DISAPPEARING MIYUKI

Her name was Miyuki, or ‘beautiful snow’ in Japanese. The name didn’t suit her: Miyuki was about as far removed from beautiful snow as you could get. Her complexion was sallow and pock-marked, she had a scrunched up face like a Pekingese dog’s and a skinny, scrappy little body – and a kick-ass attitude. She might have been all of 4 feet 11 inches, if she’d worn heels. Which I guarantee you, she  never would have done. I never saw Miyuki dressed in anything but straight-leg jeans, tee-shirt and running shoes – and a baseball cap. She had a whole collection of baseball caps: every time I saw her she was wearing a different one.

I first met Miyuki when I was studying in Kyushu, in southern Japan. We had a mutual friend, Shizue, who had gotten to know Miyuki in a crafts class. I had just broken up with a boyfriend and was depressed; Shizue decided that I needed to make a few new friends to help me take my mind off my broken heart.

Miyuki was a little shy when we were first introduced, but she asked me if I liked drinking. I was amazed by her voice. She had the body of a ten-year-old boy, but the voice of a truck driver. I told her that I didn’t much like alcohol, but I liked getting drunk. She drew back and studied me for a moment then nodded. ‘You and me’ll get on,’ she said gruffly.

Miyuki had another friend and drinking buddy, Keiko, who she claimed she knew through Church. At the time I was not sure if this wasn’t just Miyuki’s weird sense of humor.  As it turned out, it was not. Keiko and Miyuki were Catholics, two of the leading ladies in the Japanese equivalent of the Women’s Institute. They organized meetings and volunteer groups – and did the flowers for the church. Keiko, who I later discovered spoke excellent English, had a framed picture in her house of the Pope, surrounded by a group of smiling women. Two of the ladies in the photograph looked remarkably like her and Miyuki. When I mentioned this, she smiled modestly and said ‘That is us. I interpreted for him when he came to Nagasaki.’

And so one evening, Shizue and I, accompanied by the two handmaidens of the Pope, went out drinking together. We went to a little hole-in-the-wall of a bar that Miyuki recommended, and had a whale of a time. Shizue and I sang a duet together on the karaoke machine, a memory that makes my ears red even now just remembering it. The mama-san behind the bar was a motherly woman in her mid-fifties who politely offered to put on what she assured us was very ‘tasteful and refined’ pornography for ladies. ‘It’s just marvellous!’ she enthused. ‘I thought I’d gone through the change, then a friend of mine sent me this video and – well, I started my periods all over again!’  Miyuki, who was three sheets to the wind by this time, almost fell off her barstool in her efforts to reassure the mama-san that she was still youthful. You? Going through the change? At your age? No way!  

It was at this point that the door opened and another customer walked in. He was, we instantly saw, very drunk, but not as drunk as Miyuki, and when he made a pass at Keiko, Miyuki leapt to her feet and put her fists up, the picture of spitting indignation. My jaw dropped. This fellow was easily half a foot taller than Miyuki (all of us were, come to think of it), and three stones heavier. Keiko, Shizue and I all grabbed Miyuki and managed to subdue her, but even before that, the fellow had backed down.

I still don’t remember exactly how we got home that particular night. I vaguely recall being half-pushed out of a taxi and someone – probably Shizue – making sure I got up the stairs to my apartment without any mishap. I also remember that all four of us serenaded our grumpy taxi driver with a multilingual version of ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railway.’

It was Shizue who told me about Miyuki’s interesting history. She’d grown up in a very strict, traditional, and unloving home, the only girl out of five children. At the age of sixteen she had done something unthinkable, or at least for a modern Japanese girl – or boy: she had left home, for good. On her own, she had slept rough in parks and temple grounds, surviving by doing odd jobs such as weeding, window-cleaning, and car-washing.  Looking for a place to bed down one night, she had met the local Catholic priest. The Church had taken her in and Miyuki had never forgotten their kindness.

Miyuki was married to a pleasant, conventional-looking man and they had a ten-year-old son, Kohei, a lovely, unspoiled boy whose passions were baseball and tongue-twisters. Miyuki, her husband and Kohei would play softball together in the park, taking their respective turns at batting, pitching, and catching. If you saw them from even a short distance, it was hard to tell who was who. They all dressed identically in jeans, tee shirts and baseball caps. Miyuki admitted once that she did her clothes shopping in the same section where she bought Kohei’s – and her husband’s – clothes, and even poached from their wardrobes.

A few years after leaving Kyushu, I went back to visit Shizue and her husband, and they told me that Miyuki was ill. At first, no one would admit that it was anything serious. Some sort of virus, they maintained; she’d soon be fine. But months later when I came back and Miyuki was still in the hospital, I finally got up the courage to ask what was wrong with her. It was some form of hepatitis, non-communicable. Miyuki’s fondness for whiskey, beer and sake had done her liver no favors, and the prognosis wasn’t good.

We all went to see Miyuki in the hospital. She looked awful: scrawnier and sallower than usual. She was worried about Kohei, but Shizue and Keiko assured her they were doing their best to look out for him.

‘When I beat this thing,’ Miyuki boasted, ‘let’s all go to Kyoto and do a good round of all the temples.’

‘What will you do if you’re still on the drip?’ Keiko asked, laughing.

Miyuki grabbed the pole her drip was hanging from and gave it a good shake. ‘I’ll take it with me!’ she cried. ‘Won’t I be a sight, dragging this sucker up and down the stairs at the station!?’

Miyuki died eight months after entering the hospital. Fortunately, both Shizue and Keiko rallied round Miyuki’s widower and took their turns with the other Church ladies looking after Kohei.  On the rare occasions I spoke with Shizue, Kohei seemed to be doing well. I inherited a box of the baby clothes he had outgrown shortly after my youngest daughter was born and, when I thought of him at all, assumed that he was growing up happy and well cared for.

Six years after Miyuki had died, I happened to go down to Kyushu again. I asked after Kohei and Shizue’s face fell.

Two years earlier, Shizue told me, Kohei’s father had dropped dead of a heart attack. He was, at the time, barely 40 years old. After his father’s death, Kohei had suffered from severe depression. Nothing anyone said or did seemed to make it any better. All of his mother’s friends rallied around, once again. Counselling sessions were scheduled, visits were arranged, but Kohei seemed to sink even further into depression.

One day when he was particularly depressed, he disappeared. This had happened before, so no one was terribly worried at first. And he was almost a man: nineteen years old. After days had passed, however, his mothers’ friends began to worry and the police were summoned. A search was conducted and his photograph was distributed to police departments all over Japan, but the days turned into weeks, then months. No trace of Kohei was ever found.

To this day, Kohei is missing. The money in his bank account was never touched and no phone calls have ever been made. ‘There was a point,’ Shizue cried, ‘when we were even beginning to pray that he had been kidnapped. That someone would call us asking for ransom. Or that he’d made friends with the wrong kind of people and they were trying to dupe him out of his money – you know, make him withdraw it all and give it to them. But then come home. We just wanted him to come home.  But he never will, will he?’

When I remember Miyuki, I don’t see her as the sallow woman in a hospital bed tethered to a drip, but dressed in her jeans, tee-shirt and baseball cap, one point of a triangle composed of her husband and Kohei. She is facing her husband, roaring at him to just pitch that damn ball again – with or without a spin – to pitch it just one more time – and by God, she’ll hit it, she’ll send it sailing over his head and wipe that smile off his face.  Perhaps, in the pocket of her jeans, she has a small flask of whiskey (her personal favorite). I hope she does.