Koibumi

by Hildred Billings

  Reina wanted to laugh, but knew it would only confuse Hana and anger her wife. “Very deductive.” She flung her briefcase over her shoulder. “But I don’t think you know what that word really means.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “That’s an adult –”

  Reina cut Aiko off. “A lesbian is a woman who has sex with other women.”

  “Reina!”

  “What? She’s old enough to know what sex is. Aren’t you?”

  Although she blushed as if she were meeting her favorite celebrity, Hana stood her ground and nodded.

  “So you see why it’s inappropriate for you to ask stuff like that. You’re asking private things about a woman’s personal life. Adult things.”

  Hana looked at Reina, and then at Aiko. Oh for fuck’s sake. Last thing she needed was a little girl assessing the sexual situation at hand. She supposed Yuri would not be happy about Reina saying more than she already had. “I’ve gotta go. Bye.” She held onto her backpack straps and high-tailed it down the street until she was nothing but a yellow and pink blur.

  Aiko stood beside her spouse, watering can in hand. “You handled that fairly well.”

  “Hmph. Not every day a kid asks you that.”

  “I hope she doesn’t start thinking things about her mother.”

  Reina lowered her briefcase and opened the gate. “That seed has been planted in her head now. Just you wait. In two years she’ll be bringing home a girlfriend.”

  “You’re better with kids than you give yourself credit for, by the way.”

  “I would be way worse with any kid of ours. I would be the bluntest person imaginable.”

  “You said ‘ours’…”

  Damnit. “I’ve gotta go to work. See you.” Reina closed the gate behind her and took off in the other direction from Hana. With any luck, she’d come home later and Aiko would no longer be thinking about babies, kids, and telling them about the Sapphic birds and bees.

  Aiko stared at her dreaded koibumi as if it would give her a million paper cuts.

  She still hadn’t finished it. Every time she sat down to work on it, she had to think in English, and when she thought in English, she thought of Takeshi. Bright, good-looking Takeshi. And when she thought of Takeshi, she felt she had no right to write an essay about her life as a lesbian and the wife of Ni-chome’s greatest female philanderer.

  It’s hopeless! She dropped her pencil and clasped her hands around her face. At this rate she would never finish it, and Chloe had asked for it by the end of September, when she would need to start compiling her project. I’m a failure. The only thing on her side was that Reina would not care one bit. It was already a blessing that Chloe had all the info she needed from her and no longer came around.

  Aiko resolved to stop worrying about it for another day. She cleaned up her writing materials and looked over the living room, deciding whether to vacuum or clean the windows.

  Her ringing phone disrupted any of her plans.

  “Moshi moshi?” She forgot to check who was calling.

  The only sounds coming from the other side were footsteps, murmuring, and the faraway chaos of a busy place. A train station? Aiko was about to ask who was calling when a haggard voice finally broke through. “Auntie Aiko?”

  Aiko may not have been a mother, but she had the maternal instinct that told her something was wrong. When she heard that strange voice coming from her niece, who had always been so little for most of Aiko’s life, warning bells went off and her gut tumbled. “Eri-chan? What’s wrong?”

  Her niece’s voice was more strained than she originally thought. “I’m at the university hospital. Please come see me. I can’t talk much more.”

  “What happened?” The line died with a click.

  Aiko sat there, listening to silence as she tried to digest what she heard.

  The baby. Her sister-in-law had said Eri was on bed rest already.

  Aiko hunted down her purse. She could text Reina about the situation as soon as she got on the train.

  * * *

  The hospital was a twenty-minute ride away, and Aiko spent the entire time going over every possible scenario in her head: Eri was sick, Eri was in an accident, or Eri was attacked. Those were the only logical situations. She vaguely wondered why her niece would call her, but her maternal qualities surged again and made her only think of her niece’s quality of life.

  When Aiko inquired at the front desk what had happened to her niece, she was met with a firm, “We can’t share that information with you.” Although family, Aiko had to register as a visitor and adhere to a one-hour visiting time. That was the easy part. The difficult part was figuring out which of the three Eri Naritas currently checked-in was her niece.

  Aiko found her near the maternity ward, and for a moment she wondered if Eri had gone into premature labor. She’s barely in her third trimester! The window to her room was unshielded, showing a bedraggled lump in the bed…and Junko, sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. She caught sight of her daughter and instantly hopped up, small feet carrying her past the bed and to the door.

  “What happened to Eri-chan?” Aiko asked, trying to push her way into the room.

  Although a petite woman with an aging body, Junko still managed to keep her daughter out while closing the door behind her. They stood together in the high-traffic hallway, in the way of doctors, patients, and other visitors all demanding their own explanations wherever they went.

  “What are you doing here? Who told you she was in the hospital?”

  Aiko fumed, on the verge of stomping her foot like the indignant child her mother perceived her as. “She called me here. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “Shh!” Junko pulled her aside and lowered her voice. “Don’t cause a scene.”

  “Okaasan!”

  “All right,” Junko said with the weariness of an overloaded matriarch. “Ryuuzan.”

  That word punched Aiko right in the chest, stealing her breath and ripping her soul from her body. Miscarriage. She turned to the window, one hand on the glass as she watched Eri, looking back at her with heavy eyes. She was paler than a ghost on a snowy day. “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Your brother will tell me when he gets back later. But isn’t it awful? I couldn’t believe it when your brother called me and asked me to come down here so she wouldn’t be alone.”

  “Let me see her. She personally asked for me to be here.”

  “I don’t know. She’s resting right now and needs to regain her strength.”

  “I’ve only got an hour!” Aiko shoved her mother aside and helped herself into Eri’s room.

  It was darker than she anticipated, with the lights turned low and the curtains closed. Eri moved her head to follow Aiko’s movements, but she did not try to get up, nor did she turn over. Is she that weak? “Auntie Aiko?” She sounded more forlorn than Aiko had ever heard her.

  “I’m here.” Aiko stood beside her, purse digging into her still tumbling stomach. “I came as soon as you called.”

  “Thank you.”

  The door behind them slid open and closed again. Junko crossed the room and attempted to supervise from the far corner. Eri lifted her head and stared at her grandmother.

  “Obaasan, can you please go get me more ice? My throat is dry.”

  Junko’s eyes darted between her daughter and granddaughter. Eventually she nodded and left the room again, taking the pink pitcher with her.

  “Auntie Aiko.” Eri raised her hand and let it brush against Aiko’s shirt. “I’m glad you could make it. You’re the only one I can trust right now.”

  Something jabbed Aiko in the gut, then the heart, then the spine. Oh God, what else happened? If it was something her husband did, surely the rest of the family would be supportive. Or so Aiko wanted to believe. “I’m so sorry about what happened, Eri-chan.”

  For the first time since Aiko arrived, Eri squinted her eyes and held back a few tears. Her already puffy eyes on
ly grew redder with each passing second. “I don’t want to believe it.”

  “What happened?”

  Eri sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her hand; Aiko grabbed a tissue and handed it to her. “The doctor put me on bed rest because he was afraid of this happening. But it did anyway. They told me there was nothing anyone could have done. It wasn’t me, it was my…” She held in a sob, her face scrunching and her already matted hair clinging to her skin. “My baby was bad.”

  She crumpled into Aiko’s arms, who cradled her as if she were the little girl her aunt remembered doing cartwheels and handstands at family gatherings. I used to help her with her English homework instead of Hana. This was wrong. That little girl who did nothing bad was not supposed to grow up to be a young woman who had something so precious taken away from her. “I’m sorry.” It was all she could say.

  “I was so excited. I wanted to be a mother so badly. And you know what’s the worst part?” Another sob threatened her face. “She was far enough along that there’s something for me to bury. Is it bad that I wish she wasn’t? I already have to plan a funeral for my daughter. I can’t stand the thought of them…” She finally cried.

  As it wracked her thin frame, Aiko stroked her niece’s sticky hair and held her hand as if she would fly away. She felt sick to her stomach. There’s a body. A tiny one, but something nonetheless. Custom dictated that all remains be cremated. She has to do that to her daughter… Aiko wanted to cry too. “Where’s your husband? He should be here with you.”

  Eri snorted through her tears. “I told him to stay at work. I don’t know if he knows about it yet. I don’t want to see him right now.”

  No, of course not. That was a grief Eri wasn’t ready to share with the father of her child yet. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Yes.” Eri gestured for Aiko to come closer as she lowered her voice. “Please call Ruu. I want to see her.”

  Aiko gulped. Her girlfriend. She had almost forgotten about her. Was this why she was summoned to the hospital, to play liaison? “Of course I will.” Anything for her niece. “But why didn’t you call her yourself?”

  “My father is a doctor here. He can see who I’ve called.” Eri slumped back into her bed. “I think he knows about Ruu. Or at least, he suspects something. He’s never said anything, but I can tell. I don’t want him to stop her coming here. I had to call someone innocuous.”

  Aiko’s hand hovered above her cell phone in her purse. She still had Ruu’s name somewhere in there, ready to dial at a moment’s notice if Eri needed it. Like now. “I’ll call her. And when she comes here, I’ll make sure my mother isn’t around either.”

  “Thank you.”

  With her niece left to her morbid thoughts, Aiko slinked away to the waiting room to call a complete stranger on her niece’s behalf. She couldn’t be bothered to feel used. In a similar situation, she would have done the same in order to have Reina there with her.

  * * *

  A half hour later, Aiko intercepted a flustered woman in the waiting room.

  She looked much different from what Aiko expected. Well, she didn’t know what kind of woman she expected. Her niece had grown into a delicate type of woman, and her husband was a delicate kind of man.

  Ruu was not.

  Aiko could tell she had come from work. Her overalls were dirty, covered with smudges and what looked like oil stains; her hair was frayed and sticking out in every direction within a few centimeters of her head; her burly frame, although not large, was certainly not petite. A mechanic? How did they meet again?

  “Are you Aiko-san?” Ruu’s voice was as gruff as her mannerisms. It knocked Aiko back into reality.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you for coming. Eri’s in a bad way.”

  Sweat, either from the heat or the palpitations of Ruu’s heart, poured down her forehead. Without a tissue she wiped it with the back of her hand. “I knew she was on bed rest but…oh man, this has to be really hard for her.”

  Aiko opened her purse and fished for her spare tissues. “She needs someone she trusts and loves to be with her right now.” She handed the tissues over.

  Even as she cleaned herself up, Ruu maintained a stern visage reminding Aiko of some of the bouncers she saw outside of the Ni-chome nightclubs. I bet that’s her night job. “Is it safe to see her? She’s paranoid about that, you know.”

  “I’ve distracted my mother and no one else is here right now.”

  “Not even her husband?”

  “No.”

  Ruu crumpled the tissue in her hand and threw it into the nearest trashcan. “That guy is a piece of shit. Did you know he told her to get it aborted if it wasn’t a boy?”

  Something bristled along Aiko’s spine. “No, I didn’t.” Although she didn’t know much about her niece’s husband, she would have never guessed that. If he really wanted a son, they could have always had another kid. And another. Aiko didn’t know how many families she knew with a few daughters and then a son. “That’s terrible.”

  Ruu chewed the inside of her cheek. “Thanks for calling. She told me I could trust you.”

  Aiko chose not to acknowledge anything else. “You better go see her now before my mother comes back.”

  She led Ruu to Eri’s room at the end of the hall, past the maternity ward with its squalling newborns and tired but relieved mothers. As they passed another room, Aiko heard the mournful wails of another woman receiving the last news she ever wanted to hear.

  “Thanks,” Ruu said again, as Aiko opened the door to Eri’s room. “Watch for us?”

  Nodding, Aiko closed the door behind Ruu and stood out in the hallway. The window blinds were mostly closed, save for a big enough sliver for Aiko to see through. Eri sat up in her bed and glowed the instant she saw Ruu. The girlfriend dashed to her side and embraced her, chin resting on top of wilted head.

  She really loves her. Aiko looked away before she felt like a voyeur. She took out her cell phone and checked for any messages from Reina, still at work for another couple of hours. Nothing. No response to the harried texts Aiko sent earlier explaining why she may not be home when Reina returned. Even though she expected as much, Aiko still wished there was something from her spouse. Any word, any damned emoticon totally inappropriate to the situation. She wanted to feel the immediacy of Reina’s existence.

  Aiko glanced through the window again in time to see Eri scoot over in her bed and Ruu climb in beside her. They spooned in the small hospital bed, Ruu covering Eri’s shoulder with light and loving kisses. Aiko turned and looked for anyone who would dare tear them apart. She knew firsthand that only the woman Eri loved could understand the pain she endured – and know how to alleviate it. Her husband couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t understand. It made Aiko think of Takeshi, and his promises that he would love her faithfully regardless of what happened with children. When Aiko imagined herself in her niece’s situation, it wasn’t a man coming to comfort her: it was Reina being her stoic, sarcastic self but giving Aiko everything she had anyway.

  No matter how many times Aiko may dream of sex with Takeshi or having his children, it would still never replace the love and desire she felt when Reina was there with her. Takeshi offered things she still wanted but couldn’t have; Reina offered her everything making her whole.

  I have to tell him. If Takeshi were a true friend who cared for Aiko’s happiness, he would be saddened, but not disgusted by Aiko’s confession. I am already married to a beautiful, wonderful woman I love more than anyone else. If Takeshi couldn’t support that, then he was never a man worth marrying anyway.

  With Aiko preoccupied with her niece’s ailments, Reina was left to her own devices Thursday night and most of Friday – not because Aiko was not around, but because she was so distracted that talking to her was like chipping away ice with one’s fingernails. Reina gave up trying to have a decent conversation when she suggested sex and Aiko replied with, “I don’t think Eri-chan is going to have sex for a while…�
�� Reina rolled her eyes and went to bed early.

  Friday was much of the same. Reina hoped Aiko would feel better, but there seemed to be something else bothering her beyond her niece’s maladies. When Reina tried to pry a little at breakfast and then later at dinner, Aiko froze up and kept mumbling about the hospital and Eri’s girlfriend, the mechanic. Or bouncer. Aiko could never make up her mind which the apparent bulldyke was. Then she would retreat into talking about how sad the event was, and how she couldn’t imagine the sorrow of losing one’s child that was still growing inside. “She must feel like there’s something wrong with her, even if the doctors told her otherwise. Like it’s her fault.” Reina didn’t pretend to empathize. She didn’t have a maternal bone in her body and didn’t understand what the big deal was. But she let Aiko ramble on without comment, and for one of the few times during their relationship Reina saw going to work as a welcomed escape.

  However, Saturday had to be better. Not only was it Reina’s day off, but there were no pressing plans: no therapist, no Chloe, and no parties in Ni-chome demanding their appearance. Naturally Aiko went to the hospital after lunch, but Reina figured she would be back by dinner. With the way her wife had been fretting lately, it seemed a prime opportunity to scrounge together a romantic idea – if Reina were any good at that. As she sat by herself and watched TV, she tried to think of something “romantic” to do for Aiko. Take her out to dinner? No, the crowds would only bother her more. Rent a movie to watch together? Reina had no idea what Aiko would want to watch. Give her a massage? Ha! The only thing that would put a smile on Aiko’s face that night would be making dinner for her…and that was never going to happen.

  “Fuck it.” Reina stood up. She couldn’t take Aiko out for dinner or cook it for her, but she could bring it home. The only problem was that she couldn’t remember which take-out restaurants existed in their neighborhood.

  Just as she found her cell phone and started checking online, the doorbell rang.