RECORDING

Chapter Twenty-Six

Big Mouth Strikes Again

Tainaka Kanako sat up unusually late that Friday night. She was waiting for Ritsu, her daughter and the elder of her two kids, to come home. She had told Kanako and Shoutaro, the father, that she would be out past dinner at an old friend's place. And the old woman knew it was true: if Ritsu had been lying, she would have used that sing-song voice she reserved for telling lies. A voice not unlike the one she used when tearing herself away from Mio — her lips away from Mio's — a week and a half ago.

I was about to lock up the house and go to bed, Kanako remembered, setting aside her Stephen King book, and I opened the door to let Ritsu in, so she wouldn't get locked out, and I found…She shuddered.

It wasn't like Kanako abhorred homosexuality. In all honesty, she never thought much about it. But now that she knew her daughter was a lesbian — "Are you saying my daughter's a lesbian?" she remembered Shoutaro yelling at that psychology teacher — she had been thinking about it a lot. She thought homosexuality was unusual — but it was unusual in the sense of: if Kanako was, say, standing in a garage with four Honda Civics and one Honda Odyssey. Good cars all, but one was different.

It was sort of like a year ago when Shoutaro was clearing off the tatami — for it had a tendency to get cluttered — and he came upon a text book and a homework paper for an Advanced Placement humanities class. Who, he had wondered, was in humanities? The name scrawled in chicken scratch along the top answered his question. It seemed given the choice between Common Placement intro to humanities and Advanced Placement humanities, their son Satoshi had plumped for the latter. There were parents who had orgasms over achievements like this, but Kanako and Shoutaro were not those parents. To each his own, they said. Choose your own path, they said. Just…

Why don't they tell us?

Kanako was not a sick woman. She was not so desperate to know everything about her kids that she would troll Facebook or MySpace to make sure she knew everything. But, for God's sake, she was their mother. Couldn't they trust her?

She had decided tonight she would talk with Ritsu when she got home. She didn't know what to say, but the air needed to be cleared. She was tired of skirting this, avoiding this much-needed conversation as if she and Ritsu were strangers. At the very least, I have to tell her I'm okay with this.

It was just…wow. Mio.

There was the shocker. Coming outside to find Ritsu kissing a girl would have hit Kanako a lot less hard if that girl had not been Mio. She sought Mio-chan out right from the first day of first grade. They were six years old! How sharp is her gaydar, anyway?

From the foyer echoed the tell-tale ka-chak! The scuffling of someone removing her shoes, and a minute later a beleaguered Ritsu slumped into the living room, on her way to her bedroom. The way she wore her uniform gave her a scraggly appearance, which was made even more scraggly by her tiredness. She hardly acknowledged Kanako — the weird avoidance thing they had been doing taught the drummer to do so — as she trundled by, slit-eyed and hunched like some tired old snort.

"Ritsu," Kanako called before she could disappear into the dark recesses of the hallway.

The brunette lurched to a stop, back straight with surprise. For the first time her mother was actually acknowledging her. And at one in the morning Ritsu doubted she had stopped her for some mundane reason, like asking her to clean her room. And Mom's never up this late. Did she wait for me? Slowly, she turned to face Kanako, looking like the sleepy Holly Golightly facing Paul Varjak at her apartment door in the beginning of Breakfast At Tiffany's.

"If I could, um, have a word with you…"

This was Kanako's indirect way of saying, I have a lot to say, so you'd better sit on that couch there. Nodding, Ritsu threw herself down in all her snort glory.

Kanako stared downward, eyebrows furrowed, the way Ritsu looked when she was genuinely troubled. Ritsu looked quite a bit like Kanako, except for the hair color, and Satoshi was her spitting image. She was of average height with a form that was made voluptuous by two close-succession pregnancies and a prolonged bout of breastfeeding with her firstborn. Her hair was dark and fell to her shoulders, her eyes an aurulent hazel.

"When I walked in on you…er, I guess it was rather out on you…uh, you know…" She could feel her head pounding, her ears and wrists, and she imagined Ritsu blushing as well, probably wishing she didn't have to have this conversation. I don't want to have it either, okay? "I think we were both pretty embarrassed by it…"

Embarrassed, yes, Kanako realized. It was embarrassing, wasn't it? It was the same as if, say, she had walked in on Ritsu undressing. Intruding on a private moment, if you will.

"Look. All I want to say is that I'm fine with it. Don't feel like you, you know, have to hide it or anything. If you have problems or anything, you can come to me." Attempting a lame joke Kanako knew only a mom would tell — and partially despising herself for it — she added, "But you probably won't come across any problems. Girls are less confusing than boys, eh? Heheh…"

"Lycopene."

"What?" Kanako looked up to find Ritsu conked out where she sat on the couch, her head back and aside.

She's always been a sleeptalker, Kanako thought, arranging a throw blanket under her daughter's chin. But lycopene? Why is she dreaming about tomatoes?

She left the living room lights on when she went to bed, trusting that Ritsu would shut them off when she woke up.

"C'mon, Ritsu. Take it. It's right here."

It was April, 1992. The day was...Oh, who the hell knew? Not thirty-year-old Kanako, who had missed so much sleep the last few nights that days merged into oblivion and every waking moment bore the confused, detached qualities of a dream. As far as time went, the only thing she knew — and she knew it painfully well — was that it was three o'clock in the morning. Three o'clock in the fucking morning, and Ritsu still refused to take the cooling bottle of warm formula Kanako was waving in her plum-colored face.

Another thing Tainaka Kanako, made a mother only eight months ago, was aware of was the squealing. The only word she could give for what her daughter did when she was hungry was not screaming, but squealing — the sort that also comes from dragging a metal point across glass. When presented with the cold, hard bottle instead of her mother's warm, soft breast Ritsu's initial cry had been so passionate that at first she made no sound. Then...then came the squeal.

This hardly one-year-old meatloaf who was destroying a thirty-year-old woman's sanity sat in her high chair in yellow footed pajamas. Her face was turning from crimson to purple in her agitation, the creases from her exaggerated expression white in contrast. From behind chubby, raised cheeks peeked shiny, bright, tearful hazel eyes. Her brown hair grew in downy fluffs about these eyes and around her tiny ears.

"Ritsu," Kanako groaned, tapping her forehead against the high chair's edge. "You can't get food from me forever. You gotta be a big girl."

Big girl. There was a compliment that turned into an insult after the girl turns ten.

Why are you trying to reason with a baby? Kanako asked herself. Ever since this bottle ordeal sprang up she had been getting a lot of thoughts like that, as well as Remember how excited you were when you learned you were pregnant? or Remember how long you were in labor?

Kanako gently pointed the bottle closer to the infant's mouth. Ritsu reacted by turning her face away and thrusting small, mittenish hands out, warding. You'd think Mrs. Tainaka was proffering a glowing bottle of polonium.

How do you do this? How do you break it to a baby that there were realities she had to face, that she couldn't get what she wanted?

Usually at this point Kanako realized she was almost forcing this bottle at her terrified child. What is this, Mama? she imagined Ritsu's squeals translating to. I'm hungry! I'm hungry and you give me this? You're horrible! Afraid that continuing this way would traumatize her, Kanako would then give up the bottle and feed Ritsu herself once more. And that was what she did now.

"Fine," she growled, setting the bottle down on the counter. "I can see that you're determined to send me over the edge." She had been crouching before the high chair, so as not to intimidate Ritsu by offering the bottle from below, and now she stood up straight and hoisted her daughter out of it. Ritsu's glass-squeals intensified for an instant — reaching frequencies that were almost beyond Kanako's human scope — but then they slackened as she felt the familiar warmth of her mother. It was like a precursor to what she wanted, and the baby's cries paused, waiting.

Probably the obvious solution would be to hold the baby and give her the bottle, if softness and warmth were what she craved. But that wasn't it for Ritsu. She wanted the breast. She wanted her mother's food.

When Kanako raised her night shirt over her right breast, like magic her daughter's face paled back to its normal color and the tears vanished as if they had never been. There was no resistance this time; no turning her head away, mouth scrunched up in distaste; no warding little hands pushing this away. Oh, no. She went right for it. Why couldn't she go for the bottle in this same manner?

Kanako hated her breasts, which was ironic considering how in high school she had always wanted them to be bigger. If it was one thing that could turn a lady's honey-don'ts into honeydews, it was pregnancy. But like most things in life, they came with a price — a few prices, in fact. First, there was her posture: Kanako hated knowing from all the glances at the mirror that she looked like a gorilla — shoulders slumped, back hunched and painful (oh, so very painful, especially her upper back), and her ungainly pendulous breasts drooping over her now flabbier stomach. She had wanted a larger rack to look and feel sexier, and this neither looked nor felt sexy.

Then there were the breasts themselves, which Kanako now had to look at whilst Ritsu fed off one, her hazel eyes narrowed contentedly. They were horrid, frightening things that should have only been in movies based off Stephen King novels. They looked and felt like huge boulders; they probably weighed twenty pounds each and had all the softness and conformity of a tree trunk. The areolas were as pink as grapefruits and the size of silver dollars; the nipples distended, stinging, and hard enough to cut diamonds. A ghastly blue vein wove from the areola of her right breast to her armpit, its latticework tributaries spiderwebbing all across the boulder.

She had nightmares about these things. While she was pregnant, she had a nightmare about the baby kicking so hard that one of these things flew up at her face and broke her nose. How could Shoutaro get turned on by these?

Ah, yes. There was that, too.

Above all, she hated the way her husband ogled her. If it wasn't bad enough that she had her daughter constantly squealing for her breasts, then she had Shoutaro trying to proposition her for them. Before going to bed it was Kanako's wont to take off her bra before changing into her night shirt because, you know, it's uncomfortable to sleep in a bra. This whatever-night-it-was in April, 1992 she found Shoutaro staring at her, his gray eyes glazed, an erection stretching his boxers like a pitched tent. Kanako made it a point to glower at him in a way that said; We are NOT stemming the rose tonight. Understand?

She couldn't tell from his face if he understood. But he made no effort to mount her as she slipped under the covers, so that was alright.

Contrary to what one might think from reading the situation above, Kanako loved making love to Shoutaro. She loved what he did with his hips when he was on top, turning them so that he corkscrewed a bit inside her. She loved the fleshy clapping sound they made when he was thrusting hard and she was arching in response. But you just don't feel like making love when your breasts weigh twenty pounds each, your nipples are stinging, and at any given moment during the act you could spring a leak.

Her head touched the pillow, and Kanako was out. She slept so little ever since Ritsu was born, but when she did sleep she imagined her sleep patterns likened to her daughter's: able to withstand loud explosions. Kanako snoozed deeply , oblivious to everything. She didn't feel the bed shake as Shoutaro jerked off. She only woke up at 3 A.M. to Ritsu squealing.

And so, here we are.

Using her right arm to support her daughter, Kanako lifted her left hand and gently pulled it through Ritsu's downy brown hair, felt the peach-like softness of her skin. Ritsu closed her eyes in response. When she opened them, they were liquid gold orbs. One day you'll have to do this for your kid. It'll be 3 A.M. and you'll think about how long you were in labor.

Eighteen years later Kanako would not be able to fathom that it was Ritsu's childhood friend who might hold her hand if she was in labor.

Kanako hated her breasts and the fuss her husband and daughter made over them. But she did not hate Ritsu. Breastfeeding did have its upshots. She got to spend time with Ritsu. If her daughter felt like she was one with her mother during this, then Kanako supposed she felt this way, too.

Still...this had to stop.

Shoutaro appeared suddenly in the kitchen then, on his way to the bathroom. He wasn't as chubby back then, but he was still a big, burly guy. In 1992 he had a full head of hair: bronze-brown, shagging. Now after sleeping it stood up like a bird of paradise. His boxers flapped like sails under a barrelesque torso, his white T shirt pulling and shifting across his muscled back.

Kanako hunched her shoulders and looked down. She didn't want him ogling her while she fed their child.

If Shoutaro gave his lust for her breasts any consideration, it was brief. He trundled past, only thinking of emptying that tea he drank into the toilet. As he passed his wife and daughter he rumbled, "Isn't she too old for that?"

A/N

Each K-ON! character gets a backstory on her infancy/childhood which includes a bit on how their parents met and got along and stuff. Ritsu's comes first, then Yui's/Ui's, Jun's after that, then Mugi's, then Sawako's, then Mio's, and finally Azusa's. Satoshi's comes a bit with Mio's, and Nodoka's I'm saving for the sequel (there is a chapter that touches on it, hints at Nodoka's story for the sequel).