The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness Read Free Page A

literature?” Then I conclude that thirty would be good. I am now thirty-two, so that would mean the hardships of my early years have passed. At sixteen, when I pierced the sole of my foot with the pitchfork, while sitting on the veranda of the house with the blue gate, waiting for Brother’s letter, I got a vague sense that life was made up of vicious wounds. And that in order to embrace that viciousness and live on, I had to retain in my heart one thing that was pure. That I should believe in and depend on that one thing. If not, I would be too lonely. And if I simply lived on, I would some day, once again, pierce my foot with a pitchfork.

    I am sixteen years old and on the last day of rice planting I take the night train and leave the house and the well that swallowed the pitchfork. At the edge of the village is the railroad, across from which Father runs a store. Mom tells me to go say good-bye to Father and to get on the bus there. Then she’ll catch that bus when it comes through the village center. Before leaving the house, the sixteen-year-old sister gazes down at the face of her seven-year-old brother, asleep after an early dinner. From the moment he was born, Little Brother had been glued to his sister’s back like a turtle and is always wary and full of fear that she might disappear. To Little Brother, who had grown up on Sister’s back, breathing in her smell, she is still the only one. To Little Brother, school is the only place that he has to release her to.
    When Sister says, “I’m going to school, be back soon,” then Little Brother can say, “Yes, you will be back.” Even when he is playing outside, as soon as the sun sets, he will call out “Sister!” and run back into the house. Anywhere he might be, he calls out, “Sister.” When he is fetching eggs, when he is pooping, or picking persimmons. Once, out on the newly paved main street, he hit his head on a truck, and he still called out, “Sister, Sister, Sister” as he was being taken to the hospital.
    “Sister, where are you? I want to go to Sister.” Left without a choice, his fourth-grader sister heads to the hospital straight from school, carrying her schoolbag. She sleeps at the hospital with Little Brother, has her meals at the hospital, and goes to school from the hospital. The way things are, Little Brother is not at all ready to part with Sister. If she were to tell him she is heading out to the city, he would burst into tears, so she dare not tell him she’s leaving and just gazes down at Little Brother’s sleeping face. Little Brother opens his eyes slightly and looks at Sister. He must have found it strange that she is dressed to go out when it is nighttime, and demands an answer, even in his stupor.
    “Are you going somewhere?”
    Sister says no, she is not going anywhere. Relieved, Little Brother closes his eyes. Sister puts her hand on the scar, still visible on the head of her sleeping brother. What a fuss he will make when he wakes up in the morning.

    I haven’t even crossed the railroad tracks when I see the bus lights. I had spent too long gazing into Little Brother’s sleeping face. I am sixteen years old, and suddenly anxious as the lights on the bus approach.
    “Father!” I shout out. Father runs out of the store, at the same time the bus arrives at the stop. “Father, I am off !” And without a proper good-bye to Father, I board the bus. I hurry to the back of the bus and look out the window. Father stands vacant and still in the dark. His face is not visible; only his silhouette stands vacant and still.
    Since then I have not had the chance to live in the same house as Father. Even with Mom or Little Brother, we have not spent five days together under the same roof.
    Boarding the bus in the village center, Mom asks of her sixteen-year-old daughter, “Did you say good-bye to Father?”
    “Yes.”
    But was that a good-bye? Shouting toward the store, “Father, I am off,” and not even getting to see