Cries That Did Not Reach — Children Turned Away at the Doors of Help (Part 1)

My father’s violence could begin at any moment. The instant his mood soured while watching TV, he would suddenly kick a chair toward me. If I cried, he hit me harder. So I learned to stand expressionless, even while being hit.

By the time I was in middle school, the violence had become daily. There were mornings I went to school after being hit in the kitchen.

I called the emergency police line, 110, many times. In a shaking voice I would say, “My father is hitting me.” The police came. But after exchanging a word or two with my father, they would turn to me and say, “Your dad’s tired. Don’t go making him angry.” Then they would leave, just like that. I went to the Child Guidance Center many times, too.

The case worker opened a file and explained, “He hasn’t really hurt you that badly, has he?” “And our temporary shelter is full — we can’t really make room for you.”

It went on like that until I finished high school. Later, this person wrote, “I kept being betrayed — by the police and by the Child Guidance Center alike.”

My mother ignored me, day after day. The night I had a nightmare and called for her, she turned her back to me. In front of all my relatives, she would belittle me — “There’s not a thing cute about this child.” Nothing I did was ever praised.

One day when I was eight, I couldn’t take it anymore. I went, alone, to the Child Guidance Center in my neighborhood. I had looked up the location ahead of time. I stood at the front desk, trembling, and said, “I don’t want to be at home.”

The worker looked into my face for a long time, thought for a while, and then said, “It’s because you aren’t cute that no one loves you. Be cuter, so your father will love you.”

She was still looking at my cheek as she said it again — “Be cuter.” Then she sent me home.

On days when my mother’s mood was bad, no food came out. Sometimes that went on for three days. I would get so hungry I’d try to find something in the kitchen, and my mother would shriek at me in a high voice. I was sent to school in thin clothes, even in winter.

A neighbor noticed and called the Child Guidance Center. The same neighbor told me I should go in person, so I did.

I told the worker what was happening. She took notes on a piece of paper, thought for a while, and said, “I’m sorry, but there are times when there’s nothing we can do, either.”

There was no malice in it. But it came across as: “We can’t help you.” That night, when I got home, there was no food again.

You could never read my mother. On days I got a poor test score, she used that as a reason to press a lit cigarette against my arm. During long school breaks, there were stretches when I went days without enough food.

Starting in the upper grades of elementary school, I began going to the Child Guidance Center on my own. I had found the location myself. The first time I asked, “Can I go into a facility?” the worker said, “It’s not that simple.”

The answers I received over time were similar — “Talk it through with your father.” On the day I told them I hadn’t eaten for days, the worker looked me over and said, “You don’t seem to be losing weight.” Once a worker said, sounding tired, “When you come in this many times, the paperwork on our end gets to be a lot, you know.”

In the end, they always asked, “So — what do you want to do?” I was never told of anywhere else I could go. So I had no choice but to say, “I’ll go home.”

Every visit got back to my parents. The night I came home, I was blamed again. After a few times, I started saying to the worker, “It’s all right now.”

My mother was angry. In her hand was a metal rod from a doorway curtain rack — its tip jagged and pointed. She thrust it toward my face. I dodged at the last second. But a sharp pain shot through the corner of my eye.

I ran out of the house and into the nearest police box (交番, a small neighborhood police station). The moment I said, “My mother did this to me,” the officer’s manner changed.

“When a parent does something to their child, the police can’t intervene — that’s a civil matter,” he said. If the injury wasn’t too serious, the parent could claim it was discipline, and the police couldn’t handle it.

I was taken to the police station. An officer who looked close to retirement studied my face and said, “You can’t be doing well at school, can you.”

Late at night my father came to pick me up. After we got home, he said only “Don’t make your mother angry,” and ordered me to bathe and go to bed.

One night during middle school, my mother drove the car to a deserted harbor. With the engine still running, she said, “Let’s die together. I’m worn out trying to live with you.”

Before she could press the accelerator, I opened the door and jumped out. I had no shoes on. I ran barefoot to the nearest police box.

“My mother is going to kill me,” I said. I couldn’t stop shaking. They took me to the police station in a patrol car. But the police didn’t protect me.

After a while, my mother — the same one who had just said we should die together — came to pick me up. With her next to me, I was taken home, just like that. She smelled of alcohol, and she went on drinking after we got back.

My father sexually abused me nearly every night. Once he had checked that my mother was asleep, he would slip into my futon, cover my mouth, and touch me all over. If I made a sound, he threatened that my little brother in the next room would wake up.

One day my father was away on a business trip, and I thought — today is the only chance. I ran to the police. Shaking, I forced myself to explain.

The officer thought for a while and then said, “Listen. If we accept what you’re telling us, your father will lose his job. Your whole family won’t be able to make it. For your family’s sake, do you think you could endure this a little longer? If you can hold on, everyone can keep their peace.”

I was sent home. For years and years, those words wouldn’t leave my head.

My father was obsessed with my grades. When I didn’t get the marks he wanted, he would yell for hours and sometimes hit me. The winter before my entrance exam, I talked back to him, and he turned a kitchen knife on me. I dodged, and got only a shallow cut.

A neighbor saw the blood and called it in. I was taken to a temporary shelter (一時保護所, a short-term protective facility run by the Child Guidance Center). In a windowless room, I spent days staring at the ceiling. Even to use the bathroom, I had to call a staff member, and I would wait a long time before they came.

The Child Guidance Center worker looked at the shallowness of the cut and said, “If he had really meant it, it wouldn’t have ended like this.” Then she added, “You have an important entrance exam coming up. You should go home and study.”

The police didn’t listen properly either. From the start they spoke as if they had already decided, and ended up raising their voice at me.

In a few days, I was sent home. The time at the shelter felt as if I were the one being punished. After I came back, my father’s attacks got even worse.

From the time I was in fifth grade, my father started coming into my futon at night. He pinned my hands and feet down, touched my chest, and said, “You’re growing up.” If I made a sound, he threatened that my little brother in the next room would wake up.

The lunch I brought to school was a single bag of cheap rice crackers. My mother didn’t have it in her to make me a real lunch.

During lunch break, my teacher saw it and said, in a voice loud enough for the whole classroom — “Hey, this isn’t snack time.” The classroom snickered.

The next day, the classroom became unbearable, and I started spending my days in the nurse’s room. The school nurse only ever asked me, “Are you hungry?” and gave me a small yogurt. Then she would say, “If you try a little harder, you’ll be able to come back to your classroom.”

About my father, I couldn’t tell anyone.

My father was obsessed with my education. Even when I got 100 on a test, he said, “Don’t get excited over a test that easy.” If I got 90, two or more hours of verbal abuse followed. He kicked my chair so I fell to the floor, and kicked me again where I lay.

In my third year of high school, one day, I couldn’t take the abuse anymore and went to my homeroom teacher.

The teacher was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t really know what to do either. I guess I’ll have to talk to your father.”

By that evening, the teacher had reached out to my father. At home that night, the beating was worse than ever.

On nights when my mother was in a bad mood, I was made to kneel in the hallway. The floor was cold, and her cursing went on past midnight. “Because of you—” “If you weren’t here—” Trembling, I pressed my forehead to the floor in apology. The next day, at school, I behaved as if nothing had happened.

When I started high school, I worked up the courage to email a teacher I had been taking lessons from for years — an after-school class I’d attended since I was small. “Something is happening at home,” I wrote. “I’d like someone to hear it.”

No reply came. I waited a week. Two weeks. Nothing.

Next, I went to the advisor of the club I was in. The advisor listened for a while, then said, “You’re old enough to work. If you hate home that much, just leave.”

As a final attempt, I ran to the police. The officer’s answer was this: “Speaking badly about your parents — that isn’t right.”

Later, this person wrote, “All I could do was give up on a society where no one would help.”

At home, no matter what I did, my parents shot it down. I was being bullied at school too, and my parents didn’t care.

One day, in middle school, there was a parent–teacher conference, with me there too. I had been hoping that the homeroom teacher, at least, might take my side.

But in front of my parents, the teacher said about me, “This child doesn’t really have anything she’s particularly good at.” My mother laughed and said, “That’s right — at home, she’s no help at all.” The teacher nodded along: “Right, I can imagine.”

For the whole meeting, the two of them sat on either side of me, counting up my shortcomings. The one who was supposed to protect me had sided with my parents.

After that, no matter what trouble I had at school, the thought of going to a teacher never crossed my mind again.

Even after I finished high school, I couldn’t escape my father. At night I couldn’t sleep — I was afraid of the sound of his footsteps. During the day, I couldn’t work.

One night when I was 19, I was walking unsteadily through the streets. It was raining. I couldn’t stay standing anymore, and I stepped into a police box. “Please help me,” I said. The officer looked at me and said, “What are you doing out here at this hour? Go to school.”

A few days later, I went to the city’s welfare counter (福祉課, the municipal welfare desk). When I said, “I can’t work,” the worker’s face hardened and she scolded me — “Why aren’t you working? You’re young.”

She didn’t ask for the specific circumstances. She handed me a flyer for a job placement office far from where I lived, and sent me home.

In her twenties, one woman finally worked up the courage to tell her mother something she had never been able to say.

“When I was in elementary school, at night, Dad would come into my room. He touched me, and told me not to tell anyone. Did you really not notice anything?”

Her mother did not stop washing the dishes. After a short silence she said, “You’re thinking too much. There’s no way he would do something like that!”

Then, as though nothing had happened, she changed the subject.

It had taken years to bring herself to say it. The whole confession was erased with a single sentence.

In middle school, while my father’s violence continued, I went to stay with my grandparents. My father’s mother, at first, welcomed me kindly.

But after about a week, my grandparents’ attitude changed. “How long do you plan to be here?” “Your parents have their reasons too.”

Eventually my grandfather said, “You’re the one who walked out on your parents. From here on, live on your own.”

When I told them I had no home to go back to, they didn’t budge. I packed my things and was pushed out the door.

My parents turned a knife on me many times. On nights my father came home drunk, on nights my mother was beaten by him, for some reason the blade was turned on me. “Because of you—” “If you weren’t here—” my father would shout, taking a knife from the kitchen.

Terrified, I ran to a relative’s house in the middle of the night. I rang my aunt’s doorbell. She looked at my face and stood there in silence for a while.

Then she said, “Don’t bring shame on your parents.”

The door closed. I had no choice but to go home.

After I started middle school, there came a stretch when no one in class would speak to me. Behind my back they called me “Germ.” At home, when I spoke to my mother she would nod without meeting my eyes. I didn’t feel I had a place — not at school, not at home.

One evening, at dinner, I made myself tell them. That no one at school spoke to me. That at home too, I felt I had been written out of existence.

Without stopping her chopsticks, my mother said, “Everyone goes through a phase like that.”

My father didn’t lift his face from his phone. The conversation drifted away, and ended.

I got up from the table without a word. After that, at home or anywhere else, I stopped saying what I really felt.

One morning in sixth grade, my mother hit me with a laundry pole, and red-purple bruises came up on my arms and across my neck. Even long sleeves couldn’t hide them.

That day, a delivery driver came to the door. He noticed my arm and stopped. “…Is that — are you all right?” he asked, lowering his voice.

My mother came out from the back, pulled my shoulder behind hers, and said with a smile, “She’s a clumsy one — falls all the time. Sorry about that.” Then she closed the door.

The driver didn’t press it, and left. Someone had noticed me. Still, nothing changed.

If I said it hurt, it would only get worse. So before long, I couldn’t even say “it hurts.”