There were children inside. Some were sitting on the floor looking at manga, some were rearranging the Q-tips and disposable razors, and others were sticking their faces in the ice cream freezer. As I maneuvered between them to reach the register, I pulled out Tomiko’s pay slip. An older woman with brownish hair, the only employee in the store, took out the store seal, stamped the slip, then asked for 74,000 yen. I took the bills out of Tomiko’s envelope: five 10,000-yen bills, nothing else. 50,000 yen? I immediately opened my own wallet, but I only had another 10,000-yen bill. “Did you say . . . 74,000?” “Uh-huh,” the clerk said, showing me the number on the slip. She was right. The money was going to some company I’d never heard of, but it sounded like it had to be some sort of health food company. “I’m sorry . . . I don’t have . . .” The clerk gave me an annoyed look, having already stamped the slip with today’s date. She had to be as old as Tomiko, maybe a little older. The wrinkles on her neck stood out against her brightly colored uniform. “I don’t have the cash. I’ll need to use the ATM.” She tilted her head quizzically and asked, “You mean right now?” “You have a machine, don’t you?” She smiled a little. “Right there, next to the copier.” It was the usual setup, the same as every 7-Eleven in the city. I pulled out my card and walked toward the machine, but found my path was blocked. In front of the shrink-wrapped manga, a battalion of children obstructed the aisle. They looked like they were probably in the first or second grade, but could’ve been younger than that. They were completely absorbed in their comics, not even noticing me. I don’t know if it was the radio or not, but there was music playing in the store. It was the latest pop music. I had no idea who the singer was, if they were male or female, but it sounded like they were twelve. “Excuse me,” I said to the children. They didn’t move a muscle. I looked to the clerk for help, but she was too busy to notice. “Hello?” Other than their fingers flipping the pages, the children were perfectly still. Their mouths were open, their eyes never left the comics. “Kids . . .” I heard a man say. “See this lady standing here? You’re in her way. She’s trying to get to that machine so she can get money. Give her some room, okay?”
They quickly turned to look up at me. The corners of their mouths were white with powder. It smelled sour-sweet. I turned to see where the voice had come from. It belonged to a middle-aged man in a white open-collar shirt and black slacks. He was thin, and a little on the short side. He had his hands on his hips, and was holding a comic book that was as thick as a dictionary. Only his face was turned toward me. “Are we in the way?” “Are we in her way?” the children asked in tinny voices as they stood up and swarmed around me. They were all wearing shorts and jumper skirts. A few of them had sandals — more like clogs, really — and their toenails were black with dirt. “Sorry.” Keeping an eye on both the children and the man, I made my way to the ATM. I slid my card into the slot and started typing in my PIN, but the children were right there, watching closely. The guard over the keypad, for preventing others from seeing you put in your code, has no effect on grade schoolers. They’re too short. One of them nestled up under my arm as if we were family. From the way he was looking at the screen on the ATM, you would have thought it was a TV showing some cartoon. “Sorry, can you stop looking, please?” “Whyyy?” Come on, don’t act like you don’t know how ATMs work. Then again, these kids were so young that maybe they really didn’t. Every bit of attention that the children had given to the manga was now directed at me, so I had to use my free hand to cover the keypad as I finished typing in my code. I pressed WITHDRAW, typed in “24,000,” then pressed ENTER. As I grabbed the bills from the machine, it seemed pointless to put them in my wallet, so I walked over to the register, money in hand, when one of the little children screeched. “Sensei!” Sensei? The man in the white shirt nodded, then smiled at me with all his teeth. I nodded back without thinking. “Sensei! This lady’s got a lot of money. That’s a 10,000-yen bill!” The other children broke into laughter. “That’s a lot of money!” The man smiled wryly and said, “It sure is, but we don’t talk about things like that in public, do we? So shush . . .” “Shush?” “Shush!” “Shush!!” The children were practically bouncing off the walls, squealing. The man started laughing and so did the children. I did the same. Only the clerk was expressionless as she grabbed the bills from my hand. She counted them once, then held them up and counted again for my benefit. Well, it didn’t look like I’d have any change for ice cream. I didn’t have much money saved up. I was unemployed now, so dipping into my savings was the last thing I wanted to do, but what choice did I have? What was going on with Tomiko? She’d always been on top of things.
I nodded at the man the children called Sensei and left the store. As soon as I stepped outside, the cicadas and the heat descended upon me. On the other side of the glass, the children in the store were waving at me with white palms. I waved back, then followed the river home. On the way back, I didn’t see anyone. Every now and then, I’d look down to the riverbank, but didn’t see the animal. I saw no life at all. The river was so stagnant it looked like it was made of gelatin. When I got to Tomiko’s house, Grandpa was outside, still watering. Together with the copy of the stamped slip, I left a note on the desk saying there wasn’t enough money and that I’d covered the difference. After some thought, I decided against writing exactly how much I’d paid. I had to believe that Tomiko would remember how much she’d left in the envelope.
That night, when Tomiko got home, she came over to apologize. She gave me 4,000 yen. Stock-still, I stared at the four crisp bills as she said, “I must have really been out of it. I’m so embarrassed. You really helped me out, though. I know you couldn’t get any ice cream, so . . . I brought these,” she said, handing me two Popsicles, each as thick as a couple of fingers. As I took the Popsicles, Tomiko shrugged — although I wasn’t sure why. “Save one for Muneaki, okay? This was all they had in stock. But you’ll like them, I promise. They’re from the co-op. The soda-flavored one is really good. It really fizzes when you bite into it. Oh, they deliver, too. Next time, I’ll bring the catalog for you. The co-op catalog.” She kept talking about the co-op and their frozen desserts, but I didn’t know how to tell her that her 4,000 yen wasn’t even close. I thanked her for the Popsicles. Maybe she had no idea how much money she’d actually put in the envelope . . . Or maybe someone had come in when the door was unlocked and skimmed some of the money. Maybe it was Grandpa. Who knows. Whatever the case, we were living rent-free. And it was only 20,000 yen. I had to let it slide. I put the Popsicles in the freezer and waited for my husband to come home. When he got back, it was after midnight. Since our move, that was more or less normal.
“I saw a weird black animal today,” I said as I set out dinner for my husband. He looked up from his phone and said, “Oh yeah?” His hair was wet from the shower he’d taken. He probably didn’t bother drying it — or maybe he was just sweaty. The back of the blue shirt he always wore to sleep was so wet it looked almost black. As soon as he sent me a text saying he’d be home in a few minutes, I turned on the AC. For me, the room was like an icebox, but maybe my husband was still hot. He put down his phone and picked up his chopsticks. He inhaled his rice, then chased it down with a mouthful of miso soup. I’d made the soup while he was in the shower. “It had black fur and was probably this big.” I held up my hands so he could see. “Was it a stray dog or something?” he asked, finishing his mugicha. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a dog.” “Maybe it was a raccoon. I remember hearing there are a lot of raccoons around here, or at least there used to be.” “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a raccoon.” “How do you know?” “I know what a raccoon looks like.” I filled my husband’s cup with mugicha. He used his chopsticks to lift the omelet onto his rice, brought the omelet up to his mouth, then reached for his mugicha. Now there was ketchup on his rice. “Whatever it was, I followed it into the grass — and I fell into a hole.” “A hole?” He reached for the pickled cucumber and tossed it in his mouth with the ketchup-covered rice, then finally chewed a few times. I listened to the crunch. I’d already eaten my dinner. I didn’t make an omelet for myself. I just had some meat and a single egg — sunny-side up — over a bowl of rice. Before we moved, my husband never came home this late. I was always working overtime, too, so we’d eat together — even if it was some reheated curry or stir-fry. I never had the energy to go to the supermarket after a long day at work, so we hardly ever had vegetables. We had a few frozen things that we could heat up — fried rice and things like that. Now I never bought anything premade. I made our meals from scratch. This was far better for us, both financially and nutritionally. At the same time, I’d pass out from hunger if I tried to wait for my husband to come home. It’s not like eating together meant that much to me, but when you make dinner twice a day, one of those meals is going to lack heart. Miso soup is best when it’s fresh. Anything pickled is going to get soggy eventually. Fried food mutates into something else when you reheat it. “How deep was it?” “Up to my chest. A little deeper, maybe.” “No way.” You can’t survive on boiled pork or meat and potatoes.