The Kitchen God

Hiromi Kawakami
translated by Lawrence Rogers

It was almost impossible to chip off parts of the kitchen wall with my fingernails, so I pushed against it as hard as I could with the flat of my fingers. A piece of the crumbly wall I call plaster broke off. I don’t really know what the word “plaster” means, but I like the sound of it. It rolls off the tongue easily somehow, so that’s what I call it.

I put the plaster in my mouth.

I chewed it up and swallowed it.

Once the wall starts breaking off, the rest is easy. I ate a lot of pieces, one after the other. I heard a voice coming from under the refrigerator.

“You shouldn’t be eating that stuff!”

It was the voice of the kitchen god. It’s small, has three faces, and is always in a dark place in the kitchen. The first time I saw the kitchen god I let out a scream. My mother scolded me. It was before I’d started going to school. My mother was younger than I am now.

“You must never be afraid of it or treat it coldly.”

I don’t know whether having such a god in your kitchen is common or not. My mother didn’t try to keep me from talking about it or anything, but I never gave a hint of its existence to either Ayaka from next door or my cousin, Sho.

I still haven’t talked to anyone about it now that I’m an adult. The kitchen god showed up in my kitchen only a little while after I got married; we were living in housing my husband’s company provided. This kitchen god had a different face, voice, and way of talking from the one in my house when I was young.

I phoned my mother.

“It’s here.”

“You have to say, ‘The god is here,’” she scolded me.

“It’s everywhere, isn’t it?”

“The god is everywhere.”

“The god is everywhere, isn’t it?”

“That’s because,” my mother said softly, “your heart’s in the right place.”

“My heart?”

“The kitchen god only stays in the kitchens of women whose hearts are in the right place.”

Apparently satisfied, my mother hung up.

I have doubts about my heart. I had just that morning stolen a package of plum gum and an extra large bucket of miso-flavored instant noodles from the convenience store in front of the train station. I’d started shoplifting about the time I began middle school, so I’m an old hand at it. It wasn’t easy to take the extra large bucket of noodles, since they make that dry rustling sound and are bulky in the bargain.

I’m always depressed after I’ve taken something. I’m not depressed because I’ve stolen something again. And I’m not depressed because the excitement of shoplifting is gone. Nor am I depressed because I couldn’t steal anything of value. It’s just that I’m depressed somehow.

I got on my bicycle and came back to the company housing. Co-op plastic boxes were folded and placed under the stairs at the middle of the building. I’m also a member of the co-operative. They make deliveries every Thursday. People notice that I’m always asking only for the tiniest amount: a bag of the co-op’s cupcake mix or a bottle of its strawberry jam. Someone told me I can indulge in such elegance because I have no children. She told me how, when her kids were in kindergarten, she would wobble along on her bicycle, a child on the front and one on the back, a bulging supermarket bag and five boxes of tissues in the basket at the front of the bicycle. I nodded.

“Uh-huh.”

We all call each other “Missus.” All the “Missuses” have smooth skin and heavy arms. They put their goods in the co-op’s eco-friendly bags and climbed their respective staircases, and I put the co-op’s tomato ketchup and mini-donuts in my tote bag and climbed slowly up the stairs that go to the fifth floor.

“All you got was sweet stuff!” the kitchen god snorted when I went to the kitchen and showed it the delivery.

I like sweet things, but I like wall mud more. I heated up some water to pour over the instant noodles I’d stolen that morning. Gnawing wall mud doesn’t fill my stomach. I finished off the Extra Large, broth included, and immediately began chewing six sticks of the plum gum, then emptied a bag of co-op cookie sticks and clasped my hands in reverence to the kitchen god. My mother raised me to offer obeisance to the kitchen god morning, noon, and night. It growled under the refrigerator. Then it fell silent....

Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. She won the Akutagawa prize in 1996 and the Tanizaki prize in 2001. Her most recent novel is The Loves and Adventures of Nishino Yukihiko. This story appeared in the literary magazine Bungakkai in 2000. Lawrence Rogers (ZYZZYVA 10) teaches Japanese language and literature at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His most recent book, Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll (University of California Press), was awarded this year’s translation prize by Columbia’s Donald Keene Center for Japanese Culture. E-mail: rogers@hawaii.edu