Coin Locker Babies Read Free Page A

applied for twins to take the boys. The application had come via the Holy Virgin Relief Society from a small island off the west coast of Kyushu. At first the boys refused to even consider leaving the orphanage, but they were shown a picture of the people who would be their foster parents and at last they agreed; the couple had been photographed with the sea in the background.
    In the company of a welfare officer, they made the long journey south by ferry, sitting inside on torn plastic-covered seats, where the heat was made worse by the oil fumes. They were met at the dock by their new parents. Perhaps it was the fading light, but to Hashi they looked more like mother and child than man and wife. As the welfare officer made the necessary introductions, Kiku studied his new father, Shuichi Kuwayama, with disappointment. Not only was he short but his pale arms and legs were spindly and the flesh seemed to sag on his body. He was clean-shaven, and the hair on his head was thinning; he had absolutely nothing in common with the Father in the picture in the chapel.
    From the neck up, his wife was thickly painted with white powder, which was beginning to dissolve in her sweat and trickle down into a pool collecting on her collarbone. KazuyoKuwayama was in fact six years older than her husband, and had just turned forty. After leaving her first husband, she had come to the island with her uncle, a miner, in the days before the coal mines that were dug under the sea were closed down. Big-boned, with rather narrow eyes and a nose too large for her face, she had trained as a beautician, then worked in a bar, before settling down with Kuwayama, who had a small factory next door to his place where he produced disposable styrofoam lunchboxes.
    Kiku and Hashi, as soon as they got home, were put to bed in matching pajamas with locomotives on them. Hashi was exhausted and running a slight temperature, for which Kazuyo made him an ice bag. She fanned the boy as he slept while her husband saw the welfare officer off. When he was gone, Kuwayama went straight back to work. A bug Kiku had never seen before flew in through the window, and he got out of bed to look out into the darkness. From the windows of the orphanage he had liked to watch the lights of the city and the stream of cars passing, but here it was pitch dark, though he thought he could just make out a tree with big black leaves rustling in the mild breeze. When Kuwayama turned on the styrofoam press, the noise drowned out the pleasant hum of the bugs.
    “It makes a racket, but he can never get to sleep unless he gets a little work done before going to bed,” Kazuyo explained. Ignoring her, Kiku eyed the strange beetle, and when it landed nearby he stamped on it.
    “You mustn’t kill living things like that!” Kazuyo scolded.
    Back at the window, Kiku spotted a tiny point of light in the distance; a star, he thought, but Kazuyo told him it was a lighthouse.
    “It shines all night so the ships at sea don’t bump into the rocks.” The light spun around, revealing the rough surface of thesea for an instant. “Time for bed,” said Kazuyo. “You must be tired, too. Get some sleep.”
    Kiku suddenly wanted to scream, to turn himself into a huge jet plane and bomb the hell out of the bugs, the leaves, this window, Kuwayama’s machine, the lighthouse. The smell of the summer night, of sun-warmed trees cooling in the darkness, was somehow unbearable.
    “Hashi and the nuns call me Kiku, but my real name’s Kikuyuki,” he managed to say before he burst into tears. Kazuyo went on fanning, without saying anything. As he got into bed, Kiku realized he had no idea why he was crying. Before long he was fast asleep and the new sheets were damp with sweat.

    By the time the boys woke the next morning, Kuwayama’s press was already humming. Kazuyo presented them with new shorts, shirts, and tennis shoes before leaving for the beauty parlor that she owned and worked at.
    “You two can