by M F Sullivan
“Minoru! Minoru!” She had never seen her mother cry. In that moment when she became conscious of Yoriko’s warm arms and the splashes of her tears, the girl felt this was the true miracle vision. Forget the tesseract! She was so dazed she nearly forgot the Lady’s words, until hers bubbled up of their own accord.
“Will you call me ‘Miki’?”
Her mother, half laughing for a brief second of relief through her tears, managed, “What?”
“It’s just—if I have to be a boy here, can’t I have a name that’s more like a girl’s?”
“Oh!” The motions of Yoriko’s hand, which had been mechanically rubbing away the impression of the belt in her child’s tiny neck, froze in a comprehension that was also quite possibly the grown woman’s very first experience of shame. “Oh,” she said again, new tears springing up in those beautiful eyes, “oh, I didn’t know!”
While her weeping mother clutched her (weeping, surely, out of joy as much as embarrassment to have missed every one of a thousand signs), Miki also heard the lamentation of the kami. It had come in the same tone, with the same depth of sorrow. The words had even sounded Japanese, in a way, but she knew they weren’t. They hadn’t even been the English her mother insisted they speak around the house. She sensed they weren’t a human language. At some point, she tuned back in on her mother, who had been repeating variations of, “Forgive me! I’ve been an idiot—a total idiot! When you were littler and would argue that you were a girl, I thought—I thought you were just too young to understand. I didn’t realize you were really…forgive me, oh, forgive me!”
Miki had just been saved from suicide and had come out as transgender—and here she was, patting her mother! Comforting Yoriko through her tears! The life of a narcissist’s child: small wonder she should someday get on quite famously with the infamous eldest (living) daughter of the Hierophant. But, narcissist or no, Yoriko was the best possible parent for Miki, especially from that point on—though her maternal value may have peaked in those moments after her apologizing, when, collecting herself with a birdlike laugh, the former geisha sat up and daubed away her tears with the edge of a designer handkerchief.
“‘Miki’ is a very pretty name. Have you wanted me to call you that for long?”
Miki shook her head. “I’ve always wanted you to see who I really am…” She frowned, and could not think of a cautious way to say it. “The name…a kami told me that name, before I woke back up with you.”
“Kami desu,” repeated the woman in wonder. “You visited Yomi but didn’t eat the food there. You’re a smart girl.” Being called a girl by Yoriko in such a casual way was so flabbergasting—so validating!—that a sheen of tears brightened Miki’s bloodshot eyes and made it hard to focus on her mother’s questions. “What was the kami you saw?”
“A beautiful woman. She—” The thought of having had and lost that marvelous body drove Miki out of her post-death daze and into a profusion of childish weeping. “She showed me my body. The body I’ll have someday. I’ll be so beautiful, like you.”
“What woman,” pressed her mother. “Izanami?”
“Maybe,” agreed the girl, before her intuition gave an unpleasant twist, and she decisively shook her head. “No. Or maybe, this goddess and Izanami are sometimes the same, but she wasn’t Izanami now. She couldn’t have been, because I wasn’t afraid. Even if I met Izanami at her most pure and beautiful, I think I’d be very afraid. This Lady, she was so perfect—bright—”
“Amaterasu,” breathed Yoriko, and this elicited a more agreeable chill.
“Yes,” the little girl hummed, removing from the unstable shelf of childish memory her culture’s fables, which she remembered better at that time than her mother’s Halcyon contact number. “Definitely, Amaterasu—but, in her cave. Before all the gods throw a big dance party to bring her out.” The girl could not help her grin. Of all the stories she had by then been told of the ancient Shinto gods, that one most filled her with joy. Yoriko smiled, too, and mopped away her daughter’s tears with that same fancy handkerchief.
“And how do you know that?”
“She was in a dark place, trapped—and sad. Susanoo should apologize for breaking her loom, and hurting her friend.”
“Yes, he should—but he never will.” Rocking back upon the heels of her stylish slippers, Yoriko said, “She’ll need help coming out, won’t she?”
“I want to help her,” said the girl, holding back bold tears. “I want to be like Uzume, and dance so well that I make everyone happy. To call her out again.”
“Then,” agreed her mother, “we’ll need to make you a pretty bronze mirror.”
Few children experienced such an overnight change for the better. The very next day, Yoriko took Miki out of a school where she didn’t get along with anyone and began to work on her transfer to an all-girl’s school, where she could transition superficially without much fuss. It was far easier, and more sensible, than trying to get children to accept their current classmate’s change. Even in that day and age, the subject of what to do about transgender children caused fierce debate in the Empire of the Risen Sun. Like opinions about women, homosexuality and other issues of human rights, these things waxed and waned with the centuries. It took a martyr’s perspective to understand how little any of that mattered in the long run, which was often why such identities were considered inappropriate; but those same small-minded people usually eschewed genetic engineering and croaked, turning the tide back and forth every fifty or so years.
Socially speaking, things looked up for the Japanese transgender and homosexual communities around that time, but the subject was still iffy, so Miki had to be cautious yet adamant about the true nature of her identity. She was tired of being misgendered by well-meaning peers, teachers, and strangers, and she wasn’t about to let those same individuals turn around and tell her she’d grow out of her own soul. Even Yoriko, after all, had mistaken Miki’s initial protestations as some kind of phase or misunderstanding on the part of a toddler not equipped to comprehend gender. But when, in those weeks off of school, Miki’s haircut appointment was canceled, and her wardrobe was completely changed over, and even her bed was replaced without warning to one with frills and curtains like a Western princess (maybe even the Western Princess—you know the one she meant), it was like a whole planet fell from Miki’s shoulders.
Oh, her mother was still incredibly—sometimes shockingly—passive-aggressive (“No wonder she was such a homely boy,” Yoriko once chortled in Japanese to a friend during tea time, right in front of Miki. “Her really being a girl and all! Isn’t she pretty now?”), but that was just the way Yoriko was. It was all bearable when Miki could play the little-girl games from which she’d been ejected, or consigned to male roles. Now in “House” she could be the mother, and be a downright bitch just like Yoriko. Ah, childhood! Many pretend husbands, daughters, and dogs were slapped across the face with fans, slippers, and rolled-up paperbacks. In retrospect, it did explain her adult specializations in sadomasochism.
Somehow, in spite of how quickly Miki took after Yoriko when allowed to be herself, the girl made scores of friends in her new school. Friends! She’d never had any before. Slowly but surely, she started to have places to go that were not her own (still slightly oppressive) home. Meanwhile, Yoriko assuaged the girl’s body image frustrations with mountains of gifts and more validations than the selfish old (okay, middle-aged) witch had ever given anybody. But it wasn’t the stuff, the support, or the friends that kept Miki going as she blossomed, through the help of hormones, very mild genetic therapies, and—at the long-awaited age of eighteen—surgery, into a beautiful young woman.
The Lady was always there with her, after her suicide attempt. She couldn’t explain how she knew it. She never saw Her, after all. Never even in dreams, though these did become more vivid after the experience. There was one time, though, that rocked her world and made her question her whole interaction with the entity.
It happened a c
ouple of years after her vision. For some reason, the news always reported tabloid gossip about the martyrs and what they called their Holy Family. Ostensibly this was done to give people a glimpse into the existence of the enemy, but there were plenty of Japanese women who kept their eyes on Lavinia’s current wardrobe. Yoriko was one.
Miki hadn’t ever given a shit about the enemy, to be honest, for better or for worse. Japan was a safe place these days. Martyrs weren’t welcome after the Pacific Conflict, and Miki lived in a happy snow globe of assumption that she would never, ever meet one of those predatory fiends. Hell! Even if she left the island nation, the odds of encountering a martyr were fairly low. Something around getting attacked by a shark or being struck by lightning. Okay…not that low, but still. No way was she going to have to worry about something like that! Consequently, she would laugh and roll her eyes when her mother, like all Japanese mothers, would use the boogie(wo)man that was Dominia di Mephitoli in early, ill-fated attempts to get her child to behave. She was still out there, the Governess of the United Front, always waiting to appear on the island with her Father and snatch up disobedient children when the supply of immigrants ran thin.
W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R. Especially once Miki was allowed to be a girl, there was no getting her to behave. Not even the infamous General/Governess/etc. could threaten her. Nobody!
Except—with a bored glimpse up at her mother’s program playing in their holo-corner one afternoon, Miki dropped her portable video game in shock. There, with Roman nose pale beneath her stern lapis eyes, floated a clear vision of the Lady.
How? It was more static and mortal than that vision, yet—Miki knew. The shape of the face, of the non-glowing eyes…it was all the same. “Who is that?” the girl asked her mother, who admonished her in surprise.
“Miki! Don’t you pay any attention to the news, or social studies? That is the Governess of the United Front, that devil, Dominia di Mephitoli. I can’t even stand to look at her damn face! Ugh.” While the hologram’s muted lips moved, Miki stared into the floating face with wonder before her mother plucked up the remote to fast-forward with a sigh.
“Just get to the Florentine…blah, blah, blah…”
Miki hid in her bedroom for a while after that. Now there was an experience to keep her up at night! The Lady was a martyr? Not just a martyr but one of the worst, most evil martyrs in all history?
She couldn’t understand it. In that other place the Lady’s image had been beyond comprehension or explanation. Yet when Miki thought of it now, there stood Dominia. That kami, awash with light, had the same face. She confirmed it with research that impressed her mother and earned her a couple of valuable history books that she wouldn’t crack open until the Red Market expanded her interest in self-education. Even if she’d been into reading such heavy shit at the time of receiving those tomes, it would have been too much. It was already too much to sweep through her hand-me-down e-reader after doing an image search for “Governess of the United Front” and seeing image after image of the goddess from her suicide attempt.
There was no telling anybody about this. Ever. She had to keep this to herself. This was insane. She might have been seriously unhinged. And at such a young age! What was wrong with Miki? Had she just seen the Governess in the background of news broadcasts, and been presented that image by her brain? Why? Why would her brain choose this evil martyr to represent Amaterasu? Why would Amaterasu take this form before her? The idea was a source of great spiritual consternation.
Yet, she knew she was not wrong. The Lady was real, and had chosen her. Had saved her. Why, she didn’t know. She didn’t know that any more than she knew why or how the martyr was tied to the Lady. Why she could not unconvince herself—why she eventually came to accept—that the two entities, no matter how evil one seemed, were one in the same. Maybe there was something to her mother’s suggestion of Izanami, after all.
But it could not be Izanami. Could not be something evil, this kami, this Lady. No matter whose face She used, She was good. And She did not directly communicate with Her human charge, but She did seem to send some messages, somehow. Sometimes, going about her daily routine, Miki would get a flash of inspiration to do something drastic—eat fewer sweets, start working out, start wholeheartedly venerating Amaterasu—and Miki felt compelled to follow the action through. Good thing she wasn’t being told to, like, stab somebody, or something, right? Though, admittedly, one of those impulses did lead to a pretty vicious falling out between herself and her mother. See, what had happened was, Miki was about fourteen when she started expressing real interest in following in the footsteps of her mother’s work. After her experiences, Yoriko was reluctant but knew her daughter was smart and driven enough to make it in the ancient business of Japan’s most fetishized class of women. Therefore, after school, Miki’s schedule was crammed with music lessons, dancing lessons, elocution, etiquette, calligraphy, flower arranging, foreign language lessons, posture—for the Lady’s sake, she had to relearn how to walk! It was about two years before Miki realized being a geisha absolutely, unequivocally sucked, no matter how romances written by Westerners tried to make it seem. Why did her mother do it? Miki asked her once, and, outside of the fact that her mother began training her around the age of seven, Yoriko had insisted that the career of the geisha was a living art that was to be kept alive.
Miki wasn’t so sure about all that anymore. It was the opposite of her personality to be quiet, demure, and obedient—to sit and pluck her shamisen like a boring doll. Was this what she wanted to do all her life? Snore, snore, snore! No, thanks. About the time Miki was supposed to be promoted from maiko to actual geisha, which might have been a little more interesting, one of her fellow maiko mysteriously quit. That was all the incentive the admittedly lazy girl required to leave, herself, and put her skills of being an amusing beauty queen to work in hostess clubs. Yoriko wasn’t happy, but what could she do? Her daughter, who had adopted the last name Soto while apprenticing as a geisha, was free to do what she wanted with her career, and working in hostess clubs wasn’t so different from that most ancient of doll-like women’s arts. So, her mother put up with her change in career until the day Miki was at the market picking up a shoulder of lab pork. That day, her abruptly missing former coworker bumped into her—or, more appropriately, came running for her while screaming, “Soto-chan, Soto-chan,” across the crowded stalls. Always got a couple of hilarious stares from the Japanese, that name. Miki grinned at the strangers who returned to their business, then at her approaching friend. While nursing the stitch in her side, the tanned young woman stopped to kiss and hug Miki, and tell her (in the semiprivacy of fluent English) what she’d been up to: prostitution.
“You’re Red Market,” whispered Miki, trying not to be visibly disgusted but letting her shock remain. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“No, it’s great! The women all take care of each other… Actually, I know a couple of girls who know your mother—from the foundation, isn’t that funny?”
“You didn’t tell them about me, I hope!”
“Of course not, of course—but, Miki—” The girl’s voice dropped even lower, and the hostess was forced to lean in. “You have to come meet some of them. This industry, I’m telling you, it’s much better than being a geisha. More fun. When you’re a geisha, every man thinks he owns you. It’s like he’s renting you out for party decoration or something! But when I’m working for the Red Market, I’m so free. The Market and I are the ones in control.”
“Sounds like some kind of weird, sexual pyramid scheme. But I guess a weird, sexual pyramid scheme is just a cult, huh?”
Though the girl’s made-up and childish sticker-accented face flashed with annoyed, her expression regained its sly quality perhaps too soon. “Actually…you might call it a cult. A lot of the women involved, they do their work for religious reasons, to reach out to men and connect them with the divine.”
“What do they worship?”
“I don’t know. They’r
e really obscure about it! They won’t tell me its name, they just call it ‘the Lady.’” The title, which was the same she had privately applied to that kami, shot a chill straight up Miki’s spine while the girl went on. “I think it’s Amaterasu, or something… I don’t know, I don’t care. I’m in it for that money, girl!”
“Good money?” asked Miki, as if she needed convincing now that the compelling nag of intuition built an electric tingle in the front of her brain.
“Girl,” emphasized her friend, waggling her bleached eyebrows in a way that Miki’s natural-colored ones echoed. “You don’t even know.”
She sure didn’t! Hot damn. Yoriko threw Miki out as soon as she discovered her daughter had reacted to two nights spent shadowing a pair of experienced Red Market recruiters by quitting her stupid hostess gig, which was a-okay. It was time for Miki to spread her little wings and fly. And did she ever. She moved in with her ganguro friend and started turning tricks, which was weird at first but quickly became a total blast—especially when she discovered that most masochists didn’t even expect or want the gratification of getting laid. Then she talked to her manager (aka, the woman who took a “small finder’s fee” on behalf of the Market until Miki was a formal member, which wouldn’t be until she was vetted for an interest in the Lady and trained as a priestess) about becoming an exclusive dominatrix.
Then, much to Miki’s delight, she spent ten solid years embarrassing her mother at every turn. The young woman took particular joy in slipping work anecdotes into speeches given for the women’s foundation, which she was often expected to do “[…]so some good [could] come out of [Miki’s] [expletive] stupid career choices,” as Yoriko put it one very drunken New Year’s.
But, even if she didn’t approve of Miki’s lifestyle, Yoriko did seem proud of her daughter. She was proud of Miki because she knew Miki would do whatever Miki wanted to do, and there was nobody on Earth who could stop her.