11.19.05
shiver
When I open my eyes I see his ear against my stomach, listening for the faint rustling inside.
�Our boy is moving,� he tells me and smiles his toothy grin. Inside me, our baby struggles in indignation, her small fists flexing.
The day I decided, we�d met on the street in Harajuku after school, our little cell phones flashing so that we could find each other in the crowd, which thronged around us in its bright colours. The girls here wore Victorian gowns instead of our pleated skirts, torn fishnets instead of our baggy socks and chatted on the curb, watching people walk by. They sold their bodies to the fashion companies for advertisement. They were paid to sit around and make people stare. We went to evening classes instead, Saturday cram courses every weekend, out backs bent under the weight of our cheerful backpacks.
�I decided to sell two pairs of panties to those vending machine men yesterday.� Kyokyo was looking past us as she said this, fingering the buckles on her new purse, which shined in the sunlight.
�They pay better for lace panties you know, but you have to be careful, or you�ll get an infection,� someone said and then yelled, �If you get an infection, its better for business!� We imagined old men buying these things from the vending machines, taking their prizes home in secret to bask in their aroma. We wondered, could they tell who you were? Would your scent, like wine, give you away?
We sat on the curb to eat and opened our lacquered bento boxes over our knees, discreetly eying each other�s laps to see what had made the best nigri, who had the best rice balls.
�Yesterday, my sugar daddy promised me a shopping spree in the diamond district.�
They cooed over Yoko and her polished fingernails, her sophisticated perfumes. Every week she dropped little glimpses of her other life, like fish, into their waiting mouths. They looked to me then, wondering what I would say to raise the stakes between us, but
I was looking ahead of them. My mind had wandered to the sea of black pushing itself back and forth across the crosswalk. A little song played each time the lights changed, a children�s song from the country played with tinkling piano notes. The man would turn green and the song would float over the suit-clad bodies, dancing in their ears as they passed. I imagined myself dancing too, in a long green dress over the heads of these men and laughing.
�I�m marrying him,� I said, and bit into a piece of sushi, licking my chopsticks free of soy. How disgusting of me.
Kenshin said he saw me first on one of those days, walking through Shibuya with my hair pulled back from my temples in a pale ribbon. He took a picture of me on his cell phone, but all that appeared was a dark blur. He said He wanted to scare me so that he could see my eyes wide open. He wanted to smell the scent of my skin directly after a bath. He wanted to make me scream and to see my lips spread into a perfect red �O.�
We took walks in the park together as night fell, and as it floated around us he would kiss each of my fingertips, pausing every so often to look at me. As we left he would hand me a �present� with his eyes averted and his cheeks beginning to redden in the dark from embarrassment.
I imagined that they would form clouds in the air with their heat, puffs of steam trailing from his face as he mouthed goodbye to me, leaving behind images of phoenix to hover in the night.
Once, he took me to a restaurant, pretending to be my father. He made me rub his thigh as we waited for our food to be served and he told me about his work, about how he needed a new secretary and thought that everything was too busy in his office. I seemed, he said, to hover on the edges of the rest of his life, never touching it. He liked that.
I murmur to Yuri that she should be calm and I feel her relax a bit inside of me. Kenshin mistakes my words for an invitation and kisses me with those lips of his that, at times, are like thin slits in his face. He doesn�t close his eyes, but only stares. I�ve learnt to stare back, but I can only see myself reflected in his dark of his eyes.
The contractions are coming more and more frequently now. The midwife comes three times a day to check on me and I find myself too lazy to go through the ordeal of the kimono; the hour of standing while the women poke and pull at me, moulding my body into the shape of a lady. Tightness has replaced the ease of my school clothes and my loping steps have become a slow shuffle. Now I�ve even stopped the ordeal of the makeup and I only paint my lips red so that, like now, he can taste it on his lips as he pulls away from me.
�When is your egg going to crack?� he asks me as he changes from his suit into a kimono.
�Soon,� I tell him.
He still wears his fundoshi underneath his clothes, the bright red thong only appearing after his pants slide from his hips. Above it, his skin is pocked with a constellation of stars, sometimes still fresh and bandaged with cloth to keep them from bleeding. A suit covers everything except your face and your hands.
There are no pictures of me in his wallet. There are no toys on his desk at work. He wears a plain gold band on his left ring finger.
In the early days, he would spank me constantly. I was still learning how to walk, fluttering, in my geta and if I tripped, or if my obi came undone he would come and undress me. He would bend me over his knee, slapping until my skin mottled all over and became a dark landscape of broken blood vessels. Eventually I became used to the jolt of his hand smacking my skin in rhythm with his hot breath pouring over me as he gasped too.
I remembered the lashings I used to get when I was younger, but those were different from Kenshin's. Those would eventually fade into an annoying, dull, pain as I waited for the ordeal to be over. I could feel every one of Kenshin's slaps, every finger as it pressed into my flesh. I could feel the bruise blooming.
�When did you last eat?� I tell him I don�t remember and his lips thin.
�Have you been lying here all day?� I say yes and I can see his face flushing.
He tells the maids to make me soup and he dresses me himself, pulling my obi so tight that I can barely breathe. We walk out into the garden, and above us, the leaves look as sharp as knives about to drop. Kenshin drapes a coat over me and I lay in his lap watching the water smooth the stones in its downward path. Somewhere I can hear the hollow gong of bamboo hitting stone like a comforting chant.
After those first few dates, Kenshin began to blindfold me, leaving me alone in a room and telling me not to move until he came back. He wouldn�t come back for hours. Sometimes he would bind me; at first only my wrists but then my feet and he even bound them together so that I would rest with my stomach to the floor, defenceless. I couldn�t tell he was doing but could only hear the soft padding of his feet around me and every now an again a kiss or a soft touch. I remember I was scared. I thought to myself, maybe he�s going to rape me, what will I do then?
Suddenly, fashion had a purpose for me and the girls noticed this too, wondering what had brought on such a spurt of creativity. There was a reason now to wear my baggy socks, a reason to wear long sleeved shirts and makeup. When I went home I would stand I front of the mirror and take off each piece of clothing, staring as the marks would appear against the skin in my reflection. I touched them and winced.
The pain rolls over me in waves and I struggle to breathe, clutching the cushion below me. It feels like the life is flowing out of my body, trying to force itself out between my legs but it can�t. The midwife watches me, squeezing my hand and trying to look sympathetic. I don�t make a noise. My lips harden into two lines and I hold in a scream.
She tells me that the baby will come soon, and goes into the other room to ask Kenshin if he will take me to a doctor to have it. I hear his voice raising and the screen slides open again but instead of the midwife it is Kenshin with a damp cloth that he holds with wooden tongs. He places it on my brow. He doesn�t ask how I am but the pain subsides to a dull throb anyway.
Kenshin leaves me for an emergency, pulling on his suit and covering his skin in black linen. As he leaves, the leaves swirl in the air, rushing towards him like daggers. He shields his face with his hands. I put on my geta and walk outside, leaning forward on their slanted stilts. I can hear them clacking with each step on the wooden floor but as I step onto the crisp grass I only hear a soft crunch. Kenshin designed the garden himself; he chose the land, peering at it from a distance with his eyes half closed. He saw the reflection large pond and he wanted to place large circular stepping stones in the midst of it, level with the water so that you could barely see them. I fell in once before, playing on them, and he had to fish me out because the shock had stunned me.
The trees are willow and one cherry blossom tree that blossoms as if with an audience every year, and slowly drops its petals, carpeting the ground and allowing them to swirl in the movement of the water. I take off my geta and the leaves stick to the bottoms of my soft feet, and I relish for a bit in the illicit feeling of it. I can see a monk walking by on the path between the trees, the rings on his cane chiming the universal Om. His wide brimmed casa flops up and down with every step and he holds a bell in his hands as he walks.
Once when I was younger I saw such a monk and the children all gathered around him, tugging at his saffron stained robes. He rang his bell and I could feel the clear tone passing through me. In his other hand he rubbed his mala between his finger, mouthing words as he passed over each bead.
My mother told me once that the Buddha had found 108 griefs and a way to overcome each of them, one by one. When the monks pray they count each grief with their mala, trying to do the same. We tried once to find them all, listing each of our annoyances on a ruled sheet of paper, but by the time we�d filled two sheets we couldn�t think of any more. I think fifty was the most we ever found. We had not yet known enough grief to overcome them all.
The monk smiles and rings his bell once, and the sound reverberates in golden tones until I can feel Yuri�s body stir within me. When he leaves, the air is still and peaceful again. I tell Yuri not to be afraid and she calms herself, resting within me.
Kenshin is inside and I can see his neck bending to watch carefully as he writes. His calligraphy spreads easily across the page in it bright red letters, the script is small and I have to come up close to read it. From behind him, I run my fingers across the edges, barely smearing the drying ink and he catches my fingers in his hands, his eyes slowly taking me in and his lips thinning.
The day that I told my mother I was leaving I had walked home from school in the rain. It had been a warm day, but as it lengthened it cooled itself and became darker. The rain clouds began to collect in the corners of the sky till, too crowded there, they poured themselves over the greying streets of the city, flooding them with tiny rivers. I had my umbrella with me, but as I stepped out into the cold rain it hit my face let it roll down my cheeks and drip, softly, from my eyelashes. The rain began to soak through the roots of my hair and my hands began to burn as they gradually lost feeling to the caress of the beads of rain flowing down from my shoulders.
I tried to call mom on the way there; the green screen glowing happily as the water pooled on its surface. I dialled slowly, my fingers nearly refusing to move now, but there was no answer. With the dial tone droning in my ears, I began to wonder if it was only in my mind that the lampposts flickered.
In the white walls of my room the feeling gradually returned to my fingers and I sat for a while, looking at myself in the mirror and soaking in the feeling of my clothes, wet against me. Now I noticed that my bra was wet, that my toes were burning, and I from there I could no longer hear the rush of the water falling down around me. I peeled out of my wet clothes and lay back in my bed, wondering when the last time was that I�d felt so cold.
As I wrote the note, the rain from my hair kept dripping on to the page and blotching the ink. I told her I was going to Kyoto, that id see her when she got back from work, and I weighted the paper with a cup of tea. In the morning the note was gone, the cup empty, and her keys were missing from their hook. In the other room, the television crackled with snow.
We took the bullet train to Kyoto. I packed my books and my skirts into my book bag and Kenshin carried it for me to the train station, the bright blue strange against his suit. Beside me, he read and I watched the tall buildings fall away as we moved further south. As we neared the green trees started to envelop us in their arms and I could see the occasional Shinto shrine standing tall in the distance, bright orange red.
We had no ceremony. Neither of our parents quite approved and we exchanged rings alone in our new home, christening the shining floorboards in secret before Kenshin hired his staff of housekeepers. Those were the last days I wore my uniform for him.
Now he drags his brush along my skin and it tickles as he writes each word on my body. Lips, he writes, first finger, second finger, and he continues in his tiny script, marking each part with its name. Thigh, cheek, sole, breast, stomach, and he pours the ink onto my navel and it slips down my belly, pooling below me on the floor. When he holds me, the ink stains his kimono but he doesn�t stop. I hear the commotion of dinner being made in the next room.
I remember I tried once, with a boy. We were at a friend�s party and as the music blared he led me to one of the empty rooms in the house. He left behind the smell of alcohol and the memory of the faces he made as he bobbed up and down over me. I couldn�t restrain my laughter.
The midwife tells me things like, �have courage� and watches calmly as I feel my body torn apart from inside me. We�ve been sitting here since for hours in silence, watching each other. She tells me that it will come soon, as she�s told me each time before when it begins to seem too much and the contraction grows, as if in reaction to her words. My eyes lull back in my head and, for a moment, I hear the clear gold tone of a bell ringing in my ears.
Yuri cries as the midwife takes her. She hands her to me and Yuri opens her eyes, the red in her face fading as she learns to take her first meal. She gazes at Kenshin as he bends over my shoulder, and her eyes are wide and clear. She stops sucking and stares, mouth open, in final recognition of her father.
He smiles.
shi-ou-sama at
