BEYOND THE DRAWN CURTAINS floated the sound of the little truck from the local supermarket coming to sell produce. ‘It’s A Small World’ – the song from Kokoro’s favourite ride at Disneyland – boomed from the large speaker on the back, reminding her of the world of laughter and hope that lay just outside her window. Ever since she could remember, it always played the same song.
It was abruptly cut off, and an announcement followed. ‘Hello everyone. This is the produce truck from Mikawa Market. We have fresh goods, dairy products, bread and rice for sale!’
The supermarket along the highway was far away, and you needed a car to get there, so ever since Kokoro was small the Mikawa Market truck had driven over every week, and parked behind her house. Its melody was the signal for old people in the neighbourhood, and mothers with small children, to come outside and buy their provisions.
Kokoro had never gone to shop there herself, though her mother apparently had. ‘Mr Mikawa’s getting on in years, so I wonder how much longer he’ll keep coming,’ she’d said.
In the past, before the supermarket appeared in the area, it really had been convenient for the truck to drive over, and plenty of families bought its produce. But it was beginning to lose its customers. Some people even complained about the loudspeaker, calling it noise pollution.
Kokoro didn’t think it was a nuisance, but whenever she heard the melody she became, like it or not, aware that it was daytime, and a weekday. Forced to be aware of it.
She could hear children laughing.
It was only after Kokoro stopped going to school that she discovered this was what eleven o’clock in the morning was like in her neighbourhood.
While in elementary school, she only ever saw the Mikawa truck during the holidays.
She’d never listened to it so intently – on a weekday, in her bedroom, curtains drawn, her body rigid. Not until last year.
She watched TV with bated breath, the sound on mute, hoping the light from the set wouldn’t filter out through the curtains.
Even when the Mikawa truck wasn’t there, there were always young mothers and children playing in the park beyond their house. Whenever she spied the strollers lined up by the park benches, colourful bags hanging from the handles, a thought came to her: It’s not early morning any more. The families who gathered between ten and eleven always disappeared by midday, heading home to have lunch.
And then she slid open her curtains a tiny bit.
Spending so much time alone in her bedroom – gloomy during the day despite the orange curtains – feelings of guilt welled up in her. She felt she was being blamed for being slack and lazy.
At first she’d enjoyed being at home, but as time passed, though no one said anything, she knew she couldn’t carry on like this.
There were good reasons why set rules existed.
Rules like: you should open your curtains in the morning.
And all children should attend school.
✦ ✦ ✦
TWO DAYS AGO, SHE AND her mother had visited a private alternative ‘School’ (they used the English word), and today she’d been sure she could make a start there.
Yet when she woke up, she realized it wasn’t going to happen.
As usual, her stomach was killing her.
She wasn’t faking it. It really did hurt.
She had no idea why, but in the mornings, her stomach, and sometimes even her head, pulsed with pain.
Don’t force yourself to go, her mother had said.
So when she went downstairs to the dining room, she wasn’t worried about her mother’s reaction.
‘Mum, my stomach hurts.’
Her mother had been preparing some hot milk and toast, and when she heard this her face went blank.
She wouldn’t meet her daughter’s eye.
As if she hadn’t heard, she looked down and carried a mug of hot milk over to the dining table. ‘How does it hurt?’ she asked.
Then her mother yanked off the red apron she was wearing over her work clothes – a trouser suit – and draped it over a chair.
‘The same as always,’ Kokoro said in a small voice, but before she’d managed to finish speaking, her mother interrupted.
‘The same as always? But you were fine until yesterday. The School we visited isn’t like your public junior high, you know. You don’t need to go every day, there are fewer children in each class, and the teachers seem so kind. You said you’d go. But now you’re telling me you won’t?’
Her mother obviously wanted her to attend. The sudden accusations made that clear enough. But Kokoro wasn’t feigning illness. Her stomach really was killing her.
When Kokoro didn’t reply, her mother shot an irritated glance at the clock.
‘Ah – I’m going to be late,’ she said, clucking her tongue. ‘So – what do you want to do?’
Kokoro’s legs felt paralysed.
‘I can’t go,’ she said.
It wasn’t simply that she didn’t want to go. She couldn’t.
When Kokoro was finally able, with great effort, to mutter a response, her mother let out a huge sigh and grimaced, as if she too felt a twinge of pain.
‘Is it only today you can’t go? Or are you never going to go?’
Kokoro couldn’t say.
She wasn’t going today, but she had no idea if, the next day, she might not have a stomach ache again.
‘OK then,’ her mother said, and rose to her feet. She picked up the plate with Kokoro’s breakfast and threw it in the triangular waste collector in the corner of the sink. ‘So no milk either? And after I heated it up for you,’ she added, and poured it down the drain without waiting for a reply. A burst of hissing steam rose up from the hot milk, quickly vanishing under the sound of tap water.
Kokoro had planned to eat it later, but before she could get a word out the toast and milk were history.
‘Could you please move?’ her mother said, brushing past Kokoro, sitting motionless in PJs. She disappeared into the living room. After a few moments, Kokoro heard her talking on the phone. ‘Good morning, this is Mrs Anzai.’ Her earlier testiness had gone, replaced by a formal, polite tone.
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ she heard her mother say. ‘She says her stomach hurts. I’m so sorry. When we visited the School, she seemed so enthusiastic to start. Yes, that’s right. I apologize for any trouble.’
The School that her mother had taken her to was called Kokoro no kyoshitsu – literally ‘Classroom for the Heart’, a sort of children’s counselling centre and alternative School. Above the entrance were the words Supporting Children’s Development.
It was situated in an old building, a former school or perhaps a hospital, and when they’d first arrived, Kokoro had heard children’s voices coming from upstairs. Elementary age kids, she thought, from the sound of them.
‘You must be a little nervous, Kokoro, but let’s go in,’ her mother had said, smiling. She looked more on edge than her daughter but nevertheless gave Kokoro’s back a tiny, encouraging push.
Kokoro had felt awkward that she and the School shared the same name – kokoro, ‘heart’.
Her mum must have noticed the coincidence, too. It wasn’t as if she’d named her that just so she could bring her here. Even thinking such a thing brought a pang of pain.
This was how Kokoro learned for the first time that the so-called non-attendee children had somewhere else to go, other than normal school. Back in elementary school, no one in her class ever refused to go to school. A few kids might fake a sick day or two, but there hadn’t been a single child who would have to go to a school like this one.
Even the teachers who greeted them all referred to the alternative School by the English word ‘school’.
Kokoro felt a bit strange in the open slippers she’d been given, and as she sat waiting, she nervously curled up her toes.
‘So Kokoro, I understand you’re a student at Yukishina No. 5 Junior High School?’ The teacher was smiling gently as she checked all her information was correct. She was young, and reminded Kokoro of those cheerful, ever-smiling older girls who danced and sang on children’s TV. The woman had a sunflower-shaped name tag on her blouse, with a tiny portrait of her, undoubtedly created by one of the children at the School, and the name Kitajima written on it.
‘Yes,’ Kokoro said. Despite her efforts, her voice came out sounding weak and muffled. She wondered why, but at that moment it was the only voice she could manage.
Ms Kitajima smiled broadly.
‘I went there too,’ she said.
‘Oh.’
Their conversation stalled.
Ms Kitajima was actually a beautiful young woman, her short hair giving her a vivacious look. And she had the kindest eyes. Kokoro immediately liked her, and she envied her no end that she had long since graduated and no longer had to attend the junior high.
It was hard to say that Kokoro herself was actually attending junior high. She had only just started school in April, when the new academic year began, had only gone to lessons for the first month, and then stopped.