Blood Hina

by Naomi Hirahara

  The door creaked open and the light, a bare bulb covered in spider webs, was snapped on. On his side lay Haruo Mukai, his hands and feet bound with duct tape. The miniroom smelled like urine, but who cared about a little shi-shi at a time like this. Most of his mouth had been taped down too, except for one open corner that allowed for a large straw from a supersized 7-Eleven drink. Haruo’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes caked down with dried mucus.

  “Haruo, Haruo.” Mas struggled to tear the tape from his friend’s mouth while Pico worked on his hands. A scab was left on a small bald spot on the front of his head. His lips were completely dehydrated, skin flaking off like the whites of a freshly peeled orange.

  Slowly Haruo’s good eye opened. “Mas.” His voice was faint yet still audible. “Took you long enough.”

  Casey had told Haruo that he was just locking him up for a couple of days. “I’ll call Taxie on Friday,” he told him. “Just need the extra time to get out of L.A.”

  Haruo had promised him that he wouldn’t tell a soul. He wouldn’t breathe a word about how Casey had taken him and two homeless men to the track two times a week to claim winnings that weren’t theirs. But Casey didn’t believe him. He pulled Haruo by his hair, dragged him into the back of a van, bound Haruo’s legs and hands, and finally delivered him into the tomb of the empty market.

  “Casey knew that I couldn’t do the cheatin’ no more,” he said to Mas as they waited for the paramedics.

  “No shinpai, Haruo.” Do not worry. No sense in confessing when you were half dead. Someone had laid down a tarp onto the cold cement floor and Mas, Taxie, Pico, and Felipe had lifted Haruo out of the dungeon into the bright lights of the market.

  “Haruo!”

  Mas at first didn’t recognize Spoon because she was wearing a bright-orange cardigan and her hair was cropped short. She pushed her way through the men to get to Haruo’s prostrate body.

  “Youzu glad to see me?” Haruo asked.

  Spoon didn’t verbalize a yes or no, but hid her face in his bony chest. “When you’re all better, we’re getting married, first thing.”

  Haruo grinned, his dried-out lips bursting at the seams. “Izu got be kidnapped more often.”

  Haruo was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, just west of downtown L.A. He was in the Japanese wing, which served sticky rice to anyone interested, Japanese or non-Japanese. Only family was allowed in his room, which meant Clement, Kiyomi, and her husband, and even Spoon. But not Mas.

  Mas was taking out his screwdriver on his walk back to the Ford when he noticed a figure smoking underneath one of the lamp posts in the hospital parking lot.

  “Your friend’s doing all right?” the dead man asked.

  “Weak from no food, five days. But heezu gotsu soda at least. Casey no want to kill him. But youzu almost did.”

  “I didn’t touch the man.”

  “But you killsu Casey.”

  Ike looked shocked. “I’ve always thought that I was an excellent judge of character. In fact, my superiors have been impressed by my uncanny intuition. But I must say that I underestimated you, Mas. You’re definitely smarter than you look. Even the police believe that Estacio Pena killed Casey for a past deal gone wrong.”

  Ike was letting Estacio take the fall for Casey’s execution. In light of all the trouble Estacio had caused, Mas shouldn’t have cared. But he believed that each man should answer for his own crime.

  “I’m leaving the country, so I thought I’d just check in with you one time.”

  “Japan?” Mas asked.

  “South of the border, that’s my home now. That’s where my wife lives. And our two sons.”

  Mas’s eyes grew big. Spoon’s husband was toshiyori, as old as Mas and Haruo—no, even older—but he was still iki-iki, energetic and virile enough to start a second family. Maybe living undercover did that for a man.

  “I didn’t tell Spoon. I didn’t have to. She’s a smart woman; you can’t pull any fast ones on her.” Ike adjusted his tinted glasses. “I just don’t want Dee to know. Not any of it. She’ll think that she caused all of it.”

  But she had, hadn’t she?

  “The truth is that I’m addicted to taking on different identities. If I had to be Ike Hayakawa my whole life—”

  “Youzu the Chinito.”

  “I guess that’s what they’re calling me now. I’m getting way too old for any of this. I plan to get out of this undercover business next year.” The dead man dropped his cigarette onto the concrete parking lot. “The thing I regret the most is dragging Jorg into all of this. Lying and pretending wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t suited for this type of life. It must have been the stress, because he started forgetting things, or repeating the same thing over and over. I took him to a doctor—it was early-onset Alzheimer’s. I got him into the best facility in Phoenix—at least it was warm—and even saw him from time to time. He kept telling me that we’d be safe because the hina dolls held our secrets. And yes, he called them hina. Even though he didn’t say too much, he had a facility for languages. Anyway, he told me that if Estacio Pena dared to do anything to our families, he’d expose him, his father, and the government. I asked him continuously where the dolls were, but he wouldn’t tell me. ‘You’re not the only one with secrets,’ he told me. He thought that he was being funny. Jorg had his own sly humor.”

  What would happen to the audio evidence that had been hidden in the hina dolls for the past twenty years? Mas didn’t have to ask his question out loud, because Ike eventually revealed the answer on his own.

  “We’re getting the taped confession to both governments—U.S. and Nicaragua—as well as some sympathetic media and web outlets. Maybe nobody will be arrested, but their reputations will be damaged. Estacio’s father will not only be mourning his son’s death but perhaps the death of his political career.”

  How about the fingerprints of the dead man all over the Montebello house?

  Ike chuckled. “You’d be surprised how quickly that investigation will be snuffed out. Estacio Pena’s death will be an unsolved mystery, thanks to my employer. My fingerprints are not on file on any governmental record.”

  “Look after Spoon and my girls, will you, Mas? Especially Dee. She needs some kind of father figure in her life.”

  I already got a daughter, Mas was thinking. I don’t want to take on one more. But Ike needed some kind of reassurance, grease that would allow him to slip away from his old life. So Mas nodded. He didn’t feel like he was making a bald-faced uso. Haruo would be the new husband and stepfather now, and he was the best man for the job.

  Kimono o kikaete obishimete

  Kyowa watashimo hare sugata

  Haru no yayoino konoyokihi

  Naniyori ureshii Hina Matsuri

  Changing into kimono, tightening the sash

  Today I too look beautiful

  For this special spring day

  The happiest Hina Matsuri

  —“Hina Matsuri Song,” fourth stanza

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After Haruo’s kidnapping, his children purchased him a cell phone. “We want to know where you are at all times,” said daughter Kiyomi. Clement sat down with him and explained all the features—from answering to calling, taking pictures (especially handy during automobile accidents), and even playing games with cascading cubes. Days and weeks were spent mastering that phone, the size of a pocket calculator. Now Haruo was using the cell phone to call Mas every hour.

  “Nanda!” Mas practically spat his exasperation onto his receiver as he answered his bedroom phone on its first ring.

  “Dad, it’s me. Is something wrong?”

  “No, Haruo just goin’ kuru-kuru-pa.”

  “Oh, he’s getting married tomorrow, right? You have to tell him congratulations from us.”

  Mari was like a second daughter to Haruo. But her giant hakujin husband Lloyd and their son Takeo? They were strangers. Mas didn’t know if omedeto from the entire Jensen family would really mean anything to his f
riend.

  “I know being the best man and all, you must be really busy,” said Mari. There was something in the tone of her voice that sounded funny, almost too formal. Mas braced himself for an unexpected turn of events. He didn’t have to wait long. “I wanted to tell you as soon as we decided. Dad, Lloyd’s been offered a job in L.A. You won’t believe it, but it’s with Dodger Stadium. We’re going to be moving to California.”

  For the next few minutes, Mas only heard blobs of noise, floating words encased in membrane, not having any particular contextual meaning. He was too shocked to even pursue what work Lloyd, the giant gardener, would be doing with his beloved baseball team. All Mas comprehended was that his only daughter and his grandson were going to be not only in the same side of the country as he was, but maybe in the same town.

  “Where’su you gonna live?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, Dad.”

  Mas twisted the bottom of his T-shirt.

  “We were wondering if we could stay with you for a little while.”

  Shimmata. The end. The death of a carefree life of going to bed and waking up at any hour he felt compelled to. The death of freely eating ramen and hot dogs. Didn’t the daughter recently say that the family had adopted some kind of special diet consisting of wakame, stringy seaweed, brown rice, and red bean? She claimed it was Japanese but not the Japan Mas knew or liked. The death of leaving his dirty clothes in a trail from the bedroom to the bathroom. The Jensens moving in meant Mas’s bad habits had to move out.

  “Dad, are you there?”

  “Oh, yah. Orai, yo.”

  Mas then cut the conversation short, saying he had to run an errand. Which wasn’t quite entirely untrue, but wasn’t completely true either.

  Before he left the house, he pushed open the door to Mari’s old bedroom—still virtually preserved the way that she had left it. A twin bed and shag rug with her high-school team banners tacked on the wall. Nobody had been allowed to trespass in it; even when Haruo had been staying at Mas’s, it was off-limits. And now the ghost would be returning to her old haunts. Would the room be happy? Considering that the thick layer of dust would be cleaned off and perhaps the old shag even ripped from the hardwood floor, it most likely would be. It probably wouldn’t mind being inhabited by three humans of different shapes, colors, and sizes. The question was, would Mas mind?

  He got into the Ford, and as had become his custom every two weeks, he drove to the Gardeners’ Federation Coop. This custom had started on the day of Casey’s funeral, in fact. He had stopped by the federation, placed a fertilizer bag over his shoulder as if he were carrying a body sapped of all life or energy, loaded it into the bed of the truck, and driven to the stained-glass church in Koreatown. The rector, dressed in a gown of purple with a white tab collar, regretfully told him that the funeral was over. Mas hadn’t been interested in attending, but had brought gifts instead—a bag of fertilizer for the garden and five thousand dollars, half of Clement and Kiyomi’s reward money, to pay for Casey’s burial.

  He wasn’t quite sure why he had made it possible for Casey to have a last resting place. He wasn’t sure why he had started to help the community vegetable garden as well. But every two weeks, he’d find something new—organic pesticide, sticks for the carnation stalks—to bring to Koreatown. And normally he did his weekday shopping at the Gardeners’ Federation because he didn’t want to deal with the brunt of the Eaton Nursery gossip led by Wishbone and Stinky.

  As he entered Four Corners and specifically Toy Town this afternoon, a familiar figure came to his aid. Wearing a knit cap even in June, the black man in a T-shirt gestured to an open parking space in front of a store that specialized in soccer balls.

  “So how ya doin’?”

  Mas handed the homeless man three quarters, two to stick in the meter and one to keep. “My friend gettin’ married tomorrow.” Mas never shared specifics of his personal life and wondered why a part of him was doing it now.

  “That’s cool, that’s cool. That’s fine for other folks to get married. Just make sure it don’t catch you. Three times and look where I’m at.” The homeless man then laughed uproariously, showing off his purplish gums.

  The next day, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Mas made his way to the flower market. In three short hours, the floor of the market had been transformed. Giant silver origami cranes hung from the rafters, and every grower had their specialties on display in huge gold-painted plastic vases.

  Sweet peas, the color of a pastel rainbow, handpicked by four generations from hunched great-grandmother to toddler. Gardenias and stephanotis from a greenhouse in Carpinteria. Cactus, sunflowers, and baby’s breath grown on the hills of Palos Verdes across from a luxury seafront public golf course built by Donald Trump. Exotic orchids, their mouths patterned like snakeskin, from a specialist in Montclair. Brilliant gem-colored roses from Colombia and Ecuador.

  Even though the ceremony and reception would be entirely underground, plenty of the outdoors filled up the indoors. Mas was admiring some dendrobium from Oxnard when he felt something warm by his elbow.

  “Mas, you’re going to have to talk to me sometime.”

  Genessee was dressed in a light blue lace dress that hugged every curve in her body. Mas didn’t know that a woman in her sixties could look so juicy. If he’d been alone, he would have shoved a fist in his mouth to keep from drooling. Today in his suit, powder blue tie, and hair greased back with Three Flowers oil, he’d just have to swallow.

  “You haven’t even charged me for my garden. I need to pay you for all those limestone chips and your labor.”

  Mas had spent seven days and seven nights designing the rock garden for Genessee. He attempted to do all the on-site work while she was away visiting her grandson. The biggest challenge was finding the anchor for the landscape piece. What could it be? Most Japanese gardens in Los Angeles had their token toro, stone lantern. Mas wanted something different. Something natural, he’d told Genessee. He started with his own backyard, filled with Chizuko’s pots of waxy cymbidium. He searched underneath the overgrown ferns and in the corners crowded with empty plastic planters.

  And then he remembered the plant cemetery at Spoon’s house. Gaining her and the Buckwheat Beauty’s permission this time, he wandered through the beds of sick and dying plants. In the back (underneath, ironically, a wilting bird-of-paradise plant) was a large, moss-covered stone shaped like the landmark of the nearby community of Eagle Rock. Residents argued whether the rock resembled the head of an eagle or perhaps its outstretched wings. It didn’t matter how the name started or what different people saw in its formation. Those kind of debates were useless to Mas. There was no changing the shape of the rock. And he would be accepting his moss-covered find just as it was.

  He gathered all the smooth round rocks that Henry the other gardener had given her and relegated them to the outer rim of the garden. The limestone chips filled in the center. But then where to place the eagle rock? Smack dab in the middle was too obvious, like a dartboard target. No, the rock needed to be placed intuitively in a new home, an egg being laid in a nest. So Mas followed his heart and put it in the upper right-hand corner. The rock belonged there, seemed happy there. Out came out the rake, and he combed the limestone chips to simulate ripples around the rock.

  “It’s beautiful, Mas. I sit out there a couple of times every day. You never know what the light, the shadows bring to the rocks. I never knew rocks could be so beautiful.”

  Mas grunted. He was proud of what he had done and regretted that he didn’t at least have a photo of his finished work.

  Genessee sidled up even closer to Mas so he could smell the tang of her perfume, or perhaps it was just her skin?

  “Henry’s not my boyfriend, Mas,” Genessee whispered in his ear. “Besides, he has a crazy ex-wife. I don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

  She grabbed Mas’s hand.

  Chu—it happened before Mas could even experience it properly. A peck, or rather ha
lf of a full-blown kiss, on the cheek. Mas felt his face go red and his body tingled all over as if it were in one of those fancy massage chairs. He didn’t know what to say, so he made an excuse that he had to check in with Haruo.

  Haruo found Mas washing his face in the bathroom.

  “Taxie lookin’ all ova for you. You not sick or nuttin’?” Haruo took hold of Mas’s neck to peer into his eyes. Seeing Haruo’s fake eye rotate three hundred and sixty degrees wasn’t anyone’s idea of fun. Mas shuddered and shook his friend loose.

  “I’zu orai.”

  “Itsu time.”

  “Oh yah?”

  “Yah.”

  Taxie had already pressed the button for the CD player. A medley of songs by Perry Como, Spoon’s favorite. Taxie pushed both Mas and Haruo toward the front underneath an iron gazebo decorated with ivy and blue hollyhocks.

  In the aisle between two sections of chairs was a butcher paper walkway. At first some of the market guys thought it would be funny to tape together the newspapers featuring a missing Haruo, but luckily Taxie put a stop to that. Down the humble and plain walkway came the Hayakawa girls in birth order. First Debra, then Donna, and finally, Dee. They wore simple eggshell-colored shifts and carried fresh bouquets of daisies, Spoon’s beloved flower.

  As the Buckwheat Beauty made her walk toward the gazebo, she saved a special smile for Mas. She was wearing makeup, but not enough to disguise the freckles.

  After Dee came the matron of honor, Sonya de Groot, her beehive hairdo more erect than ever. A yellow silk ribbon had been tied around it, and somehow that ridiculous touch suited her. She took her position a couple feet from Mas.

  “Funny, I’m a bit nervous,” she confessed softly. Lowering her chin, she almost giggled, and Mas was afraid her hair would take a tumble.

  Nervous wasn’t the emotion that Mas would describe for himself. More like hazukashii, embarrassed. All eyes focused on the handful of them. If Haruo had chosen three men to match up with Spoon’s girls perhaps Mas wouldn’t feel so self-conscious. But he was the only representative, envoy, and ambassador for the Mukai side, and he felt the full weight of that responsibility.