Yakuza Moon : Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter by Tendo Shoko

Author:Tendo, Shoko [Tendo, Shoko]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter TWO

CHEAP THRILLS

Around the same time I finally graduated from elementary school, my older sister Maki began to cut school and became a yanki, one of those wild kids who bleach their hair and race around in illegal hot rods or on motorcycles without mufflers. She dressed in flashy clothes and looked way older than a middle school student. Of course, I thought she was totally cool. But this hero-worship was about to turn my life upside down.

It was the spring before I started middle school. Late one night, I happened to catch Maki as she was about to sneak out of the house. Afraid that I might rat her out, she asked me if I wanted to come along. I felt guilty when I thought of Mom, who was already worried sick about Maki’s behavior. I knew it’d be hard on her if another of her daughters became a yanki too. But I was dying to find out what Maki was up to.

Maki used her artistic talent to swiftly transform me from a twelve-year-old girl into a precocious teenager, plastering my face with thick makeup and dressing me up in some of her loudest clothes. I felt like a real yanki as we got into the taxi and headed downtown. Outside the taxi window, the streets were jammed with garishly painted hot rods, and gangs of yanki kids hung out on every street corner. It just wasn’t the same place as in the daytime—night had turned the city into a yanki paradise, lit by tacky neon lights. The atmosphere buzzed with excitement.

Maki paid the fare and the taxi door opened. Frigid night air flooded in around our feet. Trying to shake off the chill, we hurried as fast as our high-heeled shoes would take us toward a sign that said Minami Disco. “If anyone asks how old you are, say you’re eighteen,” warned Maki, before we got into the elevator. By the entrance, there was a large sign that read OVER 18 ONLY. I began to panic. I didn’t look eighteen. There was no way I’d get in.

Maki rolled her eyes at me, and pushed me through the door. She held out the entrance fee in a very womanly hand tipped with red-painted nails. Getting in was so easy it was a total anticlimax.

I stepped onto the dimly lit dance floor and was almost knocked off my feet by a huge wave of sound. The bass rhythm of Earth, Wind and Fire’s Boogie Wonderland felt like a rumbling from the earth that vibrated up through my feet and spread through my whole body. Looking around, I realized the sign at the door should have read YANKIS ONLY. Although it was early spring, the room was as hot and steamy as if it was the middle of summer. In bizarre contrast to the heat and the noise and the heaving crowd of people dancing like demented maniacs, a mirror ball turned slowly overhead, casting beautiful rainbow lights over the scene.

As

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