by Lily Chan
suits and trousers
Ryu had caught a cold when he was five years old. He coughed up phlegm and blood and spent nights in bed feeling his lungs squeeze like wet rags. Then the cold seemed to sink into his bones, detour down his torso and snuggle into his hip. A wound opened there, the skin weeping pus. Otoya carried his little boy to the clinic for treatment and dressed the wounds with clean bandages every day. Ryu cried when the cloth stuck to the sores.
The infection stunted his growth. By the time Ryu was ten, his left leg was shorter than the right by ten centimetres. At school he sat on the sidelines and watched his friends chase a soccer ball, skip rope, dash past him. He longed to toss balls and clamber over rocks and splash through puddles as easily as they, no longer conscious of his leg, of the heavy limb.
He tied a rock to the leg and tried to lengthen it, gritting his teeth, stretching out the ligaments till his muscles burned and sweat rose in buds on his forehead. Sometimes the leg did not seem to belong to him; he resented its parasitic indifference to the rest of his body.
In high school he hung out with the baseball team. He watched their training sessions, swept the grounds, and carried water bottles, baskets of balls, mitts and bats. He tied a bandanna around his forehead and topped it with a straw hat, equipped himself with a taiko drum and led the cheer chants at the baseball meets against neighbouring schools. He glowed with a vicarious thrill.
To his family, to the world, to Toyo, the limp did not hinder him. He was invincible. He rode on his green bicycle with all the aplomb of royalty. A wave of bobbing heads and waved greetings would follow him, a familiar figure in a suit and hat, often trailing one leg on the cobblestones with his weight shifted on the bicycle.
Ryu played the guitar at the corner of the shop, propping the curve of its acoustic belly against his knee, his fingers plucking melodies which stopped the women with their bags of shopping and the children cycling on bikes carrying dragonflies and lizards trapped in plastic containers, nets thrown over their shoulders. The admiring looks of young women crowding around Ryu tore into Toyo.
“Any more growling, Toyo, and you’d turn into a tiger,” Okaya said.
“I don’t understand why he must parade his talent in public like that,” Toyo snapped, although secretly she was proud of his skill.
Ryu auditioned at a television studio for a program featuring local artists and musicians. He set off with his guitar case and his face full of hope. He returned dragging his feet, dark circles under his eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Toyo asked, placing a cup of iced tea before him.
He sighed and gulped it down. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter.”
She persisted. “What did they say?”
“They listened to me play, looked me up and down, and said, ‘Come back when you get your leg fixed. We can’t have somebody like you on the show.’ You know what I wanted to say to those bastards? I wanted to yell I don’t ever want to come back! But I was a coward. I just bit my tongue, bowed and said, ‘Thank you for your time.’”
Toyo curled her arms around his neck. “Your leg has never bothered me.” But he brooded for a week, sullenly tilting the sake in his cup back and forth at the dinner table.
At dinner, Shigeo beckoned Toyo with his hand so that she sat beside him, curling her legs underneath her on the tatami mat.
“Let me tell you a story about your husband,” Shigeo said loudly, and Toyo understood that the story was being told to jolt Ryu out of his foul mood.
Ryu did not look up.
“When I was a junior in high school, Akio and I went camping at Biwa Lake. We packed cans of food, fishing wire, buckets and sleeping bags, and hopped on the bus which goes inland, about sixty kilometres away.
“So, the second day there we are, sitting on the rocks, throwing our fishing lines in, hoping to catch some lunch, when we hear an engine roaring in the distance, coming closer and closer, and then we see a man riding a motorbike, all dressed in black like a Yakuza, circling the lake as if he is trying to find something.
“Akio and I start feeling nervous. We don’t see the Yakuza often, and when we do, it often means trouble. So we watch him carefully, but pretend that we aren’t watching him at all, and as he comes closer, he begins waving at us. He parks the bike, removes his helmet, and it’s Big Brother, all the way from the city with a packed lunch from Mother, who is worried about us, the lunch containers wrapped in cloth as if we were still schoolchildren.
“The food is so good: fried egg flavoured with soy sauce, fried salmon, beans, rice, pickles. We eat it all. He watches us happily, then leaps into the lake and swims a few laps.
“We ask Big Brother where he got the bike. ‘I bought it today!’ he announces. As if on cue, the motorbike collapses in the dirt, falls over like a drunk animal.
“Akio and I help him with the motorbike, trying to set it upright, but it is so heavy. It is enormous. The engine is still hot; the leg stand wobbles. I burn my finger and strain my arms.
“As we wrestle with this monstrosity of a vehicle, I pant, ‘What prompted you to buy this thing?’
“When we finally get it upright, he says, ‘A cripple like me needs to fly.’ Then he roars off like a black dragon, and Akio and I go back to trying to catch some fish.
“Big Brother’s always been like that. He loves to show off! Even his menswear shop is an extended wardrobe for himself. When he was seeing you, when only Eiko and Tansu knew about you, Tansu says he disappeared for days at a time, taking the best shirts off the mannequins to chase the Beautiful Girl From Miyakojima. That’s what he called you. The Beautiful Girl From Miyakojima.”
Toyo laughed in delight, and at the sound of her voice Ryu looked up and a small smile appeared on his face. He downed his sake and joined them.
“What’s all this racket? Has Shigeo told you about the time he mistook the deep gutter as the sidewalk and fell in? He knocked himself out against the concrete, eventually came to, climbed back out with blood streaming down his face and covered in dirt. The patrol police came across him stumbling along the road and threw him in jail because they thought he was drunk. When I came to get him out of the cell, he was declaring loudly that he had seen two moons in the sky.”
songbirds as we sing
Toyo avidly watched every new Takarazuka Revue extravaganza: adaptations of Casablanca, Romeo and Juliet and Dark Brown Eyes. Sometimes Kazuko accompanied her and they were glitter-eyed together as the stars appeared: the musumeyaku flying across the stage in their bright costumes, feathers sprouting from their shoulders, and the otokoyaku following, suits fitted snugly around padded shoulders and flattened breasts, moustaches glued to their upper lips.
The star otokoyaku would appear to shrieks from the audience, shimmering in her dark velvet suit, her figure tall and boyish, her arms spread wide as she danced and sang in her rich deep voice. There was something so marvellous about her: the velvet collar framing a white throat; eyelashes spiked black starfish; hair oiled and combed back from a widow’s peak.
Toyo dreamed of dancing on the stage with them, the orchestral music swelling to an emotional crescendo while the deep red curtains swung away like the wings of a giant bird. The fans screamed and fainted and she leapt into the spotlight, gesticulating with her long fingers, singing out her heart, her perfumed eyes wide open.
“Can I apply? Can I go to the auditions?” Toyo asked.
Okaya was adamant. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Toyo lingered in front of the shop windows and imagined costumes, frocks, suits, ribbons, stockings, her legs turned out in her dancing heels. She became what she saw. She lost herself in the television, the cinema screen and books.
Watching Giant, Toyo felt James Dean’s impending car crash curl in her throat and collide with his brooding profile, his eyes steeped in emotions and impulses he could not unde
rstand or control. A strange languor enveloped her when she watched Elizabeth Taylor, caressed by the moonlight, the curve of her shoulders rising and falling, discontent seeping from her warm brown locks. Toyo felt the dust of Texas staining her marble skin, that her pillows and bedsheets smelled of saddles and sweat.
the world covered with water
Sometimes Toyo felt a pang of guilt because she was laughing at the boys’ quips, or Okaya’s stubbornness, or Otoya’s jests, or Ryu’s jokes. She would bring her mother into the conversation, just to prove that she remembered things about her, like the delicate poise of her chopsticks when she ate, her careful stitching of kimonos, her tall figure bent over the cloth and fingers weaving in and out, face pouched with late nights.
“Walk straight!” she told Hideo. Hideo was nine years old and slouched all the time. “Mother always told me to keep my back straight. She would tape a ruler to my back.” Hideo grinned at her and slouched even more, curving his back into a camel’s hump, scampering away. She could not decide whether to frown or smile.
It was inauspicious to stick chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice. It was inauspicious to tie a bow in a vertical direction. Cutting fingernails at night would attract ghosts. She covered the mirror with a cloth at night so she wouldn’t be frightened by her reflection.
She recalled the hot day when Mother had been very ill, lying on the futon, and had asked her to purchase a watermelon. Toyo acquiesced, then spent thirty minutes fiddling with her hair, make-up and dress in a languid state of indecision.
“I’m going now, Mother,” she called as she passed the bedroom door, handbag slung over her arm.
Mother was furious. “Are you only going now? I told you to make it quick! What have you been doing for so long, you silly girl? Always flitting about like a butterfly. And here I lie, so thirsty.”
Chastened, Toyo rushed to the markets.
This episode haunted her; the dawdling she wished she could take back, the efficiency she had failed to achieve, the thirty long minutes that stretched out for her dying mother. In her mind she re-enacted the sequence of events so that she stepped out straightaway, selected a crescent of the pinkest watermelon and sliced it up in the kitchen and her mother was so grateful, so happy. Then the memory of her mother’s face, fretful and dry, interposed itself, her hands plucking at her bed, the anger directed at Toyo, at the thirst, and at the helplessness of her condition.
Toyo’s time of month came and passed without any bleeding. Her skin felt delicate, as if more pores were opening up. The second month came and passed; still there was no blood.
She went to the doctor and returned home, dazed, with the news. Ryu was by turns ecstatic and philosophical. At night he spoke to Toyo of the books and journals he had read on the existence of the soul, mused about the baby’s potential character. Toyo dozed off, and when she opened her eyes again, Ryu was still talking, staring at the ceiling.
Being pregnant filled Toyo’s mind and heart and waking thoughts. The baby was a balloon, lifting her up into the sunlight and the rain. She floated along the golden river of lamplights, cherry blossoms and stalls selling colourful candy in tiny tins. The family gravitated to her as if she were the moon. Their eyes lit on her rounded belly.
Kazuko insisted that Toyo accompany her to the opening day of her senior high school. “There’s no point for Mother to go, she doesn’t understand much Japanese …”
A heavily pregnant Toyo lumbered to Kazuko’s high school and greeted the English teacher, the Japanese teacher, the economics teacher and the mathematics teacher. The homeroom teacher was young and enthusiastic. “Mrs Zhang, I congratulate you on the imminent birth of your child – a lovely complement to your family. Thank you for coming to the opening day – your daughter must be so grateful!”
Toyo froze in horror. Kazuko burst out laughing.
When the labour pains started, Toyo gritted her teeth and would not cry out. Women had to be tough, they could not scream at the mere touch of pain. She had been initiated into toughness by her mother, who had held her little hand proudly in the street, ignoring curious glances and queries about an absent father, a kimono wrapped around her statuesque frame. So Toyo hemmed in her screams.
The doctor cut the umbilical cord and tied it in a knot. The nurse handed the remnants of the cord to her in a wooden box with the birth time and date inscribed on top.
Ryu ran into the house, sobbing.
“What’s the matter?” asked his family, concern on their faces. “How’s the baby? How’s Toyo?”
“I have a son!” he shouted. “A SON!”
They laughed in relief and patted him on the back. “Good on you, Ryu! Congratulations. Crazy man. Laughing when there’s sad news, crying when there’s good.”
Toyo smiled through a haze of exhaustion. Her body felt as though it had been ripped apart at the middle and sewn back together. Ryu sat beside the baby’s cot, leaned in to gaze like a little boy, tears trickling down his cheeks. He stroked the baby’s forehead with a soft finger.
Men, Toyo thought. They do all the crying.
“I had a dream this morning,” Ryu said. “I want to name him after it.” The world was covered in water, and then the sun rose, illuminating the peaceful expanse of ocean. Yoshio: world, water and dawn.
Toyo left the hospital with her baby and the wooden box. It contained a part of her and a part of the baby. It was proof that they had once been connected; that Yoshio had once resided inside her; that she had nourished him and pushed him out into the world. She rubbed oil into his belly button and marvelled at its neatness. His eyes began to blink open with the liquid gaze of the newborn.
the long coat
In Toyo’s second life, she was a wife and a mother and a sister and a daughter. Except for a framed photo of her mother, Kayoko, hair curling over her wide forehead (eyes soft and surprised, holding a baby Toyo) and a separate photo of her father, solemn in his kimono, her first life had never existed.
It was for the sake of her child and herself, for Ryu and her entire new family, that she held this secret close. It was a thorned kernel lodged against her ribcage, knocking into her with every step. Sometimes her breath caught with the possibility that the facts would be found out: that her mother had remained unmarried, that Toyo’s real name, her father’s name, had been hidden. The news would spread in whispers, in sidelong glances, to the children’s playgrounds, to the customers who came into the menswear shop. She repeated her real name to herself, an incantation to ground her before sleep: Takahashi Toyo. In the morning the kanji peeled off her eyelids. Nobody knew about her mother and father except Ryu and that was the way she intended to keep it. She and Ryu had told the Zhangs that her parents had died; and surely that was not far from the truth.
Toyo settled into a routine of feeding and sleeping and changing clothes and nappies and going to the pictures when she could make it. Actors lit up the silver screen with their profiles and huge eyes, the angles of their cheeks becoming more familiar, softened by the moonlight, the lamplight, by sweeping camera shots and intimate close-ups: the brooding eyes of Alain Delon, the impertinent sweep of Vivien Leigh’s nose, the rounded cheeks of Ingrid Bergman melting into Humphrey Bogart’s shoulders.
As Toyo walked from the corner store with a bottle of orange juice, a man’s hand reached out of the crowd and gripped her milk-heavy breast. Her breasts were soft domes, outlined by the clinging sweater, a narrow waist, a figure like a Hollywood star. The man squeezed hard, grinned into her astonished face, and disappeared into the ocean of people.
By the time she reached home, she was red-eyed and fuming. His leer and dirty fingers touched the place her son’s little mouth had clung to, feeding and sleeping. Tears ran down her face and her voice shook as she described the incident to Ryu.
He scolded: “You do wear figure-hugging sweaters, so it’s partly your fault.” H
e gave her one of his coats to wear for the rest of the breastfeeding period and she was enveloped in his scent, his shaving cream.
Every few days she put Yoshio to bed and Ryu fastened the spare helmet strap under her chin, grinning at how Toyo’s cheeks squashed against the inner padding.
The motorbike roared. The wind whipped her nose and cheeks numb, until they were separate pieces of flesh grafted onto her face. Her eyes watered. The road widened and narrowed like a stream.
Ryu’s body was warm and solid between her thighs and she placed her face against his leather-clad back and closed her eyes, imagining that in the thrum of the engine and the wind she could hear his heartbeat. The motorbike roared like a black dragon. The name Ryu meant dragon. She told him that he was a dragon on a black dragon. He was flushed with the speed and beauty of his motorbike, bowing to every shift of weight and twist of the handles. The horizon never seemed too far away. Mountains, hills and rivers waited to be conquered. He grinned with pleasure.
“So does that mean I’m kakoii?” he asked.
“For now,” was her reply. She took in his lean frame, clad in the leather jacket and jeans and black boots. “For now, you’re quite, quite handsome.”
He kissed her through both their helmets, pursing his lips to touch her laughing ones, their helmets clashing with a plastic sound. The river ran alongside like thousands of cascading metal sheets.
When Yoshio was five months old, Toyo realised she was pregnant again. Ryu ahhhed and ooohhhed and was caught between surprise and worry. He paced the room, sat next to her, placed his hand on her belly, and rose again to pace the room.
“It’s too soon,” he pronounced. “You can’t look after two babies born so close together. I’ll take you to the doctor to get an abortion.”