Haruka was born in the rice fields and, much like the grain, was grown there too. Her grandfather Jiji would often say she was born with the legs of a rice farmer: strong turnip-shaped calves that never got stuck in the mud. A comment she would later learn to hate. As soon as those turnips could walk, Haruka was shown how to hold the rice shoots between middle finger, index and thumb, and plunge them into the muddy cross-sections indented by the metal structure, pushed across the wet earth by tired hands.
Every grain of rice is a drop of sweat, Jiji would say.
In the spring, Haruka would watch the tadpoles swimming about in the warm waters of the paddies. She would scoop them up and watch them wriggling across her hands like musical notes. By September, they had matured into a resonant band of frogs and the rice was tall and yellow and ready for harvest. These golden paddies coloured almost every aspect of Haruka’s childhood—fields of grain that belonged to her beloved grandfather who tended to them with pride.
When Jiji was younger and his spine was not yet bent with age, he would watch over two and a half hectares of land from spring to autumn every year without ever taking a day off. Baba would say that Jiji was as constant as the mountain snow that fed the waters of the fields, but Haruka had never known this upright man. A bad hip break after falling off the roof one winter clearing snow had left him with a painful limp. Jiji would sit on the grassy banks in his camping chair, calling out orders, his barks spilling with frustration. A white towel wrapped across his forehead to catch the sweat that never came. When Haruka was a child, Jiji agreed to hiring a select group of local men to help out on his land, ensuring they kept to the traditional farming methods he had practised all his working years. Jiji was impatient with them, quick to cut loose any employees who weren’t committed to the labour. He was a man that favoured the chorus of frogs to the rumble of the combine harvester, preferring hard work over ease. Even the moles that vandalised the paddy ridges in pursuit of a supper of earthworms were his comrades. With their presence came the promise of a rich wildlife maintained. Most of the other farmers had taken to pesticides, traded the old ways for machines, and saw to the decline of local eco-systems. Jiji was one of the last labour-intensive, organic farmers who prided himself on the sato-yama he protected—his place between the mountains and the village. Where a stooped back was the price you paid for diversity. Where between the earth and sky a man may remember how he is not too different from a seed or a star. A place of balance. Where the fireflies still dance.
They dance with us. Not for us, Jiji would say to Haruka.
Throughout her childhood, Jiji was Haruka’s favourite person. Despite his grumbles, he would always immerse himself in her games of make-believe, following her flights of fancy until he’d had enough. Haruka would know when to accept his withdrawal and turn her attentions to someone or something else without fuss. She knew that to argue with him was a mistake. They were similar in temperament that way. One of their many private games involved Haruka stuffing as many of the summer vine tomatoes into her mouth as she could, provoking Jiji to chase her across the garden and into the fields with his secateurs. Red juice, tiny seeds running down her chin, she would scream at the danger of it. Jiji was thrilling, the only person whose limits were unknown—there was always a part of Haruka that wondered if one day he might just snip off her ear with the cold used blades. And it was this uncertainty that kept her coming back to him for more. She loved sitting on his lap as he read his daily newspaper, blowing out his matchsticks after he lit a cigarette. Jiji was the only man in her life, and she was determined to be just like him when she grew up.
August swiftly became Haruka’s month of excitement. In the summer there was the famous o-matsuri where she felt her part of the world come alive. They would take the long drive to Niigata city, where swathes of people would gather on the bridge that crossed the great Shinano river, which ran down from the mountains. Faces upturned, they would watch the fireworks break across the night sky. For Haruka’s fifth birthday, her grandmother, Baba, sewed her a patchwork yukata that she wore with pride to the hanabi displays and the summer festivals. It was a light-blue cotton with yellow and pink Sakura, and an orange cotton with cherry-red lilies. She wore a bright red obi around her tummy, and matching red wooden geta that had belonged to Mama when she’d been Haruka’s age. Haruka would sip fizzy Ramune under the exploding colours and beg to stay after the display was over. She loved the energy of those summer nights, when the air was warm and everything seemed to hum with excitement, her spirit soaring high with gunpowder and wood smoke. She relished the sweet ice shavings of the kakigori melting in her mouth, as she watched the local men carrying the wooden o-mikoshi, the palanquin bouncing up and down, filling the city with the spirits of the gods. Mama and Jiji would give Haruka money to spend at the stalls, on big puffs of cotton candy, goldfish that she’d take back home and neglect.
During those summer nights, out in the garden, Jiji and Haruka would light sparklers and write vanishing messages to one another, the flickers fading into the night. Sometimes the fireflies would pulse in the darkness, and Baba, Mama and Haruka would run out with glass jars to catch them, carrying them inside and releasing them into the mosquito net that covered their futon. The three of them lying beneath the glow of the fireflies, until the humid night lulled them to sleep.
As the years passed, Haruka turned boyish, preferring the loose cotton trousers, or the dark-blue snowsuits the boys would wear to primary school. She loved exploring the open land beyond the paddy ridges, where the trees grew tall and close. Climbing branches and scaling giant tree roots that erupted from dense earth. She made food for the forest spirits with crumbly green moss, splinters of bark, fallen flower heads. Her legs would be covered in bruises and scabs that she’d pick at and eat, uncovering fresh, pink skin. Whenever Haruka was far away enough from the house, she would remove her skirt, and stuff it in the hollow of a fallen beech. Then, removing her T-shirt and wrapping it around her head like Jiji, she would stomp belly out through the woods. Haruka made a game out of the mosquitos that would feast on her little body. She would let them come—huge, stripy suckers—and would smack them across her bare skin, her blood smearing across her chest, tinging her brown skin with black and red. A collection of dead things that she wore on her body like trophies.
One day after school when Mama was still at work, Haruka stole her Baba’s sewing scissors and snipped away at her long bob until it was a massacre of unruly short hair that she instantly regretted. She hid herself in the garden shed until dusk, where her mother finally found her. Mama had burst out laughing at the sight of her daughter, infuriating Haruka. She did not like to be laughed at. Her grandmother was kinder, saying that she didn’t look cute anymore. A response that had overjoyed Haruka.
At least once a week, Haruka and her mother had a bath together. The wooden bath leaked and some of it was rotting in places, but she savoured these moments. It was a time just for them. Where Mama would call her a little frog, where Mama would close her eyes and sigh,
Ii-kimochi.
Haruka would trace the veins on her mother’s hands and arms, imagining they were mountain ranges, and the water droplets lakes. She loved Mama like this. Quiet and still and close to her. In these moments, Haruka felt the way she did when she was watching a heron in water. Too quick a movement, too loud a noise, and her mother would take flight.
You were born right here, Mama would mumble, eyes closed. Right here was the first time I ever met you. You cried and cried and cried.
So, what did you do? Haruka would ask, though she knew the answer.
I held you like this.
The story always ended the same. Mama would hold Haruka against her chest and tickle her until she squealed. And just like that Haruka knew that bath time was over, and that her mother would soon take flight again.
Haruka’s mother was a beautiful, tired vanishing act. She was always leaving through the door. Only to reappear hours later, exhausted and humourless. There was a never-ending costume change of uniforms. The dull navy of the Family Mart, the pink and maroon of the Seven Eleven, the night-black outfits she wore that would return smelling of smoke and liquor.
When she was home, Mama would be obscured by books piled high. Her studies, as she called them. The slew of papers that covered her desk and would double-up as pillows. The two of them shared a room, but most of the time Haruka slept alone. Her mother had night shifts at the 24/7 supermarkets, and would bring back discounted food and sweets: consolatory popping candy, melon chews, strawberry Pocky. Mostly, it was Baba’s cooking that Haruka grew up on. Watching her grandmother bent over the stove, her long cooking chopsticks dancing over the steam. It was Baba who would tell Haruka to bathe, to brush her teeth. It was Baba who taught Haruka how to make the miso soup for everyone. It was Baba’s waxy hands that would pull her from the kotatsu and say it’s time for bed. Haruka hated the lone walk to the empty bedroom. She longed for Mama to tuck her into bed, to read her stories, her fingertips stroking the bridge of her nose until she slept. When Mama was home for dinner, Haruka would make herself useful and offer up her little feet to walk across her mother’s strong, knotted back. Mama would lie down and let her relieve the aches with light, careful steps, sighing beneath her as she pushed the pain away.
There were entire chapters of her mother’s life that were kept from Haruka, under lock and key. In time, she would discover that her own history was vague. An ungraspable miasma that followed her, evaporating every time she attempted to face it. If only she could wrench open her mother’s mouth, reach down her throat and pull out all the names, places and people that were out-of-bounds and punishable if mentioned.
You do not need to know where you came from, only where you are going, is what her mother would say.
There were no photos of him. Her father wasn’t even a ghost. He was an absence. A black hole of a man.
It was a happy childhood. One full of earthly things: snow, mud, tree roots, scabby knees and heat stroke. Haruka was oblivious to her mother’s quiet anguish, the worry that kept Jiji up at night, the regrets that plagued Baba. This was before Haruka knew sadness. Before a cold, snowy day was anything but exciting.