If You Follow Me (3 page)

The old man bowed before retreating to the house across the street. In front of it, an old woman wearing a Hello Kitty apron over purple sweats was feeding the fish in a barrel, reaching into her apron pocket to scatter rice and table scraps into the water. After the door closed behind the old man, she held out her hand and said, “
Chotto machinasai
.” Wait a minute. Then she too disappeared into the same house, returning a moment later with a boy who must have weighed three hundred pounds. His sweatpants hugged his thighs,
his stomach hung over his waistband in a broad flap, and the flesh of his face almost swallowed his eyes, only a fingernail paring of black indicating that they were open at all.

“Haruki,” the woman said as she lifted the boy's wrist and wagged his hand at us. Carolyn and I waved back and introduced ourselves in rudimentary Japanese, awkwardly trying to explain that we'd just moved from New York to teach English. “
Sensei
,” the woman echoed reverentially. She prodded the boy's back, and he crossed the street so slowly it looked like he hoped to get hit by a car midway. When he reached our stoop, he picked up the parcels of rotten beef. “You don't have to do that,” I said. “If you could just tell me where to throw it away…” But he walked off as I was speaking, vanishing around the corner with our trash.

 

There were two weeks before school started. Carolyn's new supervisor expected her to come to work every day and sit in the faculty room, just in case any students wanted to stop by to meet her, so I was left on my own to explore Shika. I managed to get lost every time I left our front door. The streets here aren't named and the houses look almost identical, sided in beige or gray plaster with dark wooden support beams, only their roof tiles varying from blue to black to persimmon orange. I dropped things on purpose to mark a trail back home, and just like in the fairy tale, they always vanished before I could retrace my steps.

It was a few days before I managed to find my way down to the sea, even though I could hear the raspy breathing of the surf from almost every part of town. But finally I spotted a vending machine stocked with cigarettes, beer, and cream of corn soup, at the top of a flight of stairs padded with sand. The stairs led down to the beach, where a very long bench stretched on and on like a train. I learned
later that this was the second-longest bench in Japan. It had once been the longest, until an even longer bench in Hokkaido was built, and Shika lost its claim to fame.

The beach was empty, but the sand was littered with cans and Styrofoam trays, so it felt deserted, like an off-season fairground. Close to the water, birds jabbed their beaks into the yellow foam, scattering as I approached and huddling in a cluster, each perching on one leg and eyeing me warily. The waves seemed fidgety, indecisive, barely rolling in and out. But the water was a beautiful shade of blue, dark and clear like a bottle. I stripped off my shorts and T-shirt and ran into the water. The ocean stayed shallow for a long time, barely surpassing my knees, until the sand suddenly dropped out from under me. I closed my eyes, plunged under and swam as far as I could, wondering what was down there with me, alert to my intrusion. When I broke the surface, gulping for air, the salt kept me afloat and I lay on my back, drifting for a while.

Three teenaged boys were sitting on the bench when the current bumped me into the sand. They were all smoking and staring straight ahead, watching me with expressions that were almost identical, almost neutral, as if I were some less than interesting TV show. I wanted to hide underwater until they left, but it was ridiculously shallow. The waves kept pushing me into the sand. I yanked on my T-shirt and shorts and then I faced the boys, trying to conceal my embarrassment. “
Ohayogozaimasu
,” I managed. Good morning. In Tokyo, we'd learned the importance of proper greetings. The boys didn't answer. Nor did they laugh or jeer, as American teenagers would have. In some ways their silence was more intimidating. Finally, one of them stuck his cigarette in his mouth and mock-saluted me. He had a big, bushy Afro that I assumed was a perm, because it was so tight and perfect, and because his face, while tan, looked characteristically Japanese.

“Good-o morningu, Miss Marina,” he said.

“How do you know my name?” I asked, but he didn't answer. He wasn't the first person in town who had greeted me by name. I remembered from Miyoshi-sensei's welcome letter that there was only one high school here. I guessed that I had just met my new students.

 

But I was wrong. Shika High School is split into two tracks: secretarial and technical, and I was only going to be teaching the secretarial students. While no law segregates these tracks by gender, no girls were enrolled in the technical track, and only one boy—Haruki Ogawa—was in the secretarial course. On my first day, I was surprised to walk into the freshman secretarial class and see him, the one boy in a room full of girls, squeezed into his desk like a snail in its shell.

“Hi,” I said, glad to recognize someone. “Haruki, right?”

He flinched at the sound of his name and the girl to his right snickered.

“Anoko wa dare
?” she said. Who is that?

“Wakannai yo
,” he mumbled. I don't know.

“I told you my name,” I reminded him. “It's—”

“Wait!” Miyoshi-sensei said, ushering me to join him at the front of the classroom. “You shouldn't reveal the answer to the first question on your self-introduction test!”

In his welcome letter, Miyoshi-sensei had told me the date upon which to show up at Shika High School, “only to introduce yourself.” So I assumed I'd be meeting my new colleagues and getting a tour of the school and explanation of my duties. On my walk that morning I got lost as usual. “Where is Shika High School?” I asked an old woman pushing a wheelbarrow full of melons, but I couldn't understand her reply. This, I was learning, is the problem with memorizing
questions in a new language. No matter how simple the question, there are always more answers than you can know.

By the time I found the school I was dripping with sweat, eager to get my introductions out of the way and return home for a shower and nap. Outside the door stood a slim young man in a well-cut black suit and Converse sneakers. As I neared him, I noticed that his yellow shoelaces matched his yellow tie. His hair was blow-dried back from his face, styled into a kind of pompadour, so that he looked vaguely rockabilly. He had a dimple in his chin, eyes that turned down slightly when he smiled, and a firm handshake.

“I'm Hiro,” he introduced himself. “Like superhero, you know? But alas I have no superpower. I am only your supervisor.”

“Nice to meet you, Hiro,” I said.

“Most people call me Miyoshi-sensei,” he said.

I apologized for being late, explaining that I'd gotten lost, and he apologized for having drawn a faulty map. I told him that his map was fine, that I have a rotten sense of direction, and then he apologized for not having been in Shika when I arrived. Just when I thought the volley of apologies would never end, he told me that we should probably go inside, so that I could make my self-introduction test before first period began.

“What self-introduction test?” I asked.

“A test about you,” he said. “To make our students listen when you speak.”

I told him that I'd rather not test the students on my first day, that I didn't want to make them afraid of me. “This is a vocational school,” he said, smiling sadly. “Our students have no fear of teachers. Maybe the only way to make them listen is to give a test.” So I made the quiz as easy as possible, with multiple-choice questions and pictures for clues.

The girls in the freshman secretarial class squinted at me and
guessed most of the answers correctly. Only Haruki's page remained blank, his UFO-patterned pencil case zipped shut, his hands wadded on his desk. I crouched beside him, wanting to help him as he'd helped us. “You know my name,” I reminded him, unzipping his pencil case, “and I told you I moved here from New York.” I pulled out a mechanical pencil, clicked out the lead and wedged it between his fingers. When he still didn't budge, I placed my hand on top of his and made him circle the correct answers. His hand was moist and heavy like dough; I wiped my palm on my skirt before returning to the front of the room.

The boy was practically catatonic. Only once in the whole period did I see him move. When I read the correct answers aloud and Miyoshi-sensei told the students to grade themselves, he turned his pencil upside down and erased every mark on the page before drawing a large “0” at the top. Then he resumed the act of sitting as still as a statue. It looked like hard work, curbing his body's every desire to twitch, swivel, and flex. It was difficult to look at. That seemed to be the point.

 

“What's the matter with Haruki?” I asked Miyoshi-sensei at the end of the day as we shared our first “cuppa'” in the faculty room.

“Matter?” he repeated.

“What's wrong with him?”

“Ah,” he paused, “until recently, Ogawa-san was a…I don't know how to say in English…
hikikomori
? This means hiding in cave. Like a bear in winter?”

“He was hibernating?”

“He was a school refuser.”

“A shut-in?” I said, and he nodded. I had heard of such cases in Japan.

“In junior high, some older boys subjected him to
ijime
. Bullying. It's not so unusual. But he could not tolerate. For three years, he refused to leave his room. Naturally, he became kind of fat and nervous.”

“Poor kid,” I said. “What did he do in his room for three years?”

“I don't know,” Miyoshi-sensei said. “I only met him last April, when he joined my homeroom. Usually only girls choose secretarial course. I guess it's his happy place now.”

“He seems sort of depressed,” I ventured.

“Depressed?” Miyoshi-sensei echoed.

“So sad,” I tried. “Upset.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “Maybe he's upset because he had to throw your
gomi
.”

“My what?” I asked.

“Your garbage,” he said. “Beef is burnable
gomi
, collected on Tuesdays in your neighborhood.”

“That garbage wasn't ours,” I protested, glad for the chance to vent at last. “It was there when we moved in.”

“Hmm…” Miyoshi-sensei turned his lighter around so that sunlight winked off the silver. “Before you arrived, I inspected this house. I even looked inside garbage cans. They were all empty,
ne
?”

“That's because the beef was in the freezer,” I explained.

“So why did you throw it away? Don't you like beef?”

“Not really, but that's beside the point. The beef was rotten,” I said, increasingly frustrated. “It smelled terrible. We had to throw it away immediately.”

“Ah,” he said again, “well, in that case, you had better take it to the nuclear power plant, like Haruki did for you. They burn
gomi
every day.”

“What nuclear power plant?” I asked, hoping I'd misunderstood.

“Don't you hear the music every morning?” he asked, and I nod
ded. “In case of emergency evacuation, such a smoothly operating PA system could be quite useful,
ne
?” He opened the bottom drawer of my desk and pulled out a baggie filled with pills, explaining that it was iodine. “Only take in case of radiation sickness,” he said. “Don't eat like candy.” I asked how far the plant was from our house, wondering why he'd failed to mention it in his welcome letter, which listed the English songs on catalogue at the local karaoke parlor and the flavors of rice balls at the town's two convenience stores. He said, “not far at all,” as if this would be reassuring. “Would you like a tour?”

“We can tour the power plant?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “But almost. Come with me. I'll be your guide.”

 

Miyoshi-sensei drove a silver sports car. Before I got in, he pleated the cardboard shade that had been blocking the windshield, and turned on the air-conditioning. Then he got out his cigarettes and a special screw-top ashtray, explaining that it was against the law to drop butts on the street. I wanted one too, but he didn't offer and I was too shy to ask.

We drove on a road that ran parallel to the river. The water that day looked pink, as if it were reflecting a vivid sunset, but the sky was a faded denim blue. I'd noticed that the river seemed to change color from day to day. Sometimes it was fluorescent green, other times a deep indigo, and most often it looked olive drab, like water in a jar holding dirty paintbrushes.

“Why is the water pink?” I asked, turning to look at him.

“Ah,” he exhaled. “Maybe, Shika is downstream from a textile mill.”

“Maybe?” I repeated. I was getting used to his speech patterns.

“Mmm,” he grunted. “Maybe they pour dye into the river.”

As we crossed a bridge, I noticed rainbow stripes ascending the cement banks. A man in thigh-high rubber boots stood in the middle of the river, flicking his rod into the rosy current. “What happens to the fish?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe they become salmon?”

His delivery was so dry that it took a moment before I realized that he was joking. When I laughed, he laughed too. I noticed that as long as I kept laughing, his hands kept tightening and relaxing on the steering wheel, like a cat kneading its paws in pleasure. He turned away from the river, onto a road that veered up a steep hillside covered in thick bamboo, which ruffled and clacked as we drove past. At the precipice, an empty parking lot faced a brick building. Pointing the way inside was a pasteboard sign cut in the shape of a blond, blue-eyed girl wearing a white pinafore over a blue dress.