Ikigai Read online

  A trio of drunken women stumbled into the bar, shielding their eyes from the light. Reina glanced at them over her soup bowl. To be young and drunk on Tuesday. None of those girls looked old enough to be out of college. “I’m starving!” one of them cried, tripping over her feet to lean against the bar. Her smile faded as she saw Shio on the other end. For some reason this bartender was hesitant to approach patrons. She must be used to drunken assholes.

  “Ah, shit,” one of the other women said. All three of them frowned as if they were told the bar was closed. “It’s the fucking tranny.”

  Shio gripped the edge of the bar. “Can I help you?”

  “No, get the owner. We don’t want you touching our food.”

  “I’m here.” The owner appeared from the back room again. What was once a pleasant demeanor with the other patrons was now a sour one thanks to these current fools. “Is there a problem, ladies?”

  “Yeah, the problem is that you still employ a man in a lesbian bar.”

  A man? Reina glimpsed at Shio, with her set face betraying the fear behind her eyes. “Shio-san is a good employee, and if you have a problem with her serving you, then this is not the establishment for you.”

  Snarling like three dogs in a kennel, the women backed off and left the bar. An awkward silence ensued as the other patrons pretended to ignore the recent outburst. Some not-so-discreetly gawked at Shio.

  “You okay?” the owner asked the colorful bartender.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  The owner snorted. “Don’t apologize for existing. Call me if you need anything.” She ducked into the back room for the final time of Reina’s visit.

  Within a few seconds the other couples and groups of friends were back to having their conversations and meals. Reina stared into her soup bowl and tried to concentrate on eating. But something gnawed at her, and it wasn’t her teeth upon her cheek. She took out a cigarette and lit it before resuming her meal. Shio picked up some glasses and started cleaning them with fervor.

  The bartender caught Reina looking at her. “It’s not true,” Shio said, a tinge of desperation in her voice. “I’m not a man. I’m a woman.”

  Reina tapped her cigarette above an ashtray. “I believe you.”

  “It’s just... I’m trans.”

  “So I gathered.” Not the first transwoman Reina met, and certainly not the last. Though she wasn’t used to them working the bars. As the previous patrons indicated, there were many who weren’t comfortable with transsexuals in their spaces. Reina didn’t care. A woman was a woman, as long as said woman believed it to be true. I don’t have room to talk. There was a time when Reina wondered if she were trans as well. “Don’t worry. I’m not exactly a big fan of being a woman most of the time, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I know. I read about it in your interview.” Shio put the glasses down. “Dr. Katou, right?”

  Reina perked up at the mention of her therapist’s name. “What?”

  “You go to Dr. Katou, right? So do I. Lots of people like us do.”

  “Like us?”

  Shio looked away. “I mean people with gender... never mind. I shouldn’t pry.”

  Cigarette half gone, Reina went ahead and smashed the rest of it so she could finish her soup before it got cold. “Whatever. Yeah, I see her.” It wasn’t something she was proud of, but she wasn’t ashamed of it anymore. She would call that progress. Two years of seeing the good doctor and Reina wasn’t as much of a mental mess anymore. Somehow.

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. “Excuse me,” she said, pulling it out and seeing her wife’s name flash on the screen. A text announcing that Aiko was on her way home perked Reina right up. “Ah, it’s my wife. I should probably get going.”

  The bartender’s shoulders slumped. “”Oh, okay. Thanks for coming in.”

  The stool swiveled as Reina hopped off and grabbed her jacket and briefcase. “See you around.” Maybe. Maybe not.

  Stomach full and muscles aching, Reina walked into the chilly night and put her jacket back on as she wandered to the train station. It was another half hour ride home. Wonder if I’ll get there before Aiko.

  As chance had it, they were on the same train to their station – a fact they didn’t realize until they descended to the platform from two different cars.

  “Where were you? Did you work late too?” Aiko asked, rearranging her bags so she could hold her spouse’s hand as they walked down the dark street.

  “Nah. I ate out for dinner. Your text caught me as I was finishing up.” Reina pulled out her house keys so her wife wouldn’t have to. “Did you eat dinner yet?”

  A sigh. “No. I am too tired for food.”

  “Mou, you should eat.”

  This time Aiko laughed. “You’re turning into a hen with age, my love.”

  I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Reina opened the gate and led her wife inside.

  With some coaxing, she managed to get Aiko to eat some noodles and eggs for dinner. They sat at the living area table watching the news as Aiko slowly chewed her food and Reina drank another beer. All Aiko would say about her day was that it was exhausting teaching three blocks of classes in a row. She kept specific comments to herself, just like Reina rarely went into details about her job.

  They forewent bathing that night in favor of falling into bed early. Aiko almost instantly fell asleep as she curled up in Reina’s arm. Her spouse, on the other hand, stared at the ceiling and thought of her upcoming visit to Dr. Katou’s that weekend. To talk about my gender issues. As sick as she was of them, at least she didn’t have to deal with hormone therapy and surgeries. I don’t even know what I would change my name to. Sometimes she thought about it. There weren’t many male names that started with Rei. She knew a boy named Reisuke growing up, but that was trite. Reita was close to her current name, but didn’t fit her personality. I would drop the “na” and stick with Rei. Still a girl’s name.

  “Would you ever change your name?” Reina asked, unsure if she would get a response.

  Aiko stirred in her embrace. “What?”

  “Your name. Would you ever legally change it to something?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “You would?”

  Aiko stretched her arms out and turned over. “I would change my family name to Yamada if we could legally get married.”

  That wasn’t what Reina had in mind. But Aiko started snoring, so it would have to do.

  It seemed that every time Aiko went to the Zojo-ji Temple in central Minato Ward it was raining. Always raining. Almost as if the place was cursed. In her youth, she used to visit the adjacent Tokyo Tower behind the temple, and it would be sunny, rainy, snowy – any other kind of weather. But since moving in with Reina it seemed only fog and rain blessed the hallowed grounds of Japan’s largest temple.

  Then again, her only reasons for coming here lately were to either show tourist friends the big attraction, or to accompany her niece Eri to the Jizo Garden.

  “I don’t like going by myself,” she told her aunt Aiko months ago. “But my husband won’t go with me, and when my mother went with me once, she said it was too painful and now tries to get me to not go. How can I not go? How can I not go see and pray for my daughter?” This tale had been her plea to Aiko, the last woman in her family she could trust.

  Now she came with Eri about once a month, and it was always raining. Today it was a drizzle, but wet enough for them to carry umbrellas and to shiver inside their jackets. Aiko kept her respectful distance from the Jizo Garden while Eri went in to pray. After standing in the rain for two minutes, Aiko bought some incense and made an offering to Amida Buddha. She didn’t know what to pray for. World peace. Somewhere a deity was laughing at her.

  A breeze picked up and sent her to the entrance of the garden to get away from water droplets. Rows of stone statues shaped like small children stood before her, bedecked in knitted caps and scarves. Some held pinwh
eels that whirled in the rainy breeze, and others smiled down at offerings of candy, stuffed animals, and flowers. Aiko shivered again. The calm carved faces looking back at her were nonthreatening, but she didn’t like the presence of these bad omens. Jizo, the Buddhist deity who saw the safe passage of dead infants to the afterlife, whether from stillbirth, miscarriage, or abortion, had a habit of plucking heartstrings right off the harp and tossing them into the dumpster. Aiko wasn’t even a mother and yet...

  Eri knelt on the wet ground a few meters away, rifling through her bag with her umbrella balanced over her shoulder. Before her was one of the stone statues, smiling at her as if she shouldn’t be so upset that her daughter was dead, snatched from her womb over a year ago. If there is an afterlife, surely she is there. Aiko didn’t know where she stood on the idea of whether a soul came to exist before or after birth, but for her fragile niece she made the assertion that somewhere Eri’s baby was living a good existence, even if it wasn’t on this earth.

  A colorful knit hat popped out of Eri’s bag. She pulled off the soaked cap currently on the statue and replaced it with the new one, fingers tugging on the edges to make sure it fit correctly. Wet hair slumped over Eri’s shoulder as she bowed her head, arms still extended and hands feebly grasping at the statue. The old cap crumpled in her palm.

  “Doushite?” her voice carried on the breeze. “Why were you taken from me?”

  Aiko took a step forward but held herself back. Last time they came, Eri said she wanted to be left alone with the statues.

  “Why?” Eri fell against the statue, hugging it close to her body. A statue that couldn’t be larger than a two-year-old. Is she imagining it as her growing girl? Had Eri not miscarried, her daughter would be about a year old now. She had lost her late in the pregnancy, a freak occurrence that doctors like her father could only explain as “nature’s will.” Aiko recalled something about a bad heart that escaped detection earlier in the pregnancy. She wouldn’t have lived long regardless. Months passed before Eri was able to encounter a baby in a store or on TV and not fall into a fit of tears. Her father described it as a “terrible affliction of lingering pregnancy hormones.” There was a reason he wasn’t an obstetrician.

  There was also a reason Eri didn’t trust anyone else in her family to watch over her as she cried. Her husband had become estranged from her after the death of their child; her father pushed her to stay with said husband, even after Eri separated from him and moved back home; her mother became weary of coddling a heartbroken girl barely out of college. The only people Eri trusted were her aunt Aiko and her girlfriend Ruu.

  “Oh, look at the cute little statues,” someone said in English behind Aiko. She glanced over her shoulder to see a pair of foreign tourists set up a tripod and discuss the Jizo Garden. “What do you think they are?” the man said to the woman. They both wore cut-off shorts, long sleeve shirts of solid colors, and fanny packs that were more utility than fluff. Usually Aiko enjoyed interacting with English-speaking tourists, but today was not a day for that.

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” said the woman. “Perhaps they’re childlike spirits. You know, like imps or something. Oh, make sure you get that colorful pinwheel in! It would make a great shot.” The camera clicked.

  “What’s wrong with that lady down there? Why is she crying in front of that statue?”

  This time the click was in Eri’s direction.

  Aiko spun on her heels and sent both tourists a glare so severe that the man gulped and the woman took a step back. “These are dead children,” she said, fighting for a clear accent. “Do you come into any place in my country and start taking pictures? Get out! I know the head priest!” A lie, of course, but it inspired the fear of Amida Buddha in both tourists, and they picked up their tripod and bolted from Zojo-ji. A monk stood at the top of the central steps and watched after them, curious, but not committed to saying anything.

  Minutes passed before Aiko had the fortitude to approach her niece without accidentally snapping at her. Sometimes I hate tourists. Especially the English speaking ones who had a habit of popping into anywhere they pleased and desecrating whatever they felt like. Is my niece’s grief a cultural oddity? Something to share with strangers back in America, Britain, Australia, or wherever the hell they were from? “And here was a woman crying in front of effigies of Buddhist gods. You can tell because they’re fat and smiling!” Aiko imagined them saying. She gripped the handle of her umbrella with enough force to turn her knuckles white.

  When Eri was ready to leave, she was wet and red in the face. “At least then people won’t know I was crying,” she said with a sniff. Aiko hugged her and escorted her out of the Jizo Garden, but not before bowing respectfully at the garden of unborn children.

  Aiko didn’t think her niece was up for lunch and tea in a public place, so she invited her back to her house up north. “I’ll make some homemade ramen. How does that sound?” Aiko shook the water off her umbrella and folded it up as they entered the subway station. “I used to make it for you when you when I babysat you. Do you remember?”

  Eri smiled, but only a little. “Yes, I can remember. You used to help me with my English homework too, but I was never good at it.”

  They caught a train as it was pulling into the station. Within a half hour, during which Eri stood in front of a heater to dry off, they arrived at Aiko’s station and ambled to her house. The only thing Eri said was a curt “excuse me” as she entered her aunt’s house, removed her shoes, and went to sit in the living room with the TV on. Aiko went into the kitchen to prepare lunch.

  She could see Eri from the counter, slumped against the sitting table as she watched a travel show set in Spain. Every so often she would twist her feet like she always did throughout her life. I used to babysit her when she was small enough to carry. But it wasn’t a little girl who sat watching cartoons while she doodled in a coloring book or did her summer homework. It was a grown woman who escaped into the television set to take her mind off the blemished reality of her life. A miscarriage. A failed marriage. And the secret that she was gay like her aunt.

  While the ramen simmered on the stove, the doorbell rang.

  “Hai!” Aiko called, disappearing into the genkan to see who was calling. She was surprised to see her neighbor and lover Yuri standing on the other side of the front door. “Yuri-san! I wasn’t expecting you.”

  The woman giggled at Aiko’s shock. Normally she’s out on Wednesdays. PTA meetings and the like. Although another lesbian, Yuri kept up a traditional married life with a husband and daughter. The husband who has some girlfriend in a bar. Aiko doubted that Hiroyuki knew about his wife’s affair. “I unexpectedly had the day off from wifely duties, until everyone comes home in a few hours, anyway.” Yuri poked her head into the door. “Are you... available?”

  The way she quickly looked away and shuffled her feet cheered Aiko up from the gloomy, emotional day. Oh, she wants to do it? As far as Aiko knew, she was the only woman with whom Yuri expressed her true desires. When her neighbor now came over, Aiko knew to expect more than tea from a visit, assuming Yuri wasn’t in a hurry. “My niece is here,” Aiko reluctantly said. Not because she resented her niece’s presence, but because Yuri was particularly lovely in her yellow sundress. It contrasted well with her long, silky black hair that always curled at the ends. With her youthful heart-shaped face, it made her look like a girl ready for a summer adventure even on that gray autumn day. I could make short work of it. A certain spouse taught her how. “And it’s been a bit of a day.”

  Yuri frowned in disappointment. “I see... if it’s all the same, there is something I would like to briefly discuss with you that I can’t over the phone.”

  Aiko glanced at Eri in the living room, still staring at the television. “Of course. Douzo.”

  They went into the tatami room across the hall from the living area. It was meant to be a place for formally entertaining guests and worshipping ancestors, but Aiko and Rein
a had turned it into another storage area after the guest bedroom filled up with their crap years ago. Yuri had to sidestep a folding table and holiday decorations to get to a small clearing where she could stand. Aiko slid the door firmly shut behind them.

  “I found this online the other day,” Yuri said, pulling out a folded piece of paper from her purse. “I was wondering if perhaps you would go with me...” The paper fell into Aiko’s hands.

  “The Lesbians With Husbands Support Group. Every other Monday evening at the Penny Center in Shinjuku San-Chome. Led by Mayumi or Marina.” Of course it was.

  “You silly,” Aiko said with a chiding smile as she folded the paper back up, “it’s for lesbians with husbands. I know my spouse can be quite the male at times, but I wouldn’t call her my husband. It wouldn’t be right for me to go.”

  “I know that. But I meant...” Yuri held the paper to her chest as she looked at the floor. A sunburn reddened the top of her head. “I don’t want to go alone. Even in San-chome, I’m afraid.”

  Yuri didn’t mean that she was afraid of muggers or bad drivers. She was afraid of being seen too close to the gay neighborhood by someone who knew her, either from the PTA or her husband’s work. Very rarely did Yuri accompany Aiko to a place in Ni-chome. Why would San-chome, which was right across the street, be much better? The average housewife from the quiet northern suburbs had no reason to go to the department stores and chain restaurants in San-chome. It wasn’t like downtown Shibuya or Ikebukuro with their custom boutiques. People are probably already suspicious of her because she hangs out with me. Not that Aiko being with Yuri around Ni-chome would help her image any. “I see now. You want to go that badly?”

  “It might be nice to meet other women in my situation. You understand a married relationship, but...”