‘Pa,’ she said. ‘You lied to me about that snake. You promised he wouldn’t bite me!’
‘Oh, Applesauce—I don’t think I promised now, did I?’
‘Man oughtna make promises he can’t keep,’ Grandma said from somewhere dark, and cold, and nearby. ‘It’s like sayin’ you’re gonna make somebody a fine grave house, but instead you make them somethin’ mean and shaky.’
No one said anythin’ for a time, then her pa said, ‘Yes’m.’
‘Miz Willis? You in there?’
This time Annie didn’t answer. This time she just laid there quiet with all the others. The old man’s face appeared in the doorway. He had a hoe, and a shovel, and some stout clippers to cut through the thick brambles of all her dead white hair. ‘Why there you is,’ he said, and picked up an old broken stone, dusted it off, and put it back into place. ‘There you be.’
She wanted to tell him he had it all wrong. She wanted to scream and yell and shake this shaky old house, to pound and claw her shaky old head. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t stone, and she wasn’t dust, and she wasn’t weed, bramble, or bush. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t cold. But she knew that would be a lie, and she couldn’t lie to the man, not with all of them, her entire family, restin’ there, listenin’.
A LIFE IN PLASTIC
Andrew Hook
Oki usually took his green tea quietly. At one of his favourite establishments they brewed it at the table. He would watch as the waitress put approximately three grams of loose green tea into a ceramic cup with a filter. He preferred the taste of sencha, and the waitress would stand quietly as the water she had boiled cooled for several minutes before pouring it over the loose leaves and covering it. Again, they would wait for a few minutes, depending on the newness of the tea, then she would remove the cover and the filter and place the cup in front of him.
He always admired the colour before inhaling the aroma, then taking a sip. The tea rolled over his tongue as he savoured the subtle scent of the sweet grass. He would nod at the waitress and she would return to her station, whilst he returned his gaze to the department store opposite.
There was a young girl he sometimes saw window-dressing the mannequins who reminded him of his daughter. Today she wasn’t there, or maybe it was too late. She usually performed her tasks early in the morning, often Thursdays. Oki decided not to wait too long. The store next door to the tearoom had been refurbished as a record shop, and it was their opening day. They were blasting music by Ayumi Hamasaki and if he watched carefully he could see the vibrations flutter the tea in the cup, individual ripples which touched the shore of his tongue.
He stood and beckoned the waitress over, dropping coins into her open palm. Then he opened the door of the establishment, glanced once in the direction of the record shop and swiftly crossed the road until he stood in front of the department store.
It was her work. That much was clear. There was a cleanness to her touch which was almost a trademark, yet it was often matched by a quirkiness that was decidedly kooky. In the traditional salaryman’s suit facing Oki a yellow handkerchief had been folded into the breast pocket in such a way that the corners resembled petals. He placed one hand against the window, aware that he was soiling the sheen with his fingerprints. Then, sighing once, he placed his hand into his trouser pocket and turned back to the street. Hailing a taxi, Oki departed for work.
***
In his thirty-third year he had one child, a girl, Keiko, with a partner he hadn’t intended to be serious with. The girl’s parents had pressed for them to get married, but she had also known that their relationship wasn’t fated to work and had resisted. Oki should have known then that her stubbornness was a sign of great strength, and in retrospect he should have pursued the relationship and made it honourable. As it was, he hadn’t seen his daughter until her first birthday. From a distance. She took a step and fell into the arms of her mother.
Oki realised then that the woman was indeed a mother and therefore she no longer and never would be his girl again. Even if they were reunited.
He sent a letter to his daughter’s grandmother asking to be allowed into the child’s life. With a gentle persistence the woman convinced her daughter that the child should be aware of her father. The first few meetings were tentative, then regular. When Keiko was six it was agreed that Oki might take her on a long weekend to Ôkunoshima.
***
The subsequent day the record shop had tempered its enthusiasm and Oki was able to enjoy his green tea in relative peace.
As he took his first sip the girl stepped into the window display and he associated the sweet aroma of the tea with her presence. He watched as she unbuttoned the yellow handkerchief mannequin, slipping the jacket off its shoulders. Involuntarily, Oki shivered. He imagined his own jacket slipping from his body. As the girl folded it in two and placed it on top of a cardboard box she looked directly across the street. Oki held his gaze, but was sure she hadn’t seen him. And even if she had, she wouldn’t have understood that he was looking.
Some people were interested in speculating what might happen should a mannequin come alive, but for Oki the reverse was true. He wondered what it would be like to be the mannequin. He couldn’t imagine his emotions any more distanced than they already were, yet would like to try.
The girl crouched and unzipped the mannequin’s trousers, then slid them down smooth white legs. Oki had seen a television programme which had shown how mannequins were produced. Many of them had detachable limbs and torsos. A large proportion of mannequins had the same legs and lower body, whether they were male or female. Only the face, fingers and breasts, or absence of breasts, were necessary to distinguish their gender.
Two months after he had first seen the girl who resembled Keiko in the department store window he purchased a mannequin for himself. Yet it had taken another month for him to unpack it from the box.
Oki hadn’t been sure what he expected, but had imagined some disappointment. The mannequin’s structure was inflexible. There was some movement to be had from swivelling and positioning the limbs, but it was clear once the structure was complete that this wasn’t what he was looking for. The mannequin might be immutable regarding its emotions, but even something emotionless needed a heart.
The task wasn’t to recreate what he had seen in the privacy of his home, but to find himself thumping against the safety glass of the department store window as the girl he decided to call Keiko dressed him.
***
The day was crystal-bright. With Keiko’s small hand in his they caught the Sanyô Shinkansen train to Mihara Station, then caught the Kure Line local train to Tadanoumi Station. A smiling cartoon rabbit greeted them from a sign for the island and they walked the short distance to the terminal before catching the twelve-minute ferry to Ôkunoshima.
Oki had taken Keiko to the island because he didn’t know where else to go. He wasn’t used to being around children, few of his friends had married and those who had children tended to keep themselves to themselves. The island, with its over-zealous population of rabbits and numerous walking trails, seemed a good destination to bond with Keiko. So far their occasional meetings had established an uneasy camaraderie and Oki felt they needed something specific to themselves and devoid of maternal influence which they could reflect on in later life and identify as theirs and theirs alone.
Other than the rabbits and the walking trails the island held a dark history. From 1927 until 1945 it had been home to a chemical weapons facility that produced over six kilotons of mustard gas and tear gas.
When Oki remembers it now—holding Keiko’s hand as the ferry surged towards the island—he can no longer picture her face. She looks up at him blankly, the skin as featureless as a tan stocking spread over a mannequin. Her long black hair streaks away from the direction of the island as though in fear. It pains Oki that he cannot remember how she once was, that he has supplanted her face onto the face of Keiko the window-dresser and then aged it. Yet
that is the only way he has been able to deal with the tragedy that unfolded.
Keiko squeaked at the sight of the rabbits. She chased them along the forecourt to the entrance of the hotel, their multiple bodies splitting into twos and threes, from Oki’s perspective, skittering into the undergrowth. Rabbits had been used in the chemical munitions plant to test the effectiveness of the weapons during World War II, however those rabbits had been killed when the buildings were demolished. According to official reports, the rabbits which now overran the island had no connection to those involved with the weapon tests.
Oki called out to Keiko and she returned her hand meekly into his. They checked into the hotel and Oki ran a bath as Keiko explored their room, emptying her backpack and putting the contents into a cabinet alongside her single bed.
Oki stood in the bathroom doorway, steam billowing behind him as though he were a monster stepping out of the mist. In that moment the privacy of the hotel room astounded him. Outside the four walls there might be no one in the world, but inside the cramped space he and his daughter quietly existed.
He had never felt more alone in his life.
***
Keiko had arranged two mannequins facing each other. One had an outstretched hand whilst the other, a gloved female, held her fingers close to the side of her face.
Oki stood with his back to the tea room, with the street separating him and the department store. Cars were grid-locked. He imagined hoisting himself onto the roof of the nearest Daihatsu and stepping across the four lanes like a squirrel hopping across a stream on turtle backs. He watched with decreasing detachment as Keiko gently positioned the mannequins, her right hand held out ready to steady them if they tilted, her left hand smoothing down the clothes so they gave the appearance of a fit.
If his daughter were standing beside him he was sure she wouldn’t see the connection between her and this older woman. True, he had extrapolated the years onto her, but she had already been created in Keiko’s image and he considered he had simply found her rather than appropriated her. There was nothing sexual in his gaze, in his admiration of her slender form and the delicacy in which she performed her job, which she obviously loved.
If there was any emotion, it was that he was proud of her.
Oki crossed the street, placing his hands on the bonnets of the cars he passed, feeling the heat from their engines. He stood directly in front of Keiko standing within the window display. She didn’t notice him, simply continued with her task like an actress forgetting an audience, or—more simply—a worker focussed on the work in hand. If she were to acknowledge the window then she would fail in her task. For Keiko to succeed she had to imagine the window to be a blank black wall. This would explain why she failed to acknowledge him.
That evening Oki dug out the Swiss Army Knife he had retained from his camping days and began to peel back the hard plastic from the arm of his mannequin. It came away like shaved wood. On an unobtrusive part of his right shoulder, where the limb would be concealed by his office shirt, he glued the fragment of plastic to his skin.
***
Keiko soon found the speed of the rabbits detrimental to her enjoyment. The morning after her arrival she sat on the front steps of the hotel with her arms folded across her chest.
Oki remembered that she asked for her mother.
Ôkunoshima had little—in retrospect—to pleasure a child. Even for an adult the six-hole golf course couldn’t hold attention for more than a morning, and the Poison Gas Museum had limited appeal. One of the two rooms was devoted to donated artefacts from family members of the workers who had lived there. A display explained the inadequate conditions; how the gas would leak due to poor safety equipment. The second room had illustrations of how poison gas affects the human body through the lungs, eyes, skin and heart. Keiko looked at the images with scant understanding. In the afternoon they took one of the walking trails, passing the ruins of the gas manufacturing plant that were blackened and eyeless, their windows put out many years ago.
Oki spent some time examining the dilapidated building. Barriers were erected to prevent admission, but enough could be seen from the trail to imagine how life might have been. He considered the effects of war—not only on those who might be the recipients of a gas attack, but also on those who did the manufacturing. Sometimes his elder colleagues talked about war in terms which emphasised the immediacy of living a life constantly undermined by death, but Oki imagined it probably wasn’t like that at all. In all likelihood, living in war would resemble being numbed. A desensitisation of emotion.
He began to wonder whether he would have liked to live in wartime, while Keiko ran after rabbits without any idea of what she might do should she catch one.
***
When Oki’s colleagues mentioned how stiff he was looking at work, he held back a shrug and mentioned a recurring back problem.
In truth, the shards of plastic adhering to his skin restricted his movements. He had to be careful that none of them dislodged and fell through his shirtsleeves to the floor. That had happened on one occasion and he had quickly kicked the offending shard under his desk. That wasn’t so easy now fifty percent of his legs were also covered in plastic, and even if the glue he had used recently was of greater strength there were no certainties to be had.
Even drinking his favourite green tea held difficulties. The regular waitress appeared to have noticed, as on two occasions concern had crossed her face and she almost broke the customer/staff relationship by asking if he was okay. Oki had been touched, and for a moment regarded her as more than a waitress. In effect, they had been companions for some months and he wondered if that might extend to years. Whether he could court her. Whether she might become his wife. Whether they would have children. But then the memories of Keiko rushed back and he erased the future by closing his eyes.
All that remained were the tiny pricks of the edges of the plastic on his skin.
Oki wondered what he might have been should he have married Keiko’s mother. He wondered about the life he didn’t have.
At night, dissecting the mannequin, he began to consider that it had more of an identity than he did. It was no longer a factory-identical model. Oki had ordered a male, but the genitalia were smooth. Now the gouges in its structure had come to resemble the scars invited by emotional distress; the invisibility of the soul made manifest on the visible body. Whereas Oki was transplanting those scars onto his form, both absolving and absorbing them. It was similar to a deletion of history.
For twenty minutes Oki had lost Keiko at Ôkunoshima. Transfixed by the shells of the buildings, he had turned his back on Keiko far longer than he should have. He didn’t blame himself. He was not used to being around children. He should have realised that they had no fear, no conception of time, nor of their elders’ concerns for them. Yet when he turned around and saw that she was missing, those abstract concepts of fear and time were riveted into the core of his being. As his fear increased so time slowed, as though he were forced to savour its intensity as a punishment for being remiss.
After those long minutes, when Keiko was returned to him by no more than a bend in the trail, squatting beside a rabbit hole and poking inside it with a stick, Oki bent down and clutched her in his arms and vowed never to allow those circumstances to happen again.
The following morning they returned to the mainland. The wind was once again in the same direction, and Keiko’s hair blew around her face from behind, revealing and hiding it, revealing and hiding it, until they reached the land and took a taxi to her mother’s house where Oki formally handed over his responsibility once and for all.
It might only have been two years ago but it was easier for Oki’s conscience to imagine Keiko all grown up and independent.
He needed to order another mannequin for parts. He had put on weight since first seeing Keiko in the window. Some of the plastic required buckling to make it fit. Unlike in phenotypic plasticity biology, where an organism has the ability to cha
nge its phenotype in responses to changes in the environment, Oki acknowledged his procedure was less natural. But that didn’t mean it was any less effective.
On the morning before the substitution he stood directly before Keiko in the window. All of his body hidden by his clothes was covered by ill-fitting, often overlapping shards of plastic from his mannequin. None of this was evident from the outside. He simply resembled an almost forty-year-old undergoing a midlife crisis as he watched Keiko self-consciously dress the male mannequin in the display. He saw the curiosity in her eyes as she darted glances towards him, noticed her attempt to spy his reflection in the glass rather than view him directly, to try to understand—obliquely—where his attention fell. She wore a skirt that stopped just above her knees and Oki smiled at how beautiful Keiko had become. A human tear ran down from his right eye at the intervening years which had been lost. Yet it was a solitary tear, and he knew in his heart that if he had taken a greater place in Keiko’s life, those tears would have been more damaging and more frequent.
He was about to leave when Keiko turned and stood still. Her limbs coalesced into a typical mannequin pose with almost fluid precision. For an instant she was perfect, and then her eyes dropped and her posture sagged. She forced a smile, then shrugged and exited the back of the display via the little door she needed to stoop through to use. After a moment a security guard poked his head through the same door, and after another moment Oki found himself sitting inside a taxi. He didn’t look back to check if the guard had left the building, if he was standing outside the store.
That night Oki applied the last of the plastic to his face. He lay on his futon, eyes closed. He knew it would never happen, but he imagined breaking into the department store and replacing himself with the main male mannequin in the display. He watched as though from a distance, perhaps with the smell of green tea in his nostrils, as Keiko entered the display window and dressed him.
Strange Tales V Page 6