Fog Island Mountains

by Michelle Bailat-Jones

  She is shaking now as she stands up out of the bath and walks into the changing room, she has difficulty buttoning her blouse, difficulty zipping up her jeans and she is almost away from this room, away before the older women finish their bathing, but the old ladies are too quick and they are coming into the room now, discussing someone’s daughter and giggling, or asking questions about the stain on a kimono and arguing about how to get it clean, and so Kanae hustles a retreat into the restroom stall, and there it comes up—her entire breakfast, barely digested, rice and salmon and egg, little clods of seaweed stick to the porcelain and she is coughing and spitting, wiping at her forehead.

  “Are you all right in there?”

  “Oh, that doesn’t sound good.”

  “Say, can we get you anything?”

  Kanae thanks them for their trouble but she cannot open the door to look at their creased lonesome faces, she will not do it, she sits on the floor instead, resting her face against the toilet seat and she heaves again but there is nothing left in her stomach and she can only clutch her stomach at the pain of it, spit some acid into the bowl.

  “She’s not fainted, has she?”

  “She didn’t look well in the bath.”

  “Hmm, sō da nē, maybe it’s her heart.”

  Kanae yells through the door that she is fine, that she’s just a little tired.

  “There’s a stomach flu going around. My grandson told me. You sure you don’t have that?”

  “Yes, everyone is sick, it’s this weather, it holds the germs.”

  “No,” Kanae whispers, “I’m in perfect health.”

  Standing now, closing her eyes, she buttons and unbuttons her blouse, she smooths the sleeves, she swallows back the vomit taste on her tongue, and then she is unlocking the door, rushing through the mob of widows—she couldn’t stand it if they were to touch her—and she gathers the rest of her clothing, she will not stay here among them. She is bowing without looking at them, thanking them for their concern, and then she is out, breathing again in the quiet hallway, but halfway to her room she realizes she is still wearing the toilet slippers and she must go back, but no, she can’t, her feet will not walk in that direction, and so she must kick them off in the hallway, ashamed at this behavior, and run the rest of the way to her room.

  Poor Kanae will find no peace today, already her cell phone is beeping at her with a message, and she is sitting down to listen to it, bare feet dangling over the edge of the bed and biting on a hangnail that has ripped halfway down her thumb; as she listens to Alec’s voice and his explanation, his tidy anger, she pulls harder on the little flap of skin and it is tearing slowly, a little drop of blood rises, but the pain seems to be happening to someone else.

  “Just call the hospital and they’ll tell you what room I’m in.”

  Silence.

  “They’ve put me in a special room. It’s so strange. You’ll see.”

  Silence.

  “Please, Naemai . . .”

  Her thumb is bleeding now and she sucks on it, greedily, finding a thrill in the dark metal taste of her own blood on her tongue and throat.

  In ten minutes she has dressed, paid her bill and is seated back inside her car, and she will go straight to the hospital, because what on earth has she been thinking, she has not been herself, she is being ridiculous, she must do her duty to Alec—and then it stops her, this idea that he might be frightened, that he might not have understood something, that he might have needed to ask her a question, because it has been years since she really needed to act as a buffer between her husband and their home, years since she needed to explain an expression to him, or someone’s behavior, but she sees now that this is what her job must be, this is where she is failing him, and she presses harder on the accelerator, grips the steering wheel with both hands.

  Outside the morning sun is shining, not a trace of the cloud sea and only a hint of the storm to come, this hint in a heaviness around us, a tense vibration in the air, and so Kanae is driving carefully, she is not speeding, she is holding her car steady in her lane, and she watches for deer and other animals, she even slows down at each tanuki-crossing sign, careful and apologetic; halfway down she passes a school bus and suddenly her own children, not the adults they are now but the ghosts of their childhood selves, are in the car with her, Ken’ichi in the middle between his two sisters, always the quiet one, always watching out the window over Naomi’s shoulder, never over Megumi’s who would have pushed him back, told him he was crowding her. Kanae hears them now, their innocent childish babble, about the food they would want to eat once they got home or about their friends at school, and she is amazed to remember how her children always kept their conversations to themselves, they never shouted at her and solicited her to join in, and she never knew this was strange until a friend once mentioned that she couldn’t get a moment of peaceful reflection in the car because her children were too busy interrupting her, asking for her attention, needing her to comment on their own conversations.

  “Mine hardly speak to me. They talk amongst themselves!”

  “Oh, how lucky you are!”

  Yes, she had thought so too, at the time, but now she wonders, straining her ear backward to hear the whispers of their ghosts, why they never wanted her to join in, why didn’t they ask her? Why didn’t they need her more?

  The hospital parking lot is nearly empty this morning but Kanae pulls up along the street instead, she parks her car but before she can get out, she is heaving again, stretching a hand for her purse, for a tissue, anything, a piece of paper, something to catch the stomach juices that heave up out of her mouth and into her lap, and now it’s done and she is panting against the steering wheel, her stomach constricted and dry, and she has slightly peed her pants with the force of her retching; there was nothing to get rid of, but her body wouldn’t believe her.

  She does not dare look at the hospital again—all those windows, all those doors. Automatic doors just ready to open for her, willing to sense her arrival and slide right open, to welcome her back into her life and the days to come that cannot be stopped from coming upon her, and so again, she stays where she is, she starts the car and then turns it off, she folds her hands carefully together and waits until they have stopped shaking, and she puts her head down because she is certain that no one can see her, she has parked so carefully behind a big truck and in the shade of an enormous tree, and so I wonder if I should go to her, should I walk over and knock against the glass of her car window and ask her if I could help, could I give her my arm to walk with her into the hospital, would this be enough? But it is too late already, she has started the car again and she is pulling out onto the street too quickly, her tires screeching and her mouth twisted and her eyes determined and we know that she is not yet ready.

  * * *

  No matter, I am already late and the children will be getting restless, especially with this heat, and so I hurry along the sidewalk, fanning myself because I am sometimes a lazy old woman and my bag of puppets has grown heavy this morning, just a bit more up this hill, past the hospital and the Italian restaurant and toward the elementary school, and a quick glance to the sky—we have some time yet, those clouds are heavy but they are not yet filled with spite—and off I go, one more building, and then I see it, and the children are waving to me from the window and the young mothers are smiling and the teacher is waving her hand and so I must smile and bow and here I am.

  “Good morning, Azami Bā-san!”

  Their voices are so cheerful and their faces shining in this heat, with their excitement, they know I will make them laugh, I will make them cover their eyes in fright, especially young Inokida-kun, who is afraid of everything, and he will hide behind his sister and his mother will swat him gently on the head with her paper fan because she wants him to be brave, for her own sad reasons she needs a son who will fight, and so I will change one of my stories for him, I am already rewriting it in my head, because the clever thing with stories is that th
ey are never really fixed, they are meant to change as often as the listener needs them to be something else entirely.

  Some of the children are too hot, their faces pink and sweaty, their little mouths open and their eyes rolling around the room, they would like to ask their mothers for a juice box or an ice cube, they would like to remove their clothing and dance about this library in bare feet and naked bodies, but the mothers are impatient for the story, impatient for the moment when their children no longer need them, all eyes on me, all hands gripped in their laps, and so I begin, I am not even kneeling on the floor before the children, but already there is a puppet on my hand, a long and sparkly snake and quickly, from behind my back, the snake takes a frog up into its mouth and is about to devour it, and the children are laughing, because my snake is a sharp and funny creature, a jokester, but wait—here comes a woman, a painted paper bag over my other hand, and she is begging the snake to give the frog his freedom, but he won’t listen, he is very stubborn, and so she tries again, she promises to become his wife, and the children are screaming, what a horrible thought, for who would want to marry a snake?

  I tell them stories of crabs and fish, of clever mermaids and simpler stories of boys and girls who speak and think much like they do, and little Inokida-kun is watching me because we are about to come to his favorite part, to the best story of them all, and all the children know I will finish my storytelling hour with the biggest, brightest most beautiful puppet, and when I bring her out, there is always a lovely silence, even the teacher and the librarian are nodding and smiling and waiting for me to begin, and so I ask them.

  “Now who is this?”

  “KI—TSU—NE!” There was not even a pause, this word has been bubbling up inside them since I came into this room. Oh how they love to say this name, and they yell it again and again, and their lips are shining a little and their eyes are growing rounder and even the mothers who have been chattering away at the back of the room have put down their tea cups and turned away from their complaints and advice and have come forward for this final story.

  “And how many tails does she have?”

  The children are raising their hands and trying to get to their feet, one of them will be allowed to come forward and count the fox’s tails, and today I think it will have to be Inokida-kun because he has not hidden behind his sister even once. I call him forward and at first he doesn’t want to come, but his mother is helping him, her eyes greedy to touch the puppet, and I must turn my body to keep her from it—it is only for the children, only their fingers are worthy to feel Kitsune’s grace.

  He is counting now, caressing each red tail, and then he smiles when he touches the last one. “Nine!”

  And all of the children know that a nine-tailed fox is the wisest of them all, that she has lived the longest life, has earned her powers, and she can hear any conversation, she can see any person by just closing her eyes and thinking about them, and she can travel through the air and vanish back again with only a blink, she is nearly a goddess and while we love her fiercely, we are also all a little afraid of her and so Inokida-kun and his mother have seen that it is time and they are backing away and ready for the sound of my voice.

  The children know this tale and the mothers do too, so it is easy to pull a kimono over the head of the puppet and then take the young man puppet from my bag and jump right to the middle of the story when the fox has already taken human shape and tricked the young man on that lonely deserted road, it was so easy you see, because she was young and beautiful, and the children are clapping because they love the wedding dance and the song the fox-woman is singing to her beloved, and soon there is a little baby nestled inside the front fold of her kimono and the children are chanting aka-chan! aka-chan! and everyone is smiling because the story makes us happy. But then one of the children makes the sound of a dog barking, knowing that soon enough the couple’s life will be disturbed by the puppy who doesn’t like its mistress and so soon we are all yipping a little and even the old librarian is laughing at the excitement in our little corner of this building, and then the fox-woman is begging her husband to get rid of the dog and the children are sad and the mothers are shaking their heads, but we should never doubt him, because of course the husband won’t agree, this is a good and faithful little dog, and everyone is cheering . . . until I begin to measure my words, and my voice grows deeper because we are coming to the final day when the fox-woman is taking her husband his lunch in the fields with her little boy toddling next to her and the little dog is yipping, yapping at her heels and this time it takes a little bite, just a snip at her ankles, it can’t help it, it has waited for so long, and the fox-woman jumps, startled at the feel of these dog teeth on her ankle, and before she can stop herself she has turned back into a fox and raced away over the hedge and the young man and his child are left staring at the woods.

  “No! No! No! She comes back! She comes back!”

  Yes, I tell them, of course she comes back, because she was a good wife and a good mother and so every night she transforms back into a woman and the husband has missed her, and he tells her to stay, just for the nights, he is the one to name her, Kitsune, and it means “come and sleep, come and sleep,” and the family is happy again and so the children are clapping, they have forgotten the heat of the storm and their noon time hungry bellies, but all good fun must come to an end, so I am removing the puppet and becoming myself again, and the mothers are thanking me and the children have come forward, just an inch, wanting to touch me, and I kneel to them and wink at their little faces, and then it is time to go and the librarian tells me that Monday’s story hour is canceled, on account of the storm, and I am nodding and leaving and walking back down the hill, back past the restaurant and the hospital, and there are so many people walking in and out of those sliding glass doors, and maybe I could go in and talk to Alec, give him a few minutes of my time today, but no, he is surrounded, there are too many people watching him now, so I keep up my slow little pace and I check that Kitsune’s nine tails are safely tucked away, and I can’t help it, I keep my hand on them, thrust deep into my bag, because this redness, this softness, will carry me home.

  * * *

  All these sounds beyond the door, these signs of life in our hospital—the phrases of conversation that drift through to him, the laughter of a nurse and the grim embarrassed cough of a doctor who must give bad news to a mother about the reason for her child’s bloody nose, all of this is settling in on our Alec, curving around him and weaving its way into his mind to become a part of his story, because how can it not. Here is a man who has made integration into Komachi a kind of life’s work; from the moment of his marriage he wanted nothing but acceptance from all of us and he forced himself upon this little community in his tall tender way and he has followed our rules and laughed at us when we struck him as odd, but never unkindly, because he has always known that he has wanted us more than we needed him, and he has even added to our number with his three children, and then taught our children, on evenings and weekends, and taught our uncles and our wives and our daughters, he has taught them the words they will need if they ever want to leave this place, and so we have loved him in return, we have almost taken him for one of us, and as soon as it becomes known—the news is already traveling around, among his students, among the neighbors, and this is such a small town really—that he is in the hospital and that the outlook is not good, there will be a worried hush and a ripple of fear, and people will begin to pay attention, will want to stop in to see him, to bring him careful gifts and sound advice. Already today there is a woman on her way in, ready to ask about him at the front desk, a former student, a woman in her seventies whose life wish had been to travel to America and see about locating the daughter of a long-lost sister, one of those women who married a piece of paper and vanished away on a boat, and this old woman wanted, more than anything, to be able to speak enough English before she went and Alec was happy to help her.

  Luckily she will not
get past the front desk because Alec will already be in surgery by the time she gets here, but she will tell one of the receptionists to send wishes to Mrs. Chester and the receptionist’s face will go quiet and her eyes will look down, but still she will lean in closer to the window and right there, right then, this afternoon, the rumor will begin and before the end of the day, Komachi will be wondering why Kanae has not set foot inside the town hospital.

  For now Alec is still safe from this concern, he is sitting rather stiffly in his hospital room fingering his cell phone and wondering if it was a mistake to leave such a long message on Kanae’s cell phone, but what else could he do, whatever she thinks she knows might not be what is really happening, at least this is what Alec would like to think, and his fingers tap the screen of the phone, dialing her number again, erasing it, dialing it, erasing it, what’s done is done, he’s told her; putting the cell phone to the side, he makes himself watch the television but really he is wondering what it will be like to be opened up today, to have the surgeon’s gloved fingers wielding that knife and slicing through his skin, inserting a camera that will roam around inside his middle with its electronic eyes and its tiny cable, sneaking past the muscley walls of his stomach to get a look at his diseased pancreas, and Alec knows this little camera will be looking for all the abnormal cells and measuring the size of the tumors and sending back the data that will help them all make some kind of guess about just how much longer he has to live.