Koibumi

by Hildred Billings

  The front genkan area in her mother’s house was cluttered with foreign shoes. Aiko slipped out of hers and arranged them neatly next to a pair of flats as two bodies popped out of the living area.

  “Look who finally made it,” her older sister Saki said through clenched teeth. Tall with short, no-fuss hair, Saki was the type of woman Aiko used to consider a role model: the perfect housewife, with two sons to occupy each nipple. “Only an hour late.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aiko bowed to her sister and mother, who stood behind with a sullen countenance. “We had a guest at our house.”

  Saki hmphed and Junko muttered something to herself. Such was Aiko’s usual homecoming. They’re probably ignoring what “guest” means. She didn’t blame them, when “guest” usually meant extraneous lesbian sex partner. Her parents and siblings unanimously disapproved of Aiko and Reina’s relationship – although a few months before Junko had finally learned to accept it. While she didn’t celebrate it beyond keeping a picture of the married couple in the living area, she no longer constantly derided Aiko about it, either. Saki, on the other hand, still liked to get an occasional dig about Aiko “playing house” with another woman.

  Aiko followed her sister and mother into the living area, where one more woman sat among an explosion of colorful cloth and rattling toys. Eri, her oldest niece, folded baby clothes on her swelling stomach. Three months earlier she announced she was pregnant with her first child. When Aiko looked at her young, fresh-faced niece already head first in motherhood, it caused an ache in her own heart. I know how she did it. Aiko didn’t need a book to tell her.

  “So this is what you had in mind, huh?” Aiko dropped her purse and picked up the nearest onesie, a pink frock screaming the ‘70s. Good God, I think I wore this. “Getting rid of the last of the baby stuff?” Not that Aiko minded. She had been racking her brain recently trying to think of something to do for her niece.

  A pile of clothes tumbled to the floor, inciting Junko to kneel down. “This stuff has been sitting in the closet for decades now. I got rid of most of it with your siblings, but,” she looked at Aiko through slanting eyes, “this last batch was supposed to be for you.”

  Eri coughed; Saki full-out smirked at Aiko. “Isn’t it fortuitous that I didn’t take the last of the baby clothes for my sons?” Saki picked up another pink sweater – was it any wonder that it became Aiko’s favorite color? Apparently it’s all I wore. “We all thought you would have a baby eventually. But now it’s Eri-chan’s turn, and she’s having a little girl, so it all works out.”

  Nodding, Eri set aside her pile of accepted baby clothes. “Thank you for letting me take them, Auntie Aiko,” she said.

  “It’s my pleasure.” Aiko sank beside her. Years ago she had once played children’s games with Eri and helped her with her homework. Aiko pressed a hand against her cheek. I’ve got wrinkles forming… The plague of turning forty. Eri was born during Aiko’s teenage years, but she still felt a mountain’s age older than her niece. Was this hyper little girl really now a grown woman, sitting pregnant at the table and quietly going through baby clothes? Aiko fingered a blanket embroidered with marching ducks. What happened to her own life? I spent it with Reina. While her sisters and old friends passed the years raising children, Aiko encouraged her spouse’s sexual deviancy. I have more sex than any of them, but they’re the ones with something to show for it.

  “Auntie Aiko?” Eri smiled at her. “Would you like to feel the baby?”

  She snapped out of her rubbernecking daydream and smiled at her niece. “Oh, I would love to.” Her hand pressed against Eri’s rounded stomach. Gurgling tickled her fingertips, but she didn’t feel any limbs moving or hearts beating.

  “It’s due in October, right?” Aiko began to absentmindedly fold baby clothes too. As each onesie and tiny T-shirt passed through her hands, she imagined her own stomach swelling and bulging with life. In a perfect world, it would beat with the heart of both her and Reina’s love. “That’s a nice month to have a baby.”

  Eri sat aside more clothes. “These clothes will help out a lot. I’m surprised you never had any children.”

  She said it with a pleasant voice, but it made everyone stare at her all the same. Aiko’s heart stopped as Saki and Junko stared at Eri. No, a certain someone’s sexuality was no secret in the Takeuchi family. Doubtless Eri had heard it over the years, especially since she knew Reina from some family gatherings. So why would she think Aiko would have a baby? And then Junko frowned at her youngest daughter, stricken from the other grandchildren she would never have.

  Aiko recollected her bearings. “It wasn’t for a lack of want…it just never happened.”

  “Ai-chan would’ve been a good mother,” Junko said. “Such wasted potential.”

  No one said anything. The desire to change the subject clobbered Aiko like a ball falling from the sky.

  “Are we still doing a banquet for obon next month?” she asked with fake cheeriness. “If so, I’ll bring the pot stickers.”

  Junko plopped a pile of bonnets on the table. “We have a banquet every year. Why would this year be any different?”

  Aiko remained silent.

  “Everyone will be there, of course. Why? You don’t plan on bringing your…” Junko’s tongue tossed around her mouth. Although she had acknowledged that Aiko believed herself married, she still refused to call Reina her daughter-in-law or refer to her as a spouse. She spent so many years calling Reina a demon and she-man that the other words were probably foreign. “Your partner.” She spat it like a curse word.

  Beside Aiko, Eri jerked a little – not enough to disturb the air around her, but enough for her aunt to notice. “No,” she said. “She doesn’t come to our obon anymore.” Not since the year Aiko outed them as dirty lesbians to every auntie, uncle, and toddler in attendance. “She goes to the cemetery.”

  “Right, her father died.” According to Junko, that was probably the source of Reina’s deviancy.

  “And she’ll be visiting her mother.” What a lie! Reina almost never talked to her mother. Certainly not in the past few years. Sachiko had taken out her anger and frustration on her daughter when they still lived together, leaving Reina to feel no love toward the woman who gave birth to her. Aiko couldn’t remember the last time she saw Sachiko, sitting in her big, empty house and wasting away in loneliness.

  Aiko folded one last onesie and imagined it held a baby – her baby, the imaginary one she could have with Reina. If I had a baby with Reina, would they hate each other too? Maybe it was a Yamada curse. Maybe those women had not one maternal bone in their bodies.

  The onesie passed to another pile. If nothing else, Aiko had enough maternal bones to pass between them…as she recalled now, tapping into those years in which she thought having a baby would be a given in her life.

  These clothes had been saved for her theoretical child. Now they passed to a younger generation.

  Aiko’s years were wasting away.

  A fit of giggles burst from Reina’s chest as she watched a video on her phone. Beside her, Aiko turned over in their bed, a book obscuring her face. Reina ignored her and resumed watching her online comedy show.

  “Mou, put that away.” Aiko smacked her book against her spouse’s arm.

  The comedian ended his joke with a rib-breaking pun, accompanied with a quick imitation of a duck. Reina laughed almost as hard as the audience in the background. “Why?” she finally said, joviality still in her voice.

  “Because I said so.”

  “That’s not a good reason.”

  Aiko shoved her face into her book.

  “Okay, okay.” Reina placed her phone on the nightstand. “I’m done enjoying myself. You can go back to your book thing.”

  “It’s in English.”

  “Joy.”

  “You know, I bumped into a man the other day who’s an English professor at my old school. Isn’t that bizarre?” Aiko displayed her book cover, not that Reina understood any of the wor
ds. And why was the cover all gray? How boring.

  She shoved herself beneath the covers. “It’s a small city at the end of the day.” Thirteen million people, and she still ran into some of her exes from time to time.

  Aiko closed her book and followed her, although neither of them turned off their lamps. No, because we’re gonna do it. A perfectly good Saturday night and Aiko wasn’t drifting off to sleep? Yes. They were gonna be nasty. Reina wrapped her hands behind her head and waited for her wife to initiate the carnal festivities.

  “What do you think about having a baby?”

  Those words pounded into Reina’s ear, but she barely accepted them as words containing meaning. When they finally hit, her smile fell off her face and her hands unlatched. “Nani?” She stared at Aiko as if she sprouted a tail. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  Shrugging, Aiko readjusted the blanket around her waist. “I’ve been thinking lately about what it would be like to have a baby.”

  “What brought that on?” If “marriage” was one of the worst buzz words a woman could recite to Reina, then “baby” was the only one that beat it. She’d rather have anal sex than think about babies. “Oh, please, is this about your mother giving away all your baby clothes to your niece? Stop.”

  Aiko’s hair rose with static electricity. “It’s a hypothetical!”

  “Well it’s a stupid and illogical one.”

  “Why?”

  Why? Did she seriously ask her that? How long had they been married? Known each other? Breathed? “Because we’re lesbians, silly!” Did Aiko need a lesson in biology? Just because Reina was good at using a fake cock didn’t mean it was actually potent.

  “Lesbians can still have children. It’s become more common recently, you know.”

  “No.” Reina didn’t associate with parents unless she was sleeping with them. Last thing she ever wanted to hear was how little Shota or Yuko was doing in math class. “Babies aren’t handbags. What on earth is going on…”

  Aiko grabbed Reina’s arm and stroked her skin. “I’ve read about lesbian women who use a sperm donor or…you know…with men to get pregnant.”

  Vomit shot up Reina’s throat. Her usual reaction to the thought of fucking a man. Let alone him coming inside and….ugh! Great. Now she tasted puke. “Are you serious about this?”

  “I’m talking hypothetically. You’ve never wanted a baby at all?”

  “No!” Reina couldn’t say it harshly enough. Babies! Children! Both were the spawn of the bowels of hell, meant to torment the planet until they grew up into (hopefully) capable adults. While Reina certainly tolerated their existence, she did it with the understanding that she would never be a mother. Aiko, on the other hand, had always assumed she would have babies. “You’re making me feel weird.” So much for doing it. “Besides, we don’t have enough money for a baby. We barely afford our own lives.” They lived only on Reina’s shitty paycheck. It was substantial enough to pay the bills and food, with a little bit saved for the occasional vacation and weekends out, but in the long run they never saved much. They used most of their rainy day money to get married seven months ago. “Plus there’s all the time that goes into taking care of babies. Seriously, did you think this through at all?”

  The frown Aiko cast her was more caustic than acid. “I’ve thought it through for many years now.”

  Reina’s body sagged beneath the covers.

  “It’s just…” Aiko curled up next to her, their bodies retreating to the familiar cuddles they always indulged in. “Growing up, I always assumed I would have a baby someday. It was a given in my life. I looked forward to it. Of course, that all changed when I fell in love with you, but some fantasies never die. A large part of me would like to know what motherhood is like.”

  Any other woman, and Reina would have shirked her off and ran for the fucking Roppongi Hills. Any other woman. But not Aiko, the one woman she swore she loved above all others and wanted to dedicate the rest of her life and sexual destiny to. “I don’t want a baby,” she said firmly. “I’m not saying it to be cruel or to hurt your feelings. But I don’t want one. Not now, not ever. I’m sorry. That’s something we can’t negotiate.”

  Aiko trembled against her arm. “I know.” Something wet pattered on Reina’s skin. Is she crying? Over babies? “It’s hard to accept because of my age. Before now, I could always think ‘maybe one day.’” She sniffed. “I can’t even be a surrogate for a couple. A lesbian couple, of course. I saw an ad for it in a mailer recently. But I’m too old.”

  When Reina considered it, she figured a temporarily pregnant Aiko was better than mother-Aiko. But she was right. At two months shy of forty Aiko was too old to be accepted into most surrogacy programs, and they were all tenuously legal at best. Something about rotten amniotic fluids. That train had departed the station. But she was still young enough to get pregnant – that knowledge made Reina shudder again.

  “I’m sorry,” it was all she could genuinely say. “I can’t give you everything you want.”

  Hands roamed her chest as Aiko buried her face in Reina’s shoulder. “You try.”

  I can’t impregnate you. A few months ago that would have triggered an episode in her recovering gender dysphoria. She was mostly over those inadequacies now. I can ejaculate, but I can’t impregnate you. Reina looped her arm around her wife’s torso and rubbed her arm.

  “I always wanted a little girl,” Aiko mumbled. “And seeing my old baby clothes today reminded me of that.”

  Reina couldn’t understand it, but she could sympathize. We all don’t get what we want. Since she was twelve she had dreamed of her father rising from the dead to take the place of both her parents. “We live a different life, Ai-chan.” Reina tugged her wife’s hair away from her face. “A different life with different rules. Knowing that you’ll be with me as we get older is enough for me. We don’t need a child to hold us together.”

  “I know.” Aiko let out a huge, relieving breath. “It’s hard to let go of something you always took for granted might happen one day.”

  “You’ve always known I don’t want children.”

  “I know. But there was a chance. Even if in the back of my mind I knew it would never happen, I could still do it if the time came. When I was young I never had to think about it.”

  Reina leaned into her wife’s embrace. “I love you,” she said. “Is that enough?”

  A laugh tickled Aiko’s voice. “It only took me twenty years to get you to say it.”

  “And it would take another twenty years to get me to agree to having a child.”

  “By then we’ll be sixty!”

  Their bodies sank further into the bed as Reina rolled on top of her wife. She kissed Aiko’s forehead and licked away her salty tears. It’s not the first time I’ve done that. Her wife was a sweet and naïve woman, the kind prone to emotional outbursts like this. First she wanted a wedding, now she wants a baby. “At sixty we can still make love.”

  Another laugh. “Would we be up to it at that age?”

  One light kiss fell upon Aiko’s lips. “If I’m still with you, I’ll want to do it with you.”

  “How romantic.”

  Thank you. While Reina detected the sarcasm in Aiko’s voice, it had still been a romantic sentiment.

  “Ai-chan,” she said. “I can’t actually impregnate you, but I can try.”

  Her wife’s legs wrapped around her. “I know. When I think about how I would go about getting pregnant, it always ends with you finding a way to do it for me.”

  Reina masked her disgust at that notion. Gross! “I would light candles, take off my clothes, and stick a syringe up your omanko.” Full of a man’s semen – gross, gross, gross! – that they could pretend was Reina’s. “And then we would make love.”

  Tears returned to Aiko’s red eyes. “Yes!” She cupped her hands around Reina’s face and brought her down for a quick kiss. “That would be my favorite part.”

  “Mine too.”


  They sealed their agreement with a heavy kiss.

  It turned deeper in no time, their mouths opening to the idea of lovemaking. Reina wiped away the images of a cooking syringe full of man and the images of her wife swollen with child. Some women got off on that, but not her. She preferred her wife blissfully not pregnant, her body lithe and her hormones relatively in check. Either way, she would be beautiful. Reina slipped her tongue inside Aiko.

  Over the years their lovemaking had swung between the extremes of sickeningly tender and cosmos burning wild. Reina knew she wasn’t getting the latter tonight – but she was too wound up for the former. She curled a hand near her wife’s throat before groping her breasts. Their legs entwined below.

  “Reina,” Aiko said between kisses, “thank you for listening to me.”

  “Mhmm.” She was too preoccupied with what their tongues were doing to respond.

  Shortly thereafter Aiko threw herself into their lovemaking. She grumbled like an aroused pixie beneath Reina’s body, fingers playing with her hair. We couldn’t do this with a baby. Reina knew how it worked. Couples got all giddy with their newest addition, and then the mother completely checked out from everything. Passing a watermelon through your pussy does that, I guess. Reina kissed her wife harder so she wouldn’t have to think about childbirth any longer. But it was either that or imagining endless, sleepless nights as a baby squealed in the second bedroom. Who am I kidding. She’d put that thing in here! They’d never have sex again!

  Reina grabbed her wife to reassure herself she was still there.

  As sweat dripped down Reina’s forehead and made her T-shirt stick to her skin, she pushed her hips between Aiko’s legs and brushed against her bare omanko – how lovely to have a wife who didn’t wear underwear to bed. Aiko gasped. Reina diverted her lips to her wife’s throat and continued her way down, past breasts and bellybutton.