lore -- aiko

My dad died ten years ago.

My entire life I never heard my mother say a kind word to or about my father, but at his funeral she said: “my husband is dead and everything is worse now”. No clue why she said that at a funeral, perhaps she thought it was the  thing to say at a funeral. Or perhaps she meant that she knew he had chewed away at all her inheritance and replaced it with crippling debt.

I’m a dancer- or, was a dancer. Dancing became my thing when I was seven after I saw my mom perform at the annual dinner for the big shots of dad’s company. The first time I performed in front of an audience was actually with my mom. She used to put on these shows for her supper clubs or dinners with important men from big companies. She used to make me sing サンシャインの歌,, the Sunshine Song which is a sort of nursery rhyme passed down through generations in my family.

Those parties were really something. There were skits, and magic acts and the great finale was always a dance my mother did. She had this beautiful dress that she only brought out for these parties and she did this incredible number that was so beautiful and sad.

Dad hated these parties. He would always bang on the wall and yell at us to keep it down, but he always came out to see my mother dance. He’d linger in the doorway. scotch in hand and watch in awe as this cynical, despicable woman he married took flight. As a child, who was completely terrified of both my parents, I was always aware that this moment of grace, it meant something.

I moved out when I was sixteen. Dragged myself nine hours away from them, on a boat trip and a flight away from the archipelago to the mainland. I had never been further than Inochi no Shima, but once I saw my chance, I took it. Never looked back.

My mom always hated that I became a dancer. She always wanted something else for me. Something .. better, I guess. Something that would make me rich and powerful and well respected. Dancing, even though she was a dancer by extension, she saw it as something only she could do. She owned, in some twisted way. She always hated it when I became good at something. She loved to squash my achievements or accomplishments in life.

I remember I once saw a beautiful dress hanging there in a store downtown. It looked exactly like the dress Mae West had worn in the movie Going To Town. It was the only movie from overseas we had in the house and I was obsessed with it as a kid. I spent weeks saving up for it. Doing chores and stuff even though I knew my parents had the money to buy it for me. Finally, finally I had enough money saved. So I went back to the store and the dress was gone. My mom said ‘let that be a lesson to you. That’s the good that comes from wanting things.’. My mom was really good at dispensing life lessons that always circled back to everything being my fault.