I went to Aoba South Elementary, just like you. Only for a short time, though. Unlike you, I was a cute kid. And unlike you, I had to dress up like a girl. A long time ago, my mommy was a beautiful lady. A ballet dancer. She never hit it big overseas, but here in Japan, she was something like a pop star.
The thing about her was, she hated men. Hated probably isn’t a strong enough word. She despised them.
“They all just take whatever they want from me.”
I think I remember her saying that. What were they taking from her, exactly? Honey, maybe? You know how bees gather nectar from flowers? Mommy used to look at men like they were nothing but insects. You’d think if she hated them so much, she could have just avoided them, but she went out with them all the time. Not just my daddy, but other men, too.
My daddy was a nice man. He never got mad at her. But I really think he should have. He should have gotten mad, should have hit her, should have locked her up and punished her until she learned to never act that way again. But he didn’t, so she got the wrong idea. She started to think the reason he never got mad at her was because he didn’t love her.
“Daddy doesn’t love me anymore.”
She told me that herself. And when she said that, her face got really, really scary, and she started grinding her teeth. Really loud, too.
“He never gets mad at you, does he? He must not love you, either.”
Krsh, krsh, krsh… The noise got louder, and her gums started bleeding. I was so scared and sad, and I believed every word of it. Of course, the idea that Daddy had so many other women that he had no time for Mommy and me was all a delusion. That wasn’t possible. Daddy worked harder than anyone, and whenever he got even a little time off, he would spend it with us.
Mommy, on the other hand, had lost her job and her popularity, and she spent every day with a different man. But I still loved her. I looked up to her. So when she left, I went with her. Before she became a dancer, she used to live around here. She’d lived in a lovely house with a view of the church. That house wasn’t there anymore, so we rented an apartment from which we could see the church.
Mommy went to the church for a while, but she stopped almost right away. No matter how much she prayed to God, He never stopped the aging process for her.
…Hmm? You don’t know what the aging process is? It means getting older. Getting old and ugly. I guess a kid like you wouldn’t understand. You’re ugly right now, after all. But to people who are pretty, losing their looks is scarier than dying.
Unlike dying, age doesn’t treat people equally or fairly. You know how some people look a lot younger than they really are, and others look older? Well, unfortunately for her, Mommy was the type who looked a lot older. After we left Daddy and went to live on our own, she turned into an old lady overnight. Her skin went wrinkly, and she got more and more gray hairs, so many that she couldn’t keep up with dyeing them black again.
Maybe if she’d seen a doctor, they could have told her that something was wrong with her. But she didn’t. You know how it is, right? Sometimes, people have really terrible diseases and feel so bad that they think they might die, but they refuse to go to a hospital. They’re all like, “No way, hospitals are full of sick people. I’ll get sick if I go there.” That’s so weird, isn’t it? I mean, they’re already sick.
Well, that’s what my mommy was like. She probably felt that if she went to a hospital, it would mean admitting that she wasn’t as young as she used to be. Have you ever seen a maiko? You know how their faces are white? Mommy used that same kind of makeup to cover her whole body. It didn’t really hide the wrinkles or the stains, and if she changed her expression even a little, it would start cracking and showing the skin underneath. Her wrinkled, dry skin…
It was scary, you know? Seeing the mommy whom I loved and looked up to so much suddenly turn into this white, ghostly figure. Even the bees that gather nectar will stop coming to a flower once it’s wilted.
Now that no one would come to see her anymore, she danced instead. We only lived in a small apartment building, but she used to set up a little stage made of old packing crates out front and dance there. That was her new theater. Everyone said it was creepy. So creepy, people thought there was something wrong with her and were afraid to come near.
But I watched her dance. Mommy’s dancing was so beautiful. The way she spun around balanced on one leg, the way she floated around like she’d sprouted wings… Her clothes were dirty, and her makeup kept coming off her face, but she was still lovely for all that. When she was dancing, that was the only time I felt happy. It was the only time I knew nothing bad would happen.
She dressed me up like a girl. I hated it. I mean, of course I would; I was a boy. But I didn’t have a choice. Mommy couldn’t stand men. When I was dressed like a girl, Mommy would call me “Mommy’s Little Yuki.” She was so nice to me. She would keep saying how cute I was. I hated that name. Maybe if I’d been called Shintaro or something, she wouldn’t have been able to change it to something girly. No… I have a feeling she’d have found a way no matter what my name was.
If I did even the tiniest boyish thing, I would hear that terrible grinding. She would grind her teeth with that terrible look on her face. So I had to wear pink and aqua colors and dresses with lots of frills and ribbons and spend my time drawing pictures and playing with dolls.
We even had to bathe together. When she washed my hair, I could hear her teeth grinding. When I opened my eyes, I could see that she was glaring at my penis. I was so scared. I couldn’t relax; I thought she might try to cut it off. When we got into the tub, I had to tuck it between my legs so she couldn’t see it. But even then, I could still hear the grinding.
Of course, this wasn’t just when we were at home. She made me dress that way when I went to school, too.
Mommy would make me put on clothes she wore when she was little, like a checkered dress or a T-shirt with a big teddy bear on it. Any boy who wore that kind of stuff to school would get bullied for sure. I told you how there were people in the neighborhood who’d seen Mommy dancing, right? One of them was an old man called Mr. Nakano. He managed to sneak me some boy clothes that his grandson had grown out of.
Every morning, I would leave the house wearing Mommy’s girl clothes, then go to the bathrooms in the park and change into clothes Mr. Nakano had given me. For a while, it went well. I made friends. I even got to play soccer and stuff with the other boys at school. But it was never going to last, lying to both Mommy and my friends like that.
One day, a boy from my class saw me changing. He called me a freak, disgusting, that sort of thing. The girl clothes were right there in my bag, so there was no use trying to deny it. Things went downhill from there. Kids can be so cruel. I hate them all. They do things that would be considered illogical or unreasonable in the adult world without a second thought. Pretty soon, school and home became a living hell for me.
I tried to endure it. After all the crying and throwing up and losing sleep, I got really thin. But Mommy just said stuff like “Oh, that’s good, you’re getting so slender and pretty” and “Girls really have to be thin.” That was what pushed me over the edge. One day, when Mommy came home, I screwed up a frilly skirt with a big ribbon on it and threw it at her.
“I want to stop wearing this stuff!”
I’d never yelled at her before, and I was surprised at how loud my voice came out. Mommy was in the middle of putting on her makeup, but she slowly, slowly turned around. She looked at me and smiled. She looked so nice, so kind. Why hadn’t I just told her how I felt sooner? She probably thought I liked dressing that way because I hadn’t said anything until then. That’s what I thought, at least. Still wearing that kindly smile, Mommy put a hand on my cheek.