Bridge Daughter

by Jim Nelson

  “Good for you,” the woman said. “Have you started building your senbazuru?”

  Hanna ducked her head. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s a thousand cranes strung together.” The woman located another book on the shelf and flipped it open. The center of the book was a photo montage of paper cranes strung by thread, dozens of lines hung in bunches and downpours of multicolored beaks and wings.

  “I don’t know about that,” Hanna said. “I just want to get my wish.” She confided, “I know wishing isn’t real, it’s just for fun.” Hanna was inwardly surprised at the relief she enjoyed at the moment, being able to talk about origami and cranes and putting aside all that she’d been through the past two days.

  “Well, that’s how you get your wish,” the woman said. “You take all thousand you’ve folded and string them into a senbazuru.”

  Hanna smiled sheepishly. “I gave a lot of mine away,” she said. “Gifts for people. Although some of the people threw them away. But I’m okay with that.”

  The woman made an amused, almost confused look. “You don’t get your wish if you give them away,” she said. “You have to keep them and make a string.”

  Hanna’s sheepish smile faded. “But I made them,” she said. “I even numbered them.” She stripped off her backpack and dug out the notebook. “See?”

  The woman fingered through the notebook. “I’ve never seen someone so…organized. But you don’t get your wish until you make the senbazuru.” Sensing Hanna’s dawning realization of wasted effort, she said, “It doesn’t take that long. Every day make some quiet time for yourself, sit down, and fold. If you do twenty-five a night, you’ll be there in forty days. And, really, once you get going, you can do a lot more than twenty-five in a sitting.”

  “You don’t understand,” Hanna moaned, the weight of her situation returning to her. She pulled on the backpack and moped toward the exit. Eight months of work tossed away on the likes of Vivian Grimond and Liz Vannberg. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  Another paper structure under glass caught her eye. Puzzled, she approached and studied it. Constructed of blue paper, the miniature house had open windows and a front door ajar. The garage door was up. Inside stood a Ford Mustang and a lawn mower, of all things.

  “They cheated!” she said, seeing the cuts in the paper.

  Smiling, the woman took a key from her front pocket and approached. “That’s kirigami.”

  Taped to this case’s glass, in bold black ink:

  CUT FROM A SINGLE SHEET OF PAPER

  The woman unlocked the case and swung the glass door open. With the edge of her finger, she carefully pushed at the bottom of the garage door. Hanna, stunned, watched it swing down, almost closed, then spring back up on its own. The woman touched the corner of the front door, demonstrating that it swung both directions.

  “You can do a lot of things in kirigami that can’t be done in origami,” she said.

  “I’ve never heard of it before,” Hanna said. “Is it new?”

  “Kirigami is probably as old as origami. But, see, it has its own principles.” She ran a painted fingernail along the crisp edges of the house, its chimney and Tudor roof and doghouse windows. “With kirigami you can cut the paper, but it must be made from a single sheet. Even the garage door.” She pointed out the hinge. “It looks like a separate piece glued on, but it’s not. He carefully cut it from the master sheet leaving it attached with a little bit of paper. He rubbed it with bone ivory to make it give and move without tearing.”

  “He?” Hanna said. “A man made this?”

  “Sure. Another man made the dragon,” she said, indicating the origami case.

  “I thought only girls folded paper like this,” Hanna said.

  “In Japan, origami and kirigami are practiced by men and women. Even ikebana, flower arranging. Some of the ikebana masters are men.”

  Hanna couldn’t imagine men wanting to arrange flowers, let alone appreciate them. Unless they were florists, like Mr. McReddy, but his arrangements were boring. Her father took little notice of the arrangements she left around the house. Valentine’s Day, he griped about Mr. McReddy gouging him, swearing he’d be rich man if he’d planted rosebushes in the back yard ten years before. Even Uncle Rick, he treated flowers like auto parts, not the delicate works of art Hanna loved.

  “I want to learn kirigami,” she said, “and ikebana. And more origami.”

  “I’d start with one,” the woman said with a smile.

  “So with origami, the rule is no cutting,” Hanna said. “And with kirigami, the rule is you can only use one piece of paper?”

  “That’s not how I would put it,” the woman said. “They’re ways of thinking. Origami-do. Kirigami-do.”

  “Origami-do,” Hanna repeated under her breath.

  “Do means ‘path’ in Japanese,” the woman explained. “Origami-do means ‘the path of folding paper.’ Kirigami-do is ‘the path of cutting paper.’ You choose a path and you follow it as far as it will take you.”

  “Is there such a thing as ikebana-do?”

  “There is,” she said, “but it’s called kadou. ‘The path of flowers.’ Some of the masters, they spend a lifetime walking these paths.”

  “I wish I could go to Japan,” Hanna breathed.

  “Maybe some day you will,” the woman said.

  Hanna broke down then. Shaking her head, she apologized through the tears, mouth sopping wet. The woman, confused, took to one knee and lightly hugged her, telling her Don’t worry, it’ll be okay, whatever it may be.

  Hanna had told Arch to stop, of course. She couldn’t go through with the procedure, the twin purple pillars standing before her in her conscious. She couldn’t bear to leave her parents childless, and she couldn’t face the idea of becoming like Lenna, or even Maureen. She was not strong like them, she told herself. The idea of running away scared her deeply. Just running to San Francisco had exhausted her. How could she run to Los Angeles, or farther? How could she take care of herself with no house, no bedroom, no bed? She saw the people on Ellis Street sleeping on refrigerator box cardboard with only newspapers covering them for warmth, and knew she could not do that for a single night.

  She would never make it to Japan, no matter how hard she wished, or even Los Angeles. It turns out, Hanna wouldn’t make it any farther than the Santa Cruz redwoods.

  Twenty-three

  The wood sign over the gates was just as it appeared in the glossy brochure, “Susanna Glen” burned into the birch face with the Bible quote burned in below it. The sign topped a metal gate thirty feet tall, itself a part of a chain link fence with barbed wire plunging both directions into the dense forest of redwoods and ferns. Beyond the fence, a serene compound of wood cabins encircled an impressive fire pit of rough-hewn granite.

  Hanna wondered what assurances the Susanna Glen people had communicated to her mother. She forbade even a Bible in the house, and now they were preparing to leave Hanna in the care of people who probably read from it thrice daily. The unremarkable Bible quote on the sign—“And the bridge provided”—was, for her mother, like a claim that the Earth was four thousand years old, or that God had deposited dinosaur bones in the ground to trick atheistic scientists.

  Her father let the car idle before the gate a long while. He didn’t know what else to do. Eventually a bearded bushy-haired man in a faded denim jacket and faded denim trousers emerged from the largest cabin. He hurried across the dirt, a black loam flecked with the detritus of the countless redwoods and Douglas fir about the compound. He punched a code into a numeric keypad beside the gate and it gently parted, propelled by motorized arms.

  Through her father’s open window, the man introduced himself as Troy and directed where to park the car. Troy helped get the bags out of the trunk, then led them across the compound to Cabin Two, Hanna’s new lodgings. The rules Susanna Glen had mailed to Hanna’s parents stated each bridge daughter was allowed two suitcases and one personal carry bag
for toiletries, effects, and so forth. Hanna had used her personal bag to bring a few books, as Susanna Glen had also informed them they had no library.

  Hanna was assigned a spring bed along the cabin’s rear wall. A window over the bed afforded a view down the fern-strewn hill to a brook running crystal-clear snowmelt. On the unmade bed were two crisp white sheets, a gray wool blanket, and a pillowcase as crisp and white as the sheets, all folded into squares. An uncovered pillow topped the linen pile.

  Suitcases stashed, Troy led them on an impromptu tour of Susanna Glen. “We’re just finishing up breakfast,” he said as way of explaining why the common area between the cabins was devoid of people. “Would you care for a bite before we close the kitchen?”

  Even though her father explained they’d stopped on the drive up for breakfast, Troy led them to the canteen, the largest cabin in the compound. Inside ran three rows of wood picnic tables painted the same chocolate-brown color as the exterior. Bridge daughters filled the hall, all of them big and pregnant, all clad in fusty bridge daughter dresses and soft shoes. They stacked trays, wiped down tables, and swept the wood plank floor. More worked hard in the kitchen, which was partially visible through the wide service window. The bridge daughters in the kitchen scrubbed and washed pans and dishes. Others wrapped leftovers to store in restaurant-sized refrigerators.

  At the other end of the mess an emergency exit stood wide open. The door was held fast by a metal canister ashtray pulled over to act as a stop. Two men stood outside in dirty kitchen whites with bandanas holding their hair back. Both were unshaven and chestnut tan, skin glistening from perspiration. One had greening tattoos down his right arm, otherwise Hanna found them almost indistinguishable. They smoked cigarettes and murmured between themselves.

  Every bridge daughter had a bow-tie ribbon pinned on her dress neckline. Troy pointed to the duty board on the far wall, a column of colored dots with responsibilities chalked in beside each.

  “Green is on dishwashing duty today,” Troy read from the duty board, “red mops, blue does countertops, and so on.”

  “What color am I?” Hanna asked.

  “Hanna,” her father warned, indicating she needs to ask permission before speaking.

  Troy smiled. “Understand, here we don’t follow that rule. As you might notice, not many adults here. It makes sense for everyone to speak up when necessary. But,” he added, “we value respect of others and respect for ourselves above all else.”

  “How many adults are there?” Hanna’s mother asked.

  “Six,” Troy said, and he counted them off: Troy himself, the staff doctor, two nurses, a camp mom, and Remy and Rex, the cooks smoking at the fire exit. “The nurses rotate on the weekend,” Troy explained, “so there’s only six adults here at any moment in time.”

  “What about…” Hanna’s mother’s voice trailed off, hoping Troy would gather what she was getting at. She finally was plain: “What about security? Only six adults?”

  “We’re plenty secure here,” Troy said. “No one can get in past the fence, you saw it.”

  “What I mean,” her mother said, “are you sure you can you can keep the girls in.”

  Troy leaned back and laughed. “They don’t want to leave!”

  *

  Sleeping and bathing in a new place has its anxieties for any thirteen year-old, but sleeping and bathing in shared quarters for the first time is terrifying at that age. Hanna’s personal mantra carried her through her first days in Susanna Glen. What would Maureen do?

  Hanna forced herself to endure the reduced privacy she’d never faced at home. She took gang showers with the other bridge daughters, their bulging midsections as unique and individuated as their faces. She passed bowel movements with other girls seated in the stalls around her. At first she sweated over emitting even the tiniest of bodily sounds. After a few days, she came to accept the noises as a function of nature. She stopped changing clothes under the bedsheets and began disrobing before the seventeen other bridges in Cabin Two. Now a Sister of Susanna, she learned to follow their lead. Trusting them allowed her to trust herself.

  Troy assigned Hanna purple duties. The duty board changed daily, meaning one day she swept the mess hall floor and the next she loaded plates and cups and silverware in the industrial dishwasher. And there was more than one duty board at Susanna Glen. One beside the fire pit listed duties around the compound, site cleaning and maintenance. Another duty board mounted inside Cabin Two listed more hygienic chores, scrubbing toilets and washing mirrors and so on.

  Hanna’s mother’s blend of traditional and new ways would have left her wholly unprepared for all the cleaning and kitchen duties here. Erica was right, she’d been brought up soft. Her mother’s change to more traditional ways had, like an emergency exercise regimen, impressed on Hanna the basic skills she now needed.

  One night in bed, exhausted from kitchen mopping duty, baby twisting inside her and lower back throbbing, she calculated she’d spent seven hours working that day, the same as every other day. The camp kept the Sisters of Susanna occupied, Hanna reasoned. They’re keeping us busy.

  *

  Her mother had packed the Vannbergs’ wenschkind. Miffed at her mother ignoring her disinterest in the doll, Hanna left the wenschkind in the suitcase under her bed.

  Every night before bed, and sometimes in the mornings, Hanna watched the other bridges of Cabin Two with their own wenschkinds. They didn’t play with them, serve them tea or move them like puppets, or make them talk in high-pitched voices. The girls cradled their wenschkinds in their arms, rocking them to sleep and jostling them in their arms as though they were crying. Sometimes they would press the doll’s mouth to their bared breast as though feeding them, although none of the girls had developed, and would not due to their biology. The girls whispered reassuringly to their wenschkinds and hushed them to go to sleep.

  The sight of motherhood aped made Hanna slightly ill. She trusted the other girls, she shared private quarters with them, but she could not respect them.

  *

  Hanna grew fascinated with the two swarthy men who were smoking outside the canteen her first morning there. Hanna didn’t realize it, but most of the girls at Susanna Glen were fascinated with them too.

  Hanna gathered that the men performed two recurring duties. They cooked massive meals in the kitchen, the efficient and humorless duo capable of feeding ninety-eight pregnant girls three times a day without fail. They worked in almost complete silence, one manning the grill and stove while the other ladled and spooned hot food onto sectional plates. When a serving tray was depleted, the server would drop it into the humongous sink with a clang while the other, in clockwork manner, slid another tray of the foodstuff across the metal prep table. Most days, no girls worked in the kitchen during mealtime. The men held complete authority until the last plate was served. Only after they’d vacated the kitchen to smoke their cigarettes did the bridge daughters dare enter and begin cleaning up.

  The other task Remy and Rex performed was chopping wood and wheelbarrowing the cuttings to the compound’s central fire pit. The California Conservation Corps delivered a felled tree in piece parts at the start of each month. Remy and Rex dissected it into serviceable chunks using axes and splitters. Stripped down to their undershirts, they produced a week’s worth of firewood in a single morning, then wiped the grit and sweat and sawdust off themselves with rags before returning to the kitchen to prepare lunch.

  Hanna had trouble telling them apart. Their faces were not identical, but with features so rugged and well-worn, their individuality seemed to have been sanded down to the bare foundational matter that all males are built from. Hanna learned to distinguish them by the tattoos down Remy’s right arm, crisscrossed rose vines with mermaids trapped in the fishhook thorns. When Remy served food at the window, she felt he’d tainted the food, as though he should wash the tattoos off before entering the kitchen. This unfair suspicion never suppressed her appetite.

  The other ma
jor adult presence at Susanna Glen was the camp mother, Eloise, who watched over the girls throughout the day and spot-checked them at night. A matronly woman, Eloise had overly wide hips and kept her graying hair in a Danish roll atop her head. She roused sleepyheads from bed in the mornings and went from cabin to cabin to enforce a strict ten o’clock lights-out. She clapped her hands to capture the girls’ attention and get them to do as they were told. She thumped the girls’ earlobes when they dawdled. She was the subject of the cruelest gossip when not present.

  Hanna wondered if Eloise was a kind of check-and-balance to Remy’s and Rex’s presence in the camp, a protective measure against these two coarse men. The men disturbed Hanna, their dour demeanors and the way they murmured to each other when smoking. Their manhandling of cookware and axes, the tattoos and their muscled backs, all indicated they were capable of so much violence. They could go anywhere in the camp, it seemed.

  Then she wondered if she was supposed to be attracted to them. Some of the other bridge daughters insinuated they were smitten. Hanna sensed something new in herself when in their presence. Her gemellius was now consuming a portion of Hanna’s natural gefyrogen and producing one part estrogen and two parts progesterone. Together these foreign hormones introduced changes in Hanna.

  *

  Hanna’s ruse to take back the sneakers she’d gifted Erica was not without justification. All the other girls had hiking shoes or boots in addition to the soft-soled bridge daughter shoes they wore around the compound. Some afternoons Troy led a group of bridge daughters out into the redwoods to navigate one of the many footpaths meandering the property. This was their “duty” on the compound duty board. Never strenuous, the walks were just enough to get the blood pumping and fresh oxygen into the lungs’ deepest branches. Troy asked for church-like silence as they traversed inclines and forded arroyos. Sweet-scented maples and commanding redwoods mutely observed the girls’ movements.

  On the walks, Hanna could not help but point out flora she recognized. Blue irises, violets, sword ferns, and azaleas she readily identified, to the surprise of the girls around her. They had to know how she could possibly name so many flowers from sight. She admitted trouble with other identifications, but did correctly name a cluster of trillium they encountered at the foot of a skyscraping redwood. It was with this Troy approached her.