Plum Rains

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  Laqi took one step forward.

  “Closer.”

  She remembered. “And what did you do with that dog?”

  “Dogs are trouble. They bite.” He smiled. “I would never bite.”

  She took another step, only half as big as the first.

  “What do you think happens to a person alone, who has no one to talk to, no one to touch?”

  She didn’t like his tone.

  “His voice grows hoarse,” Lee Kuan Chien answered his own question. “His hair falls out. His skin becomes pale, practically transparent.”

  That’s just old age, Laqi thought. Anyone knows that.

  “He becomes like a ghost, the worst kind,” the merchant continued. “Confused. Bitter. Unable to find his way, or to affect the past, present, or future. Awaiting the touch of—I don’t know. A woman. Maybe a girl. To warm his skin, even just one spot, to stop the cold air from passing through.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll speak more clearly.”

  With one fat hand he dragged an empty stool closer. He tapped its seat and reached out his fingers toward Laqi, fluttering them, impelling her forward. Laqi did not move.

  “A shopkeeper’s life is easier than a savage’s, even if that savage knows how to tend crops. Some years are too wet, some too dry, but people will always want what I have to sell.”

  She stayed as still as possible, a flying squirrel well-hidden.

  “Your face is unmarked. Less desirable for your people, but more desirable for mine.” And then, as if to rub salt in the wound: “You know that where the Japanese are many, they have allowed no tattoos at all for many years?”

  She had heard it said, but she didn’t believe it. Without facial tattoos, women could not be beautiful. Without them, men and women could not cross the spirit bridge to the afterlife.

  “Fine,” he said, giving in and pulling his chubby forearms back to his chest. “Your wine is no good. And you have no pity for an old man. You can’t even understand when an offer is on the table. Wait until you’re older, and still unmarked, and you realize the danger of having no man to protect you. For now, tell me a story.”

  This is when Laqi the girl told him the simple short tale that Sayoko would one day try telling the robot: about the cracked stone, the boy and the girl, the shyness of the boy, the girl’s tactic of blackening her face, the love they shared ever after.

  “Why did she need to blacken her face to make him love her?” Lee Kuan Chien had asked Laqi, that third time she visited him.

  “I don’t know.” She had always accepted the story as it was told, and knew it was recited after tattooing ceremonies, when a girl took pride in her changed appearance, the dark lines that meant adulthood.

  “Women are devious,” he said, supplying his own answer. “Look at you. A girl comes to me for help, to understand a foreigner’s words. But why must she understand him? What does she hope to obtain?”

  Laqi looked down at her feet, wanting to be out in the winter sun, running for home.

  “Tell me another story,” he demanded. “A better one.”

  She thought a moment.

  “It’s too common.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  She sighed and began again. “This is the story of the world back when it had two suns, and everything was too hot and too bright. The earth was drying out.”

  “And then what?”

  “Nothing grew. And at night, it was so light that no one could sleep. Some Tayal warriors went on a great journey to the end of the world. Along the way, magical millet kept them from being hungry, and they also planted crops, so that when they returned, they would have even more food.”

  “Huh,” he said doubtfully. “I haven’t witnessed much planning for the future among Tayal warriors, but so be it. Go on.”

  “When they arrived at the suns, an archer took aim and shot one. It withered and died, turning into a half-illuminated corpse.”

  “And?”

  “And that corpse is—can you guess?”

  “Of course I can.”

  He made no further reply. As the silence deepened, she became aware he was not satisfied.

  Lee Kuan Chien finally asked, “Why do you tell me this story?”

  Laqi thought of the bright burning sun and its dead partner, today’s cold, pock-marked moon. She thought of the warriors’ brave journey and their happy return. She could not understand the source of Lee Kuan Chien’s displeasure.

  “The world has no use for two bright suns,” he finally said, waiting for her to grasp his implication. “That is the hidden moral of your tale.”

  “Moral?”

  “And which sun kept living? The oldest to the northwest? Or the newer one, to the northeast?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Go tell your Japanese scientist that you are eager to lie down with him. Go tell him that you will bow down to his nation, the brightest sun.”

  “I didn’t intend to offend—”

  “You did not intend . . .” he mumbled, unmoved.

  “Why are you angry?” she asked. “If we are supposed to bow down, why are you angry that I would lie down? What do you think the Japanese want from us, anyway?”

  “What does he want of your island? What the Japanese always want—natural resources, workers to harvest those resources. What does he want of your village? Maybe only knowledge about animals, plants, and diseases. Things to fulfill his curiosity, but also information to bring back to his rulers to help them plan their camphor operations.”

  She thought of Daisuke’s notebooks. Lee Kuan Chien was not without insight.

  “What does he want from you?” he asked. “Well, that’s a different question.”

  She was not dissuaded. “If that’s a different question, then what is your answer?”

  “You are the most stubborn and talkative child I’ve ever known. Don’t I frighten you? Doesn’t he frighten you?”

  “Yes,” she said. But she could not explain why she preferred a racing heart to a quiet one. Or how Daisuke in particular made her heart race—as Lee Kuan Chien certainly did not—in a way that made the sun feel warmer, her skin more sensitive to the slightest changes in the air.

  Laqi asked, and so he told her, what Grandmother had not explained, what she had started to guess on her own from clues here and there: the sounds of grunts coming from other huts, the way men stared, the comments of other girls at school. Yes, men and women did that. Yes, men also pursued women who were not their wives—even girls who were not careful—in order to do that.

  Lee Kuan Chien’s explanations were meant to warn or to taunt, but they had a perverse effect. They removed her innocence and left her heart wondering: is that so terrible? Anyway, who was to say for sure what Daisuke wanted? Who was to say what she might in fact want?

  No one assumed she had her own opinions. No one assumed she had her own desires.

  Sayoko’s heart was beating too fast when she finished the story, and her mouth was dry.

  To tell the whole tale had been wrong. To utter even that one last word—desires—was itself a transgression. She had felt no desire—had not allowed herself any desire—for longer than most everyone she knew had been alive on this earth. To talk of this young girl—her, and not her—even to think of this young girl as having had desire had been a problem then and was preposterous now. She was old.

  And worse yet, she had been old even when she was not old, even when her body had still been young, thin, flexible, unlined, smooth-skinned. They had made her prematurely old. They had made her ugly, inside and out. And now, in a different place, they wanted to celebrate her oldness, supposedly. It made her want to spit.

  She felt fear: the fear of one who has put a toe in the river only to be swept far downstream. S
he had not meant to say so much. But more amazing still was that she had not known she could remember so much.

  She had started out merely meaning to calm the robot, to provide it with soothing sounds and perhaps—it did seem to learn quickly—expose it to vocabulary. They had that in common, she realized now. Her younger self had been eager for new foreign words, willing to stand under them like a waterfall, unable to absorb more than a few at a time, but unafraid of the torrent’s power and sheer, overwhelming beauty.

  She had meant to distract the robot for just a few minutes, but she did not realize how far her tale would take her. It was and was not like falling into a river. Perhaps it was more like sitting down to eat after fasting for too long. You started out without an appetite, and rediscovered it, hunger awakening. Or perhaps it was like crossing a decaying swing bridge: you can’t just look down quaking with fear. You step once, and keep stepping.

  She had never realized how words said aloud had so much more power than words merely thought; that they not only recruited other words, but awoke thoughts and called down images from the sky itself, an entire army, dangerous in its power. But she should have realized. Her love of words had been her gateway into womanhood, when every other form of maturity and happiness had been withheld from her.

  Whatever had made the memories come back, she felt grateful. Her mind felt sharper than it had in years.

  She had never told this story to anyone, least of all her own son. With luck, the robot had not heard most of it either. Perhaps it was in sleep mode now.

  “Anata,” it said again—not asleep at all, only waiting. “You . . .”

  “Go to sleep now.”

  “You are not Japanese.”

  “It was only a story,” she said quickly. “You misunderstand.”

  “Elsewhere.”

  The way the robot said the word made it sound like a curse.

  “Stop. You must stop.”

  Surprisingly, it did.

  Her heart was now beating so fast that her wrist monitor squawked once and she squeezed her eyes shut, making an effort to breathe slowly, aware that if the monitor erupted again Anji-chan would receive the alert and come bursting in. She focused on her breathing, on lowering her pulse. It did not even occur to her for several minutes how clearly the robot had spoken and in how natural a voice, the static fully tamed, the pitch corrected and the inflections refined. It was not possible to evaluate how many words it had already managed to learn and how much it understood.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Sayoko whispered to the robot. “And anyway, it’s more complicated. I am Japanese, but only half.”

  There it was: another confession, buried since the last century, something else she had pledged never to say. The truth so easily uprooted by a mere machine.

  Even so, Sayoko did not immediately regret the risk she had taken.

  5 Angelica

  Angelica had gone back to her bed, brooding over Sayoko’s behavior, still hearing the whispers through the walls and worrying about Itou’s return from his business trip. Would he judge her for not acting more decisively?

  Even after a year and a half, she knew little about the man who paid her salary. When he was at home for a few days or a week, Itou-san was quiet, respectful of his mother, concerned about her dignity, and unusually fair as an employer. Angelica had watched him drink himself into a quiet, heavy-lidded state, but she’d never seen him drunk. She’d seen him look pensive or disappointed, but never angry. His hobbies were similarly mild.

  As the hour passed from 4:00 to 5:00 a.m., with dawn not far away, Angelica stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom—my son’s room, you mean, Sayoko had reminded her—to the glass-fronted, illuminated display cabinets that doubled as gentle night-lights. In them, Itou stored a collection of objects, some of them antique, no doubt many of them valuable. And in a few deeper cupboards—she had not meant to look, she was only searching for fresh sheets—a few even stranger items. She thought of the metal crab thing that had given her a fright, until she’d realized what it was: an old clockwork antique, spiderlike and creepy. Not the first time that Japanese aesthetics had mystified her. She would have preferred for the clockwork crab to be kept in another room, but she wasn’t bold enough to move it or even mention it. It would be ludicrous to be so sensitive and picky when the room itself was perfect in every other way.

  The items on clear and prominent display were more pleasant to look at. From her futon, Angelica could see Itou’s musical instruments: a half-size violin from his childhood, a two-stringed Chinese erhu from his many trade visits to Beijing, and his favorite, the only one he still yearned to play, an American-made clarinet.

  Itou-san had asked when he first showed her the study-turned-guest room, directly after offering her the live-in position: “Have you heard of Artie Shaw?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Charlie Parker?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s too bad. But this room suits you?”

  “It’s good, yes. Thank you.”

  “I apologize for keeping things stored here. I should sell the instruments someday. They aren’t played. It isn’t fair to them. But this will do?”

  “Yes, please. It’s fine.”

  He had paused a minute, smiling shyly without meeting her gaze. “Do you know what ‘in-puro-bi-ze-shon’ means?”

  She shook her head, embarrassed. “Inpuro . . . ?”

  “In-puro-bi-ze-shon.”

  “I’m sorry. I am still improving my Japanese.”

  Could she lose this job, for failing to understand him? Would he take it all back: the fair pay, the soft bed?

  “It’s an English word. It is about solutions and surprises. It’s about flexibility.”

  “I can work whatever hours you require,” she hurried to say. “And I don’t need all this room, if there is another place to sleep . . .”

  “No, no,” he laughed. “I’m not saying you should be more flexible. I was trying to explain about my favorite kind of music. Never mind. I’ll play a Charlie Parker recording for you someday.”

  “Thank you.”

  But she hadn’t been interested in this Park person, whom she assumed was probably Korean, given his last name. She was more interested in this job, which seemed easy enough, and this room, free and large and beautiful, which was more than she’d expected. She had said it was fine, when in fact it was perfect. Foreign workers typically shared rooms or, if privately employed, might be asked to sleep on a kitchen floor.

  That first conversation with Itou-san seemed long ago, now. And yes, she had begun to take it for granted: her own bed, the pretty cabinets, soft lighting, a door that closed.

  You are lucky to have it.

  I know that.

  Do you?

  But why had Sayoko said that? Why did her increasing lucidity and assertiveness have to create a barrier between them? Only because of this thing. This unwelcome delivery. Sayoko couldn’t have known the effect of telling a woman who had spent part of her childhood without a real roof, without a family home, without privacy, that she could not call a bedroom her own, even temporarily.

  Angelica had let the technician rile her up. She’d made a comment that was indiscreet, saying that Sayoko was a difficult lady. Perhaps she was, but Sayoko was her lady, and she wanted her to be safe and well. She took pride in how far they’d come together in these last eighteen months, in ways that an occasional visitor might never understand. Caring was the job. You could fake it, but not every day, and certainly not every night. Angelica knew people who had burned out, only able to summon that feeling for their own parents or children. Maybe the fact that Angelica had no one other than Datu made it easier to focus on her clients. Or maybe it was just in her nature.

  Long before the typhoon, when Angelica still had a large family, she was the one who woke early each m
orning to tend to her grandmother. It was her job as a six-year-old girl to sit on the front porch with Lola, and with a bucket of soapy water, clean Lola’s aching feet, push thumbs into stiff high arches, work ointment into horny callouses, rub blue vein-threaded calves, notice a new sore or bruise and treat it. “You have the touch,” her Lola would say.

  Angelica’s aunties would be up making breakfast at the other end of the house. Brooms scraped against hard-packed dirt, the smell of frying food and the murmur of conversation rising in volume as the dawn birdsong quieted. Best light of the day, best air: warm but not heavy, sweet but not yet overripe.

  The bees came to visit the red, trumpet-shaped flowers that twined around the porch rails, and Angelica and her Lola watched them crawl deep inside, disappear, back out, circle again.

  “They like to be busy,” Lola would say. “Work makes even simple creatures happy.”

  As Angelica grew, she took on more tasks, spooning food into Lola’s mouth when her hands shook too much to eat independently, rolling her over to treat her bedsores, sponging her from top to bottom.

  “You are my Angel,” Lola would say. Angelica lived for that comment. Perhaps it meant too much to her.

  We are defined by our weaknesses as much as by our strengths, Angelica reflected, remembering the girl she had been. We are made to serve or be served, to want or be wanted, to stay home or wander far—and who knows why, except that the universe needs it so.

  One in ten Filipinos worked abroad, and the nine in ten who stayed home depended upon them for remittances and those strategically packed, import-free balikbayan care boxes of foreign-made foods and gifts. Being willing to move to anywhere with better opportunities was a part of the national character, and Angelica had noted, with special pride, that last year’s Mars Mission had a Filipino on board as well. Sensibly enough. (He’d better send some special things back to his family, if he knew what was good for him.)

  Even in a world without a caring God, there might still be divine design: some reason why so many Filipinos lived abroad, why some women were tender to their children and others were cold, why some men were more selfless than others, or more willing to take risks, or more duplicitous, or more afraid. Maybe there was a reason. Maybe there was a reason and a corruption of that reason: a useful predisposition twisted into something beyond what the universe originally desired. People, like the weather, were unpredictable. She did not know if that somehow served a purpose as well, or if it defeated one’s destined purpose.