by Lily Chan
Toyo was too surprised and overwhelmed to protest. She followed him to the clinic. The aborted baby was a boy. He would have been a brother. She could not look at the fleshy thing. She did not feel an affinity for something that had been growing inside her, once it was dead and surgically removed and wrapped in plastic.
picnic
On his first birthday Yoshio was treated like an emperor. He was crowned with presents, feted with sweets and generous servings of fried duck, steamed rice and pork dumplings. He was the first son of a first son. He rode with his father on the motorbike, swaddled in a jacket, an oversized helmet balanced on his small head.
Ryu took him to the onsen and scrubbed his body with a soaped cloth. Yoshio began to cry.
“You have to be tough, Yoshio. Be a man, be tough, don’t cry at these little things!” The green steam fogged up the glass windows.
Ryu took him to the billiard tables. The boy was too short to see what was happening on the table, but he saw his father limp around it, the cue jutting out of his hands like a long violin bow. The balls rolled into the holes like rain, like music. Ryu’s friends laughed and talked and pinched Yoshio’s cheeks and tossed him packets of peanuts. The low-hanging light above the table flickered and swung when they knocked their heads against it.
Ryu was happy when they walked home from pool; he swung his bad leg vigorously out from the hip so his limp was an easygoing swell, rising and falling in time with an inward rhythm.
The siblings were attuned to Ryu’s voice and a sharp edge to it made them sit up and listen. The eight brothers and sisters knitted around each other and their parents, interwoven like the stitches of a jumper. Toyo slipped in amongst them, an extra stitch, nestled between the cool pink calm of Okaya and the excited yellow of Kazuko.
There were days when the whole family hit the beach, the glorious beach with its blue waters and the sand and the breeze and the sky, and they laid out the picnic and the children chased each other with handfuls of seaweed and jellyfish until, eventually, one of the uncles uncovered the big fat watermelon, tied a bandanna around a child’s eyes and instructed them to hit the watermelon with a stick (if they could find it) as the remaining children squealed and ran about, avoiding the flailing. The melon broke open in bits of flying red flesh and black seed, and Toyo and the women sliced the splintered mess into cubes and distributed them to all as the spoils of war. The adults ate okonomiyaki and drank cans of light beer.
Toyo did not talk very much when the whole family was out. She was too busy laughing at their strange stories, their competing with each other, creating versions of their own tales to retell, each one funnier than the last.
The story of Shigeo’s hotheadedness made the rounds. The first scene began with him staggering out of jail, his astonished brothers having bailed him out, blood caked on his head and thighs, incoherently mouthing a tale about an altercation with a Yakuza. In the murky summer heat, waiting in a long line for a ride on a ferris wheel, he had seen a Yakuza insouciantly jump the queue. The rest of the line shuffled their feet and let him in. Shigeo shouted, “Hey, you! Wait in line with everyone else!”
At first the Yakuza looked towards the back of the line and raised an eyebrow.
Shigeo shouted again, “Wait at the back of the line, you! Don’t push in! We’re all waiting here.”
“Who the fuck is that?” the Yakuza snapped.
Shigeo leaped out of the line, glaring, and the Yakuza glared back, and the people waiting in line murmured and began moving away, and Shigeo and the Yakuza stepped towards each other and exchanged uncivil words, which turned into uncivil punches, with Shigeo coming off worse, but he stubbornly clambered up to be knocked in the face again and again and then, blood streaming from his nose, ran into an adjoining sushi stall, whipped a large knife off the chopping board of an astonished chef, and, hacking the air, began to chase after the Yakuza, screaming like a demented ghost.
The Yakuza was at first so astonished by his behaviour, so unlike the usual cowering he encountered, that he stood frozen as Shigeo leaped towards him, then yelped and fled, and Shigeo pursued him, still screaming and hacking the air, as if all the Yakuza in Japan had manifested themselves in this single Yakuza, as if all the bullies and tormentors in high school and all his sorrows and injustices had been incarnated in this man, and with one final scream Shigeo brought the knife down through the air, missing the fleeing, yelping, panic-stricken Yakuza and instead slicing open his own thigh and collapsing on the grass.
By then someone had notified security and the police hoisted Shigeo away as he protested, “He was trying to jump the queue, the bastard!”
At each retelling of this incident, Shigeo grew more and more embarrassed, as if it was not he who had been responsible for any of these actions but a demon that had possessed him.
Then there was the time when Takeo, aged twelve, had climbed up the onsen building. He did not know what he would find at the top, he just knew that he had to keep climbing, one white rung after another, up the onsen wall and towards the narrow chimney. From the edge of his vision he could sense the roofs of the houses and the buildings growing smaller and smaller, like toy blocks.
He sensed people entering and leaving the onsen, their slippers clacking on the pavement. But he did not look down, not until he had reached the very top rung and breathed deeply, and felt the steam rising up through the chimney, coating the tips of his fingers in moist drops. And when he looked down, his knees began to tremble, and the fear rose up through his body like a swamp.
A crowd had gathered below and began to shout at him. Some shouted encouragement, others shouted at him to come down. The people appeared as tiny blobs moving and merging and coalescing with his fear. He could hear the voices of his sisters. Finally he squeaked, “I can’t get down!” in a trembling voice.
Toyo watched his tiny figure perched on top of the ladder like a grasshopper. She clasped her hands together and prayed. The police, a fire engine and an ambulance arrived. Toyo prayed with all her might that Takeo would not fall, that she would give anything to the gods if he would not fall.
Whenever Toyo told the story, she felt again the fear trembling in her fingers and she struggled to stop her voice shaking.
“Why did you do that, you silly boy?” she kept asking. “Why? I don’t understand.”
Takeo mumbled, “I just wanted to get to the top, that’s all. Just once.”
the hot summer
Ryu returned resplendent from a surgical appointment. The doctor could fix his short leg.
“You don’t have to do it,” Toyo said. “I don’t mind your limp.”
“I have a son now, and another child on the way. When they grow up, how can I walk by their side with pride? Their in-laws won’t give a man with a limp a second look, especially a Chinese. I want my children to be proud of me.”
Ryu booked the operation.
Toyo gave birth to a daughter in April. They called her Toyomi, the little mi at the end of Toyo like an extension, a budding flower off a branch. Toyomi was a fretful baby. She yowled like a kitten, showing the pink yawn of her mouth, tossing against the crib.
It was a hot summer. Dragonflies threaded harmonies in the sluggish air. The days were marked with jugs of cold green tea, lemonade bought from the street vendor, and cubes of ice exchanged for a hasty clank of yen coins.
Ryu rented a small house next to the Hanshin Tigers baseball stadium. He attended all the games that he could fit into his schedule, glowing, leaning forward as the fielders crouched like mosquitoes on the green skin of the field, as the first batter shuffled on the plate, steadying his grip. When Ryu wasn’t watching a game, he was reading about it in the papers or listening to the radio for live scores.
Some nights he drank sake with his friends, then staggered home. Toyo received him with resigned acceptance; whether he arrived empty-handed
, or with containers of take-away sushi.
“This is the best sushi I’ve ever eaten!” he announced. “I’m feeding it to Yoshio.”
Toyo tried to dissuade him. “Yoshio is asleep. You shouldn’t wake him up, it’s late. Get him to eat it tomorrow.”
“It’s the best sushi in the world, I tell you! And my son is going to taste it tonight. Just one bite. It’s fresh now.” He climbed the wooden stairs and opened Yoshio’s door. “Hey, Yoshio, I’ve brought you some sushi. Come and eat it!”
Yoshio climbed out of bed, blinking sleep-smeared eyes. “Papa?”
Ryu fed him a piece. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
Yoshio’s cheeks bulged with the tart vinegar rice and the rolled egg and cucumber and pickle and raw salmon. It was good. He chewed and chewed and swallowed. “It was yum!”
“Good boy. Now go back to sleep.” Ryu closed the door and climbed back down to the kitchen.
Toyo shook her head. “You are very drunk, my husband.”
“You should try this sushi too. It’ll go off by tomorrow.”
Several times during the summer Ryu complained about not being able to pee. She came across him at the toilet, door ajar, dick hanging out. “I haven’t peed for three days now.” He pressed his bladder, or where he thought his bladder should be. “It doesn’t hurt, but …”
Toyo was aghast. “Anyone can see you! Close the door and pull up your pants, or do one or the other.” And as he was about to close the door – “And go see the doctor!”
But he was too busy. There were customers to greet, suits to alter, deliveries to deliver, materials to order, buttons to sew, pant legs to measure, accounts to balance, receipts to issue. He rushed home to eat iced noodles for lunch and stopped mid-sentence to fall, open-mouthed, frozen, and convulse electric-shock-violently at the top of the stairs.
Toyo called an ambulance, shaking, urgent words thrown from her mouth like splinters. He was rushed in a whirl of white coats and silver trolleys and tangles of IV drips up to the emergency department, his face pallid, eyebrows dashes of black ink. She clung to his trolley like a leech, desperate for a hint of breath, of sweat. As the lift ascended, he opened his eyes and took a startled breath.
“Wow!” He saw her desperate face. “I almost made you a widow, Toyo, almost made you a widow, didn’t I? … Isn’t that funny now? Don’t look at me like that. With your big eyes, you could scare an owl!”
He lapsed back into unconsciousness.
Toyo stood vigil outside his room in the hospital. Mid-morning, the doctor checked his vital signs, then made a cross with his fingers, telling Toyo that Ryu would die soon.
He stopped breathing around noon. She saw the cessation of breath in his body, and she did not cry. She felt as if her own breath had escaped from her chest. She felt her heart beating, sluggishly, slowly. She walked down the hallway blankly, why am I walking? Why should I walk? The energy flowed out of her body and she collapsed and her family came running up to her, holding her, forming a wall of human bodies around her. Without him I have no reason to live! She did not know if she had spoken aloud; her mind was burning up. Her four-year-old son looked on with puzzlement in his round face and his incomprehension struck her like a brick.
The family retreated into cocoons of mourning. Okaya locked herself into a room and wept till her face was a huge white balloon, the bags under her eyes filled with fluid and tender as pastry.
The attending doctor almost spat in frustration. Ryu had had a kidney infection, easily rectified by a simple operation. The unclean blood had travelled through his body and poisoned him.
Toyo had feverish dreams where Ryu sat inside a small glass room sipping lemonade. She shouted his name, but he could not hear her. His abdomen slowly ballooned and filled the room and burst.
paper money
A Ryu-shaped hole yawned in every room. The house was near a train station and as the trains passed, the walls shook gently like a baby’s rattle in a giant fist.
The first night without him she lay awake in her bed and noticed a ticking in the room she did not remember before. She did not keep a clock in her room. All night she heard the ticking and was paralysed with indecision. She could rise and search for the source. She could ignore it and sleep. She was afraid of the dark and did not want to rise. After all, the ticking could stem from her imagination. Perhaps she was listening to nothing but the beat of her own heart or the clicking of a death beetle. She imagined that if she stayed in bed, the ticking would grow louder and louder and she would be full of this ticking and her legs would tick and her arms would tick until she rushed to the wall and began inscribing messages on it. For a moment, like a nightmare, she thought the shadows ran down the walls into black puddles and then the ticking broke into her mind again. She could not sleep. She could not ignore it. She was frozen by her fear of night.
As soon as the grey light climbed through the narrow window, she spotted the source of the strange ticking. A plastic Mickey Mouse watch lay in the corner of the room. The hour hand of Mickey’s paws pointed at the number five. One of the children had dropped it during their play; she carried it downstairs where it would bother her no longer.
Every morning she faced the mirror by flinging off its cover. Too often she had struck fear where dark monsters loomed toward her, trembled, and then felt the shift of realisation, where the monster transformed into her own reflection.
Then there was the wall-length mirror lining the entrance of the family home. It was useful for checking her appearance, but as she bent to remove her shoes she saw her reflection also bending to do the same thing; and she felt she was watching her doppelgänger imitate her every movement, as if the mirror were a separate yet identical world she could not control, and if she did not concentrate it would swallow her up.
One of the maids took the children away. Toyo couldn’t bear looking into their faces and knowing.
Okaya slapped her across the face. “Don’t cry in front of the children. They don’t know what’s going on. Compose yourself!”
Otoya did not attend the funeral. He kept repeating, brokenly, the Chinese proverb White hair has to send black hair first. He drank sake and collapsed into his bed and cried.
Yoshio could not understand the purpose of the funeral procession. His father was riding in the black car ahead, followed by the rest of the family in separate vehicles.
“But why?” he kept asking. “Why isn’t father riding with us?”
At each of his questions another of his uncles or aunts would begin to cry and he would look up, bewildered by their tears. The staff whispered amongst themselves that Ryu had died because of his name – Ryu Kai meant dragon, ocean – and a fiery dragon could not be content in the water, he would one day drown.
Beside Toyo, behind her, the family members shuffled and coughed. Everyone wore black. Their faces were white capsules. Toyo thought of her children and cried again, but Okaya pinched her elbow hard and she swallowed and adjusted her collar and wept silently, tears trickling down her throat. Toyomi, four months old, waved her hands, her eyes devoid of grief.
Toyo watched her own hands folding the gold and silver paper money into small squares, folding them smaller and smaller, not even trembling. The light shone on the gold and silver and folded it in and in, into ever smaller squares. With each fold the paper money increased in value. She prayed that Ryu would be richer in heaven than he ever was on earth. The funeral incense clotted her nose. She watched her fingers fold the paper money, watched herself as if she were already a spirit floating above her own skin. The prayers came to her lips like saliva, dripping.
The monk knelt in front of the memorial. He struck the gong and began to chant. Toyo closed her eyes. His low rhythmic words rushed through her, absorbed her. She spiralled downwards and hovered at the tantalising barrier between sleep and consciousness. The monk’s i
ntonations went on and on, undulating, punctuated by the ring of the gong.
Kazuko dragged on her arm, stopped her from viewing his body. “Don’t look at him,” she begged. The funeral was held several days after his death, in the middle of summer. His body was decomposing. So Toyo held nothing of him – not his body, his hand or a vessel of ashes – only a tombstone inscribed with his name.
Okaya urged Toyo to move into the hostel. She helped Toyo pack up the things in her apartment; instructed Tansu and Akio to organise the sale of remaining stock in Ryu’s shop. She dragged Toyo around like a limp fish, refusing to give up. She stuffed yen notes in her hands. “Go buy something for yourself!”
Toyo browsed the markets blankly. She picked at her food blankly. “Eat, eat!” Her brothers-in-law hounded her, surrounding her like extras in a musical, their chorus of voices: “Eat, eat!” They pressed food into her hands. Plump lychees, hot soup, fried wontons, sago encased in warm milk. They almost spooned it into her mouth.
Still she grew thinner and thinner. She had no appetite. Her teeth began to grow loose in her mouth. Her gums were pale and began to bleed. She woke up to find a tooth resting on her tongue like a pearl in a clamshell. She took it out and examined the red-tinged root, the curious knobbly shape of it. Her teeth began to fall out, one by one.
Toyo held her daughter’s head, held it in her palms. She felt the baby’s crown forming, firming day by day under the thin layer of skin. Ryu couldn’t hear her chortles or the sleepy murmurs of a milk-burped baby.
“Where’s Papa?” Yoshio said. Toyo cried every time he asked. At first Yoshio thought it amusing. He asked his grandmother and she would cry. He asked his uncles and they would cry. He asked his aunts and they would cry, smothering him with hugs, kisses and candies.