Tomo Page 11

  “Time ya went back to Tokyo,” he remarked with a sneer. Toshio did not reply but continued to look at Maeda, who rose and started to move toward him with a threatening swagger.

  “Hiyoyuki Maeda,” said Toshio quietly, trying desperately to sound calmer than he felt. “I’m a member of this class too. I’m your classmate. But if you grab me or push me again, it’ll be a fight. I can’t say I’m not afraid of you. You’re bigger and taller and can probably give me quite a bashing. But I’ll fight you anyway. And then we’ll both be punished. Is that what you really want?”

  Maeda clenched his fists, took one step forward, then hesitated and looked about, as a girl at the front suddenly stood up and cried, “Stop it!” With his eyes still fixed on Maeda, Toshio could hear the sound of chairs scraping the floor.

  “Go ahead, hide behind a girl!” Maeda taunted, but then turned back. At the very moment he took his seat, their teacher came in.

  And so the crisis passed, as did the weeks and months. Toshio no longer walked to the bus stop alone, and though former enemies did not become friends, there was now at least no feud between them.

  More than a year had gone by when Toshio returned from school one day to hear the news that his father was among those who had survived the Siberian ordeal and would be returning to Japan.

  “And now you’ll be goin’ back to school in Tokyo again,” exclaimed his aunt, momentarily sad amidst joy. But such thoughts were still far from Toshio’s mind.

  That night he dreamed of his father, limping slowly along a long stretch of beach to meet him, and though his face was cut and bruised, he was nonetheless smiling.

  Ghosts and Spirits

  The Ghost Who Came to Breakfast

  by Alan Gratz

  One warm morning in July, a ghost came to our breakfast table.

  The ghost was a girl, about twelve or thirteen years old. Just a little younger than me. She had long, stringy black hair and a round face, and wore a blue kimono with large white chrysanthemums on it. My mother and father froze when she stepped out of my bedroom. Off in the corner, the people on the television kept talking about weather and politics, but mother and father were quiet while the ghost girl tiptoed across the room, like they didn’t want to spook her.

  Ha. Trying not to spook the spook.

  I held my breath as the ghost girl knelt down beside me at the table. We were all watching her but pretending not to, the way you do with other people on the train. The ghost girl sat and stared at the empty place on the table until my father nudged my mother.

  “A bowl,” he whispered. “Get a bowl.”

  My mother bumped the table a little as she stood and hurried into the kitchen. Soon she was back with a bowl of rice and a pair of chopsticks, but when she realized she would have to get close to the ghost girl to set them down, she hesitated. My father nodded impatiently for her to do it. Very slowly, my mother set the bowl down in front of the ghost, like the girl might reach out and grab her.

  The ghost girl nodded her thanks without looking up and shoveled rice into her mouth like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  My mother brought her another bowl, and another. None of us ate. We just watched the ghost girl eat while pretending to stare at our own bowls. I don’t think any of us breathed until she stuck her chopsticks into what was left of her third bowl of rice, bowed quickly, and scurried back to my room to hide.

  “Did you see?” my mother said. “The way her kimono was wrapped right over left? And the way she left her chopsticks sticking up in her rice?”

  “Yes, yes,” my father said. “It’s clear she is a ghost. But is she a zashiki warashi?”

  It had begun two weeks ago. Little things at first. Pillows stacked in corners. Blankets flung off beds. One day my stereo started playing a Unicorn Lemon song at full blast while I was gone, and the neighbors banged on the wall before my mother could figure out how to turn it off. Mother and father blamed me, of course, even though I hadn’t been there.

  Then one night I woke to the sound of giggling. Half awake, half asleep, I saw all my stuffed animals piled on top of each other at the foot of my bed in the dark. And then I saw her. The ghost girl. She stood in the corner with her hand over her mouth, giggling.

  I screamed. I screamed so loud I woke the whole apartment building. Mother and father came running and turned on the light in my room. When you’re scared, you always think turning on the light will make the monsters go away and scare off all the ghosts, but she was still there when the lights came on, the girl with the stringy black hair and the blue and white kimono. I pointed to her, still screaming, but my parents couldn’t see her. Not yet. They got mad and turned off the lights and made me be quiet and go back to bed, with the ghost girl still standing there watching me.

  I stayed awake all night, watching back.

  My parents started to believe me when my father woke one night with something invisible pressing on his chest. He cried out, and when I peeked in my parents’ room I could see her, sitting on him and giggling. The next night my mother spread ash on the floor, like they did in the old days, she said, and in the morning there were footprints.

  They came from my room, but not from my bed.

  We had a ghost, my mother announced. Just like I told them before. But of course neither of them apologized for not believing me.

  “A zashiki warashi, I think,” mother said. She had grown up in the snow country, and her mother had read to her and her sisters all the stories of the yokai from The Tales of Tono. “If it is, we’re lucky. A zashiki warashi brings good fortune to the house it chooses.”

  The day the ghost girl came to breakfast, my father got a big surprise promotion at work and my school wrote to say they were moving me into more advanced classes next year. My mother was beside herself.

  “A zashiki warashi! It must be. As long as we’re happy and show respect, it will stay and bring us good luck. We must not anger it though, or show strife. If we do, it will leave and take its good fortune with it.”

  Mother and father both looked at me then, like I was the only one who would screw that up.

  “You must promise to behave,” father told me. “For the sake of the family.”

  “Fine,” I said. But they were the ones who were always getting upset over nothing and blaming me for everything.

  The ghost girl came back to breakfast the next day, and this time mother and father were all smiles, which was creepier than the ghost girl living in my room. Mother and father never smiled.

  “Look, Mayumi,” mother said. “It seems you have a new friend.”

  Father nodded at me, his lips pulled back over his yellow teeth like a fox, and I tried my best to smile.

  I tried. I really did. I wore my tamest outfits. I listened to my new Unicorn Lemon album half as loud as I liked. I stayed in my room day and night reading manga when I could have been down in the tunnel under the tracks at the train station hanging out with my friends. All for the sake of the family.

  And it worked. Or it seemed to. Father’s big promotion came with a big pay raise, and mother’s plot in the community garden grew fat with vegetables while everyone else’s withered in the heat. Our family quickly became the most successful one in our apartment building, maybe even our whole neighborhood. My mother and father were delighted.

  And then, one morning, the ghost girl came to breakfast wearing a school uniform.

  My school uniform.

  She wore it differently than I did. She had the long sleeves pulled all the way down, which I never did, even in winter, and she had unrolled the top of the skirt so it went down below her knees, where I never wore it. The neck ribbon was threaded perfectly through the loop on the blouse, and her socks were pulled all the way up her calf, not pushed down loose like I wore them.

  “Don’t you look nice today!” my mother told her. Mother took one look at what I was wearing—yellow Sumo Sumo babydoll T-shirt, pink tulle miniskirt over pink-and-white-plaid shorts, and pink socks with rai
nbow cats on them—and pursed her lips. She didn’t have to say what she was thinking. I had heard it all before. You dress like a prostitute, Mayumi! You have no shame! Before the zashiki warashi, she would have told me so to my face; now she held her tongue.

  For the sake of the family.

  “Did you hear about Nakayama-san? He resigned yesterday in disgrace,” father said. Mr. Nakayama lived on the third floor of our apartment building and worked in the same office as father. “There was a flaw in his database program. Hundreds of thousands of medical records were made public. Word has gotten around. He’ll never be able to find work now.”

  “Oh! That’s too bad,” mother said. “And his wife has taken ill. She’s in the hospital with food poisoning. Mrs. Wada says she may not survive. And they have a daughter your age, don’t they, Mayumi? What’s her name?”

  “Hotaru,” said the ghost girl. We all jumped. It was the first word she had ever spoken. She stared down at her bowl without moving, the way she had the first morning she’d joined us at breakfast.

  “Yes. Yes, I think that’s it,” mother said.

  None of us said anything more all meal. When I was finished, I got up to go back to my room for another day of sitting around reading manga. The ghost girl helped clear the dishes.

  “Oh! Aren’t you so helpful!” mother said.

  All that day while I sat in my room listening to music and reading, the ghost girl worked. She washed the dishes. She swept the floors. She hung the laundry out to dry. When all the housework was done, she pulled out my schoolbooks and sat at the table studying. During summer break!

  I turned up my Unicorn Lemon album and hid behind a stack of manga on my bed.

  When my father got home from work, the ghost girl brought him beer and massaged his feet.

  “Such a wonderful child!” he said. “You could learn a lesson from her,” he told me. “Show your parents the same respect.”

  That night, I dyed my hair pink.

  Mother and father cornered me in my room when they saw it, shouting at me.

  “What could you be thinking?”

  “Why would you disgrace us in this way?”

  “We agreed. No trouble. For the sake of the family.”

  “Do you want the zashiki warashi to leave? Do you want us to lose the boons she has brought us?”

  “Yes!” I told them. “Yes. I hate her!”

  My father raised a hand to strike me, but he froze. The ghost girl stood in the doorway, watching. I didn’t know how long she had been there, or how much she had heard. None of us did.

  “No strife,” my mother whispered desperately. “There must be no strife!”

  My father lowered his hand and smiled his fake yellow smile. “No strife,” he said. Together, he and my mother bowed their way out of the room.

  The ghost girl stayed where she was in the doorway, staring at me.

  The rest of the week, my parents didn’t look me in the eyes, and they only spoke to me to tell me to do things. The ghost girl ignored me too. I thought she would be mad at me, or play tricks on me, but she went around the apartment pretending I wasn’t there. After a while, my parents stopped talking to me altogether too. Whatever. I didn’t want to talk to any of them either. I stayed in my room and listened to my music and read my magazines. For the sake of the family.

  On the morning of my fourteenth birthday, I came to breakfast to find only three places set. My heart leaped. Was the zashiki warashi finally gone at last?

  “Good morning!” my mother said, smiling her fake smile. They were the first words she had spoken to me in days.

  “Good morning,” said a voice behind me. It was the ghost girl. That’s who my mother had been talking to, not me. The ghost girl walked right past me and took her place at the table with my parents, and they all began to eat.

  Without me.

  I sat down at the table and stared at my parents, waiting for them to notice I had no food.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what today is,” my father said. He held a silver and gold present out over the table in both hands and bowed. “Happy birthday!”

  I was stunned. They had forgotten to give me breakfast, but remembered my birthday? I reached out for the gift, but the ghost girl snatched it and opened it.

  “A Monster Island Zero bento box!” she said. It was shaped like the turtle in the anime series, with a shell that lifted off to reveal the separate compartments for your lunch. I had wanted one just like it since last school year.

  “It’s not her birthday, it’s mine,” I told them.

  “Now you can replace your old one,” mother told the ghost girl.

  “My old one, you mean,” I said.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” the ghost girl said.

  “It is nothing,” my father told her. “You are the best daughter we could ever wish for.”

  “I’m your daughter!” I said. I slammed my fist on the table, and the bowls and glasses rattled.

  “What in the world?” father said. He reached to steady the dishes.

  “Is it an earthquake?” the ghost girl said.

  “You know it’s not an earthquake!” I yelled. “I’m sitting right here! I’m your daughter, not her!”

  “Maybe it’s the downstairs neighbors,” mother said. “They’re always fighting.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Am I being punished?”

  My father stood. “I’ll be late at the office again tonight. The vice president has asked me to stay late with him, to prepare for the conference. I think he has me in mind as his replacement when he retires.”

  “Oh, that’s very fortunate indeed,” mother said. She smiled at the ghost girl, and they got up to see my father to the door.

  I went to my room and turned my stereo up as loud as it would go, blasting Unicorn Lemon so loud my toy figures vibrated off the shelves. Mother and the ghost girl rushed in.

  “There! You can’t ignore me now!” I said. I stood right in front of the controls. They would have to talk to me or move me out of the way to turn it off.

  Mother went right through me instead.

  It felt like stepping into a cold water spa after soaking in an onsen. I shuddered and staggered away, my skin prickling with goose bumps. My mother must have felt it too. She shivered and pulled her yukata close up to her neck.

  “Oh! Such a cold draft! There must be a storm coming,” she said.

  The ghost girl turned off the stereo, and the room was suddenly quiet. I stared at my hands and arms, wondering how mother had been able to pass right through me. I felt like I was dreaming.

  “How did the music play when you weren’t here?” mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” the ghost girl said. “Perhaps the stereo’s defective. We can sell it tomorrow anyway. It only distracts me from my studies.”

  “Such a good girl,” mother said. She kissed the ghost girl on the forehead. “Happy birthday, Mayumi.”

  I backed away until I hit the corner of the room and slumped to the floor. She called the ghost girl Mayumi. But I was Mayumi.

  Wasn’t I?

  The ghost girl climbed onto my bed with a stack of manga. She opened one and started reading. I don’t know how long I stared at her before she finally felt my eyes on her and looked up.

  “Oh, are you still here?” the ghost girl said. “Go away. Go. You’re not welcome here.”

  That night, mother left the front door open while she took the trash and the recycling downstairs for collection, and I slipped out with the rest of the things my family didn’t want anymore.

  It began in the fall after Yumiko went back to school, and it began with little things. Yumiko’s manga stacked in a tower as tall as she was. Her father’s ties all worked into knots. Every shoe pulled out of the shoe closet by the front door and stuffed into the cat’s little house. Yumiko was blamed at first—she was almost thirteen, but her parents still blamed her for everything—but soon it was obvious she couldn’t be doing it all.


  “A zashiki warashi, I think,” Yumiko’s father said. “But we must be sure.” His grandmother had once spread ash on the floor to catch a yokai in the act, he told them. All they had was flour, but it worked just as well. The next morning there were footprints all through the house. Footprints that came from Yumiko’s closet.

  A zashiki warashi was a good omen, Yumiko’s father told them. When a zashiki warashi came to live with you, good fortune smiled upon the whole house. And there had already been good fortune, to be sure. Yumiko had made the soccer team at school when another girl broke her leg, and mother had sold six paintings to a gallery in Shibuya.

  “But we must always have harmony,” father explained. “If we argue or complain or become mad, the zashiki warashi will leave, and our good luck will turn to bad luck.”

  “That means no sneaking out to skateboard with your friends,” mother told Yumiko. “And no more talking back to your teachers.”

  “For the sake of the family,” father said.

  “Fine,” Yumiko said. She would try. For the sake of the family.

  The next morning, the ghost girl came to breakfast. She was about Yumiko’s age and size, and wore a blue and white kimono. And was that a hint of pink Yumiko saw in her hair? Yumiko’s mother and father froze, torn between pretending not to notice the ghost girl and not wanting to offend her. Finally Yumiko’s mother put a bowl of miso soup in front of her, and the ghost girl slurped it up like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  “Look, Yumiko,” her mother said. “It seems you have a new friend.”

  Yumiko’s mother and father smiled big, fake smiles, pretending to be happy.

  “Oh! Did you hear about the Aoki family on the fifth floor?” father said. “Aoki-san is drunk all the time now, and sleeps in the park. It’s said he overslept one morning, and failed to bring his boss’s presentation to a big conference. He was fired in disgrace.”