I reached in to find her clitoris while his hands slid smoothly around every contour of her body.
She moved aside the sitting room’s furniture, leaving a broad, empty area near the door I decided to go through. “I’ll just…”
“You will not.” She took my arm and walked me into the far bedroom, then took the extra blanket from its closet.
He rolled her off the bed, carpet to her back. The merciless floor gave no ground to his strokes, forcing her body to absorb each full shock.
“Yumiko-sensei,” I began, “I need to see him. I love him, and I’m worried about him.”
She continued back into the sitting room without pause, folded her blanket into a tidy mat and laid it out on the floor. Her blank voice calmly chastised me, “You are a child, Shikomi-san. This is not a time for childish things.”
Her feet kicked wildly in the air as his movements approached their climax, then she latched onto him hard with all of her limbs when he began to ejaculate.
“I am a woman, and I belong to him.” I started to walk forward, and Yumiko-sensei stood, finally turning to face me, crossing her open robes over her chest.
“Hear your own voice, Child. You need. You love. You worry. You belong. This is not your time.” She ceremoniously pointed back into the bedroom behind me, fully extending her arm. “Go. Meditate upon this wisdom.”
They lay still and tangled on the floor, breathing heavily, for some time. I turned down the sheets and waited for them to come to bed.
How dare she? She spoke as if she had a universal monopoly on feminine wiles! He needed to be held, touched, kissed—not left alone. If she wanted to leave him, that was her business, not mine. She must have seen it in my eyes, because she sidestepped to stand between me and the far door. If she wanted to stand in my way, that was her business too. I lunged at her.
He stood, and she, with her arms and legs wrapped around him, rose with him. She clung to him desperately until he sat on the side of the bed, resting her on his lap. Then she began to move again, caressing and kissing him as she would.
I was livid. I was also suddenly upside-down. She wasn’t between me and Henry anymore, but she was looking down at me, pinning my back to the floor with one arm across my shoulders. I had acted out of anger and frustration and made a bad decision. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and spoke calmly and apologetically. “Onee-san—”
“I am not your sister anymore, Child,” Yumiko-sensei’s hollow voice tersely cut me off. “You know nothing of pain. You know nothing of love. You will not learn, and I will not teach you.”
As he climbed slowly backward into bed with her, I searched for a way to fit into their embrace. I wanted to touch them both, to hold them both, but they held each other so beautifully. Nothing could be added, nothing taken away.
Her matter-of-fact tone and mask-blank face infuriated me. I made another bad decision. “So says the woman who lives behind a mask. Everything about you is a lie!”
“So says the child who has no truth to hide.”
Henry was right; best not to argue with her. I closed my eyes again and breathed deeply, trying to let go of my anger and frustration. It took me a long time, time that in hindsight she was generous to give me. When I opened my eyes and said nothing, she released her hold.
I pulled the blankets up over them as they lay down, Gretchen stretching her legs out along his. He rolled them onto their sides and they held each other. I pulled the blankets in to tuck lightly around their shoulders.
“Now stand, and return to your room.” With great difficulty, I did.
I pulled my dress back on and left, going alone to the bed I was to have shared with him, enchanted by the mystic beauty and love I had witnessed.
By the soft light of her little lamp, I watched Yumiko-sensei lie down on the floor and carefully arrange the fronts of her kimono. She barely laid it closed, leaving her far leg completely uncovered up past her pelvis. Resting her arms out to her sides, she closed her eyes. It was a formal invitation, in case he finished being alone.
I slept soundly, dreaming of Gretchen, how she loved him, how he loved her too.
--Eurydice--
The crematory was unceremonious. It looked like any other light industrial building, loading dock in the back, small lobby in the front, ring bell for service. The three of us went in together, but Yumiko-sensei did the talking. Well, she didn’t talk per se. I don’t think she speaks French.
She had all the proper forms filled out, releases already signed. She just set them on the counter, and the clerk went into a back room. He returned with a small, black, plastic box, taped securely shut. He checked some numbers on the forms against numbers on the box, then made an entry in a ledger and had Yumiko-sensei sign it.
As soon as the box was on the counter, Henry walked up and held it. Then he tried to open it. That proved difficult. No doubt the crematory didn’t want people’s ashes spilled all over their lobby. He pulled it to his abdomen, clutching it, curling around it, clawing at it. Looking increasingly frantic, he bit at the tape and at the edges of the plastic, ripping the box apart. Finally it exploded in his hands.
I gasped thinking he had just accidentally spilled Gretchen’s ashes all over the floor. It wasn’t an accident. He fell to his knees, scooped up a double handful of ashes, and buried his face in them. I would have called the noise he made a scream if it hadn’t been so quiet. His hands moved up his face and over the top of his downturned head, covering him in ash.
Even the crematory clerk was stunned, speechless. Yumiko-sensei set her briefcase on the counter and opened it. She pulled out a strip of rice paper about the size of two index cards laid end to end, a brush, a small stone dish, and a piece of black chalk. That turned out to be ink. She ground the end of the chalk into the stone, then poured some liquid in with it and mixed with quick, precise movements. After inking the brush, she held it out in front of her with one hand, pointing straight down at the paper. Her other hand held the sleeve of her black kimono out of the way.
She moved like a mechanical plotter, writing with the motions of her shoulders and elbows, brush always straight down. She drew one elaborate, contorted, swirling stroke down the page, pulling the brush up and down to govern the thicknesses of her line, never lifting it all the way. She inked again and added maybe half a dozen more marks, as if she were dotting I’s and crossing T’s.
Her calligraphy was beautiful, like nothing I had ever seen. It put to shame work for sale in the type of gallery where if you want to buy something, you have your banker wire them the money.
Next she produced a small signet, painted it with thick, red ink, and stamped the page. It was the same design she wore on her kimono, a chrysanthemum. If she had put it in the corner, I would have said it was her maker’s mark. The way she placed it, it looked more like her seal, like she had written a decree and marked it with her authority.
She dropped the paper neatly on the mess of ashes on the lobby floor and reloaded her briefcase. Then she crouched, holding a cupped hand down over the writing. She must have palmed some sort of striker because flames suddenly flowed out along the still-wet ink. When the writing burned away, the fire slowly spread, carefully eating the rest of the page, saving the red seal for dessert. She pulled Henry to his feet and together we walked out.
I asked her years later what that paper said. She told me it was a prayer for Gretchen. The words she used were “writ of passage.” She did not elaborate.
--Gretchen--
Dear Diary,
Do you remember the girl I told you about? She won’t tell me her name. She says she escaped her demons and doesn’t want to risk letting them find her. If only it were so easy. We went diving yesterday, and I nearly drowned. Henry says she saved me, punched a shark or some such. He’s always so dramatic about everything. I feel bad for not liking her at first, for being jealous. She isn’t jealous at all. In fact, she helped me seduce Henry the first day we were here. She touches him so gently.
She loves him. At least she thinks she does. She’s so young, she doesn’t even know what that means.
When we were on the boat, after I almost drowned, Henry held me. It felt like before. That was so long ago. And he carried me. I was so scared, but it was strange, like I wanted to be scared so he would hold me tighter. I’m sure I acted like I was more hurt than I really was. I couldn’t help it. With him right there, it felt like I could just relax into his arms and everything would be OK. I felt sad, tired, confused, afraid, as if I had been holding myself together for my whole life, and with his arms wrapped around me, I finally let go.
Henry told me to take her anywhere she wanted to go and to see to her accommodations. I knew she wouldn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want to leave him. I could have taken her away and never seen her again, but I knew too much of how she felt. Instead I took her to bed. It wasn’t what he told me to do, but I think he was happy I did. I hope so. I don’t want him to see me the way he sees other people, like puzzle pieces he arranges to form the picture he wants.
I want him to see me as soft. I want him to touch me. I want to be the safety into which he retreats. I want him to trust me. I think he does a little bit.
Trusting is hard for him. He doesn’t want to be hurt again. I don’t want him to be hurt again either.
Am I trying to make us codependent? Is that even wrong? I want to rely on him, and I want him to know he can rely on me. It’s not that I can’t take care of myself. I just don’t want to. It feels so good when I don’t have to, when he is with me.
I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. I’m not sure what to do, especially with this new girl. I see why he likes her. She’s a firecracker. She still sees everything as new and amazing. I don’t know what she’ll be like when the shine wears off. She strikes me as a girl who is only in it for herself. But how can I think that after what she did? I guess time will tell. But, you know, time never tells me anything I’m happy about. Write me back, won’t you, if you figure it out?
- gg
As she filled each page, she fed it carefully to the candle that lit her table. She left the ashes for the gritty ocean breeze to scour away. Ashes forget so easily. She always wished she could too.
Chapter Eight – Water and Stone
--Sally--
When I couldn’t see the stars anymore, I got scared. Fear is another one of those concepts like need that can mean a lot of different things. You can be afraid of spiders or heights or noises in the dark. You might get scared watching a horror movie or skydiving or in the final moments before a crash when you know there is nothing you can do and your body tenses to receive the shock and pain. I’m talking about something different. I knew it was more likely than not that I was going to die. I cannot now remember whether or not I was afraid to die. All I remember is being blindingly, hysterically scared of dying alone.
You can see Dover from Calais during the day, and at night you just have to find the North Star and swim a little to the left of it. When the morning fog rises, you have nothing. I was pretty sure that swimming the English Channel was a thing people did, and with fins on, I felt invincible—I was Queen of the sea.
I had wedged a water bottle down the front of my wetsuit, and when I unzipped to finish it off, the rush of new seawater along my skin told me how cold I was. I shivered, and that scared me too. I started treading harder, trying to keep my metabolism up. My abject panic probably saved my life.
The moon was up, but it was too high to use for a bearing, not with the sea tossing me around for hours. I could see a little bit. The water looked pitch black like obsidian. The swells were wide and impossibly tall, but it wasn’t windy enough to make them crest. They were silent like the death that floated all around me, politely waiting for me to be ready for it.
As I slid down into a trough and faced the next wave, it towered over me like a god, like it had come to judge me for my sins. That lumbering deity ignored me as if I were so inconsequential that it couldn’t be bothered to squish me out of the fabric of creation. Then I faced the next. I screamed as hard as I could, but the sea and the darkness folded around my voice and sucked away the sound before I could even really hear it. I felt so alone.
Henry had arranged a boat to smuggle us—me—across. I told him I could just swim it, but he laughed me off. I had tried to convince him, had asked outright, and he said “no.” Unsure whether I would live or die, I finally understood why. I felt a little bit naughty when I left the note challenging him to a race to Dover but not in a bad way.
As the ocean corrected my misconception of how easy it would be to cross, I began to realize that I had in fact defied him. I had done precisely what he told me not to do. That piled onto the fact that he had gone there for me. Gretchen flew from Paris to London, but Henry brought me to Calais to sneak me across the border with no passport. He had conspired to commit a crime for my benefit, and I flippantly wandered off into the darkness instead of thanking him. I felt like betrayal swimming in consequences.
As soon as I was sure the horizon’s dim glow looked brighter on one side of me than the other, I turned roughly northwest and started swimming hard, exhausting myself. Out of breath, I rolled onto my back and began a long, slow backstroke that I would be able to manage until I died.
The glow brightened until I finally saw a glimpse of the sun in-between passing dooms. It was fully up and burning away the fog when a wave broke around me, tumbling me under water. I found Up and went there. I was in surf, near a beach, alive and exhausted. I lay on the beach in shock while the fog lifted. I got lucky. I could see the white cliffs I needed in the distance. I took off my fins and started walking.
It was early afternoon when I reached Dover. I had to concentrate on every footfall, willing my legs to move. We were supposed to take an afternoon train to London but I didn’t know what time. It didn’t matter. I just needed to get to the train station before I died. That was all I could think.
I had brought my long zipper pull forward over my shoulder and tied my fins to it so my hands could hang limp while I trudged. My downcast eyes found a child walking toward me on the road. Without breaking my pitiful stride, I vocalized my only remaining thought: “Train.” He pointed. I walked.
Train. I stopped. This is the place where Train is. The platform was mostly empty. I looked around, not knowing what came after Train. I saw my steamer trunk. There was a man sitting on it, resting his head in his hands. I staggered toward him. Something welled up inside me. Tears gushed suddenly from my eyes. My tired breaths got deeper, faster. Fear and panic returned, like I had felt in the ocean, under the towering waves. Instead of running away, I continued forward, knowing somehow that everything I feared sat in the same place as everything that could save me.
My legs buckled, collapsing me to my knees and I fell forward, hanging my head low between my arms. It was all I could do to force a mangled voice up through my throat. “I’m sorry.” I wept.
“You should be.” The quiet words thundered in my head. My thoughts buckled like my legs, and I collapsed into that voice. I felt his hand light soft upon my shoulder, a glorious angel come to carry me to paradise or cast me into the abyss.
“I know.” I cried.
I hadn’t thought past that moment because I knew I had done a terrible thing. I had left him to worry, not knowing if I was alive or dead, not knowing if he would ever see me again. The Straits of Dover are 20 miles across. The far shore looked so close from Calais. I thought it would only be about 5 miles, which would have only taken me a few hours.
Furthermore, the ocean flows fast through the straits, rushing in and out of the North Sea in an enormous riptide. I was probably swept 50 miles or more laterally then swept back. Had it been a different hour, a different tide, I would have washed out one way or the other into open ocean. Out there swimming forever in the darkness, every hour compounded my understanding of the enormity of what I had done.
He knew it all along. He knew it as soon as he saw my not
e. He truly believed he would never see me again. By all rights, he should have just taken the ferry and caught the first train in the morning, but he didn’t. He stayed at the station and waited for me all day, knowing full well that the odds of my survival were worse than 100 to 1. He waited for me even though I had run away from him in a foolish and deadly prank. I felt terrible.
What would I have done if he hadn’t been there? That was the thought that drove my feet forward, one after another after another. I had nothing: no money, no identification, nothing. I had forgotten that too easily. I took the shelter of his providence for granted, and I was wrong for doing so. Saying I was sorry didn’t cover it, not by a wide margin. There was no penance, no punishment that could reconcile me to him after that. He forgave me, and that hurt. That hurt a lot.
What do you say to that? What do you do? I felt too ashamed to beg, too guilty to grovel. I rolled my head to one side and bit my fingertips to pull off a glove. Then I reached forward and laid my fingers lightly on the toe of his shoe, resting them there while I wept. My only hope was to throw myself at his mercy hard enough to hit it. Those fingers made the most obsequious gesture I could achieve. I wasn’t even sure I could lift my forehead up off the concrete. My legs had certainly cramped into place and weren’t going anywhere. I was completely wrecked.
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