The way Junko took her leave from the table to go vomit pleasantries with someone else reminded Reina of a dog ripping the throat out of its favorite chew toy. She couldn’t guess if she herself were the chew toy, based on the little interaction she and Junko had over the past two decades.
Sweet and naïve…ha! Reina pulled out a cigarette. Once lit. she leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and exhaled. Sweet and naïve! Aiko was sweet, and sometimes a bit naïve about outing themselves to total strangers, but if only Junko knew the same things Reina did! How Aiko cursed whenever the vacuum fell on her foot; how she drank hard liquor and stripped off her clothing both at home and in bars; how she would flip on pornography late at night for Reina to come home to and scoff at; how she would nose her way through the dirty magazines at convenience stores; how she would sit in the corner of their bedroom and watch other women fuck each other; how loudly she moaned whenever brought to orgasm; how she curled up next to Reina to sleep. If only Junko knew those things…well, Reina mused, it was for the best.
Still, Reina admitted there was something different about Aiko’s happiness around the “norm.” The way she gushed over weddings, the way she twirled children around…Reina didn’t want to head down that mental path. She couldn’t give Aiko any of those things.
As if she sensed Reina’s discomfort at the hands of her mother, Aiko pulled herself away from the family and came to the lonely table. “Are you okay?” she asked, waving away some smoke from Reina’s cigarette. “I saw my mother coming from this direction…did she say something to you?”
Reina released her pent up shrug. “Nothing new.” She stuck her cigarette in her mouth and turned her head from Aiko before exhaling again. “She said her usual awfulness and then went to go prey on some other poor sap. Probably your father.”
“Mou…” Aiko slapped Reina’s arm. “That’s my mother!” Her face mimicked the children pushing each other at the buffet table on the other side of the large room. “Nee, Reina, let’s go dance!”
“What?” Reina smashed her cigarette into an ashtray and regarded her girlfriend with a jeer. “Are you stupid?”
“No! I’m serious! Let’s go dance!”
“Why?”
Aiko moved back at Reina’s blunt question. “Because I want to dance with you…everyone else is dancing together.”
Reina looked above Aiko’s pout to see couples spinning out in the open to the music. They ranged in everything from age, race (one couple were white Americans, the woman, Reina heard, was friends with the bride), and size. But she noticed not a single couple deviated from the heterosexual norm. “That’s suicide,” she said.
Aiko shifted in her seat, her hands gathering the hem of her skirt as she stared into her lap. “I just wanted to dance.”
“Ai-chan…” Reina snuck her hand beneath the tablecloth to brush against Aiko’s bare legs. “We have to be careful in places like this.”
“I know.”
Reina pulled her hand away and scratched her nose. “Why don’t you go talk to your family some more? You rarely get the chance.” In truth, Reina wanted to be alone again. The less people saw her and Aiko together, the less likely they were reminded of their “blatant” homosexuality.
Murmuring, Aiko agreed, and slunk off to find a flower girl to twirl around on the dance floor instead of her big butch girlfriend. Reina felt a twinge of guilt, but it faded within a minute. Aiko could feel comfortable all she wanted with parading them around to the family, but Reina knew better than to make a spectacle of themselves at a relative’s wedding.
That was until she looked over and saw Junko approach her daughter with a man on her arm. Aiko spun to face mother and prospective suitor, and for a second Reina’s heart seized in her chest. She met Aiko’s glimpse across the room, and nodded. Aiko extended her arm and let the man take her for a tour around the ballroom, Junko’s smile searing into the couple and over her shoulder at Reina.
She picked up her chilling glass of champagne and downed it in one gulp.
Reina hadn’t put her glass back down for two seconds before Junko loomed over her again, like a specter who ate too many prunes.
“You see, Yamada-san? My daughter prefers the company of men, like a normal woman.” She waved her hand toward Aiko, who continued to trace the perimeter of the ballroom with a tall, thirty-something man on her arm. “I admit, he is not the best I can think of. He is a widower, already at his age, but has children in case my Aiko is too old to do it herself now. But if they marry, they will all have the same name, so it does not matter.” She clasped her hand over her face to stifle a laugh. “Just you see, Yamada-san. Soon you will be moving out of my daughter’s house…and her bed.” That last statement sent a wave of red across Junko’s skin.
“Ganbatte, Takeuchi-san,” Reina said with a raise of her empty champagne glass. “I’m sure it will go just as well as all those other dates you’ve set her up on over the years.” Not the first time Junko appeared with a “date” for her “woefully single” daughter in the past two decades. Sometimes she was brazen enough to show up at Aiko and Reina’s doorstep with a man (or two!) at her disposal. One look at Reina and the way she stood near Aiko was enough to send most of the men scurrying. Even if Aiko were the type to piss on her relationship with Reina and run off with the closest willing man, many of them could not handle the idea she dated a woman for so long, whether out of their own homophobia or perverted thoughts.
“If it does go so well, Yamada-san, I would be happy to find a suitor for you as well, since your own mother seems to have given up.” Junko held a bereaved hand to her face. “Oh, but it would be such a difficulty. You aren’t quite the bastion of femininity that men look for in a humble wife. And your skills are woefully inept. And I suppose that flower of yours is wilted and barren. Oh, dear! It would be quite the challenge!”
“Tell you what, Takeuchi-san,” Reina said, “if Aiko gives me the foot out the door for a man of your choosing, then I’ll be more than happy to give you a listen. Although I will say, my flower is not wilted, albeit happily barren.” Like hell something the size of a watermelon would ever come out of her body! Wasn’t it bad enough it bled once a month, reminding her of what she was? “But it’s not your common everyday flower, Takeuchi-san. It’s like a Venus Flytrap, and it has teeth and regurgitates all meat that comes near it.”
“How…disgusting.” Junko wrapped her shawl closer to her body and shivered. “Well, it cannot be helped if your flower hasn’t been watered for many years. On the other hand, you seem the type of woman who keeps said meat away from her flower all her life, and men do, dare I say it, find that attractive.” She looked to choke on her own bile at the thought. “There may be a gardener for your flower out there yet.”
Reina settled her eyes on Aiko, ever the cordial woman who continued to speak with a suitable gardener of her own. “I like to think I’ve had a proper one this whole time, Takeuchi-san,” Reina said. “As you know, your daughter is quite skilled with pinking shears, although we don’t do much with fertilizer.” Gross.
A flustered Junko was always a good amusement in Reina’s book, and that’s what she got when Junko mumbled about “indecency” and “disgusting, vile people.” “And you think you are such a wonderful gardener for my daughter’s flower? What have you done for it? Corrupted it? Turned its petals black? Made it shrivel and die so no life can ever spring from it?” She paled. “It would be so confused, indeed, to be introduced to sweet fertilizer one day. It takes careful love and sacrifice to tend a flower, no, a garden, Yamada-san, and that is not a role for us women to fill.”
Junko was so sure she finally had Reina backed into some corner not impenetrable to sexist rhetoric. “Love and sacrifice, is it?” Reina said, careful to mind her own facial reactions. “You of all people should know that Aiko is a little shrine of love and sacrifice to those she loves.”
“Yes, and I suppose she thinks she loves you so, as she keeps trying to tell me.” Junko
smiled; Reina hated that smile. “But I’ve never heard you try to make a case for your love and sacrifice for my daughter. Tell me, Yamada-san, what kind of great gardener are you?”
Reina’s palms slipped around the base of the champagne glass – she searched for Aiko once more and realized she had disappeared with the man. “I take care of her,” she said, her mouth dry and her eyes widening the more she wondered where Aiko went. “I tend to her needs and see that she’s happy. I prune her requirements, water her growth, and weed her anxieties. I…I…”
“Yes?”
Reina knew she was trapped. She wants me to say I love Aiko. But short of that one time Junko caught them kissing so many years ago, there was no evidence beyond Aiko’s behind-the-scenes confessions to put them together in the same bed besides family gossip. And so long as Reina didn’t out them herself, they stood a chance of some teetering honor in Aiko’s family, teetering up and down themselves on whether or not to extend kindnesses to the baby of Junko Takeuchi’s withering loins. If I say it, I doom her. And as the proper “gardener” of Aiko’s “flower,” Reina had to make sacrifices…for love.
“I humbly submit my résumé to be your daughter’s gardener.” Reina stood and bowed her head. “I humbly submit, but I’m afraid I must boldly assert myself as already taking that position, whether you like it or not.” Reina checked her pocket to make sure her wallet was still there before pivoting on her foot. “Good day, Takeuchi-san. I’m sure I’ll see you in August for obon.” As if Reina wanted to honor her as family!
Reina left Junko stuttering in place as she wandered out under the guise of trying to find a restroom. She passed Aiko and the man out in the humid sunshine, having some sort of pleasant conversation, and sized up that other prospect: in the bid wars for Aiko’s precious petals, he didn’t stand a chance against Reina’s longevity and tenacity. She knew what Aiko needed and wanted, both in and out of their intimate lives. Some things Reina could never give her, of course, but she knew some shitstain like Mr. Widower over there wouldn’t know one thing to do with sweet Aiko once she proved not so sweet anymore, a different species of flower than the one Junko promised him.
Reina was the perfect gardener for Aiko’s soil, leaves, petals, everything else that damn metaphor included, all the way up to her syrupy nectar. Reina liberated her. I am the only one who can give Aiko all the happiness she ever needs.
Right?
* * *
Aiko saw straight through her mother’s feeble machinations, just like how she saw through every surprise date for the past twenty years. Junko’s habit of throwing men at her daughter was not lost to said daughter, and the widower at the wedding was no exception.
He was a kindly man, with a gentle touch, the kind of man Aiko could see making a woman comfortable in her dying days. And his name was comfortable as well – Keisuke Tanaka, nothing radical or mind-blowing, a name certain American friends would say something like “Reminds me of a guy named Robert Smith” about. Aiko enjoyed his pleasant company as they made a slow stroll around the ballroom, but she did not dare look back at her mother’s snarling face or Reina’s feigned indifference.
“My children,” Keisuke said between topics, “they are ten and four. A boy and girl. They are truly the product of their mother, very kind and sometimes smart. I think that I did not provide much to their characters.”
Aiko nodded, her hands clasped together while one arm remained looped around Keisuke’s. His aftershave smelled like cinnamon, a burning one-eighty from Reina’s wintergreen mint and tobacco scent. “I am sure your children are wonderful. How do you take care of them? It must be hard for a single father.” In truth, Aiko had never met one in Japan before.
“My sister watches them for me while I work. Well, mostly my daughter, Fuyumi.” He withdrew his wallet and showed Aiko a small picture of son and daughter: the boy was skinny with a baseball player’s shave and the girl was chubby with tiny pigtails. “Junpei – that’s my son – entertains himself mostly. He does lots of sports clubs at his school. Sometimes I can see him play soccer and baseball.”
Aiko admired Keisuke’s devotion to his children. She could see his eyes sparkle when he looked at their picture and spoke of their lives as if they were in some faraway dream. He told Aiko his wife had died from lingering complications of their daughter’s birth. When he spoke of her his sparkle faded and his frown deepened.
Curse you, Mother. Much too soon for this man to look for a new spouse, but Aiko didn’t doubt he did it out of necessity for his children. Under other circumstances she was afraid she would get involved with this man strictly out of pity. In the selfish corner of her brain she analyzed his slouch, his big nose, and his fraying hair and decided she didn’t ever want him rolling on top of her. If we slept together, he would only ever think of his old wife. And Aiko would think of Reina.
She glimpsed over her shoulder to see Reina scurrying out of the ballroom, Junko fanning herself at the abandoned table. A lump formed in Aiko’s throat. What had that old woman done now? Aiko untangled her arm from Keisuke and nodded her head. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Tanaka-san,” she said with a gracious nod. “But I trust somebody needs me right now.”
He fumbled to give her a contact card before she left, and Aiko clutched it in her hands as she traipsed around looking for Reina. Eventually she found her out in the foyer of the reception hall, smoking another cigarette and silently appealing to Aiko to leave.
She stopped halfway between Reina and the ballroom and took in the crystallized sights, the fancy smells, and the happy laughter of bride, groom, and family. She bowed at Eri, her niece and regal bride, and took her leave with her hand grabbing Reina’s arm.
The trip home was quiet, in part because of the heat blanketing the city and subways. Reina remained undisturbed in her suit as the humidity suffocated Aiko in her spring dress. She looked around on their train home and saw a multitude of umbrellas, suggesting the rainy season was still afoot.
They arrived at their station after the last of the rain hit the ground. The stench of rainwater and asphalt clogged Aiko’s nostrils as she and Reina meandered down their street under a cloud covered June sky. Before passing the convenience store on a corner, Reina turned and said she wanted to buy cigarettes and a drink. Aiko could feel another light rain coming, and not wanting to bother with an umbrella, declared she would go ahead and get tea ready at home.
But when she walked through their front door, alone and caked in dew, a chill of disappointment tickled her skin. Aiko removed her shoes in the genkan and scuttled into the kitchen, but her heart wasn’t in anything but tragedy and the unfairness of the world.
And thus when Reina arrived a few minutes later, she found Aiko huddled in the living room, listening to sappy wedding ballads on the stereo while she cried into the folds of her arms at the table. Aiko sniffed up a tear and wiped her eyes so she could see Reina walk in with a convenience store bag in hand. She still wore the pants and silk shirt of her suit, but the jacket was off and languishing in the genkan, dirty.
“Eh?” Reina stood next to Aiko’s slumped body and nudged her with a foot. “Doushita?” She asked her what was wrong one more time before slinking into the kitchen to put her things away. Aiko continued to sit in her own man-made misery.
Her brain wafted between two thoughts: first, What would I do if Reina died? and second, Why can’t I have something like that? Meeting Keisuke made Aiko consider a world wherein forty-year-old Reina got hit by a car and died a tragic death, leaving a grieving “widow” behind to shut herself up in their room and waste away like the ghosts in the classic tales. Starve myself, that’s how I would go. Of course, Aiko doubted she would pull something as drastic as suicide, if only out of fear and a mother sure to swoop down and pick up her wounded baby bird. But she would mourn away the rest of her remaining youth, of that Aiko was as sure as she knew it would rain again before the day was over. She wondered if she could ever sleep with another woman again should Rein
a leave her like that.
But it was the other thought eating at her wooden heart like a termite. As the whimsical strings and grand vibratos of the classic wedding songs emitted from the stereo, Aiko closed her weepy eyes and imagined the wedding she had dreamed of since she was a girl watching British monarchy wed on TV. She wanted a grand princess dress, covered in lace and beads, and a veil topped with a tiara sitting on her head like a real crown. Her bouquet would be deep red roses sprinkled with pink baby’s breath, and her make-up natural and stunning. Somewhere classical music played as she took a walk down the virgin road, her father taking notes from the Hollywood movies while he guided his youngest daughter to her waiting groom.
And dancing. And cake. And showers of gifts and rice and the crystal champagne clinging together in toasts and kanpai ringing in her ears for the rest of her life. How fantastic such a fantasy was! But it was doomed as nothing more than a fantasy, because not only was Aiko gay, but her partner was someone named Reina Yamada, the most unromantic woman on the planet.
She won’t even say she loves me.
Aiko covered her face with her hands again as she held back a slew of bitter tears. No point assuming it was all because Reina hated her – she knew the opposite. Still, there were times Aiko wondered if she let Reina take advantage of her because she went along with the bullshit so well.
“What is wrong with you?”
Aiko lowered her hands but kept her nose pointed to the table. “Nothing. I’m just tired. It’s hot.” The heat had a history of slowing Aiko’s usual activities to a grinding, grueling halt. The air conditioner in the living room had been on since walking through the door, but Aiko could still fake heat exhaustion.
“Hm.” Reina put a glass of cold water in front of Aiko. “I thought so. You should drink this.” She sat next to Aiko, her leg extended behind her girlfriend while a hand combed through her short hair.
And as effortlessly as the tears came, they departed on swift wings to some other place inside Aiko’s mind. She stared between the glass of water and Reina’s attentive figure as if it were a trap. “Water?”
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