Hopeful Monsters

by Hiromi Goto

  “Shhhhhhh,” Bobby whispered into her ear as he spooned into his wife’s sorrow. Hot tears burned as they slid sideways across her face.

  “I heard from the psychologist that you’ve been crying all night,” Bobby soothed.

  Hisa, sobbing, bobbed her head.

  “That Mama came to see you and she upset you even more.”

  Hisa’s sobs shook her as Bobby’s body jostled against her backside, the hot cup of his manhood. He pressed into the cushions of her buttocks, his sweet and sour breath moistening the air. Hisa could feel Bobby’s penis against the crack of her buttocks. Growing hard, bony, like a thick tail. . . .

  She shrieked. Flailed her arms, flutter-kicked her feet. Bobby squawked as he fell backwards out of the narrow bed.

  He didn’t rise.

  Hisa fearfully peered over the edge.

  Bobby’s eyes were squeezed shut. His chest moved rapidly with his breath.

  “Bobby,” Hisa whispered hoarsely. “Bobby. Are you okay?”

  “Phsssssst,” he managed. A hiss between pursed lips.

  “Did you hurt something, Bobby? Do you want me to call for the nurse?”

  “Sss, sssssst.”

  “Well,” Hisa stared dubiously, “if you’re sure.” The ripped stitches in her perineum jabbed needles of pain. Hisa slowly rolled over and stared blearily at the white square panels on the ceiling. She didn’t know why they did that. Designing the slabs to look like they’d been bored through by termites. There must be something wrong with her.

  A plat, plat, plat of sound. Hisa turned her head. Bobby was crawling toward the chair. He clung to the armrests and pulled himself upright, a small muscle jumping in his cheek. He hissed like a deflating tire as he sat down on the seat.

  Bobby’s emotionless demeanor was worthy of a samurai. Hisa tried a smile.

  “I believe,” Bobby said carefully, “I’ll go home for the rest of the day and return in the evening.”

  Hisa bit her lip. “Are you angry with me?” she asked tearfully.

  “Of course not,” Bobby said.

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “Darling,” Bobby rose stiffly from the chair and shuffled to her side. He started bending, then grimaced. Slowly, slowly stood ramrod straight again. “You mean everything to me. I’m a lesser man without you. You complete me.” He clasped her cold fingers with his bear-like paw and raised them to his lips. He kissed the back of her hand. “I’ll be back in the evening.”

  “I love you?” Hisa whispered.

  “I love you, too.” Bobby reassured. “Don’t you worry about the baby, sweetheart. I’ve signed the papers. They’re doing the procedure tomorrow. When we go home together we’ll be like any other family. And no one need ever know.”

  “No one ever need know,” Hisa murmured. The warm water lapped against the soggy sack of her belly. She hadn’t wanted to take a sitz bath. She was afraid that her privates would sting and burn, like the flayed rabbit in the folk tale who was tricked into smearing hot peppers into its skin. But the salty warm water felt good and the pain in her perineum eased. Who would have thought?

  “No one ever need know,” she sing-songed. Her voice echoed against the tiles of the private bathroom. “No one ever need know.”

  Just like her. She hadn’t known and she was fine.

  A child like everyone else.

  Raised by a single mother. Birthdays celebrated. A graduation trip to Venice paid for by her father. A modest career as a floral designer with a small but loyal client-base.

  How long had her tail been?

  Hisa blinked rapidly. Biting her lip she slowly, cautiously, slid her hand beneath her body. Stared anxiously at the closed door. What if someone came in? Her flesh pimpling with fear and revulsion, foreign, her own foreign body, she palmed down her right buttock.

  “Uhunnn,” Hisa gulped, half a sob, half a plea.

  She probed the juncture of her buttocks with her forefinger.

  . . .

  Nothing. Nothing.

  She started giggling. A gulping laugh-cry.

  Oh.

  There.

  There was . . . a ridge of skin.

  A . . . bump.

  She jerked her hand away, panting hard as blood surged in her ears, her brain. A high-pitched whine filled her head and she squeezed her eyes to stop. The ceiling spun even without sight.

  Lord Jesus. Mercy upon me. Count your blessings. Salvation of angels. The meek and the mild. Love the lepers. Blessed are the deformed. The kindness of hunchbacks. Mark of the beast –

  “Give it back!” she rasped. Mama! Mama who had to tell her now! She’d been forced to eat of the fruit when she would rather have lived on in the Garden! “Give the Garden back to me!”

  The bath water was cold. All she could do was step out, shivering, and wipe herself dry.

  Hisa crawled naked into the narrow hospital bed. Stared upward at the termite-patterned ceiling.

  She had been an amputee her whole life, without knowing it.

  What did that make her?

  She could never tell Bobby. Ever! Bobby would never understand. Bobby liked Japanese girls. Yukatas and hot springs. Bobby didn’t even like bananas.

  Hisa thought back as far as she could remember. Where family photos blurred with experienced events. Hadn’t she always felt that something had been missing? She used to think she was missing siblings. The particular loneliness of being an only child. Then she met Bobby and she thought she’d found that missing thing.

  How many amputated tailless people were out there. . . ?

  “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord,” Hisa crooned.

  Babygirl, too.

  No one ever need know.

  “What does it matter?” Hisa hissed. “I’m still the same as I was yesterday. The day before. Nothing I’ve done changes. I’m still me!”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I am!”

  “You cannot think of yourself in the same way.”

  “The world, my experiences haven’t changed!”

  “Haven’t your feelings changed?”

  “I’m just surprised. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “You must feel confused. Betrayed. Loss.”

  “I’m still me. . . .”

  “Do you think you’d be the same person if your tail hadn’t been removed?”

  “What are you saying! No one could live in this world with a tail! You’d have to join a circus! A freak show! It’s not really a tail. It’s a skin growth. Fatty gristle. The doctor said. Leave me alone.” Hisa yanked the thin blanket over her head.

  “Don’t lie to yourself. It won’t help anything.”

  “Go away!” Hisa shrieked.

  “Mrs Santos, do you need anything?” a cheerful voice called from the doorway.

  Hisa jerked the blanket off her head and patted her frowsy hair, smiling, smiling. “I must have been having a nightmare,” she laughed feebly. “Did I say anything?”

  The nurse wheeled the squeaky bassinet into the room. “You were shouting. I’m going to check your temperature. Baby just woke up for a feeding.” The nurse stuck the gauge into Hisa’s ear. “Normal,” she chirped. And deftly deposited the infant into Hisa’s arms. The nurse matter-of-factly squidged, squidged down the hallway. Hisa awkwardly inched herself into a sitting position, the baby jostling from side to side, squirming, almost spasmodic.

  She stared into the infant’s glassy eyes. Maybe a student nurse would mix her up with someone else’s baby and she could take home a normal one.

  Hisa laid the infant down on her outstretched legs. She yanked the bundled cloth, jerking the fold across and down, revealing the baby’s bare legs, her long slender feet. The infant screwed up her face, the ugly red skin beginning to turn purple. “Hhhhngha, hhhhngha, hhhhhngha,” she warmed up. Hisa tugged the strings holding the baby smock together and yanked them open. The adhesive tabs of the diaper ripped. Hisa flipped the baby over. Grabbed the infant beneath her armpits and dangled the deform
ity in front of her face.

  The baby threw out her arms, her body rigid, in a Moro’s reflex.

  The caudal appendage. The skin abnormality.

  It looked longer in the daylight. Pink. Like a rat. Hisa stared and stared. Her mouth dry. Open.

  The baby screamed, legs kicking, her head lolling to one side.

  And the caudal appendage.

  It jerked.

  Hisa gaped. No! She must have jostled the thing. The doctor said it was no more than extra skin. Just a growth. No nerve endings. No connecting bones. . . .

  The slender pink length. Twitched. Fitfully. An uncontrolled movement. Like the flailing of her baby arms and legs. Then it slid. Across Hisa’s skin, a rush of goose flesh rippling up her arm, the nape of her neck. Warm, warmer than her body temperature, the skin smooth and covered in fine hairs . . . the tail twined tightly around Hisa’s wrist in a reflex of survival. Gripped closely, solid, as if she’d never let go.

  Hisa almost dropped her.

  The rasping cries of the baby finally reached Hisa’s brain. She clamped the infant to her naked chest, cramming her nipple into the baby’s distraught mouth. Latching, she started sucking deeply, snorting for air through her nostrils.

  The tail still circled Hisa’s wrist. The baby gazed up at her face.

  Hisa could only gape.

  She knew the baby couldn’t really see. That the baby saw mostly shapes of dark and light, colour and movement. But the baby could taste, and smell her too. Hear. Hadn’t Hisa sung songs to her when she was still in her uterus? The vibrations, the pitch. Didn’t some people say they remembered being inside the womb?

  “Nemureyo iko-you,” Hisa whispered her favourite lullaby.

  The baby stared at her. Black eyes dark with secrets. The tail’s grip tightened ever so slightly.

  “Niwa, yama kiba mou,” Hisa sang. Her voice trembled, but something was expanding inside her chest, suffusing her with warmth.

  “When the birds and the sheep

  All should fall asleep

  The moon, through the window

  Shines its silver light

  Flowing through this night

  Sleep good child, sleep.”

  The baby, curved around her breast, breathed quickly, deeply. Her eyelids closed. Her mouth was still puckered around Hisa’s nipple. A pale pink bracelet around Hisa’s wrist. She held the baby close to her heart, rocked slowly back and forth.

  “What happened to my tail?” Hisa whispered into the telephone.

  “Oh!” Mama gasped. “Hisa-chan. I love you so much. You have no idea –”

  “Yes, Mama. I know. What happened to my tail?” she hissed.

  “It was a hard thing, Hisa-chan. It was a hard labour. I’d lost three babies before you. Three! It breaks a mother’s heart. All of them in the third trimester. They were almost ready. Just about ready. But something would happen. They came out too soon. And you were my last chance! They said I couldn’t try any more.”

  “The others. Did they have tails, too?”

  Her Mama gulped hard, like she was swallowing shards of glass.

  “Yes. They all had tails.” Hisa could hear the sadness in her moth-er’s voice. “But yours was the longest!” Mama added quickly.

  “Did my tail . . . move? It wasn’t a skin growth, was it?”

  “Hisa-chan. I was weak. I was forty-two when I had you. I was confused. You lived. But you had a tail, like the others. Your father, my husband, “ Mama spat. “He left that night.”

  Hisa’s cheeks burned.

  “That night. I felt your tail twitching beneath the wet cloth diaper. I – I screamed. They came and took you away. Sedated me. When I woke up the next afternoon your tail was gone.”

  A searing heat crackled inside Hisa’s chest. Her breath was short and the clamour of bells resounded inside her head.

  “Hisa-chan. I’m so sorry. I didn’t protect you. Please forgive your mama,” Mama sobbed.

  Hisa heard an audible click inside her ears. Like a jackknife being opened. Then everything was clear.

  “I need your help now,” Hisa stated.

  “Yes, yes, anything!”

  Hisa whispered instructions as her mother scratched out the details on a piece of paper.

  And despite the clarity in her head, Hisa was still frightened. Where would they go? What would they do? What did she know about being abnormal, living as abnormals? She had no skills or experience in that realm. And how would she begin to find the others like her and her baby?

  “Oh!” Hisa gasped. Of course! They would help her. Oh, it wasn’t the same thing, exactly, but they would have an inkling of what she was going through. What was their number? Biting her lip she tried to wipe the anxiety away and just let her fingers tap out the buttons as if she was being guided by the Holy Spirit.

  The phone rang seven times.

  “Hello!” a voice snapped.

  “Hello?” Hisa meekly asked. “Is – is this Maggie and Julia’s residence?” She didn’t even know their last name. Names.

  “Who is this? Do you know what time it is?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Hisa gushed. Eyes frantically looking for a clock. Her watch. “It’s Hisa. I’m calling from the hospital.”

  “Hisa? I don’t know any Hisa.”

  “Oh!” Hisa gasped. She hadn’t thought of that. And she’d been so nice to them during the prenatal classes! “Please. We were in the same baby classes. At the community centre,” she added humbly.

  “Ohhhh,” Julia said. “I’m sorry,” her voice sounding sweeter. “It must be the lack of sleep. We had our baby last week, you know.”

  “Congratulations,” Hisa managed.

  “What about you?” Julia asked, warming slightly. “Did you have your baby, too?”

  “I – I did,” Hisa gulped. Clarity clouding with sudden sadness. “A girl. I have a baby girl.”

  “Oh,” Julia sounded like she was smiling. “That’s lovely.”

  “I have a favour to ask!” Hisa blurted.

  “What do you mean?” Caution creeping into Julia’s voice.

  “My baby isn’t normal! She – shehasatail!”

  “Oh,” Julia murmured.

  “They want to cut it off!” Hisa almost shrieked. Caught herself. “I don’t know if they should. What if she’s meant to have it?” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Hisa, maybe this is something to discuss with your doctor and the baby’s father,” Julia said gently.

  “I can’t! Bobby’s signed the papers already. They’ll never let her keep it. They’ll say it’s a deformity and she’d never be treated like a normal child if she had a tail. You would know what that’s like.”

  “What?” Julia’s voice tight.

  “What it’s like not to be normal,” Hisa explained eagerly. “That’s why I called. Because you’re the only people I know who might help us. . . .”

  “You have some nerve! Jesus Christ!”

  Hisa flinched.

  “You call us in the middle of the night because in your stupid, sheltered, middle-class, heterosexual mind you think we’re ‘not normal’ and that we’ll help you because we can identify with your tailed freak baby?” Julia shouted.

  “Oh!” Hisa gasped. She started weeping. “Oh, oh.”

  “Hello!” A low harsh voice rasped.

  Hisa shook her head. She had been so mistaken.

  “Stop your bawling,” Maggie said hoarsely.

  “I’m sorry,” Hisa gulped. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Shut up,” Maggie said. “Just write down our address.”

  Hisa could hear Julia’s raised voice in the background.

  “Thank you!” Hisa gushed. “Maggie. Thank you so much.”

  “Shut up,” Maggie sighed. “I’m not making any promises. You can come over for now, that’s all.”

  “Is it okay if my mother meets us there?” Hisa asked humbly.

  “Christ! Yeah. Okay, your mother can come, too. Jesus.”

/>   “Maggie! I’m this close to –” Hisa could hear Julia’s tinny voice in the background.

  “Yeah, what if Karlyn hadn’t bailed you out when you were sixteen?” Maggie snapped. “Where’d do you think you’d be now?”

  “Don’t mind Julia,” Maggie rasped. “I’ll talk to her. Her heart’s in the right place.”

  “Maggie. I don’t know what to say,” Hisa began.

  “Save it. What did you name your baby?”

  “I haven’t chosen one yet,” Hisa said guiltily.

  “We have a great name book,” Maggie said. “Come on over. I’ll put on a pot of mint tea.”

  Hisa hung up the phone, her heart buoyed with a small measure of hope. Then she slumped. She stared at the palms of her hands. How could everything change so quickly? Just yesterday or the day before she’d been such an innocent. Hisa shook her head. She could have lived her whole life an innocent, and been perfectly happy for all she knew. And after all, what was a woman to do? What was a mother to do?

  She changed into day clothes and packed her overnight bag with the diapers and bundling cloths that were stored below the bassinet. Luckily she had her purse already. She would have enough money to finance travel. And Mama had her savings, too. It would be enough to see them to warmer climes. Like that childhood game. When someone or something was hidden. And you had to guess where. A friend would tell you if you were getting closer. “Warmer, warmer, warmer,” Hisa murmured.

  She would sneak into several other bedrooms and press their nurse call buttons so that no one would witness her departure. She supposed there were security cameras. Hisa wondered if she ought to soap the lenses. But there was no point. Once she’d left, watching her image on video wasn’t going to tell them where she was. She wondered if she should leave Bobby a note. But, really, there was nothing she could say that would explain. And in time, he would forget all about her. Be secretly relieved that he wouldn’t have to face his daughter every day. Their disappearance wouldn’t be remarkable. They would just be another few women, lost.

  She darted out and shuffled down the hallway. Ducked into one room. A few doors down. Then another. She darted back to her room. The stitches in her perineum stabbed slivers of pain. Hisa bundled her baby with two more layers of cloth. Pressed her lips to her forehead, the sweet smell of milk filling her nostrils. Hisa clasped the overnight bag and purse with one elbow, then carefully lifted her baby into her arms. “Nenne,” she murmured. “Nenne.”