F-0029 Interview with someone who made a point of not learning the passwords

(Said to be transcribed from a recording of the interview. Of the questions, only their gist was kept when the record was made.)

(On the rules for staying home alone)

From the autumn of third grade. Both my parents worked, so late afternoons I was alone. The rules were written out on paper and stuck on the refrigerator: don’t open the door for anyone you don’t know; if someone comes on an errand for the family, have them say the password from outside before you open. The ones who came on errands were my grandmother, or a lady from the same building - that was fixed. The password, my mother would decide on a new one from time to time, say it at dinner, and write it small in the corner of the kitchen message notebook. The notebook was, how to put it, house business. There’s milk in the fridge, I’ll be home at such-and-such a time. My mother wrote, and I wrote answers back. Reading it before bed was my routine.

(On the first caller)

February. Just after Setsubun, I think. The doorbell rang in the late afternoon, and when I picked up the receiver: your mother asked me to come, the voice said. And then it said, kettle. The password at the time. So by the rules, I should have opened the door. Why I didn’t - I still can’t put it into words. Because it was no one I could tell by the voice, is maybe the closest I can get. If you ask what kind of voice, all I can say is, an ordinary adult’s voice. It waited a while, said, kettle, once more, and left. The footsteps faded toward the stairs.

(On telling the family)

When I told them at dinner, my mother, before any praise, made a strange face. We stopped kettle last week, she said; it’s oden now. My father nodded too. We told you the night we changed it, you answered us - that’s what they said, but I had no memory of it. I went back through the notebook, and there it was, in the corner of a page from about a week before, the new one, written down. On the same page there’s a line I wrote myself, you know. Only the corner, I had no memory of ever seeing.

(On what followed)

Over the two years and a bit after that, it happened a number of times. Months in a row sometimes; sometimes half a year of nothing. Right after the May holidays - I remember that one too. Always late afternoon, always alone, and always it said the password I believed, at that moment, was the current one. And afterward, when I checked, it had always changed a little while before. The writing in the corner always looked like my mother’s hand. But my mother, much later, said she only remembers deciding on a new password once or twice at the very start.

(On the winter the order was different)

Just once, it went the other way around. December, before Christmas. The one who came said a word nobody had taught me. Tsukushi. Out of season, too, and I heard it as, they’ve got the password wrong. Then the year turned, and at the dinner table in March, my mother said, let’s make it tsukushi - it’s spring outside now. I couldn’t say anything. I just watched it get written into the corner of the notebook.

(On the countermeasure)

That’s when it started, my deciding not to learn the passwords I was taught. A word I don’t know is a word the voice outside can’t say either - a child’s logic, but there it was. In the months I kept myself from learning it, it never came once. The school year changed, my parents went over the rules with me again, and I learned the password again. At the end of that spring, it came back.

(On after the rule ended)

Once I started junior high, I’d outgrown passwords for staying home alone, and the rule just faded out on its own. When the callers stopped, I can’t say exactly. What I remember is the count. A voice saying the password and going away - I heard that six times in all. All six times, I didn’t open the door. …It never once felt like the someone outside had been wrong, you know. Wrong is a strange way to put it, but I was the one who was always one behind. What that means, even now, I can’t quite think through.

(On the last password)

I remember it, even now. It’s been nearly twenty years since I was taught it, and not once has it been said from outside the door. What it is - I’ll leave that unsaid.