: a six-mat tatami room. The room was empty, but there were more fusuma on the opposite wall. From there I heard shouting and laughter: a party. The hostess motioned Otousan towards the doors. Then, smiling, she held her hand out to me. But Otousan placed a firm hand on my shoulder. I remember feeling surprised, then proud. I thought she must have viewed me as too young to help with my father’s business. It was what Baachan said when I asked to go to the restaurant. But Otousan trusted me.  

“Stand straight and do as you’re told,” Otousan barked. His tone surprised me; I looked to the hostess for reassurance, but she’d already gone.

*

Otousan knocked, and the fusuma slid open to reveal a large banquet room. Inside, thirty men in dark suits sat drinking and smoking around low tables. Surrounding them, waitresses in kimono held trays with sake and frosted cups. None so much as glanced at me. Not even when Otousan pushed me into the room.

Otousan instructed me to bow, but before giving me a chance to do so he pressed firmly on the back of my neck, until I was bent at the waist. When I straightened, some of the men were staring at me. I’d never been in a room with so many men before; it made me uneasy—their splotchy red faces and wet, open-mouthed stares; their grunts of laughter.

Eventually a man at the front of the room beckoned us forward. He was wearing kimono, and when he stretched his arm out the sleeve pulled up, so that I could see a band of blue and green tattooing; so dense it looked more like a painting than a sliver of human skin.

Otousan nudged me forward. But I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go even less when the man smiled. His face was sharp—almost hawklike, and he loomed so large at the front of the room that I had the sense of a mouse being lured to its death.

When Otousan demanded I walk, I went with small steps, which became even smaller as I drew close. Not even Otousan’s insistent hands at my shoulders, his thumbnails pressed into my back, could hasten me.

“Yamada-sama,” Otousan said, when we finally made it. He pressed his forehead to the ground; he looked at me to ensure I followed. “This is my daughter, Aachan.”

Okaasan and Baachan called me Aachan, but never Otousan. I wanted to see how he looked as he said it, but because he was introducing me I kept my eyes trained in Yamada-san’s direction. Yamada-san didn’t even look at me though. Just stared at Otousan with an expression I didn’t then understand.

When nothing happened I peeked at Otousan, who was smiling at Yamada-san ingratiatingly, his mouth turned up so far in the corners that his cheeks nearly met his eyes. I had never seen him smile like that. It frightened me.

“Is it time for ice cream now?” I whispered.

Yamada-san turned to the waitress behind him and chuckled. She had been leaning against the wall, but the moment Yamada-san began to turn she’d pushed herself away so that by the time his eyes landed on her she was perfectly upright, her hands folded together like two little doves.

“Riko, the girl wants ice cream.” Yamada-san winked. Riko’s laugh was like wind chimes tinkling. “What flavor?” he said. “Red bean? Strawberry?” 

I shook my head.

“How about vanilla? They have very nice vanilla ice cream; the milk is from Hokkaido.”

Yamada-san’s kindness unsettled me. I didn’t know what to do with it. How to interpret him in light of the cavernous room and Otousan’s obvious discomfort, above which he wore an almost grotesque mask of gratitude and joy. I felt Yamada-san must have been wearing a mask too—for everyone to be showing him such deference—and it left me frozen. To not know what was beneath.

“Yamada-sama,” Otousan said, “please forgive Akiko-chan—”

“Urusee!” Yamada-san thundered. Otousan flinched, and the room went quiet. I stared hard at the tatami, fearing I might wet myself. Then thinking maybe I should wet myself, because we might be allowed to leave. At home Baachan would draw me a bath; she would wash my clothes and say it was no problem. Just an accident! I almost did pee. I heard Baachan’s singing her oshikko song, which only came out when I was too shy to pee in public, and the song was like magic for me. But right then Yamada told Riko to take me for ice cream.

“She’s scared,” he said.

Riko shuffled over and took my hand, but I was stuck because Otousan had grabbed my other arm.

“She wants to stay.”

I shook my head. And before I had the chance to say anything Yamada stood up and slapped Otousan so hard across the face that I felt the vibrations like an aftershock. I couldn’t move. Riko had to lift me by the armpits like a doll and rush me from the room. As another waitress closed the door behind us I saw Otousan touching his forehead to the tatami. Yamada-san hovered above him. He looked repulsed. As if Otousan were some madman, running naked and filthy through the streets.

*

Riko sat me down in the dining room I’d seen earlier. She disappeared behind koi printed noren and returned a minute later with two large bowls of strawberry ice cream. The strawberries are real, she said. Then: nothing. She sat down. She grit her teeth and began cleaning them with a toothpick. Riko’s teeth were yellow and grimy. Some areas, like around her gums, were brown. As I watched her, I felt the sludge creeping over my own teeth, and I knew that even if I didn’t feel sick with fear, her rotting mouth would have made me unable to eat the ice cream, which had already gone hazy and soft, like a daydream.

I wanted to ask Riko for reassurance—that Otousan was alright; that I hadn’t gotten him into trouble. But when I’d introduced myself, asking how old she was and where she was from, Riko only sighed.

After what felt like an hour, when the ice cream had long since melted to a pool of pink, and the floating dehydrated strawberries were like rocks peeking from the shallow ocean floor, Riko asked how old I was. She had her left cheek on her hands. I thought she was sleeping.

“Twelve,” I said.

Riko laughed, and it was a different laugh than I’d heard earlier. Deeper. Less contained. Not musical at all.

“It’s true,” I said. “I’m older than I look. My father lets me help him with his business.”

 “It’s not such a bad thing to be young.”

 “I’m not.”

 Riko nodded noncommittally. I asked again how old she was; she said, “very old.”

 “Twenty?”

Her laugh was softer this time, but still unlike the one I’d heard in front of Yamada. Riko said she was eighty or ninety, at least.

 “No you aren’t,” I said. “My Baachan isn’t even eighty, and she has white hair.”

Riko didn’t respond. She swirled her ice cream, which I noticed only then that she hadn’t eaten either. She started into the pink whirlpool like it was a crystal ball.

“Is he a gambler?”

“No. Who?”

“You know who.”

“He owns a restaurant,” I said.

“Well, either way he’s in debt.”

“No, he isn’t.”

Riko shrugged. She turned onto her other cheek, and I felt sure she’d gone to sleep that time because she was quiet for so long. But eventually she lifted her head and looked at me. She looked so tired, her eyes all red and veiny. And she sounded it too, when she said, “You’re too young, anyway.”

“I’m nearly ten,” I said, forgetting for a moment my lie, because there was something so eerie about her then. About what she said but how she looked too. Like she really could have been ninety.

“It’s only rumors, about the super young ones,” Riko said. “I was nearly fifteen. So your Otousan will have to find another way to pay.”

Riko sighed sleepily and put her head back down. I kept expecting her to open her eyes again and look at me, to explain what she meant. But she never did. Even when Otousan came to get me, she didn’t stir.

*

Otousan came back bruised and limping. He was sweating, and his hair was even more of a nest than usual. I asked if he was alright, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything as we walked to the car. Not one word as he drove.  

Eventually he stopped at a shop I didn’t recognize. He said to get whatever ice cream I wanted, plus a few for him and Okaasan. I went inside and picked four ice creams at random. When I returned to the car, Otousan peeked inside the bag and smiled. He waggled a finger at me. “Better eat these quick, before Obaachan finds out.”

I told him I’d already had a lot of ice cream.

“I won’t tell,” Otousan said. He nudged my hand towards my mouth, though I wasn’t holding anything.  

I took a package of chocolate and vanilla bonbons from the bag. I thought this gesture would be enough, but Otousan continued watching me expectantly. When I opened the carton, he nodded excitedly, and I felt guilty and confused at the revulsion this awoke in me. I ate two bonbons, hoping it would make him stop.

“Go ahead,” Otousan said.

I didn’t want any more. I didn’t want the ones I’d had. But something in Otousan’s expression made me understand I had to eat them. That if I didn’t, Otousan’s carefully constructed mask would melt away, and what was underneath would be something terrible, something I could already sense but wasn’t yet forced to look at directly; and I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to see. So I ate the bonbons. One, and another, and another, and another.

Otousan smiled when I finished. “Good?”

“Yes.”

“You like ice cream, don’t you Akiko?”

“Yes,” I said.

Otousan turned away from me and stared into the drivers’ side mirror. He looked at himself for a long time. Then he nodded. He looked like a soldier—serious and resolute. Afterwards, he took a soda-flavored popsicle and a swirl cone from the bag. He unwrapped them both and handed the cone to me. He didn’t look at me as he ate his popsicle, or as he started the car. Not at all as we drove home. And I was grateful because I felt the chocolate ice cream, or vanilla, I wasn’t sure, sliding between my fingers, over the back of my hands and down my wrists.

*

When we arrived home, Okaasan was at the table; I went to her immediately, ballooning with relief. Otousan left the room to shower, and as soon as he did I revealed everything. I hadn’t planned to. But it was like something living inside me. A spider crawling around with 100 legs. And if I didn’t say anything I knew it would trample my stomach and lungs and even my heart. So I told her everything: the men with their hungry stares; Otousan’s nails; the slap when Otousan grabbed my arm. Mostly, though, I told her about Riko. Riko’s tired eyes and rotting teeth. About Riko calling herself ninety but saying I was too young. Though she hadn’t been, at 15. I told her about Otousan needing to find some other way to pay.

Okaasan stared straight ahead as I spoke, nodding. When I finished, she winced. I hadn’t noticed myself watching Okaasan for her response, but I understood at this final gesture that I had been waiting for her acknowledgment—to feel the fear I’d earlier swallowed. And it was only then I allowed myself to cry.

The thought of seeing Otousan, of him being my father, terrified me.

Okaasan took a long time to respond, and all the while my body shook.

“Well,” she said, and her voice was chipper, like a bird. “You’re not hurt, right? And you got some special ice cream. Those strawberries are expensive you know.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

Okaasan got up and patted my arm. She started to walk away but then turned and squatted before me. She wore that same, sweet voice. Which was not her voice. Not a voice I’d ever heard before. “You’re alright, aren’t you?” she said. And when still I said nothing, she spoke seriously. “Put away that ice cream before bed.”

I didn’t move when she left the room. I felt frozen, like I’d been in the banquet room. I sat like that for a while, until my body grew so tired from tensing that I turned practically to jelly—slumping over, my head melting onto my hands. It was how Riko had lain, I realized, and the thought deflated me further.

When I finally rose it was past three in the morning. The popsicle left inside the bag was melted in its wrapper. I don’t know where the cone was. Maybe still in the car. I went to pour the melted ice cream down the sink but when I ripped open the plastic the liquid burst out, stickying my clothes and hair and neck. I didn’t bother wiping myself down.

*

In the bedroom, Baachan was as she’d been when I left: on her side, facing my futon. Her mouth was open; she snored noisily. I was used to Baachan snoring. Normally I had no trouble sleeping through it, but that night it infuriated me; I couldn’t remember ever being so angry. I kept looking over at her and glaring. And it wasn’t just the snoring. It was her wrinkly, sun spotted skin, her pink gums—smooth as a babies—which made me think of my own gums; of my teeth which were at that moment rotting in my head. The thought of brushing them, of cleaning myself of the grime which covered my body, did not occur to me. Or else I knew it wouldn’t make any difference. That what ailed me wasn’t so simple a fix.

When Baachan snorted, I whined in protest. I felt an urge so strong it was almost a compulsion: to kick her; to scream—STOP. STOP. STOP. The voice was so loud in my head that I clamped my hand over my mouth in case it came forth uninvited. I didn’t want to wake Otousan or Okaasan. Even the thought of them made me anxious, and I could no longer lie still. I peeled off my blanket and got up. I thought I’d sit in the other room for a while, until I grew so exhausted sleep would have no choice but to come, but instead of leaving the room I reached for the clothing I’d left at the end of my futon. I picked them up and squatted in front of Baachan. I can’t remember what I was thinking; if I was thinking anything at all. But I felt propelled—by my discomfort and the necessity of easing it. By the anger and fear which I held just as close.

I lifted the blanket off of Baachan, so I could see her small, almost childlike body. She wore a large shirt full of finger-nail sized holes. A pair of pants which were ripped at the cuffs. I pulled the blouse from my pile and placed it over her torso and arms. My skirt I put over her legs. Atop her feet, the thick yellow nails and cracked soles, I placed my long socks. I do not know, to this day, why I performed this strange ritual. Why, once I laid her blanket atop the dirty clothes, atop her body, I was able to sleep almost instantly.

*

In the morning, I woke to Baachan calling me. Gently. Gently. Like a breeze. So I almost didn’t hear her from inside my dreams. She touched a hand to my bare shoulder. “Aachan. Aachan. It’s morning,” she said. Her hand was so warm.

I wish I could say I was always grateful to Baachan after that. That I was sweet. But it’s not true. I even began to call her Obaasan, though I could see how it broke her heart.

I might say my cruelty was a test. That I was always waiting for her to stop loving me. Like a ship drifting off into the night. But I don’t know that was it. I think instead that a part of me stayed in that room with Riko. And a part of her must have grafted onto me, too. Because after that I couldn’t stand to be touched. Not even by Baachan. Not even to wash my hair.