The ABCs
Part 3
By Tony Monbetsu
Copyright 2013 Tony Monbetsu
3
"Jackson-sensei," said Miss Takahashi, breathlessly.
"Yes."
"Thank you… I want to say, thank you." She was flushed and breathing quickly, as if she had just participated in the school marathon, but the only thing running in the teacher's room was one buzzing lightbulb. Crickets sang outside in the warm and fragrant night. She sat on a desk, flouting taboo. I sat next to her, and that was taboo too. It was a night made for breaking rules. We were, of course, alone.
I adjusted myself a bit closer and asked, "For what?" I already knew, but there was a proper way of doing these things, a time-honored script that I was as powerless to deviate from as any other man. I could feel her warmth next to me.
"For helping me." She looked down, masking her eyes behind lashes as fine as kimono silk. "And…"
"And?"
"And… my toilet's backed up."
I sat back a little bit, involuntarily. "Excuse me?"
"It's overflowing," she said brightly. "I think maybe it has to do with the rain?"
The teachers's room shrank away in an instant like a burned cellophane wrapper. I sat up. My bedsheets were tangled around my waist in a sweaty knot, and it was a good thing they were there and not on the floor because Steve Brown was standing in my doorway and from the feel of things my body still thought it was in the dream with Miss Takahashi. The windows were still dark but Steve had turned on my lights, which he would have been able to locate easily enough given that my apartment was an exact replica of his. The floor plan, anyway. He held a toilet brush, which was dishearteningly wet. It dripped on my tatami floor.
"Uh," I said thoughtfully.
"Can you take a look? Sorry to wake you up." I noticed that Steve's entire person was dripping, not just the toilet brush, so maybe there was some hope yet for the purity of my tatami. It came to me then, the sound of the heavy rain drumming a frenetic J-Pop beat on my tin roof. J-Pop is Japanese pop music, if you don't know. It had been raining all night but I had tuned out the sound like a how you tune out the smell of your own socks.
"What time is it?" I asked, managing the awkward act of getting off my futon while covering myself with the sheet. I hunted for a pair of trousers and found my prey perched nervously on the back of a chair.
"I'm not sure," said Steve. "I don't have a clock and my phone is dead. Must be pretty early." The night outside the window writhed black as I struggled into my clothes.
"Let's have a look, then." I didn't sound as cheerful as I had meant to, but Steve's dull sense of social awareness made it meaningless anyway. We went outside.
The rain was pouring down. The Japanese word for rain is ame, which is also the word for candy if you don't know. There was nothing sweet about this rain, though, pounding the earth like a crazed Taiko drummer and raising up a fine mist the color of a duck. We huddled into Steve's house quickly but I was soaked through regardless.
Steve's house smelled like a shipment of frozen nikuman that somebody had been using for a bed. Nikuman means meat bun if you don't know, and it was an apt comparison for Steve: a doughy exterior, soft and white, with a succulent core of steaming meat. Maybe it wasn't such a good comparison, in hindsight.
The toilet was, as advertised, clogged. I'm not going to describe it any further than that; use your imagination. I looked into the little toilet booth from the hallway and Steve looked under my arm. Gingerly I reached into the room, where the air was noticeably more humid. I stretched and raised my foot for a counterweight and just managed to reach the little knob set into the plaster wall. It said deru and tomaru, which mean "Run" and "Don't run" if you don't know. I'll let you guess which one the knob was set to. I turned the knob and the toilet made a gurgling noise like a first-grader trying to eat tofu through a straw.
"Did you turn that knob, Steve?"
"Yeah," he said. "I thought it would… hmm. I'm not sure what I thought it would do." He scratched his head.
"Don't turn that knob, Steve. Especially while the toilet's in use."
"Okay."
"I'm going back to bed." And so I did, ducking through the driving rain once again. I lay down but the sky lightened in degrees that were imperceptible minute to minute but which soon left my room washed in pale drowned light. I sighed and put my pants back on like a soldier called up for a second tour of duty.
Today I'd be going to Kuroyama Elementary School, same as every Thursday. Another school, another day of chasing after Miss Takahashi's cards— but this time, at least, I knew who I was after. Muritaro Morita, fifth year and a real rotten sembe if there ever was one. I didn't believe in incorrigible kids, not at the elementary age, but Muritaro tested my theory on a weekly basis. I sat at my table and thought about him as I had my breakfast. I drank my milk and I drank it straight.
The rain wasn't going to do me the favor of letting up so I covered myself with a big yellow poncho before rolling my mama-chari out into the prehistoric roar. Kuroyama was invisible in the pounding monsoon and the road to town seemed to float detached in a green-grey void. I had a lot on my mind and the isolation suited me fine. Eventually buildings materialized out of the nothingness and I was in town. I navigated my way to the school by pure blind memory.
When I arrived I must have looked about as grim as I felt, with the dripping poncho over my backpack giving me the look of a yellow hunchback risen from some swamp. Kids ran around me, paying no mind, streaming towards the school doors under the cover of umbrellas, backpacks, textbooks, and, in at least one case, a smaller kid held overhead. I ducked in through the teachers's door.
Kuroyama Elementary School is old, older than me, older than anybody. The old ladies I saw every morning on the side of the road, dwarfed by age, had probably told ghost stories about the school when they were students themselves. It was a crumbling, mouldering, dust-choked, shadow-filled, drafty, achy, creaky, splintery hulk of turn-of-the-century educational terror. There weren't many buildings as old as Kuroyama Elementary School still standing in town, much less still in use, and every passing year seemed to only made the place stronger and more ornery, like a hoary wooden dragon. It shrugged off snow and paint with equal disregard. The building sighed and coughed as dozens of kids pounded through its time-worn halls. The thin smell of rain penetrated from another world.
I stripped off my humid poncho and went into the teachers's room. First on my agenda was coffee, of course. The teachers at this school were fiends for the stuff and the beleaguered office secretary, who looked like an extra from a cheap remake of a Frankenstein movie, was obliged to keep two scalding pots on the burner at all times. The coffee alcove was in no way big enough to hold more than one teacher, and at that moment it held three. I shouldered my way in and made a festive four.
"Ohayo gozaimasu, Jackson-sensei!" said Marui-Sensei, the immensely fat second-grade teacher.
"Ohayo gozaimasu," said Hosoi-Sensei, the thin and sallow fourth-grade teacher.
"Ohayo," said Yamada-Sensei, the shy school nurse. She had gotten married recently, too bad. Her name wasn't actually Yamada any more but I kept forgetting what it had changed to.
"Ohayo gozaimasu," I replied. That means "Good morning" if you forgot. I pushed myself to the coffee pot, and the four of us all poured coffee for each other in a single complicated interlocking movement. My mug said Texas A&M on it. I had bought it at the local 100-yen shop.
"Sure is raining!" said Marui-Sensei in Japanese. "Did you ride your bike?"
"Yes. It's good exercise."
"Sounds tough!" he said, and waddled out of the alcove. If he took my hint he hadn't shown it. Remembering that Marui-Sensei and Miss Taka
hashi technically had the same job was off-putting, like thinking about the indisputable fact that at any given point millions of people around the world were using the toilet. I put the thought out of my mind and refilled my coffee.
"Will you come to the school festival on Saturday?" asked the former Yamada-Sensei, batting her eyelids.
"Of course!" I said. She looked appreciative, and Hosoi-Sensei slurped his coffee noisily.
"It will be very busy," he said. Hosoi-Sensei had the most perfect bowl-cut I had ever seen. He must have trimmed it every morning after shaving. You could have used it for a straightedge.
"Betsu ni," I answered, which means "I don't mind" if you don't know. School festivals were these big events where parents and families came to the school and the kids ran activities and sold glue-specked crafts. They were chaotic, hot, and smelled of sour kid-sweat. Hey, nobody said being an ALT was easy.
I went back to my desk, which featured a swivel chair with a busted column. I sat down and set my coffee on the desk, which was at about chin level. I'd been asking for a new chair for a few months now, but you know how it is. Budget issues.
The morning meeting came and went, and I got more coffee. Motomura-Sensei, the matronly fifth-grade