My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

  But as I was saying this, I realized it was sounding all wrong. Utterly beside the point. The words trickled off and disappeared into the black, empty space between us.

  Sloan broke the silence with a bitter snort of laughter. “Sooner or later? Oh, good. That’s a big relief,” he said.

  It felt like all the air in the room had been sucked out. There was no answer, nothing else to say. I started to cry, but no tears would come, either. I was all dried up.

  “Sloan, I ... I don’t know what to say....” It was the truth.

  “Yeah. Me too.” And that was it. He hung up.

  Because of my concussion, the D and C was done with local anesthesia. I lay there, feet in stirrups, tears trickling down into my ears again, thinking this should have been a delivery table instead. After it was over, the doctor said both my head and my womb looked fine, ordered me a supply of maxipads, and told me I would be able to leave the next day. I booked a ticket to New York. Dave came to pick me up at the hospital the following morning and drove me to the airport. The crew was with the Dunns, filming happy family scenes to replace the ones I’d shot.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” said Dave, glancing over to where I sat, frozen in the passenger seat.

  “Ueno is coming up with all these ideas, and Kenji is just going along with them. He made Bunny dress up in her Miss Teen Rodeo banner and tiara, and sit on John’s lap with a plate of prairie oysters. Then he did a scene of Gale and Rose riding off together on horse-back into the sunset. It was really creepy.”

  I was holding a clear plastic bag on my lap, which I’d been given at the hospital when I checked out. It contained the bloodstained clothes I had worn at the slaughterhouse.

  “Suzuki and Oh are just like automatons. They do what Ueno says, but it’s like there’s no life to it, you know? Everyone misses you.”

  The bag was depressing. I wanted to throw it away, but then I thought I might look suspicious stuffing a large bag of bloody clothes in the trash can at the airport, and also I wanted to go through the pockets first. I leaned over to the seat behind us, opened my suitcase, and tossed the plastic bag inside.

  “While you’ve got your suitcase open, you might want to pack this too. Suzuki and Oh asked me to give it to you.”

  Dave reached under his seat, pulled out a box, and handed it to me. I opened it. In it were twelve Betacam tapes, neatly packed. I looked up at Dave, and he was grinning.

  “I guess Kenji told you the tapes were destroyed? Well, it wasn’t exactly true. Oh smashed a couple of blank ones to show Ueno, but the ones you guys shot of Rose and Bunny that night, he had stashed at the motel the whole time. Then he and Suzuki stayed up all night and copied the rest of them for you too, including the interview at the feedlot with Gale and all the slaughterhouse stuff, so you have a complete set. Everything we shot. I took Ueno out for some lap dancing.”

  At that moment I forgot all about everything except how much I loved my crew, and I told Dave to go back to them with that message.

  “Listen, Jane,” he said at the curbside after he’d checked my bags. “I really enjoyed working with you, and if there’s ever anything I can do, you know, even working in New York ... well, just let me know.”

  “Thanks, Dave. But I doubt it. I don’t have a job myself.”

  “Yeah, well, just keep me in mind.” He hesitated, then wrapped his immense arms around me and gave me a hug that could have brought down a steer. “You remember what I said?” he asked. He was talking into the top of my head, but I could hear his words rumbling in his massive chest. “About nothing helping and no one caring and it being too late?”

  I nodded, and he squeezed me harder.

  “Well, I don’t believe that anymore.” He released me abruptly and looked embarrassed. “I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes out of those tapes.”

  I bought a People magazine at the airport and read it very carefully on the plane, cover to cover, every word of it; I cannot recall a single story I read during the five-hour flight, but I cannot remember having a single thought of my own, either, and that was the point.

  The air in New York stinks some days, like a viscous sludge in a turbid swamp. I took a taxi from La Guardia into the city, creeping fitfully, in jarring starts and stops, through the congested streets until finally we reached my block. The apartment was stuffy when I opened the door. I dragged my suitcase in and closed the door behind me. I unlocked the suitcase and overturned it, dumping its contents in the middle of the kitchen floor. The first thing I put away was the box of tapes, carefully, on a shelf at the back of my closet—it was too soon to think about them. Then I extracted the plastic bag of blood-drenched clothing. I opened it, and the searing stench of the slaughterhouse hit me like a blow to the face. I pulled out the jeans, and as I unfolded the stiff, leathery creases, it occurred to me: How much of this blood is slaughtered cow and how much is my baby? And then the sadness was back again. I pressed my face into the rigid fabric and wept, which got me all covered in blood again, and then I didn’t know what to do with the clothes, and in the end I just walked out onto the street and threw them in the garbage, figuring, It’s New York; there’s something bloody in everybody’s dumpster.

  AKIKO

  “Imagine,” said Mrs. Ueno. “Calling me from an airplane!” Akiko’s mother-in-law clasped her hands in front of her chest. “An airplane in the sky! It was flying. He said it was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean!”

  Akiko lay perfectly still and stared up at the ceiling. She was pretending to be in a coma. When her mother-in-law first came, she had greeted her and tried to be polite, but it soon occurred to her that this wasn’t necessary. In fact, it was not a good idea. A good idea was to try to discourage her and make her leave as quickly as possible.

  “... I couldn’t imagine how you could make a telephone call from a moving airplane. At our house we have wires connected to our telephone, and the voices go through the wires. So at dinner I asked my husband, Joichi’s father, and he said it was done with radio waves. He is smart. He knows these things. Joichi takes after him. It is such a comfort for a woman to have a smart husband, don’t you think?”

  It was strange to hear her say “Joichi.”

  “I told my neighbor, Mrs. Saito, about Joichi’s telephone call, and she said, ‘You are lucky to have a son who is getting on so well in the world!’ Of course I denied it vehemently, but between you and me, Akiko-chan, I do think she is right. I am lucky. And so are you....”

  She reached out and tentatively patted Akiko’s hand. Akiko lay there and tried to feel lucky. There must be a trick to it, she decided. A knack to luck.

  “‘It is expensive to telephone from an airplane,’ Mrs. Saito told me. ‘Very expensive indeed.’ So you see, Akiko, he must care about you very much.”

  “Fractured,” the doctor said. “Most definitely fractured. I want you to have an X-ray tomorrow, so we can see how bad it is. Nurse, can you take care of this?”

  Nurse Tomoko nodded and smiled reassuringly at Akiko, who nodded too and braced herself.

  “Do you remember how this happened?” the doctor asked.

  “I fell,” whispered Akiko. She was nervous, but this time she was prepared. “When I fainted I must have fallen onto the edge of the bathroom counter. I hit my face too.” She pointed to her lip.

  The doctor leaned in to look at it more closely. Then he stood up and shook his head.

  “Mrs. Ueno, I’m sorry to have to say this, but that cut on your lip is at least several days old. And the black eyes, the bruises on your abdomen, they are not fresh, either. I hate to doubt your word, but ...”

  Behind him, Nurse Tomoko cleared her throat. “Doctor ... ?” she said. He paused for a moment, then continued.

  “Well, you’ve had a long day. Why don’t you just get another good night’s sleep and then think about it some more tomorrow. Maybe it will come back to you.” He smiled and placed his hand on her forehead. His hand was dry and cool and heavy. It
triggered memory, comforted her and made her feel like a child. “You’ve had a bad time, that’s for sure. But don’t worry. Nurse will take care of you here. Nurse, could you come with me....”

  “Good night,” whispered Nurse Tomoko as she slipped through the curtain. “Sleep tight.”

  As the curtain swung shut behind her and her gum-soled foot-steps faded away, Akiko relaxed. The hospital was exhausting, but it was night again, so she could sleep without interruption—she had been sleeping a lot, even during the day, dropping off without warning into a profound oblivion, from which she woke needing to sleep again. Now, feeling the luxury of her privacy, curling deep into its folds, she ran her fingers over her fractured rib and thought about her bleeding anus and the X-ray the following day. Nurse Tomoko and the doctor frightened her with their questions, their almost clairvoyant intimations. They made Akiko feel like a child caught lying, yet at the same time they inspired in her a child’s total confidence in their custody. She felt secure. Protected.

  It was dim in the ward now, and hushed. Akiko lay there, listening to the muffled creaks and humming, the snores and shuffling, when all of a sudden an overwhelming sensation of well-being flooded through her, rising from the pit of her stomach and radiating out to the tips of her fingers and toes. Amazing, she thought. You wake up one morning in a hospital, battered and bruised, and you should feel scared. But I don’t. At all. I feel wonderful.

  It was the first time she’d felt wonderful in a long time. It seemed as if a fresh breeze had blown in from somewhere out-of-doors and was making the curtains around the bed billow and glow. The air in the room eddied about her head and Akiko watched its particulates glitter in the moonlight like a bloom of phosphorescence on the incoming tide. Something was happening, she realized, though she didn’t know quite what. But she could feel it and knew it was a miracle of sorts, watery, lunar, and profound. She looked down the length of her body, skeletal beneath the thin hospital sheet, and that’s when she saw. Not saw, as with her eyes, but conceived, in her mind,a whip-tailed armada!

  zona pellucida, penetrated, now a small round egg made lively, and

  propelled downstream on ciliary currents through the darkness.

  Meanwhile, inside, changes,cleavages and shiftings,

  thickenings,

  zygote into morula into hollowed blastula, still suspended,

  free-floating, until ...

  now...

  it brushes up against the soft and spongy wall. Parasitic,

  it sticks tight, begins to burrow.

  Akiko lay there, enthralled. It was a bloody business, full ofruptures,

  engorgement,

  hemorrhage,

  secretion,

  until finally the pugnacious morsel of life bores into the wall’s

  warm embrace.

  Holding her breath, Akiko watched it happen. And when her child-to-be was safely embedded, she let out her breath with a long sigh and fell sound asleep.

  In the morning, Nurse Tomoko came to take her for the X-ray.

  “I can’t,” Akiko said apologetically.

  Nurse Tomoko looked surprised. “But yesterday it was fine....”

  Akiko looked at her, and for the first time, she smiled. “I know. Yesterday I didn’t know. But last night, you see ...”

  Nurse Tomoko waited.

  Akiko wasn’t sure, but she decided to continue. “I don’t know if you can say this or not, seeing as he is my husband, but, well, about a week ago ... he sort of ... he raped me. He did it in the back and the front....”

  Nurse Tomoko took Akiko’s hand and squeezed it hard. “That’s terrible.... I thought something like that might have—”

  But Akiko interrupted her. “It’s not important. What I wanted to say was it fertilized the egg, you see, and last night I conceived ... so I can’t have the X-ray.”

  “You what?”

  “A baby. I’m pregnant.”

  “How ... how do you know this?”

  “I watched the whole thing.”

  Nurse Tomoko frowned. She laid her hand on Akiko’s forehead, checking for a fever. She looked deep into Akiko’s eyes. Akiko looked up at her, met her gaze, and laughed.

  “You think I’m a crazy woman,” she declared, suddenly bold. “A fool. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Nurse Tomoko nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “You sound crazy. What exactly did you see?”

  “It was so beautiful.” Akiko sighed. “Like one of those science documentaries on television. I could see it up close in my mind, from the fertilization right through the implantation, the little blastocyst burrowing deep into my uterine tissue. Well, it’s going to take a while longer to really settle in there, but to all intents and purposes, I’m pregnant....”

  “How do you know about all this?” asked Nurse Tomoko, amazed. “These words: blastocyst, implantation ...”

  Akiko lowered her eyes. “I used to write articles for maternity magazines,” she said modestly. “It was my specialty.”

  Nurse Tomoko leaned her hip against the bed and folded her arms. “I don’t know what to say,” she said finally. “I’ll have to tell Doctor, of course, but if you do think you are pregnant, then you certainly shouldn’t have the X-rays. We could order a pregnancy test....”

  Akiko shook her head. “Too early. The HCG won’t show up for another couple of days.”

  This time Nurse Tomoko laughed. “Fine,” she said. “You’re the expert.”

  “You can’t just go back there,” Tomoko said, sitting dolefully on the edge of the bed.

  A week had passed. The doctor had told Akiko that if she refused the X-ray, she would have to stay longer in the hospital for observation, but Akiko suspected that Tomoko had talked him into it. Tomoko was worried about her state of mind and Akiko appreciated her concern, but she also knew that her state of mind had never been better. She was impatient to leave. She didn’t want to hurt Tomoko’s feelings, though. They had become friends.

  “I have to,” said Akiko. “I can’t stay here. I’ve been here too long already.”

  “Don’t you have any relatives you could stay with?”

  “No, not really. I’ll be all right.”

  “How long will he be gone?”

  “At least another week.”

  “Look,” said Tomoko, blushing. “I could take you back to your place and help you pack, and then you could come stay with me. For a while. Until you work things out ...”

  Akiko didn’t know what to do. She’d never had a friend before and didn’t know if it would be rude to say no.

  “Thank you, Tomoko. But I really must go home....”

  Tomoko scowled. “You’re not going to stay with him when he comes back, are you? You’re not going to stick around so he can beat you up again ... ?”

  “I don’t know....”

  “Akiko, please,” said Tomoko, grabbing her arm and shaking it. “You must leave him immediately. Can you do this? Do you have someplace to go?”

  The first step to a happy life ... , Akiko thought to herself, and she smiled at her new friend. “Yes,” she answered. “I have someplace to go.”

  JANE

  Ma could tell right away, just by looking. “You throw away your baby,” she said with disgust.

  We were standing in the kitchen and I’d just barely taken off my coat and the accusation caught me off guard, so cruel and sudden. I’d spent a week in New York by myself, unable to edit, unable to do anything but cry, and I couldn’t bear it, so I’d come running home to Ma for comfort. Stupid. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding on to my coat, with the damn tears dripping down my face. Ma looked terrified. Now that I think about it, she probably hadn’t seen me cry since I was seven or eight and much smaller than her, a size that could still be comforted. Not that she ever did much of that. But in a small child, sorrow is manageable. Now she shuffled suspiciously over to me, looked up into my face, then took me by the wrist and led me to a chair. I held tight to the coat, but she prie
d it from my fingers and hung it carefully on a hook by the door. Then she turned and came back and stood next to me.

  “Why you throw away baby if you gonna be so sad?” she asked, but her tone was softer and she placed her hand on the top of my head, not stroking, not patting or pulling me to her, but just resting it there firmly as though to keep my head from rolling away.

  “I didn’t mean to ...,” I said in that normal voice I can use even when I’m weeping and my heart is breaking. “I didn’t mean to throw it away. It was a miscarriage. I lost the baby. It was a boy. I really wanted him, Ma.”

  And then she did the last thing I expected, even from Ma. She laughed. She laughed and then patted my head briskly and withdrew her hand. The shock stopped my tears, and I stared at her. She went over to the stove and poured hot water into the teapot and brought it to the table. She sat down and poured us each a cup of green tea.

  “Drink this. You feel better.”

  “Ma, why did you laugh?” I could hear the childish whine and accusation pinch my voice. “You think it’s funny?”

  “No,” she said, wrapping her hands around the teacup to warm them. “No funny. I lose four babies before you. You only one tough enough baby to last. But I keep trying, you know? Until success.”

  “Ma, that’s terrible. I never knew that.”

  “Why say? Not your business. Now it your business, so I say.”

  “When did you lose them? How many months?”

  Ma shrugged. “One, two, three ... I forget. All different.”

  I took a deep breath. I had to ask again.

  “And are you sure Doc Ingvortsen didn’t give you some pills to make your pregnancy last? With me, I mean?”

  “Why you keep talking about some pill? I can’t remember. Sure, I try everything. Some vitamin, some Doctor Ing-san medicine. It don’t matter. Only one thing matter.” Ma’s face suddenly closed, and her expression turned furtive.