KAWANO JUVENILE RECOVERY CENTRE occupied a compound originally built to house orphaned A-bomb survivors. It was turned into a detention centre for juvenile delinquents during the seventies. Some kids claimed the bomb survivors had brought radiation with them and infected the place, that no one could recover there, but for me it became home. I was twelve when I arrived, and I didn’t leave until my twentieth birthday.
Those first days did feel like the aftermath of an explosion. I both did and did not know why I’d been sent there. The shock of what had happened – what I’d done – kept my mind cloudy, my memories watered-down. I met twice daily with Dr Kankan, a white-crested psychiatrist fond of naval metaphors. Dr K told me I had hurt someone but he would not elaborate. I wanted to know who – was it someone in my family? A stranger? I worried about my parents.
‘We’ll discuss that when you’re anchored,’ was his unchanging answer.
But other patients – inmates, we called ourselves – managed to learn what had happened. There were no secrets at Kawano. It didn’t matter that we weren’t allowed to read the juicy parts of the newspaper, or that, back then, the world was Internetless. Knowledge seeped in anyway. I killed a kid at my school, a boy whispered to me in the cafeteria. Stabbed him to death. Did I feel like a murderer? I didn’t know how to answer. I knew what he said was true, but I also didn’t know what feeling like a murderer meant. Still, if I’d killed someone,shouldn’t I know?
I noticed at a young age – four years old, five – a dark presence in my chest, a blackness, clinging to the back of my heart. Mostly, the thing lay dormant and I could put it out of my mind. But occasionally it swelled like an infected gland. These were the times I felt hurt or angry, the sensations so closely linked that I never separated them until a therapist pointed out the difference. My anger was an organ.
I feared this black organ. It was responsible for the evil thoughts I had – the visions of hurting the person who hurt me, Tomoya Yu, his taunts ofFatty Potato! ringing in my ears. And those visions had come true. I was not in control of my body.
The kids didn’t make fun of my weight at Kawano. Relatively little teasing happened there. Instead of insults we gave each other practical nicknames and my extra flab paled in comparison with other personal details. They called meSutabi-gyaru – Stabbygirl – orkireru, the term the doctors threw around in their hushed conversations; it meant ‘to split’, or ‘snap’. Like a wishbone, or a rubber band stretched too far. Before I left Kawano eight years later, seven morekireru kids would come. Three girls, four boys, each in their early teens. All killers, with the exception of one girl who’d pushed a handicapped boy off a roof but ‘only’ (her word) succeeded in paralysing him.
Dr K carried a yellow notepad in his coat pocket and pulled it out often. He said it was good I had some time away. I was allowed no visitors for six months, not even family. ‘Your subconscious needs to be bailed out,’ he said.
He was worried for me. My mom had only been dead a month, a fact I kept forgetting. I talked about her as if she were alive and asked when she’d be able to visit. Dr K listened. Then he’d remind me that she wa
