by Hanna Peach
What time would he get in? Would he come straight to my bedroom? Would he be able to sneak away from the staff quarters? Maybe he’d be too tired. Maybe I’d have to wait until tomorrow to see him.
I laid awake long into the night listening for the three taps on my window that never came. I was surprised that I fell asleep at all.
* * *
As soon as the light hit my eyes the next morning I launched out of bed. He was back. He was back. My blood sang through my veins as I rushed to my window, hoping for a sign that he had been there during the night. I let out a squeal when I spotted the telltale white square in the bottom left-hand corner.
Meet me by the Star-
gazers. Oh night! I want to
share it all with you.
K
I knew exactly what his haiku meant.
As soon as I was done with breakfast, which I gulped down so fast that Loretta lamented that I would give myself indigestion, I raced into the gardens.
Keir was sitting on the stone bench in the center of the lily garden, waiting for me. His eyes lit up when he spotted me and a bright smile beamed across his face. My heart soared and I felt so full of light that I was sure I was shining too.
“So,” I said as I fell into the space on the rock next to him. “Tell me everything.”
“Oh, Noriko, it was incredible. Have you ever been to see the Cirque de Luna?”
I shook my head.
“It’s not like a normal circus. They don’t have any animals. They only perform using people and every show is based on a story instead of just being a series of unlinked acts. It’s the best circus in the world. If I got in…it would be a dream come true.”
“It sounds amazing. I wish I could have come with you to see it.”
“Maybe you can one day.”
“Maybe.” But we both knew that was a lie. Drake would never let me go anywhere.
“There’s something about the circus,” he continued. “It’s just magic. The lights, the spots of fire twirling at the end of hands, the huge tent filled with noise and excitement and possibilities, the performers, all limbered up and backstage and ready like one big family.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “And your audition?”
His cheeks flushed. “I had a rough start, nerves I think, but I pushed through it and in the end I think I delivered.”
In the midst of my happiness for him, I felt a stab of pain. “When do you leave?”
“Noriko,” his eyebrows crushed together, “I don’t even know if I got in.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“They’re holding auditions in other major cities across the country. Then they have to come up with a long list and whittle that down to a short list and then it depends on how many places they have and whether I’d even fit any of the characters in their next show. Even if I performed well I still might not get a place.”
“I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t.”
He smiled. “You’re biased.”
“Am not.”
“Have you ever even seen another acrobat act?”
“Well, no.”
“How do you know I’m not really rubbish and you just think I’m great because you have nothing else to compare it to?”
“Because I know how you make me feel when I watch you perform. You make me believe in magic. That’s how I know you’re good. Really good. I don’t need anything else to compare it to.”
He studied me, his eyes solemn and wide, his stare so intense it heated up my insides like sun radiating through glass.
“Oh hey,” he said, clearing his throat. “I brought something for you.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“I can’t take it.”
“I’m not giving it to you. Just lending it to you. So you can call your folks.”
I stared at the black phone sitting in my palm, my only connection to the family I so sorely missed. The family who I sacrificed to be here for. “Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“I still have no money to pay you back.”
“Watching you light up when you talk to your father is still enough payment for me. Now,” he nudged me with his knee, “call them already, will you?”
This time my mother picked up the phone.
“Mama, it’s me,” I said in Japanese.
“Oh, Noriko,” my mother said, her voice tight and strained.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
The silence coming from the other end of the line started to swell. A high-pitched squeaking began to sound in my head.
“What’s wrong, mama?”
I felt Keir staring at me, his eyes dark under furrowed, concerned brows.
Stop staring at me like something’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong.
My mother broke the silence with a sob. “Noriko, Noriko,” she mumbled, “why, Noriko?”
“What happened?” I said, my voice getting louder. “Tell me.”
“The surgery…” she managed out between cries. “There were complications…”
“But he’s okay now, right? Right?”
By now my mother was crying so hard she couldn’t speak. But my father had to be fine. I’d know it in my heart if there was something wrong. Drake would have told me if there was something wrong. He promised.
I stood and walked a few steps to the edge lilies. I couldn’t sit still. “Where’s chichi? Put him on the phone.”
I heard a crackling and fumbling on the other end and then my aunt’s voice came on, my mother’s sister. “Noriko? It’s Rumi. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this…”
Stop it. Stop right there.
I heard mama’s crying in the background, the noise reaching into my heart and slicing it into pieces with every sound.
“There were complications with your father’s surgery,” my aunt continued, her voice quiet and solemn. “I’m so sorry, little butterfly. He didn’t make it.”
22
The phone fell from my hand. My Aunt Rumi’s last words echoing in my head, the funeral is in three days.
“What’s wrong?”
My vision went funny. Suddenly I couldn’t seem to see anything. And my ears, everything around me sounded distorted, like I was underwater.
“Noriko, what’s wrong?”
I couldn’t seem to work my legs. My knees gave out and I dropped to the grass, my fingers raking into the earth. I thought I felt someone’s arms around me.
I realized it was Keir who asking me, over and over, what was wrong. He peered at me, his gentle fingers cupped around my jaw, keeping me looking at him, otherwise my head would roll back.
“My father,” I heard myself say. “He’s…” Maybe if I didn’t say it out loud, then it never happened. Maybe I was really still in bed and this was all just a dream.
“Oh my God,” Keir whispered. “Noriko, I’m so sorry.”
Don’t be sorry. Nothing’s wrong. I shoved him back. “Get off me.”
I pushed myself to my feet just as the first sob wretched from my mouth. It came all the way from the depths of my belly, clenching and contracting the very core of me so that I was half bent over. My body shattered into grief. I did the only thing I could.
I ran.
I heard Keir calling for me, but I couldn’t stop running. If I stopped then I had to face him. I had to face it. Maybe if I ran fast enough I could run back into yesterday when everything was fine and my father was alive.
When I ran through the Japanese garden my heart stabbed at the scent of stale withered cherry blossoms under my feet. Winter had come too early for him.
In my bedroom, I cried all day. I cried so much I was left bereft of moisture. Until I was a bag of dry, brittle bones. Until even the bones crumbled into ash and blew away. Until I was empty.
Loretta came in to ask why I wasn’t at dinner. I only noticed then that the light from outside had died and I was twisted up in my sheets in the near dark.
She turned on a sid
e lamp. “Are you sick, dear?”
I couldn’t speak, my throat was raw from sobbing and my eyes were swollen and nearly closed. I felt a cold hand pressing to my forehead.
I was vaguely aware that she returned with tea that she set on my bedside table. “I’ll tell him not to come to you tonight,” she said as she brushed the hair from my forehead, drawing the curtains and leaving me in the dim light of my bedside lamp.
Even in the murky depths of the well I now lay in, I knew I couldn’t stay here forever. Loretta, in her mercy, had bought me a day’s reprieve from facing Drake, but I would still have to face him soon. I had to make a decision.
Three days. The funeral was in three days.
If I asked Drake if I could go to the funeral I would reveal that I had been calling my family behind his back. The consequences…
But if I stayed silent, I could possibly hide my grief, disguise it as the flu…but I would miss saying goodbye to the father I loved.
What should I do?
What
What
What?
23
“Drake,” I said, my voice wobbling. The next night I stood facing him as he entered my formal living room where I had been waiting for him.
He closed the door behind him before turning back to me. “What’s wrong?”
I had to ask him. I had to. Damn the consequences. I just had to make him see how important it was for me to go. I was his wife. In his own strange and broken way he loved me. He had to forgive me for calling them behind his back. He had to let me go, didn’t he?
“I need to go back to Japan,” I said.
“No.”
I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. I tried again. “Drake, my father…my father is dead. His funeral is in three days. I need to go back.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”
“I spoke to my mother, but that’s not the point,” I added quickly. “You’ll let me go back for the funeral, won’t you?”
“You called them behind my back even after I told you it would be a bad idea. You spoke to them against my wishes, against my advice. That is the point. Now look at you. You’re a mess. They did this to you.”
“No,” I said, horror filling my lungs. “My father is dead and all you can say−”
“My father’s dead too. Fathers die.”
I shrank back. “If there’s a shred of feeling in your body, you’d let me go to say goodbye.”
“I told you I was keeping an eye on things back in Japan. I told you I’d take care of it.”
“But you didn’t. My father died and you said nothing to me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“By keeping it from me?” I yelled. “When would you have told me? After the funeral?”
“I was trying to figure out how to break the news to you.” His voice remained cold and calm, only infuriating me more.
“You’re lying. You’re lying to me,” now I was shrieking. “You just don’t want me to go anywhere or talk to anyone.”
“What rubbish.”
“You won’t let me out of this house. You won’t let me have friends. I’m a prisoner here. A fucking prisoner.”
“Calm down, Noriko. You sound crazy.”
“Calm down. Calm the fuck down.” I grabbed the first thing in my room I could find. It was a vase, smooth and cool under my hand. I hurled it as hard as I could, a scream tearing from my lungs. “Is this calm enough for you, you son of a bitch?”
Through my tear-blurred vision I saw him duck to the side as the vase flew past his head and smashed against the wall. The crash was like a hammer shattering my brittle rage. As the ceramic rained upon the carpet my anger seeped from my bones. Drake narrowed his eyes at me and I felt the menace rolling off him. Fear wrapped its cold hands around my spine and I shivered. My actions would surely have consequences.
“Please, you have to let me go.” I threw myself at his feet, crying, pawing at his trouser leg. “It’s my father. Let me go to his funeral. Please let me go, I’m begging you.”
“You don’t have access to a phone. How could you have spoken to your mother?”
“What?” I sniffed as I gazed up at his marble face.
“Someone must have helped you. Someone on my staff.”
My blood drained from my limbs. He couldn’t know it was Keir.
“Who gave you a phone?” Drake demanded, his voice rising.
“No one.”
“Don’t lie to me. Who gave you a goddamn phone?”
“I…I broke into your office and used your phone in there.”
“I have call logs from my office. I would have noticed long distance phone calls to Japan on them. Who helped you?”
I was silent. I couldn’t give Keir away. I promised him that I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t break my word.
“Tell me,” he said.
“No.” I shuffled backwards away from him.
“Tell me,” he roared. He advanced, his fists clenched at his sides. “I’m your husband. You are my wife. You will obey me.”
“You’re a monster.”
He bent down over me, grabbing my neck in his large hand. I winced, clawing at his fingers as they tightened. “A monster. A monster? I give you everything − everything. Dresses, jewelry…your own sewing room and you dare to call me a monster? I can be a monster if you like.”
He squeezed my neck tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe. He was going to kill me. It was my stupidity for baiting him. My anger, which I couldn’t keep in, was going to get me killed.
Keir…I didn’t get to say goodbye to Keir. I wish I had made love to him. If I could change this one thing before I died tonight that would be it; to have allowed myself to experience real passion, one where my soul was set on fire, one where I was consumed by love. That was the tragedy tonight, not my death.
His hand released from my neck. I inhaled audibly, gulping air into my starved lungs. He grabbed my arm and began to drag me across the floor.
“What are you doing?” I cried as I kicked out. “Let go of me.”
He said nothing as he dragged me from this living room into my private living room. My hand lashed out as I went through the doorway, grabbing onto the doorframe for dear life. I wasn’t strong enough to hang on.
The side of my thigh burned from the carpet as he dragged me towards my bedroom. Oh God. What was he going to do to me? I struggled against him as ugly visions flashed before my eyes.
“Let go. Let go,” I screamed, but it was useless. Even if anyone heard me, they were all on his side here. No one was going to come to my rescue. Drake could do anything to me − anything − and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop him.
He yanked me to my feet and shoved me into my bedroom. I stumbled, hit the carpet, and immediately started shuffling away from him.
But he didn’t advance. He stood in the doorway of my bedroom, filling it with his menace. “If you tell me who gave you a phone, I’ll consider letting you go back for the funeral.”
The bastard. The manipulative bastard. My heart filled with a bitterness so thick that I felt like I was still choking.
What should I do?
If I gave Keir up I’d lose him forever, but then I’d get to see my family again. I’d get to attend my father’s funeral. Keir would understand, wouldn’t he?
But the thought of breaking my word to Keir, the thought of how much pain I’d cause him when he realized that I had betrayed him, it sliced through my heart, which felt like it was already bleeding. And I’d never see him again.
But my chichi, I needed to see him once more. Just one more time. To say goodbye.
But Keir. I couldn’t betray him. In betraying him I’d betray my own heart…
My soul tore at the decision.
“I’m waiting, Noriko.”
“No one helped me,” I said.
I imagined the sadness in my chichi’s eyes. Would you not come to say goodbye to me, hime? Guilt twiste
d in my stomach like a knife and I felt it seeping like a cancer down to my marrow.
Drake’s eyes were cold as he glared at me. He wasn’t going to forgive me for this for a long time, I could see it.
“Fine,” he said. “If that’s how you want to play it. I’m a reasonable man, Noriko. If you had let me look after it, then I would have let you go.”
Liar. Liar!
“But you felt it better to disobey me. You need to learn your lesson.” He pulled the small key from the inside of my lock.
“No, please.” I pushed myself to my feet as the realization of what he was about to do ricocheted through me.
“You gave me no choice.” He slammed the door behind him and I heard the key turn with a click.
“No!” I threw myself at the door, slamming my body against it. The surface was solid. There was no give as I banged and kicked against it, begging him to let me out.
He didn’t come back. He probably couldn’t even hear me through the thickness of the walls of the various rooms between my bedroom and his. No one could hear me. I knew this. But I couldn’t stop.
Something happens when you’re trapped, some instinct takes over and your body becomes a mindless thrashing animal, desperate and clawing for a way out. Even if your situation was impossible and you knew it, your body took a long while to realize it.
Only when exhaustion took over did the hopelessness slide over me like a shroud. I slid to the ground and buried my face in my hands. Soon my fingertips were wrinkly with my own tears.
Even if I could get out of my bedroom, where would I go? How would I get to Japan? How far off these grounds could I even go before Drake found me and dragged me back?
I was alone in a strange country that wasn’t mine. No family here. No friends outside these walls. No money. No means. I was a domesticated pet who couldn’t leave her master. This truth hit me hard. I wasn’t sure how I would survive the next three days.
Just hang on for now. For now just hang on.
24
The sun had sunk, sucking all its light back from between the bars of my prison. The sun was rising over my family and they would bury my father today.
