When She Loved Me

When She Loved Me

---

~ PG ~

This is Oyuki Mamisha's story as I imagine it. The Turtles are not mentioned in this story, it takes place before she met them. Oyuki was a character in the Archie series - if you are unfamiliar with her and would like to know a little bit about her, you can check out her page here. Okay, enough rambling :-)

Told from her POV.

She always said that I had my father's eyes. I don't know if I ever really believed her... after all, I never knew him. But they must be his - her own were black and deep, reflective like mirrors. Mine are blue... light blue like the sky. I think sometimes that she hated looking into them - like she was looking at him again. That's why I started hiding them... why I kept them averted and let my hair grow long enough to cover them.

It was always strange... being to her a living reminder of someone that I had never even met. She used to love him. She used to love me, too - until I became like him. I was different - just like my father. I never called him that. I never even mentioned him. But she did... she talked about him all the time. But she never told me his name. She always called him that gaijin. He may have been American or Australian... or German or Russian. I never knew, I guess I never will.

She told me that they met at Shimoda during the Black Ship Festival. There are always a lot of ships there - people from many different countries coming together to parade around in their finest vessels - each ship decked out and flying their nation's flag proudly. But she lived there - she had been born there. Every year she loved to watch all of the strangers come to her city by the mountains - and wished that she could leave with the ships when the festival ended.

He was a sailor - and she fell instantly in love with the charming young man in uniform. She was only seventeen and he was nearly ten years her senior, but it didn't seem so wrong at the time. They only had a few short days. A few days that changed her life forever - and that he probably didn't even remember.

He left promising to write... someday to return. And she believed him. He told her that when he came back they would be married - that she would be a bride. A month later she was still waiting for his note - but it never came. And she soon learned that I would exist. She said that she cried - that she slid out of the family's communal sleeping room each night and went into the garden and sat under the stars, watching them through tear-blurred eyes. She had read that sailors used to find their way by following the stars. Maybe... just maybe she could bring him back by willing the stars to guide him.

Her clothes began to get tight. She knew then that he would not be back - that he would never mention her to his family or remember her name. He would probably brag to his friends about the young Japanese flower he had found in the city between the mountains and the sea. That was when she decided to lie.

She told her parents that she had a job in a Southern city. They didn't know about the secrets she held - about the stranger, about the child that would someday be me. She left, finding her way to Hiroshima just before I was born. She denied to all that she was single. She told her new neighbors that she was a widow - that her husband had died at sea.

Somehow she was able to find a job, a factory position assembling electrical components for radios. She worked hard to keep us fed,. but there was only so much a single woman with a child could do in Japan in those days. People ridiculed her, pointed and quieted their conversations when she came near. They never said anything about the baby with the blue eyes.

But she loved me. She held me each night and told me stories and sang lullabies from many different lands. Some nights she would come home from work and want nothing more than to hold on to me and cry. So I would raise my tiny voice and sing a song to her and she'd smile. Even when I sang off-key or I didn't remember the words - she'd always say it was so beautiful.

She never bought me presents and I never needed them. When you have nothing you barely wish for anything - you learn to be happy with what you have. I considered it to be a wonderful month whenever I was able to get a new pair of shoes or a dress without holes. We were happy - somehow, having nothing we had everything we ever wanted. We had each other and for a long time that was enough. That was our world.

Even though I was small I knew that I was different. At first she told me that it didn't matter - that just because I wasn't like the other people it didn't mean that I was worse than them. But it did. There it made a difference. If you weren't the same you were outcast. And it started to wear down on her... knowing that she had an outcast for a daughter. A little at first, but noticeable. Whenever we went out walking she would be sure to turn my face from anyone that greeted us. Just to be sure they didn't see my eyes.

I remember that sometimes other children would make fun of me in school. They said things about her, too... they called her a yariman and said that she would favor any gaijin that came to her street. That made me angry... so angry. I started fighting them fist-to-fist. I'd come home bloody and bruised from defending her honor - and that made her ashamed. There I was... being different. Being the bastard gaijin child... even if my battles were fought for her sake.

She stopped speaking to me - sometimes for days at a time. She would go to work and come home. Then she'd read and wait for me to finish dinner. If it was good she would say nothing. If it was bad she would yell. But I still held on inside. I still told her I loved her.

She met someone at her job - a man that she decided she enjoyed being with. He would take her out sometimes, to a bar or to dinner. They would stay out late and he would drop her off at our door. But he never came in. I would watch them through the curtains, being sure not to move the fabric. Somehow I knew that she hadn't told him about me - that either he didn't know she had a child or that the child was so different.

Then one day I was bringing her lunch to her at the factory. She had forgotten it and I didn't want her to be hungry. I planned on slipping in and then out again before I could be seen - but she saw me. They were speaking together when she saw me. She ignored me... acted like I wasn't there so he wouldn't know who I was. And I wasn't there... not any more. I knew that then. At long last I could see where I stood in her life. I left the factory and went home. I took my jacket and a pack of her cigarettes - and three thousand yen that I had been saving to buy her a birthday present.

I left that day. She came home and I watched her from across the street as I hid in the alley. I hoped that she would go out looking for me. I watched the building all night. I didn't sleep... I couldn't sleep. The ground was hard and cold and that evening there was a light rain. But I stayed there, waiting for her to come out and call my name. She finally left the apartment the next morning - when she left for work.

I stayed out on the street after that, walking around during the day and waiting in that alley at night. I'd watch the curtains, waiting for them to part. Once in a while they did, but not much and never for long. The three thousand yen went quickly, spent on food and cigarettes. It wasn't long before I learned there was only one way to keep from being hungry - and that was to steal. I was small and quick, so it was actually easy for me. First I would help myself to small food items in busy stores. Crime in Japan is rare, so nobody really watched for it. I would pick up something in plain sight of a customer and then walk around the place and eat it right there in the store, in front of others as if I had paid for it. And nobody questioned. Stealing was a thing simply not done - so nobody thought I did. That made it easy.

After a time I started picking pockets - simple enough for a pretty young girl. Older businessmen would watch me as I walked past, smiling their middle-aged lecherous smiles. They wouldn't mind that I brushed against them - and they didn't notice when I lifted their wallets. There were certain powers that a young lady could possess in Japan, it seemed.

For months life went on and I became hardened to the streets. It didn't bother me to sleep out there any more and when the rain came I would simply pull my old leather jacket over my head and smoke a cigarette to keep myself warm. And I'd watch the window - waiting for the curtains to part. And it seemed that they did more often those days.

I watched her leave for work and once in a while I followed. I never saw her with that man anymore, but she never saw me, either. My heart started to ache when I saw how ragged she had come to look. I decided that I would speak to her - that I had to speak to her just once. Even if it was to say nothing more than goodbye. I waited for her after work one evening and met her at the door.

Her eyes grew wide when they met with mine and she invited me inside. She made rice and tea, all the food she had left in the house. Times, it seemed, had been hard over the months. The rent had gone up and her pay had gone down. The man she had been seeing had been promoted, and so spent no more time with her than with any other worker. After all, how unseemly it would it be for them to be caught together.

Late into the evening we sat up, talking about the past and what might be left of the future. She told me she wanted to go home - back to Shimoda. That she had been gone for fifteen years and that now she felt she should return. There was nothing left for her in Hiroshima... there was no reason for her to stay. There was one question that I didn't need to ask her - a question that she had answered by saying that she would be returning to the city of her birth. I was not going to be going with her. Somehow, I knew I couldn't.

I sang to her one of the lullabies she had taught me years before. She smiled and drifted to sleep, wrapped up in an old worn blanket. I watched her for a while and then kissed her on the forehead. I put on my jacket and reached into the deep pocket, pulling out seven thousand yen I had lifted earlier that day. It wasn't much, but would help with the cost of a train ride to Shimoda. I put it next to her shoes by the door, where she would be certain to find it the next day. I left and watched the apartment from the alley again.

In the morning she didn't leave for work. Three hours later than she usually left, she walked outside. In one hand she held a worn-out bag that I was certain held all she owned. In her other hand she gripped the money I had left her. Even from across the street I could see that her eyes were red with tears. She took a look around and I slid back into the shadows so she wouldn't have to see me that one last time, so she wouldn't be forced to say goodbye. I wanted that last time she saw me to be the one that had been - her staring into my eyes as I sang her to sleep as she had done for me so many times. And so she left.

I had thought I would be angry at her - that I would hate her for leaving me behind. For some reason I didn't hate her. I didn't blame her. She was going back to where she belonged - and I was staying where I belonged. Her parents would never know about their granddaughter. She would never tell them. I only hoped that on returning home she would be accepted - that she would be happy.

I still watched the apartment after that, but I didn't do it from the alley anymore. I didn't need to hide now that there was nobody to hide from. Three weeks after she left I was sitting on the stoop, smoking a cigarette. I looked up at the sky - the blue sky. Blue like my eyes. An airplane flew overhead and I turned my eyes down, away from the thought that I would ever get the chance to leave the streets of Hiroshima. I thought about how many more days I would sit on that stoop and watch that old apartment, waiting for her to return.

That day was the last.

BACK