A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

  Ruth

  1.

  On September 11, they were in the Driftless. A few days earlier, Ruth had given the keynote address for a conference on food politics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after which she and Oliver had gone to visit their friends John and Laura, who had a house in the country. The Driftless is a rural area in southwestern Wisconsin, one that Oliver had long wanted to see on account of the unique geology of the Paleozoic Plateau, which had somehow escaped glaciation and was named for the absence of drift: the silt, sand, clay, gravel, and boulders usually left behind by the retreating sheets of ice. He was particularly interested in the cave systems, the disappearing streams, blind valleys, and sinkholes that characterized the topography, but Ruth was feeling anxious. Her mother was still alive then and living with them on the island, and although Ruth had arranged for a neighbor to drop in and bring food and check up on her, she didn’t like leaving her alone for so long. But the fall weather in Wisconsin was beautiful, and it felt good to be with their friends. They spent a long, lazy afternoon in canoes on the Mississippi, watching turtles basking on logs in the golden sunlight.

  The next morning the four of them were sitting around the kitchen table after a leisurely breakfast, enjoying a second cup of coffee, when they heard the neighbor’s pickup truck approaching. John went out to see what he wanted. He came back a few minutes later looking serious.

  “Something’s happened in New York,” he said. The farmhouse had no television. He turned on the radio to NPR just as the second plane hit the North Tower.

  Ruth spent the next hour standing on a picnic table at the top of a small rise on the property, trying to get a mobile phone signal so she could call her friends in New York. Finally she managed to get through to her editor, who was watching the disaster unfold from her kitchen window in Brooklyn.

  Her editor’s voice cut through the static. “It’s falling!” she cried. “Oh my god, the tower’s falling down!” And then the connection went dead.

  They drove back to Madison, turned on the television, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the planes slice into the towers and the towers collapse. She thought about her mom, all alone in the little house in Canada. Her mom always watched the news, even if she couldn’t remember what was going on from day to day. Ruth tried calling, but nobody picked up. Her mom was almost deaf and couldn’t hear the phone ringing.

  “Mom’s watching this on TV,” she told Oliver. “She’ll think we’re in New York. She’ll be crazy with worry.”

  “Call the neighbors,” he said. “Tell them to unplug the set.”

  By the time she got through to anyone, it was already the next morning. “I need you to go to Mom’s house and find out if she’s seen anything,” she said. “If she has, just reassure her. Tell her we’re okay and that we’re nowhere near New York. Then unplug the television and tell her it’s broken.”

  There was a long silence on the end of the line. “Sure thing,” the woman said. “Is there a problem?”

  “I’m afraid she’s going to see the news and panic.”

  Again, a long silence. “What news . . . ?”

  Ruth explained briefly and then hung up the phone. “We have to get back,” she told Oliver.

  2.

  The airports were closed, so they rented a car, a white Ford Taurus, and drove west, skirting the Canadian border. Their plan was to drop the Taurus off in Seattle and take the hydrofoil back to Canada. Canada was safe.

  As they made their way across the country, American flags began popping up like flowers after a rain, fluttering from poles and car antennae, and taped to the windows of stores and homes. The country was awash in red, white, and blue. At night, in Super 8s and Motel 6s, they watched the president vow to hunt down the terrorists. “Dead or alive,” he promised. “Smoke ’em out of their caves. Git ’em running so we can git ’em.”

  One evening they stopped for dinner at the Great Wall of China restaurant in Harlem, Montana. The restaurant was empty and closing early. It was an extra security precaution, their waitress explained, when she brought their bill.

  “You never know who they’re gonna target next,” she said.

  “You think Arab terrorists will attack us here in Harlem, Montana?” Oliver asked. Harlem, Montana, had a population of just under 850. It was two thousand miles from New York City, and surrounded by desert.

  The waitress, who looked like she might be Mexican, shook her head. “We’re not taking any chances,” she said.

  Later, at the Super 8 motel, they watched a news report about the spate of hate crimes against Muslim Americans being committed across the country.

  “You know, I think I was wrong,” Oliver said.

  “About what?”

  “Our waitress. I don’t think it was Arab terrorists she was afraid of.”

  3.

  They made it across the border, and Canada had never felt safer. Back on the island, their neighbors expressed concern for their well-being, but news of the world had little relevance to their daily lives, and they were only vaguely aware of what was going on down south, which didn’t keep them from having opinions.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s all a hoax,” one neighbor said, when he dropped in to deliver Masako’s Alzheimer’s medication, which he’d picked up for her at the clinic.

  “A hoax?” Ruth repeated. “You mean, you don’t think it happened?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “It happened all right. It’s just not what they’re saying it is.” He looked around and then took a step closer, standing so that his face was inches from hers. “If you ask me, it’s a government conspiracy.”

  He was American, a Vietnam vet. He had been awarded a Purple Heart, which he handed back to the U.S. immigration authority at the border when he crossed into Canada. His spinal injuries had never healed and he required a steady dose of morphine in order to control the pain. Ruth didn’t have the energy to argue. She offered tea and then sat with him, listening to his theories and thinking about the box in the basement. How nice it would be to crawl inside and fall asleep.

  From their fog-enshrouded outpost on the mossy margin of the world, she watched the United States invade Afghanistan and then turn its sights on Iraq. While troops were quietly being deployed to the Middle East, she sat on the couch with her mother, in the little house in the middle of the dark and dripping rain forest, staring at the small, glowing television screen.

  “What program is this?” her mother asked.

  “It’s the news, Mom,” she answered.

  “I don’t understand,” her mother said. “It looks like a war. Are we at war?”

  “Yes, Mom,” she said. “We’re at war.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible!” her mother exclaimed. “Who are we at war with?”

  “Afghanistan, Mom.”

  They watched together in silence, until the commercial break. Her mother got up and shuffled to the bathroom. When she came back, she stopped and looked at the screen. “What program is this?”

  “It’s the news, Mom.”

  “It looks like a war. Are we at war?”

  “Yes, Mom. We’re at war.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible! Who are we at war with?”

  “Iraq, Mom.”

  “Really? But I thought that war was over.”

  “No, Mom. It’s never over. America has always been at war with Iraq.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible!” Her mom leaned forward and peered at the screen.

  Days pass, and weeks. Months pass, and then years.

  “Now, who did you say we are at war with?”

  Nao

  1.

  After 9/11 we thought the world was going to end more or less immediately, but it didn’t. School just kept plodding along. My classmates were nice to me for a while because of my connection to America. We folded a thousand origami paper cranes to send to Ground Zero for the twenty-four Japanese victims and all the other people who had died in the towers. But by the end of Septe
mber, everybody was tired of feeling kind and compassionate, and there was a noticeable increase in hostilities. It wasn’t organized like before, at least not at first, just minor random sniper attacks coming out of nowhere when someone felt impatient or restless. A shove in the hallway, a punch in the breast. War and treachery were in the air. The whole world was waiting for America to attack Afghanistan, but nothing was happening, which seemed to cause a lot of tension, even in our classroom. We took our preliminary exams, which weren’t the real ones but still made it clear who was going to get into a good high school and have a fabulous life, and who was a loser. Me. I should have been prepared, but I wasn’t. Still, what’s the point in beating yourself up when other people will do it for you?

  Finally, on October 7, the United States started bombing Afghanistan, and I got my period again, and in a way both of these felt like a huge relief.

  I know a lot of people think it’s gross to talk about this kind of thing, so I hope you don’t mind. I’m not the kind of girl who gets an erotic kick out of telling everyone about her menstrual cycles, and I wouldn’t even bring it up if it wasn’t important to what happened next.

  I started having periods in Sunnyvale, when I was twelve, which is pretty normal in America but early for Japan. I was fourteen when we moved back to Tokyo, but then suddenly my period just stopped for almost the whole year, probably on account of all the stress and ijime. I think my body was trying to go backward in time to my younger, happier days. Anyway, it didn’t start again until the last class that day, when Sensei was announcing that the U.S. had started bombing Afghanistan, and suddenly I felt myself starting to bleed. Stupidly, I’d gotten out of the habit of carrying around pads and supplies. I knew it wasn’t safe to hang around after school for even a minute, but I wasn’t going to make it home without a big bloody disaster, so as soon as the bell rang, I grabbed my stuff and ran to the washroom.

  The junior high school I was going to was old, and the old-style Japanese toilets are different from American ones. The bowls are in the ground and you have to squat over them instead of sitting. I was squatting there with my skirt up and my stained panties down at my ankles when I heard the washroom door open and close. Someone had come in.

  As quietly as I could, I wrapped some toilet paper around my hand and made a wad. A noise, kind of a scrabbling sound like rats climbing the wall, came from the stall next to me. I froze. The stalls are built all the way to the floor so you can’t see under, thank god, but still it’s a terrible feeling to be squatting with your panties down and your bare butt hanging out, listening to rats. Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable. I held my breath. Everything was still. I hiked up my skirt and leaned over to stick the wad into my panties, when I heard the sound again, only this time it was coming from the top of the partition. I heard someone snicker and looked up to see two raggedy lines of little keitai phones thrust over the partition walls on both sides, aiming down at me. I stood up real quick and pulled up my panties.

  “Oooh!” a voice cried. “Nice shot!”

  One by one, the phones disappeared. I pulled my skirt down and backed into the corner of the stall.

  “Gross!” someone said. “There’s blood! She didn’t even flush!”

  I leaned against the tiled wall, hugging myself. Should I flush? Should I try to escape? If I’d had a rifle I would have shot myself in the throat.

  “Baka! It’s blurry!”

  I pushed away from the wall and reached for the latch.

  “That’s not blurry! That’s her pubes!”

  I unlocked the door and opened it. They were standing at the sinks, clustered around Reiko, comparing their keitai screens. I ducked my head and pushed past them toward the exit, but Reiko held out her hand like a traffic cop.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Home,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Someone grabbed me by the collar then and pushed me into the corner, where Daisuke was filming with a video camera. Three of the big girls forced me to my knees and then onto my stomach. The floor tiles smelled of urine and bleach and felt cold against my cheek. I could feel someone’s hard knee in my back, pinning me down, and someone’s hands yanking my skirt up to my armpits. Someone else kicked me in the ribs.

  “Pass me the rope.”

  They had planned this. They held my hands together, and then they pulled my skirt up over my head and used a skipping rope to tie it like a sack so I couldn’t see. They held my ankles so I couldn’t kick and then they pulled off my panties.

  “Ooh, score!” I heard one of them say. “There’s stains! You get more for stains!”

  “That’s disgusting. It stinks. Put it in the bag before I have to throw up!”

  “Daisuke, you baka. Are you shooting this? We need video.”

  It was dark inside my plaid skirt sack, and hot and wet because I was breathing hard and my breath had nowhere to go. I could see only the faintest bit of light and shadow through the weave of the skirt fabric. Someone stuck a toe under my ribs and rolled me over onto my back, and now the shadows were moving above me, and the tiles were cold against my bare bottom. They were talking about who was going to rape me first. They decided to make Daisuke do it.

  “Hand over the camera,” Reiko ordered. “Pull down his pants.”

  They held my legs apart and made him kneel and then lie down on top of me. I could feel the weight of his scrawny body and his bony hips poking into me, but he was way too scared for anything to happen, so they kicked him off and I heard him run away. They started talking about how they needed a rape scene for the video, but after Daisuke’s failure, nobody wanted to try. Maybe they were all scared. I don’t know.

  “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

  “She’s bleeding. It’s too gross.”

  “You guys are pathetic.”

  “Fine, so you do it, Reiko. It’ll be a lez scene. That’s even better.”

  “Baka. I’m no lez.”

  I just lay there, perfectly still. It was pointless to struggle or scream. There were too many of them, and no one would hear me or come to help, but really it didn’t matter, because I was thinking about Number One, and he was giving me courage. They could break my body but they wouldn’t break my spirit. They were only shadows, and as I listened to them arguing, I felt my face relax into a gentle smile. I summoned up my supapawa, and soon the shadows were just mosquitoes, buzzing in the distance and bothersome only if you let them be.

  “Hey,” I heard someone say. “She’s stopped moving.”

  “She’s not breathing.”

  “That’s way too much blood.”

  “Shit. Let’s get out of here!”

  Do you remember what it feels like to be a little kid playing dead? You’re out in your backyard in Sunnyvale with the other kids, and there’s a war going on, and suddenly BANG! somebody points a stick at you and shoots? So you fall to the ground, clutching your chest. The earth is cold and damp. Your enemy is watching you die, so you make it good, groaning and clutching at your bleeding heart, but by the time you’re done, the war has already moved on to a different part of the backyard.

  You lie there, feeling the cold of the earth pressing against your cheek, your chest, your whole body. There are wet patches on your knees from where you first went down. You shiver. The earth smells like mud and rain and lawn chemicals. It makes your head ache, but you don’t move. You can’t move because you are dead.

  Where did everyone go? you’re wondering. Did they forget about me?

  How much longer do I have to lie here?

  Will they just play around my dead body and then go home? How will I know if the game is over? What if nobody tells me?

  It’s boring to be dead!

  Finally, you can’t take it anymore, so you roll over onto your back and open your eyes, and above you is the great, big, goofy, cloud-spotted sky. You blink, half believing that it’s not pretend and you might actually be dead. Slowly you move your ar
m, your leg, to see if you still can, and then . . . hey! You’re not dead! Relieved, you scramble to your feet, pick up your gun, and declare yourself alive again, and run off to rejoin the war.

  That’s what I felt like, only I couldn’t see the sky at all, only the hazy blur of the fluorescent light tubes through the plaid fabric. The bathroom and the hallway outside were silent. The tiles were still cold, and I could feel the sticky blood against my bottom. Slowly I sat up and pushed at the knotted fabric above my head until the rope gave way and released me from my skirt. The bathroom was bright and empty. I used my teeth to untie the rope around my wrists. They hurt, and so did the place in my rib where someone kicked me, but mostly I was okay. I wet some paper towels and went back into the toilet stall to clean myself up, and then I took the train home.

  They posted the video on the Internet that night. One of my classmates emailed me the link. The image quality from the keitai phone cams was crap, grainy and shaky, and you couldn’t really see my face too clearly, which I was grateful for, but the video was awfully clear. With my arms and head tied up in my skirt and my naked legs kicking, you could almost say I looked like a giant prehistoric squid, squirming and oozing ink from my ink sac in a futile attempt to confuse my predators.