Carried Away

by Whitney Williams

  “Yes, Onee-san.”

  “Good.”

  Her litany continued as our driver slung us through traffic on the wet roads. She had caught me by surprise earlier in the bathroom. By then, I was up to speed and rolling with the punches flawlessly. She had expected less of me, and I followed her instructions aggressively, slowly paying out my anger about the scrub-down with each almost-too-quick response.

  It was a long drive. The instructions continued uninterrupted until the car stopped in a busy commercial street. She immediately opened her door and got out. I lagged behind because I checked for traffic first.

  I saw which door she went into, a small clothing store of some kind, and ran after her. How did she move so fast? I caught up to her at the back of the store and looked around. She was giving instructions to two increasingly frantic women behind a set of display cases filled with elaborately embroidered silks. A third woman emerged from the stock room and was immediately pressed into service. The store was cramped, crowded with rows of shelves holding folded silk, kimonos and obis, each on its own shelf. On end caps, sets of garments were hung for display. Here, in the back of the shop, they were amazing, some magnificently embroidered, some incredibly subtle blends of texture and hue.

  Onee-san was soon behind the counter, rifling through the previously locked display cases, her hands moving quickly and precisely, seeming to float through undisturbed stacks of merchandise like a ghost’s insubstantial tendrils. She suddenly whipped out a kimono, unfolding it in a flourish of blood red, almost black, silk. Laying it across the display case, she said, “Put this on,” and continued her search. There were no dressing rooms, but we were the only customers in the store. I turned around, stepped into an aisle and exchanged my robe for the kimono.

  It was beautiful, lightweight (like a negligee) except for its narrow collar, which hung lower down my back than seemed appropriate. I checked the seams and biases, and I was wearing it right. It just didn’t fit.

  “Arms,” Onee-san commanded from behind me. I reached out and down, and she pulled a second, heavier kimono on over the first. It fit like the first, which seemed to satisfy her. I looked down, and my breath caught at the beauty of it. Its base fabric was a midnight blue silk, just as dark as the red I wore under it. Its sleeves hung so low they drug the ground, and up each sleeve, as well as the body panels, grew fully embroidered, trellises of gnarled and forking cherry trees, blossoms fallen thin enough to show their dark branches. The blossoms and their falling petals could not all have been done by hand, but I did not see any pattern or symmetry to them. Each petal showed a careful gradient of color, white to pink, and each had a different shape, floating down on invisible wind at various orientations. The kimono’s lower edges were completely covered in embroidered petals as if a thick blanket of them had fallen to the ground.

  Onee-san arranged the fronts of my robes, and one of the store’s clerks wrapped an enormous sash around my waist. What I could see of it was woven pink and white, like the blossoms, in a way that seemed to shimmer and shift colors as the fabric moved.

  The older woman from the storeroom approached with stockings and some sort of wooden stilts. Onee-san, still fussing with the sash behind me, barked some orders at her, and she knelt in front of me, lifted my hems and started putting the stockings on me. They turned out to be long, silk socks, split between the first and second toes. Foot mittens—I smiled at the thought.

  She boosted me up onto the sandal/stilts, which helpfully lifted my kimonos well off the floor. The third woman joined us, holding a variety of decorative combs and ribbons, and Onee-san went to work again on my hair.

  I experimented with my range of motion in the gargantuan robes and found myself feeling less a prisoner in them than I expected. Crossing my arms in front of me held my sleeves above the floor, which would help with walking, but my legs had little enough range of motion that it would be impossible to keep up with Onee-san. I started wondering what to do about that; the outer kimono felt too heavy to hike up effectively. I was strong enough to turn handsprings, but I felt certain that would not have been the correct solution. I kept my arms crossed, holding my sleeves up, a silken statue of a woman in a cherry grove.

  Finishing with my hair, she took me by the elbow and said, “Come,” in a slightly softer voice than she had used earlier. Much to my relief, she moved at a pace I could almost achieve in my stilts. I suppose it wouldn’t do to ruin that beautiful kimono by careening facedown into the gutter. She helped me into the car, and we moved on. Her instructions continued as we rode, but her voice was slower. She sounded less angry. I think she liked the way I turned out.

  She opened her briefcase again in a washroom 72 floors above the harbor. I stood next to her, in front of the mirror, and when I saw its contents, I felt like I was looking at the inside of a magician’s hat. She had put her own hair up in combs and ribbons, taken off all her clothes without explanation, and was standing on her shirt. She had laid her jeans out across the edge of the counter to avoid sullying the collection of assorted brushes and empty dishes she pulled from her briefcase.

  There were bags of powder, vials of liquid; she poured and mixed with scientific precision and industrial speed. She dabbed a large, round brush into a big bowl of thick, white shellac, then she reached behind her head, twisting the brush to leave a white circle on the nape of her neck, stroking down from there. One after the other, she painted up from the sides of the circle, leaving an unpainted “W” on the back of her neck but tracing her hairline forward beyond it. Finishing her hairline, she pulled more white down to cover her face. She looked at me with the face of a skeptical and unfinished clown, offered me the brush, and told me to paint her forearm. I did so, using the same straight, careful strokes she had. “Good. Finish my back.”

  I painted. I inferred from the streak left on her forearm that she intended to whitewash her entire body, so I continued around her flanks, down her hips, around her legs. Meanwhile, she continued working on her face with smaller brushes. While I worked around one knee, she lifted her other foot up to the counter and painted the top of it, leaving a crisp border around its unpainted sole and unfinished strokes up her ankle. That was where I was to stop; we traded legs in silence. She raised one arm for me, which I painted out to her wrist, while she applied black and red to her face.

  She had transformed. I was amazed. It seemed strange that she didn’t fill the red out all the way to her lips’ edges, but even stranger, it looked natural by some trick of color and contrast. I was around her side, painting up her abdomen when she snatched the large brush, set her feet apart, and passed the brush back and forth under her crotch and up between her buttocks. I felt oddly comforted to see her tend to herself with the same unwarranted level of detail she had applied to me earlier.

  I colored her right arm while she touched up details around her labia and nipples with her left. While I finished her chest, she painted her hands, leaving the same neat border around her unpainted palms and pads, even lacquering her nails with the same goo. When we both finished, she just stood there, legs and arms slightly spread, looking down at her hands, silently watching paint dry.

  After several minutes of quiet reflection upon the nature of paint and how it dries, I decided to try moving ahead. “Onee-san?”

  “Speak, Shikomi-san.” Her voice still commanded, but it was lighter, softer, a voice to match her costume.

  “Have you finished with the brushes?”

  “Yes, Shikomi-san.”

  I carefully washed the brushes and bowls with her occasionally correcting me. Not long after I finished, she carefully withdrew from her briefcase a beautiful, thin, white kimono, like my red one, with silver details around the collar. She dressed gingerly over the makeup. The heavier gray kimono she donned next was elegant but looked plain next to mine. While she tied her subtly silvered, snow-white obi, I had to ask.

  “Onee-san, why have you given me such bold and beautiful clothing when you yourself wear o
nly gray and white?”

  “Because I am an artist, Shikomi-san,” she answered plainly. “You are a prop.”

  So I was a prop, a silken statue of a woman in a cherry grove. I could do that. Standing next to Onee-san in our foot-mittens, I felt comfortable in the sparsely decorated lounge. We fit the scene. The first other person we saw was my self-selected master, the man to whom I had bet myself and lost. Halfway around the world, wearing a kimono that should have hung in a museum, I was pretty sure I had won.

  Without even glancing at me, he walked up to Onee-san, softly kissed a pair of his fingers, then touched them to the unpainted W on the back of her neck above her white makeup. “Thank you, Yumi,” he said softly.

  She closed her eyes and released her breath. I could not imagine such a harsh woman responding that way to any man’s touch. It had to be part of her costume. She was indeed an artist.

  After he lifted his fingers and walked away, I asked, “Yumi?”

  She turned to me with a crisp, angry hiss. “Yu-mi-ko. Sen-sei.”

  With her carefully blank face turned forward again, she spoke with a tone of genuine kindness, almost tenderness toward me, something I never would have expected from her. “You are a terrible liar, Shikomi-san. Do not see him. Do not hear him. Do not think of him. This is important.”

  I was grateful for her tone if not her message, and I risked using her name. “I understand, Yumiko-sensei.”

  “No,” she replied, her voice as blank as her face, “you do not.”

  “Yes, Onee-san.” I hoped that answer would return me to her good graces, such as they were.

  We stood silently until a group of Japanese businessmen arrived. There were five of them, and they looked like stodgy, over-starched suits, all Scrooges, no Marleys. I was fascinated from the moment Yumiko-sensei greeted them. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, but she was a smooth operator. She led them to a group of chairs and served tea. There were a lot of things going on that seemed important but that I didn’t understand: redundant movement of dishes, a single stick of incense conspicuously unlit, perfect chrysanthemum blossoms everywhere. She was seducing all five of them at once, like a kung-fu movie hero gracefully dispatching endless streams of foes from all directions. They might have had speaking roles when they came in, but it wasn’t long before Yumiko-sensei had reduced them to uncredited stuntmen who the camera wouldn’t even follow through the windows and paper walls they were about to crash.

  I watched and wished I could listen, soaking up everything I could. I had a great deal to learn.

  She faded out like a ninja before they walked to the adjacent conference room for their meeting. She brought me in with her, and we knelt together near the door with our heads bowed. She had a small ornamental mirror in her hands, which seemed odd. I spared a glance up at the ceiling, and saw it was deeply recessed over the conference table for indirect lighting. Blown glass globes of all sizes hung down in the cavity, refracting soft, asymmetric light into the room. Each globe held a reflected image of everyone present. She watched, and she listened. I wondered what she saw.

  The meeting seemed to last forever, but that might have been because I couldn’t understand what was being said. Yumiko-sensei touched my knee, then silently rose and hovered slowly out of the room. I did my best to follow likewise. She closed the door behind us carefully and quietly. The instant she released its handle, she was moving at full speed again. She bent down, lifted her hems, and strode for the exit. I’m sure she only did it that way so I would follow suit and be able to keep up with her.

  We remounted our stilts and left, taking the car to a building that looked like a medieval Japanese castle. As we walked in, everyone we saw bowed to her and ignored me. I got the feeling they didn’t recognize her but were bowing to her rank, like saluting a general. Perhaps, unlike me, it wasn’t their first time seeing this sort of thing and they inferred from her attire what she could do to people. The reaction of the first person who did recognize her confirmed my feeling.

  “Geiko-sama.” He bowed curtly, then walked with us, talking quickly. She seemed to have a lot of names, maybe titles? We went through an invisibly mundane door, up a flight of wooden stairs, and walked down a narrower, plainer hallway than I had seen on the level below. It must have been a servants’ passage. We were backstage.

  I guess you could call the place we went the green room, but it wasn’t green. Dim red light fell inert against its matte-black walls, floor, and ceiling. When Yumiko-sensei entered, about half a dozen people, all dressed in black like stagehands, stood from their work and bowed. She waved them off, and we walked to a patch of naturally finished wood (the rest of the floor was painted black) with corners demarked by vertical ropes, floor to ceiling. It was no wider than a very large table, and if it had been a table, was long enough to have seated eight people down each side. There was a low, wooden pedestal on one end, on which Yumiko-sensei seated me and carefully arranged my posture. I remembered her telling me I was a prop, and I felt like it. I was part of a little diorama laid out on that wooden rectangle: mats and cushions, a wooden frame opposite me, porcelain dishes neatly stacked, flowers, brushes, what have you. She inspected everything carefully, then started talking to the stagehands and looking through the off-stage props.

  Everyone fell silent as if whatever show we were in was about to start. More people came in with steaming pots and serving dishes. Food? Yumiko-sensei mounted the diorama, whispering, “When I instruct you to pour tea for the second man on your left, you will knock over his teacup and spill it into his lap, then return to your seat.” Not waiting for a response, she nodded to one of the staff. They drew a heavy black curtain all the way around us, making it so dark I couldn’t even see the cherry blossoms embroidered on my chest. Then the floor started moving.

  The thick ropes on our four corners were not decorative. Our entire platform descended into the room below until it was, in fact, a table. The five men from the office were there, seated on the floor. There must have been a foot well under the table. I tried not to notice the sixth, seated to my right, since I was apparently such a terrible liar. The men were noticeably amused to see us on the table.

  When our platform came to rest, everyone fell silent. Neither delayed nor rushed, Yumiko-sensei was first to move.

  In smooth and graceful choreography, she served the first course to the men at her feet. She danced, knowing the exact position of every saucer, never bothering to look where she was going, never a silken tail touched any place she did not intend. She served and poured slowly and silently, then moved quickly and playfully, laughing like a songbird.

  I saw for the first time how beautiful she was. The kung-fu hero resumed her work, singlehandedly winning the film’s decisive battle. She was the center of attention and conversation at every instant, and the room was otherwise empty: no waiters, nothing. She did it all. She was everything.

  She waved her hand in my direction, and they all looked at me while they talked, trying to convince her of something, something I was certain was her idea. With a mischievous giggle, she seemed to acquiesce, then she moved toward me, acquiring a knife as she navigated to my end of the table. She took the fabric of my sleeve at my shoulder in one hand and cut into the kimono just above her grip, then she cut the other side, looked over her shoulder, and opened her stance toward the other end of the table.

  Somewhere in her fluid movement, the knife left her fingertips and made straight for the wooden frame at the far end, sticking perfectly into the center of it. With no pause for the men’s sudden laughter, her hands were at my shoulders, ripping the sleeves off my beautiful, museum-quality outer kimono! As she pranced across to the frame, waving my sleeves, I was genuinely stunned that she could destroy such a work of art so casually.

  I had to admit, though, once I saw those sleeves hung like tapestries, that it was a more fitting display for them than folded in my lap.

  “Come, Shikomi-san,” she casually commanded from a perc
h in the middle of the table, “show us your talents; pour some tea for us.”

  I stood and tiptoed carefully toward her (suddenly thankful I didn’t need to manage those sleeves), kneeling where she gestured, right in front of the second man on my left. After her patronizing demonstration, it was my turn. Acting the frightened novice was no stretch for me. I wasn’t sure I could make the spill look like an accident.

  The cascade of steaming water evoked uproarious laughter from everyone except its victim. Yumiko-sensei jerked me upright by my shoulder and hit me hard with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of her white makeup on my cheek. A warning would have been nice, but I rolled with it instinctively, sprawling out in a wreck of empty dishes toward the lap into which the sudden pain wanted me to crawl. Suppressing that urge, I returned to my seat instead, just in time to see Yumiko-sensei in front of me with the knife again.

  She reached one hand under my obi, cut on either side, then ripped out a swath of it, dropping its elaborately tied bustle to the table behind me. The obi’s cross-section unfolded in her hands and the knife flew back to where it came from while she pulled me down into a tuck. She used the silk to tie my hands behind my back, then reached over me, grabbing the enormous silk knot she had so carefully fussed over earlier.

  Back at the site of the spill, she was up on her knees, chest down to the table’s surface, arms and head over its side, mopping up with the ruins of my sash. She had them all reeling, red faced, laughing so hard they could barely breathe. She finished her tease and sat back on the table, then we rose into the ceiling.