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  “Do you mind?” she says. “Don’t watch me. I know I look stupid when I do this.”

  “You don’t look stupid,” I say. “But you don’t need to do that. I like the way you look without makeup. You really don’t need it.”

  “Well maybe I want to look different,” she says. “Is that okay with you?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’m sorry. Let’s not fight.”

  I stand behind her, wrap my arms around her waist and kiss the nape of her neck. I want her to turn around and kiss me back, for it to be hard and close like the first time. She pivots and presses her lips to mine and my breath catches. It’s not quite the kiss I coveted, not rash or urgent or new, but it feels as familiar as any home, and I’m sorry when she breaks away.

  “Don’t forget to take out the trashsicle,” she says. “And sort through it first!”

  As I put on my shoes in the entryway, I notice that a picture has slid to the bottom of the refrigerator. One weekend in late September, Carolyn and I took the train down to Osaka. We went to the Panasonic Museum of Technology, where everyone’s favorite attraction was the baby maker. A computer took a picture of me, then it took one of Carolyn. It averaged our bone structures, added a few dollops of fat, and created the image of our genetically impossible daughter, posed between us on a park bench. She looks about five, dressed in an awful purple dress with puff y sleeves. She has Carolyn’s blue eyes and sharp nose, my heart-shaped face and full lips, and an ironic little smile. On the train ride back to Shika, we kept passing the picture back and forth.

  “I know I’m biased,” Carolyn kept saying, “but she really is cute.”

  “She’s totally cute,” I agreed, “and she looks smart too. She looks like a great little kid, like she’d have all these strange, interesting things to say. I wish—”

  “We could really have her,” Carolyn finished my thought.

  We stuck our digital daughter’s picture to the refrigerator, where she greets us every time we enter or exit the house. But lately I’ve been averting my eyes from her ironic little smile, and I’ve noticed Carolyn doing the same.

  Mrs. Ogawa is still outside, raking weeds from the cracks in the blacktop between our houses. I wait until her back is turned before I set the trashsicle on the roof of my car—I don’t want it to ooze onto the already smelly upholstery—and crawl in through the window. As I drive down the block, an empty bottle of soy sauce blows out of the trash bag and careens into the ditch. In my rearview mirror, before I have time to brake, I see the old woman rush to pick it up. At a crosswalk, a group of elementary school kids stops and points and laughs at me, as if I were some kind of circus freak instead of a tired blonde driving a car with a bag of trash on its roof. In front of Mister Donuts, two old ladies wearing aprons and galoshes guard the trash bin. As I approach, they make the X-sign with their arms and say, “dame.”

  “What’s forbidden?” I ask, leaning out my window.

  “Zenbu,” they say, smiling. Everything.

  I drive past the convalescent home, the post office, the liquor shop, the persimmon grove, where the fruit has been picked and is now hanging to dry from the branches. The orange globes look like Christmas ornaments, which reminds me of Miyoshi-sensei’s recent criticism. In your country, you cut down a tree only to hang some balls. It’s kind of strange and wasteful. I could drive up to the nuclear power station, where they burn gomi every day, but I’d never get back in time for first period. I haven’t even sorted the trash, I realize with a sinking feeling. I am driving past the conveyor belt sushi restaurant when I notice an unattended metal Dumpster in the otherwise empty lot. It’s larger than the one in front of Mister Donuts, so tall that I can no longer see my bag after I toss it in.

  I will not let Miyoshi-sensei steer another class toward garbage.

  I am taking matters into my own hands.

  Before first period, I sneak into the secretarial classroom, my pocket heavy with magnets. On one side of the blackboard, I stick pictures from the Japanese magazines Cutie and Fruits, of models posing like little girls. On the other I hang pictures of female politicians and sports stars from Time and Newsweek. The bell rings and the students file into the room, trailed by Miyoshi-sensei. Like a school of fish, they cluster around the pictures from Japanese fashion magazines.

  “Kawaii! Cute-o! Cute-o!” they chirp. This is one English word they all know.

  “So cute,” one girl says, reaching a finger to trace the ruffled panties of the model bending over. The right half of this student’s face is puckered with a pink burn scar. I try to remember her name. It’s either Junko or Chiemi. A dozen common names get recycled over and over here, and since I don’t know what they mean, I can’t keep them straight.

  “Look at her,” I say, pointing at Venus Williams, smashing a serve at Wimbledon. “Doesn’t she look strong and powerful?”

  “So big!” she says. “Like man!”

  “She’s an athlete,” I say. “She’s not trying to look like a little girl.”

  “Who is that?” asks Ritsuko Ueno, as she points at a picture of Hillary Clinton.

  “That’s Hillary Clinton,” I reply.

  “Bill’s wife?”

  “Yes, but she’s a politician too. She’s a smart and independent woman, just like you.” I don’t even know how much I like Hillary Clinton, but I put her up so I have to defend her.

  “Maybe too independent?” Ritsuko says.

  “No way,” I say. “You can’t be too independent!”

  Ritsuko says something in Japanese, and Miyoshi-sensei laughs before translating. “When Bill was president, Hillary was never in the white home. She made it so easy for Monica-chan, ne?” I laugh too, in spite of myself.

  Ritsuko is funny, playful with her words in both English and Japanese. She’s a head taller than most of her classmates, but she doesn’t seem to mind sticking out. “Same size,” she always says, standing beside me and grinning without covering her less than perfectly straight teeth. She has, as she likes to say, “a very Japanese face,” a porcelain oval with long narrow eyes and a pink bud of a mouth. She looks like a girl in a traditional woodcut, or the model for a Noh mask. But there is nothing old-fashioned or demure about her. In the future, Ritsuko wants to work as a tour guide in San Francisco or New York. She got a copy of the questions for one company’s certification test, and she often visits me in the faculty room so I can quiz her. She knows more about the places I’ve lived in than I do.

  Once, she happened to be hanging out at my desk when her mom dropped by. Sakura Ueno is the matchmaker here in Shika, the force behind Noriko’s engagement, but she also manages the local bank, and she comes to Shika High School at the end of every month to distribute the faculty salaries in cash. She brings a metal box filled with money and bank books belonging to each faculty member, and she goes from desk to desk, subtracting whatever each person owes for gas and electricity, rent or mortgage payments, helping to determine what portion of their remaining salary should go into savings, then distributing the rest as pocket money. She knows everyone’s debt patterns and spending habits, information she puts to use as a matchmaker. When she approached us with her metal box that day and asked me a question, Ritsuko shook her head before translating.

  “She wants to know, are you singuru? You don’t have to tell. She is very noisy.”

  “Nosy?” I guessed, avoiding the question of whether I was single.

  “That also,” Ritsuko said, which is what I love about her. She is so quick.

  Now the girls sit down and get out their gender worksheets. I read the first question and ask Miyoshi-sensei to choose a student to read her answer aloud.

  “I like to be a girl because…”

  “Chiemi,” Miyoshi-sensei says, and the girl with the burned face stands up.

  “Because I like cute skirt,” she recites in a rush.

  “Okay,” I say. “Great.” I try not to feel disappointed when the next student he calls on reads the exact same re
sponse. I ask if anyone has a different answer. “Because I like make,” replies a third girl. I write the word “makeup” on the board, and most of the girls pick up their pencils to adjust their answers.

  “Question two,” I say, “I would like to be a boy because…”

  I’m optimistic when Miyoshi-sensei calls on Mai Murata, the volleyball team captain, who wears sweatpants bunched up under her skirt, swaggering like a cowboy. She gnaws on a hangnail, then reads her answer in Japanese. The class snickers and Miyoshi-sensei presses a fist to his mouth to conceal a grin.

  “What did she say?” I ask.

  “It’s kind of so rude…”

  “That’s fine,” I say. “Girls don’t have to be polite or ladylike.”

  “Okay,” he says with a shrug. “Mai would like to be a boy so she could…how to say…make yellow water standing up?”

  “Pee,” I translate.

  “It’s more convenient,” he says. I have to laugh. They’re funny, these girls. They will not be manipulated or even led. It’s a kind of strength.

  “Question three,” I say. “In Japan, only girls can…” Without looking to Miyoshi-sensei, I call on Haruki Ogawa. The boy has been sitting like a stone throughout this discussion. At the sound of his name, he jerks back in his seat as if whiplashed. He braces both palms on his desk and pushes himself slowly to his feet. The first time he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. “It’s okay,” Miyoshi-sensei says, but the boy opens his mouth again, and this time, a tiny, raspy sound escapes, like an insect he’s been holding on his tongue, barely alive.

  “In Japan,” he whispers, “only girls can stay home forever.”

  At the end of the day, as I climb the stairs to the faculty room, I hear the thumping background track of The Carpenters’ “Close to You.” Miyoshi-sensei often plays karaoke CD’s after school, keeping the faculty windows open to attract students to his after-school club. But no one ever shows up. I sit at my desk and he turns off the machine before approaching me, hands in his pockets. “Congratulations,” he says.

  “Thanks for translating,” I say. “I enjoyed hearing what the girls had to say.”

  “So did I,” he says, “I did not think they could answer such questions.”

  “Questions about gender?”

  “Questions without multiple choice. Without one correct answer. But this is not why I said congratulations before. Reason is because Ogawa-san did not have to sort your gomi yesterday. Maybe you didn’t make any more gomi mistakes…”

  “Great.” I force a smile. We didn’t throw anything away yesterday. But I decide to take advantage of his good mood, telling him that our groceries all went bad again, that we really need a new refrigerator.

  “But new refrigerator costs much money,” he says, “and you couldn’t take it home to America. It’s also a waste, ne?”

  “We could buy a little one,” I suggest. “Or we could rent one.”

  “Shika does not even have video rental store,” he reminds me. “But I have one unusual suggestion…. How about buying groceries such as bread and noodles and fruit? Food that does not live in refrigerator…”

  “That’s a temporary solution,” I say.

  “Exactly,” he says. “A temporary solution for a temporary person.” He claps his hands as if the matter were resolved and offers to take me grocery shopping. “I think you are kind of helpless,” he says.

  “I am not helpless,” I snap.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I only meant that you need help. How should I say? You are needy? Is this better?”

  At the supermarket, I feel like a contestant on The Price Is Right as I chase after Miyoshi-sensei while he weaves the cart down the aisles. Apparently we’re in a big hurry.

  “Do you eat rice or bread for breakfast?” he asks me.

  “I eat both,” I say.

  “But how about for breakfast?” he presses. “Rice or bread?”

  This is a trick question, one I’ve been asked many times, a way to gauge whether a foreigner is resisting or adapting to Japanese life.

  “I usually have cereal,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says, “but you need milk, I think, to swallow cereal, and milk needs refrigeration, ne?” From the cooler he pulls out a package of steak, sliced ribbon thin. He tells me that he’s buying it for his own dinner. Stuck to the plastic wrapper is a sticker printed with a photograph of a man’s face, his nose engorged and ruddy, his eyes bugging out.

  “Is that guy some wanted criminal?” I ask.

  “Oh no,” he says, laughing. “This is Yamagawa-san. Manager of Jade Plaza.”

  “Why is his picture on every piece of meat?”

  “Recently,” he says, “in another town, a supermarket manager faked expiration dates on old meat, resulting in a small E. coli epidemic. So supermarket managers put their own face on every package. It’s personal guarantee of freshness. Do you want to try tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “Right,” he says. “I remember now. You don’t eat meat. This is why you threw so much beef in your neighborhood soft plastics recycling bin.”

  I follow him to the produce section at the front of the store, where every apple is cradled in a nest of foam, every melon swaddled in tissue, clusters of grapes polished and shining in open boxes. One corner has been sectioned off with padded rope, the floor covered in foam squares. Inside, two old women and a little boy are seated on folding chairs, their eyes closed and their hands resting on their knees. Pressed to the insides of their wrists, plastic suction cups connect them by wires to a buzzing machine.

  “Konnichiwa, Miyoshi-sensei,” says a man in a white lab coat with shaggy bleached hair.

  “That’s my former student,” Miyoshi-sensei says. “He is entrepreneur now.”

  “What’s going on in there?” I ask.

  “Maybe they’re receiving a kind of shokku treatment.”

  “A shock treatment?” I interpret, and he nods. “Like for depression?”

  “Mmm,” he says. “Or another problem. People come for many reasons. Hoping to cure a disease, to lose weight, to replenish energy…even to restore hair to a bald head.”

  “Those people don’t look shocked,” I say.

  “But current is inside them. You don’t believe? Come. I can prove to you.”

  He approaches the man in the lab coat and says something in Japanese. Then he pushes up his jacket sleeve and the man presses a suction cup to the inside of his wrist. For a moment we stand facing each other, close enough that I can smell green onions on his breath and the pomade in his hair. I feel like a couple at a junior high dance, waiting for the music to start. “Now shock is inside me,” he says. “But I can’t feel anything until…” He reaches out for my shoulder and the current springs from his fingertips, forks down my arm and into my hand, which buzzes like I slipped it into a glove full of bees. “Itai!” I cry out, jumping backward and shaking my hand in front of me. My palm is mottled red and white. It looks like raw hamburger.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, biting his lip. “That was more powerful than I expected.” He takes my hand and rubs it between his palms.

  “Have you done this before?” I ask, my flesh still tingling.

  “Maybe,” he says. “Once or twice.”

  “So did it work?” I venture, wanting to know why he would sit in a grocery store shock booth, where anyone could see him.

  “What?” he says, only now letting go of my hand.

  “The shock. Did it fix all your problems? Your hair is awfully thick.” I keep my tone light, so that he can crack a joke if he wants.

  “I came with my father,” he says. “He has gan…. you know, cancer?”

  “Oh god,” I say, wishing I could fall down a hole. “I’m so sorry.”

  I met Miyoshi-sensei’s father once, at my welcome banquet at a Chinese restaurant. The mayor presented me with my hanko, a narrow bamboo cylinder carved with the characters for my name. He showed me how to press th
e stamp into a red inkpot to sign my contract. He was stockier and shorter than his son, dressed in a double-breasted suit with a sheen that matched his silver hair. He didn’t seem sick. But when he introduced himself, he pressed what looked like a beeper to his throat. His lips moved, but the sound came out of the device. I laughed obligingly, thinking it was some kind of zany Japanese invention, an automatic translator, and wishing that I had one too. The rest of the night, Miyoshi-sensei did the talking. Only now do I realize my mistake.

  “It’s okay,” he says, smiling in an embarrassed way that I recognize, trying to put me at ease.

  As he pulls onto our street, we pass Haruki Ogawa trudging home from school. His grandfather is outside, tinkering with his miniature forklift, and as he catches sight of my supervisor he sets down his tools, clamps his hand around the back of Haruki’s neck, and steers him toward us. More than twice his size, the boy could easily overpower his grandfather, but instead he trembles like an overripe fruit at the end of a gnarled branch.

  “Recently,” Miyoshi-sensei translates for the old man, “Ogawa-san was sorting the gomi in Haruki’s room when he found your failed test.”

  “What failed test?” I ask.

  “Your self-introduction test. Haruki scored zero percent.”

  “That wasn’t a real test,” I say, glad that for once I’m not the one in trouble. “It was just a worksheet.” Miyoshi-sensei translates this for Ogawa-san, who still doesn’t release his grandson’s neck. “Ogawa-san says if it’s not a real test, you should not call it a test.” I remind him that he told me to call it that, that he said the students wouldn’t listen otherwise. “It’s true,” he says with a sigh, “but Haruki is not like other students. He did not attend junior high school. He only studied English alone in his room with a book. So of course he lacks confidence in his voice. His grandfather is concerned that if he fails, he will return to his room once more.”

  Then maybe the old man shouldn’t shame him, I think, or root through his trash.