The Throwaway Son
By Bengman
Not too many of my passengers ask me about my name, but I can
tell they all want to. I can tell from their eyes. They slide over
my license on the dashboard a little too casually, never lingering too
long before they slide away again. They look at the ticking meter, or
at my hands on the wheel, or at the white seat covers, but they always
end up back at the license somehow before they slide off again.
That picture on the license is a few years old, from when I first
started driving this taxi. At the time I was thinking about how this
picture would go up on the dashboard right next to my name, how every
one of my fares would make the association. I smiled extra big
because of it. When passengers look at that, it makes them think
extra hard. Most of them wonder how I can smile with such a name, and
if they happen to look up at my face during the ride, I'll smile at
them again to let them know I don't mind, go ahead, ask me.
But, as I said, they rarely do. They keep their polite smile,
and make their polite conversation about the Osaka Tigers or whatever
until I politely deliver them to their final destination, opening the
door and standing at polite attention. What I say is, if they haven't
got the guts to face up to my reality, if they just hide behind that
politeness crap, then it serves them right not to know.
Most of the people who do have the balls to ask are foreigners,
calling for a ride to the train station or the airport on their way
out of Kyoto. It's always on the way out of town. When they first
arrive, they're still under the impression that they've got to behave
themselves at least a little bit, which generally means avoiding
speaking to anyone they meet, for fear that they will inadvertently
insult someone. But when it comes right down to it, half the people
they meet here in Japan assume from the start that they must be rude
and pushy gaijin -- no matter how fluent and courteous they are -- and
by the time they leave town, they're resigned to at the very least
capitalizing on their reputation to ask what they've been dying to ask
all along. I like that. I'd rather have one honest gaijin, no matter
how rude and pushy, than ten polite-as-hell Japanese fares.
Politeness has its place, but there are certain barriers that just
don't need to be. Me, I keep up the forms when I'm working, but I
smile only when I want to.
Anyhow, my name.
The story, as I heard it from my oldest brother Ichiro, goes
something like this. My mother discovered she was pregnant with me
four years after my next-oldest sister Junko was born. Unexpected
doesn't even begin to describe the situation. Ichiro was already a
junior in high school, and the last thing the family needed was an
eighth child. And so it was with a great deal of concern that my
mother approached my father with the news.
When I think of the story, I always start imagining it at this
point, because I can picture my father so vividly, hard at work
pressing the moist black dough that would dry to become ink into the
family's hand-carved molds. Mother cautiously steps into the room
with her hands twisting her precious green-and-gold handkerchief like
a rope. Ichiro is there as well, working silently by Father's side as
the eldest son should. All of the children of my family start
contributing to the family business at an early age, and by his
teenage years Ichiro is skilled enough to help with the molding,
probably just as skilled as Father. After all, Ichiro will be the one
to carry on.
Anyhow, Mother faces Father across the room and makes some small
sound to attract his attention. He barely flicks his creased black
eyes up from his gnarled hands, black to the elbow with soot. What?
he grunts in his slurred voice, roughened from decades of smoke and
ash. Mother smiles faintly, though of course he can't see it, and
says, we're going to have another one, dear. -- Ichiro's voice when
he told me this part rose an octave to an approximation of Mother's
high-pitched quaver, higher than normal from nervousness. Not
happiness; Ichiro didn't have to tell me that.
The way I envision it, the room is utterly silent after her
words, except for the moist slapping of Father's hands on the ink-
dough. Finally, without even looking up again, he says it.
Sutero.
Throw it away.
To this day, I don't know what he really meant. Abortions were
not quite so common then, and the days when an unwanted child could be
abandoned on a mountain or donated to a Buddhist temple were long
past. I doubt he actually wanted her to toss me out with the trash,
though I've never completely discounted that theory. Maybe he wasn't
even talking about me at all; he could have been talking about the ink
he was making, which just didn't have the right consistency, or the
mold he was using at the time, or even Mother's ruined handkerchief.
It doesn't really matter. His intentions don't change the result.
You see, Mother was completely unimaginative when it came to
naming her children. The first four were boys, and she predictably
named them Ichiro, "first son," Jiro, "next son," Miro, "third son,"
and Yontaro, "fourth son." Mother was probably all set with "fifth
son" when she went into labor the next time, but her convenient plan
was confounded when she had a girl instead. Word has it that she took
the nearest book -- "The Makioka Sisters" -- and opened it up to a
random page. The first character she found on that page was named
Taeko, and so then was my sister. Number six was another son, but
once the numerical sequence was broken it could not be rejoined, and
so she gingerly named him Sumiro, from sumi, the ink the family
business was devoted to. Finally there was Junko, named after a
childhood friend because Mother had moved on to classical literature,
and her questing finger had turned up Oborozukiyo, which even she
realized was a bit too unwieldy for daily use.
It's probably apparent that Father didn't have much to do with
the naming process. I don't think he even knew what we were named, or
cared; we were always "you." Hey you, go rake the garden. You, bring
these inksticks to Mother for painting. Hey you, be quiet while I'm
working.
But after all those years, maybe Mother was hopeful that he was
actually expressing interest. I like that explanation better than the
idea that she agreed with him on what they should do with me, or that
she gave me the name out of hatred. But when I really think about it,
when I try to understand, I end up believing that she was simply
tired. Weary to the bone. Too exhausted to resist.
And so when I was born some months later, she shakily wrote on
the necessary forms the name on my license: Sutero Mizutani. The
throwaway son. That was the name I grew up with, and some time ago I
decided that it's the name that will go on my grave marker. People
ask me why I've never changed it, and I always answer them because
it's who I am. Some of them even understand what I mean.
Of course, as a child, I didn't realize there was anything
unusual about my name. It sounded like my brother's names, had the
same ending. I never made the linguistic connection. It wasn't until
primary school that I found out, maybe the third or fourth grade. I
remember the situation, but not the time... I think it must have been
third. Anyhow, we had learned the basics of brush calligraphy, and
one of our first projects was to learn to write our own names in
Chinese characters, on a banner we could hang on the walls for our
parents to see. I was excited as could be; the ink we were using had
been made by my family, and for a third-grader, that was an awful lot
of excitement. I was quivering at my desk as the teacher worked his
way around the room, guiding each of us on the path of fine
penmanship. When he reached my desk, he paused for a long moment
before kneeling beside my desk and writing my name in sure strokes
that I would awkwardly try to imitate. But where my classmates had
exciting Chinese characters for their given names, mine he wrote out
syllabically.
I creased my forehead in disappointment. 'Don't I get
characters? I want to write characters."
The teacher smiled at me in a way I now can interpret as falsely
polite, and said "This is a better way to write your name."
That wasn't what I wanted to hear. I pointed over at the child
in the next desk, Taro Ichikawa, who was already swishing his brush in
the ink, concentrating intently. "I should have characters like his.
My name ends in 'ro' too."
"That's true," the teacher hedged. "But the characters in your
name are really not suited for calligraphy." Thinking back, I can see
he was awfully tolerant of my argument. I think he was feeling guilty
about the whole situation, the conflict between my parents' choice of
names and his own feelings on propriety.
"But I want to write characters. I already know how to write
this." All right, I admit it. I was a whiny brat. But I had been
looking forward to the project all morning, and I wanted to get the
most out of it. The teacher finally gave in and showed me the
characters, and I blithely proceeded to make the appropriate twenty
loose copies of my name before making the final banner, swelling with
pride at each stroke.
I was filled with righteous arrogance when my name was hung
beside the work of every other child. Surely I had an affinity with
the ink that made my calligraphy much more soulful than the rest, and
so my work would naturally attract the attention of the viewers the
following Saturday.
As a matter of fact, it did attract a lot of attention. I
watched secretly from my mother's side, and as each mother walked past
my name, they paused, a distinct and definite pause. When we
ourselves stood before my masterful calligraphy, Mother herself was
frozen in awe. "Well," she said in her singsong voice, clutching
briefly at my hand. Then we moved on, quickly because at home there
were inksticks waiting for her to paint. But I could see heads turn
as we went past, watching the boy master of calligraphy and his
mother. I felt that my pride was justified. The rest of the weekend
was spent envisioning my future career as a great calligrapher, a
Living National Treasure. I wasn't sure what that really meant, but I
knew my being one would make my brothers squirm in envy.
When I returned to school on Monday, though, there was a subtle
difference in the air. My classmates would barely look at me, and
when they did, there was something underneath that I didn't quite
understand. I knew, though, that it wasn't the awe I had expected.
When I sat down in my seat, I felt something sharp poking repeatedly
into my back. Takiji Matsumoto, the boy who sat behind me, was
jabbing me with his pen. I ignored him. Living National Treasures
were above such things.
Takiji soon realized he wasn't having much effect, and so he
leaned forward so that his face was right by my ear. "Gomi," he said
in a sharp whisper, then sat back down, snickering at his own joke.
I turned around hotly. "I am not garbage," I hissed, glancing at
the front of the room, where the teacher was preparing to call us to
order. Other students were obviously listening in, and I felt my ears
turn red.
Takiji basked in the attention. "That's what your name means,
gomi. My mother says so." He smirked in the way only a young boy
can, utterly satisfied with his own insults. "Just look at your
hands, they're all dirty. You're dirty every day. Garbage."
I looked at my hands. I had washed them that morning, as I did
every morning, but there were still faded grey stains on my fingers
and black crescents under my fingernails, from the ink. My job, and
the job of Yontaro and Miro and Sumiro as well, was to gather the soot
from the candle room, where it collected in a thousand little upside-
down cups over burning tallow, and then to knead it together with
vegetable fat until it was a moist dough, ready for molding. In the
process of kneading we were invariably blackened head to foot -- to
get it just right, we often had to use our entire weight, working the
dough with our feet. And when ten people had to take baths each
night, the bathing process naturally got a little rushed. I curled my
fingers into my palm, hiding my fingernails as Takiji went on.
"My mother says your parents didn't want you. She says they wish
they could get rid of you every time they say your name." He was
leaning forward again, so that his beady black eyes were close to
mine. "Sutero." He said it like I imagine my father had said it,
rough and commanding -- though I hadn't at that time heard the story,
I only think of Takiji's tone that way now. It made the insult
absolutely clear.
"You take that back," I sputtered. I was half out of my seat
when the teacher rapped his ruler on the podium, calling us to order.
I turned forward, shaking with fury. Behind me, I heard a final gomi
under Takiji's breath, and a ripple of nearly silent titters swept
through the room. The teacher cleared his throat meaningfully, then
began class.
I don't remember what he taught, or even what other insults I may
have endured -- must have endured, because I do remember being
completely humiliated by the time I began my walk home, alone since
Junko had moved on to middle school. Mother did this to me, I thought
as I stomped home with every intention of confronting her with my
newfound knowledge. If she hated me, I wanted to know. I had thought
she loved me -- at least, she always cooked dinner and came to see my
teachers, though most of my daily care was in the hands of Taeko, with
a bit of help from my brothers. I sometimes wondered what it would be
like not to have any brothers and sisters at all, but the only thing I
could think of was that I'd have to make all that ink by myself.
Anyhow, when I got home I headed straight for the little room
where my mother sat when she wasn't cooking or cleaning, the painting
room. Each stick of ink had to be painted by hand before it was
wrapped for shipping, the intricate patterns of the family molds
limned in gold and red and green. Now that I think of it, it was a
profoundly useless activity -- why decorate something that is destined
to be ground away to nothing? The ink my family made was not likely
to end up in a museum anywhere. But despite this, every day my mother
could be found in her painting room, meticulously outlining dragons
and bamboo and the seal of our family on the matte black sticks. And
so I found her that day, as I seethed with the pure fury of a child.
She was bent over her little desk, glasses pinching her rounded nose
as she focused on the leaf she was painting. She looked like a statue
to me, one of those solid stone figures at the temples, Kwannon
offering salvation to the unenlightened.
I didn't say anything to her. My fury vanished the moment I saw
her, because as I watched her, unnoticed, I realized that my mother
was old. Not just older than me, but turning into one of those
hunched old women we kids sometimes made fun of on the street, her
back permanently curved by the posture she had held for so long. I
watched her for a moment longer, then went and looked for Ichiro. He
told me the story.
By that evening, I had run through my anger, and was working on a
solution. I couldn't change my name, of course, but I could take care
of the image that came with it. I sneaked one of Mother's scrub
brushes out of the kitchen, and waited for my turn at the bath. We
had our own bath in the house, which was nice, but it was only big
enough for one person to sit, knees drawn up to chest as he or she
soaked. We had a prescribed order in which we washed, in order to
economize on both water and time. My sisters went first, Junko
scrubbing herself on the tile floor while Taeko soaked; after their
bath, they would go help Mother lay out everybody's futons on the
floor for bedtime. Then the boys began, in a neat assembly line
fashion. Father would scrub, then while he soaked Ichiro would scrub,
then while Ichiro soaked Jiro would scrub... I was last in the chain
of baths except for Mother, who waited until everybody else was done.
Since we did the washing and rinsing outside the bath, we did not
change the bathwater, and by the time it got to Mother it was
invariably lukewarm at best.
So on this night, when my turn approached, I approached my
mother, who was spreading out the last of the futons. Father was
already tucked in, watching television from his pillow. Mother's
hands were like thin silk as she smoothed the cotton quilt down over
the bed that Sumiro and I shared. Again I was struck by her age; she
seemed more like a grandmother to me than a mother. I think she was
fifty; not too old, I realize now, but she seemed that way then.
"Mother?" I said quietly, not wanting to distract Father.
She turned her owlish eyes towards me. "Yes?" She rarely called
me by name; today I knew why.
I heaved a deep breath and began my plan. "Can I take my bath
after you tonight? There's some studying I want to do."
"Studying?' She looked at me strangely. "I thought you had done
all your homework already."
"I did. I want to do more."
She looked at me for a long moment, then smiled faintly. "All
right, dear. Study hard." She stood and headed for the bathroom,
where Sumiro was just getting out. He walked past me and stuck an
elbow in my ribs.
"How come you aren't taking your bath? Dad'll be pissed."
Sumiro was in ninth grade, working on the entrance exams for high
school, and he reveled in his newfound slang. I was suitably awed,
but I stuck to my story.
"I've got to study some more. I'm going after Mother."
He shrugged. "Fine by me. Just don't wake me up when you come
to bed."
"I won't." With that, I slipped off to Mother's painting room.
As a matter of fact, I did study. I sat in the room, under the
light of one naked bulb dangling overhead, and wrote the Chinese
characters we had learned so far over and over. Most of all, I wrote
my name. Sutero. Sutero. Sutero. By the time I heard Mother
leaving the bathroom, I had ingrained the pattern into my hand, so
that I could write it without thinking.
In the bathroom, I sat on the cold tile floor and filled a pail
with warm water, then reached for the bar of soap. It was coated with
a grey film from the washers before me, but that couldn't be helped.
I soaped myself up as well as I could, rinsing off the outer layer of
grime. Then I turned my attention to the ingrained stains. I applied
the scrub brush gingerly to my soapy arms, scrubbing gently in
circles. Even being gentle, it hurt. But I thought of Takiji's cruel
face, the giggles of my classmates, and I scrubbed harder. My skin
was bright red from the friction by the time I finally decided I was
clean enough. Then I turned my attention to my fingernails, scrubbing
at an angle so that I could get under the edges. When that didn't
seem to be working, I brought out the fingernail clipper, trimming my
nails right up to the edge of my skin, then scrubbing again. When my
fingernails were absolutely clean, I did the same thing to my
toenails, just in case. Finally, convinced I was the epitome of
cleanliness, I rinsed a few more times, filling the bucket and dumping
it over my head, then slipped into the tub. It was barely warm, and I
only soaked for a few minutes before getting out and drying off,
wincing at the feel of the towel on my tender skin. As I slipped
under the quilt next to my brother, I smiled in the knowledge that I
was too clean for Takiji to make fun of the next day.
But of course, the name Gomi had stuck, and though the new
bathing arrangements continued and I scrubbed myself until my skin had
toughened and it barely even hurt any more, the name would not go
away. I tried to figure out what was wrong with my appearance. I
took to doing my own laundry, polishing the brass buttons of my school
uniform every night after my bath and bleaching my socks and underwear
to a bone-white. I polished my shoes every morning so that they were
a hard, shiny black. I even scraped together my pocket money to buy a
special whitening toothpaste, to make my teeth gleam, and stopped
drinking or eating anything that would stain my teeth. I was the
cleanest third- or fourth-grader in the school. But I kept the
nickname Gomi until I grew bigger than my classmates and they were
afraid to insult me. Even now, I'm big enough that nobody gives me
any crap about my name. Six feet may not seem tall to most
foreigners, but for a Japanese man I'm positively giant.
It was a few years later, though, when I was still Gomi, that I
decided what I wanted to do with my life. I was walking home from
school past a small hotel when a black and green taxicab pulled up to
the curb and the driver got out. He was wearing a navy blue uniform,
cut much more sharply than my own school clothes, with a double row of
silver buttons down the jacket front and white piping down the sides
of the perfectly creased pants. His shoes were mirrors of patent
black. There was a solid, authoritative blue hat with a black brim
and white insignia shading his eyes. As the final touch, his hands
were enclosed in gloves, white as snow. He was an older man, in his
forties, but he was the sharpest, the neatest, and above all the
cleanest person I had ever seen. I don't think I made any conscious
decision when I saw that man, but the picture of him stood in my mind
throughout middle school and high school, and even into college.
By then I think everyone expected me to land a high-paying
business position -- my extra hours of studying as I waited for my
bath paid off, and I attended Kyoto University, majoring in English.
But by then I was more than a little sick of the race. It was around
this time that I started looking for something genuine in the people
around me, something that's usually too much hidden by politeness and
social expectations to see. I wanted to find that inner core. So
when I graduated, I marched straight to the offices of Aoki Kotsu, the
taxicab company I admired most. They don't allow smoking in the cars
-- something I heartily agree with -- and I had heard that they were
recruiting English-speaking drivers to deal with the tourist trade.
It took about ten minutes to convince them to hire me.
Now I make about 370,000 yen a month, a good living, and I only
work two or three times a week. It's a twenty-four hour shift, of
course, but most of that time I'm "on call," not cruising, so I can
visit friends, nap, whatever, as long as I've got my radio. My
taxicab is the cleanest in the fleet. The best part about the job is
when I talk to a fare, and I find that inner core. After all, I'm
more than willing to show myself in return.
Once in a while, when I'm signing my name, I think about the ink
I'm using and wonder how Ichiro is handling the family business, and
how many children he has. But I haven't spoken to him in years.
Father is dead, and I expect Mother will soon follow, though I haven't
heard anything to that effect. Junko knows where I am, and Taeko;
they would tell me. So Mother's probably still painting dragons in
that back room, her back more hunched than before. I wonder sometimes
if she thinks of me at all as she paints, thinking that maybe she got
what she wanted. But I don't worry about it too much. I don't need
to know. And the one lesson I learned from her is that if I don't
need something, then I should simply throw it away.
The End.
bengman *** "On the appointed day, I notice something amazing. When I take a
step outside the vacant lot, a meadow spreads out before my eyes. And there
are lots of horses and cows staring at me. Since when has there been a ranch on
Akane's street? -- Where the heck am I?!" -- Ryouga, "Ittai koko wa dokonanda?"
