Plum Rains

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  While she stayed back, he peered into one doorway and then retreated, fanning his nose.

  “Something was digging in there.”

  “A wild boar,” she said.

  “Going after food?”

  “No. They take the food with them.” She did not want to say what she knew, that the boar was following the smell of a body buried hurriedly underneath the hut’s floor, too shallow.

  “Sickness here,” she said, while she was also thinking, ghosts.

  It had always been their people’s tradition, when a person died, to bury them under the floor of their home. The spirits lived among them, in their village, the dead as close as each family’s hearth. But here, the dead had been buried and left behind. The spirits here would be confused and restless.

  “We need to go,” she said.

  From the darkness behind them came a whoosh and then a knocking, slow at first, then faster, like someone rapping one walking stick against another. She took three quick steps, pushing up against Daisuke’s side and sheltering under his arm. He froze, listening.

  “It’s only the trees,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, meaning, yes, but not only.

  The wind had picked up, rattling the stands of bamboo, narrow ends bending and swaying, thicker bases—hard green poles—clapping against each other. Louder and louder: the sound of a place that wishes you to leave.

  She could not remain in this village, in the dark. She had to get away from the huts and away from the clacking trees. Downriver, a silhouetted shape on stilts was just visible, at the top of the bluff, overlooking the water: a black structure outlined by dark blue sky above the peach-colored rim where the sun was setting.

  It was a traditional lookout tower. When they got there, she went first to test the ladder, foot on the first rung, and then proceeded up to the sheltered platform, which was bounded by shoulder-high walls and covered with a good roof—all of it solid and steady.

  It would protect them from snakes and boars and give them a place from which to study their route in the morning. If unfamiliar warriors arrived, they would not be protected, however. Laqi was glad Daisuke asked few questions.

  From the high platform, they heard the bamboo knocking again, below. Hard green poles. Like old men with walking sticks, angry at them, at her in particular. She was trespassing, with a foreigner, and with feelings in her heart that ghosts would know in an instant, merely by passing through her and sensing, in her pulse and in her pores, the unmistakable traces of foolish desire.

  And now she knew. Her mother must have had this same desire, culminating in an affair with some colonial administrator or policeman or visiting scientist or timber scout. And though their liaison had been brief, her life, too, was marked by the tireless whispers of angry ghosts. But the difference between Laqi’s mother and her was that, had her mother not become pregnant with the child of a stranger, she would have lived a normal life. For Laqi, that was not possible. She was an outcast already, with far less to lose. The path would always be narrow and rocky, the bridges impassable.

  Daisuke made a bed of his jacket in the corner of the shelter. Laqi withdrew her bare arms into the folds of her tunic. The motion raised her dress to mid-thigh. The night would be cold and long.

  Daisuke was still sitting up, close to her but not touching. In the fading light, he leaned forward to look at her injured leg and its makeshift bandage.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “In the morning, we’ll walk back and you’ll say that nothing happened. We got lost. Everything will be fine.”

  They shivered and, gradually and imperceptibly, moved closer to each other. Even as her teeth chattered, every muscle in her body remained rigid, ready to startle at any move on his part. She tried to feign sleep but couldn’t resist opening her eyes, straining to see through the darkness, and she could imagine him doing the same. It took effort to remember to breathe, and an additional effort, when she finally inhaled again, to ensure she wasn’t breathing too noisily.

  She did not remember how she decided to finally reach out to his shoulder with one hand, but what followed was a quick and seamless motion as they rolled toward each other. Hands on shoulders, hands on ribs, her leg coiled around his, then lifted up and over his hipbone. Closer yet: warmth, breath, wordless relief, and the taste of him. Somehow we know how to do these things even before we have done them. The first step, the next step, until there was a twinge of pain, but another kind of relief followed, a hollowness filled. When tears rolled onto her cheeks he sensed it, even in the dark, and reached a finger to wipe her face, but said nothing.

  In the morning she was sure that the change would be tattooed on her, if not with ink, then with some change in her eyes or cheeks. He said they must go back. She said they could not—not yet—not until she knew how to hide what they had done. She thought of the story of their people, of the girl darkening her face so the boy would love her. She thought of how often we must hide who we are, for good and for bad. She did not realize then that she would be hiding most of her life.

  14 Angelica

  I know the big man came home. You can get out tonight, Junichi texted.

  It was true. She could. And she had to, for more reasons than one. They needed to talk.

  A minute passed. He revealed his hand. That favor you asked? I did it.

  What did you find out?

  Better in person.

  He gave her directions to a yakitori joint ten minutes away on foot. Itou-san was home at least through Sayoko’s birthday, and the robot was there, too. For once, if only briefly, slipping away was acceptable.

  On the way, Angelica remembered how excited she had been the first time she’d met Junichi for a clandestine meal, and her innocence then, not realizing how quickly dinner would become dinner and a love hotel, the combination accomplished with great efficiency. She couldn’t fault Junichi for his tendency to rush things. It was her way, too.

  She’d met him one Saturday during her first months on the job, when he came over to the condo to talk over a work matter with Itou. Junichi was suited to his pop culture post, but he hoped to make a horizontal move, from culture to technology, and the two frequently met to share working meals or rides to conferences. On that day, Angelica had been on her way to run errands, and when Junichi’s chat with Itou was finished, he accompanied her to the elevator, where he flirted with her shamelessly. In a country where she had trouble reading personal signals half the time, he’d been easy to read, impossible to ignore. He’d started texting her. He’d kept it up until she’d met him for drinks. She’d never questioned his single-mindedness. She was just grateful he’d done the work of seducing her, since she didn’t have the time, energy or audacity to pursue a lover on her own.

  Now when she wondered how they’d ended up together, she reminded herself: it had been easy. All too easy.

  Arriving at the restaurant, Angelica made her way down the steps into the darkened room of private booths and was greeted by the smiling hostess, who gave her a knowing look. In the next booth, a woman laughed every few moments, performing, trying to be charming in response to the low mumbles of her older male companion. An escort, or a mistress—something Angelica had never planned to be. Angelica tried to focus on the light music being piped from overhead speakers.

  “That’s jazz, right?” she asked Junichi.

  “You like jazz?”

  “I don’t know music very well.”

  “Itou likes jazz,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You trying to get on his good side?”

  She ignored the comment.

  “I like your hair tonight,” he said when the silence between them had grown uncomfortable. “The skirt could be a little shorter, but it looks good. You have nice legs. Not like the stork legs of some of these girls.”

  “How’s your wife?
” Angelica said, trying to jostle Junichi out of his flippant chauvinism. Now she remembered their first months sleeping together, her Japanese had been only half as good. She hadn’t understood his silly or sexist remarks most of the time.

  “Yuki has good days and bad days,” he said, then lowered his voice. “She had a dream last night, of losing it. And this morning, there was blood.”

  “Spotting?”

  “The doctors said it was fine.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Angelica said, though she had her doubts.

  Junichi opened his wallet and fanned three passport-sized photos out on the table. Babies.

  “Do any of these look like me?”

  Angelica was confused. Then she saw the tiny stamp at the bottom, advertising an adoption agency out of Western China.

  “No, of course not,” he said, suddenly embarrassed, putting the photos away.

  “You were considering adoption?”

  “One has to consider everything. But it’s not cheap or easy. Yuki was more open to the idea. I was opposed.” He managed an unconvincing laugh. “Luckily, we don’t need that backup plan now.”

  “I’m happy for you,” she said, realizing she hadn’t properly said so yet.

  Junichi mumbled, “I don’t like to see her so desperate and hanging everything on this one chance. Did you hear in the news? The woman who committed suicide after she miscarried? Ninth one this year. Once they give it a name, once it becomes a trend, there will be more.”

  In Angelica’s Japan-based nurse training, they’d lectured them on suicide in Japan, its long tradition and effect on attitudes about death. They’d been told that it was mostly men who carried things through. But now this: a new reason for women, and seemingly women alone, to take the blame for childlessness and end their lives.

  In Japan, a quick sacrificial death was not necessarily looked down upon, even in the modern age and despite official statements and editorials disparaging it. In the Philippines, sacrifice happened, too, but it was the slower, less ritualized variety: vanishing not by a single sword stroke or swallowed pill bottle but rather one flight and low-paid job at a time, until you could no longer remember the smell of your own house or neighborhood, the dawn crowing of roosters, the quality of light—until you could not remember your homeland and it could not remember you. Self-erasure, whatever the method.

  The waitress came by with long thin sticks of meat, small bowls of dark sauce, more beer. Junichi dug in, oblivious to the downturn in Angelica’s mood.

  “You asked me about your visa,” Junichi said between bites. “I called. My friend said you’d been red-flagged.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s expiring in two months.”

  “No, not flagged for expiry. Something else.”

  “My phone was hacked . . .”

  “I don’t see how that would affect government records.”

  “I’m completely broke, if that means anything. More than broke.”

  There—she’d said it, hoping perhaps that he might hear her desperation and ask more, or offer more. The shame was almost unbearable. But he took it as a given.

  “What foreign worker isn’t?”

  “I mean . . . really in debt.” She took a deep breath. “In a bit of trouble, actually.”

  “The visa office doesn’t care about that.”

  She had tried. And he had seen the request coming, and resisted. They were friends, supposedly. But he did not have the rescuers’ disease.

  “Plus,” she said, the effort of explaining her situation tiring her more and more, “I’m still waiting for my language exam results.”

  He shrugged. “That wasn’t it, either. My friend saw the codes and tried to read the notes, but they were closed. Language exam failure would have been coded in a straightforward way. All the other typical codes—missing sponsorship paperwork, employment type no longer in demand—are straightforward, too. This is something else.”

  He seemed to enjoy having access, by way of a friend who had gone to the same university and still owed him favors. He’d been the same way with his wife, promising her he would send her to a high-priced fertility clinic in Sweden last winter—and he had. They’d given her some complex diagnosis related to chemical exposure—a list that looked like the bottom rows of the periodic table of elements itself, the parts no one ever gets around to in school, Junichi had told Angelica—and some treatment to supposedly detoxify her.

  We’ll have to call the baby Scandium, Junichi had told Angelica, who did not get the joke. The name sounded close to English.

  Because Yuki was treated in Scandinavia?

  No, because I paid a year’s salary to get all that shit out of her system: Scandium, Yttrium, I don’t remember the rest. It’s a chemistry joke, Angelica. Never mind.

  Couples like Junichi and Yuki were willing to invest a fortune in their dream of having a family. Angelica had never thought she could afford such an expensive process and never imagined this would be the one thing she’d get for free: a baby, at the worst time, born to a middle-aged mother whose womb was supposedly scarred. Perhaps she’d miscarry as a result. She tried to ask herself—would that be a relief? A disappointment?—but her feelings were too muddled. The question couldn’t penetrate her present alarm over the red-flagged visa.

  In any case, Yuki’s expensive treatment had done the trick. She was pregnant now. Junichi had promised to make his wife fertile and he’d done it. Junichi kept his promises. Of course, he always wanted something in return.

  “I’ll try to get more information on your visa problem,” he said.

  “Thank you, Junichi.”

  In the moment that followed, she tried to muster the nerve to tell him about the pregnancy. She failed.

  She settled on a less difficult task—to ask him for a loan to pay off Bagasao, in order to prevent more trouble, both for her and for Datu. She failed at that, too.

  And maybe it was for the best. She had already stepped near the cliff’s edge, asking him for favors, admitting her debt and wishing he would sympathize with her situation. This is how you got into trouble, by believing that other people could come to your aid. And anyway, the mere whiff of desperation had a way of spoiling fortune. Just when you needed a job, or money, or love, all those things suddenly turned tail and ran.

  As if Junichi had read her mind and detected a potential request on the horizon, he said, “My life’s getting messier. We still have specialists to pay. It’s a high-risk pregnancy. It costs a fortune, having a child these days. My only hope is a promotion.”

  “I’m sure the ministry recognizes your value.”

  This had been the right kind of comment to make before, when he’d been more secure. Now it only annoyed him.

  “Do you realize they are considering moving Itou up any day now? Unmarried, no kids—and they still keep promoting him. He doesn’t even want to get to the top, yet everything goes in his favor. His ancient mother’s birthday is enough to put him in the spotlight, yet again.”

  Angelica lowered her voice. “I don’t think he wants to be in the spotlight.”

  Junichi banged the table, startling her. The beer in his glass sloshed over the rim.

  “Sumimasen,” she said to the room at large, studying the half-eaten food on her plate.

  “Don’t shush me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, less afraid than terribly embarrassed. Other diners were staring. The waitress, head half-bowed as she veered toward the table and away again, seemed unsure whether she should clean up the spilled beer or just pretend it hadn’t happened.

  After a moment, Junichi said, “Never mind. Let’s just enjoy. Go ahead.”

  But Angelica wasn’t hungry anymore. The thin skewers of meat had gone cold. The sauce was too oily. She felt a tingle of nausea, which only reminded her of the news she definitely wasn’t going
to tell him. Not today; not given his strange outburst about Itou-san, who had never done anything to deserve Junichi’s resentment.

  “You go ahead,” she said. “I’m full.”

  While he ate with gusto, she sat quietly, trying to look relaxed, while inside she couldn’t stop puzzling. Itou always crept into their conversations, and Angelica assumed a little jealousy was normal, but she had thought it was personal, sexual. That maybe Junichi had guessed that yes, she did find Itou-san attractive.

  Where she came from, wariness between macho rivals was commonplace. Perhaps it was a cultural blind spot that had caused her to ignore the possibility of a more serious professional rivalry. Junichi had pursued her resolutely from the first time they’d met. She’d known his tastes in women and his problems with his wife. She’d never questioned why Junichi courted her with such determination in the first place. She hadn’t let herself consider that he was sleeping with her in order to find Itou’s weak spots.

  When Junichi’s plate was empty, he pushed it aside and reached for her hands across the table. “Anji, I know you have problems. Sometimes I wonder why you don’t talk about them more than you do.”

  “I don’t need to talk. I’m happy to listen.”

  “But I’m not the only one having a hard time. Is there a rule that only one of us can be having a bad week? You seem like you have something more you want to ask.”

  His tone confused her. His words confused her just as much. She felt like he’d already made it clear that he was not interested in her money problems, that his hands were full, and that he had no way to help her. She felt lost in this culture and this language all over again. Fluent did not mean native.

  “Except for looking into the visa, I haven’t asked you for anything, Junichi,” she insisted.

  “You’re misunderstanding. I didn’t mind helping. I was happy to do it.”

  She didn’t trust his sincerity. It had been a mistake to ask for anything. She swallowed hard. “And I’m grateful.”

  “Now . . .” He paused, and she knew the debt was already coming due. Perhaps she’d translated his words and his signals correctly after all. “Tell me more about this robot business.”