by Asha Lemmie
“Kaori,” I say sharply, “go get us something to drink.”
She looks at me gratefully and jumps up, hurrying out the door. I doubt she’ll be returning and I don’t blame her.
Tanaki raises an eyebrow but does not reproach me. Nori stands a few inches behind me, hands clasped and head bowed.
“It’s good to see you, Kiyomi,” Tanaki says gruffly, standing up and crossing to the front of the desk. His eyes fall on my breasts, as they always do.
I force myself to smile. “It’s lovely to see you, as always, Tanaki-san. I take it you had a pleasant journey?”
He snorts. “I swear the girls get uglier every year.”
“They do seem to.”
He laughs and mops at his sweaty face. “It’s always a relief to come here and see some pretty ones.” Finally, his eyes fall on Nori. I see his wet lips part.
“This is the Kamiza girl?”
I step back so he can see her better. “Yes. This is Noriko.”
Tanaki comes towards her, but only I am close enough to see the anger snap alive in her downcast gaze.
“Not a word,” I whisper as he nears us. “Not one word, Nori.”
Tanaki takes Nori’s chin in a viselike grip and forces her head up. She does not flinch. His eyes roam over her face and then up and down her body. He reaches a hand around and clenches her buttocks. I draw in a breath that he should be so brazen, but Nori doesn’t react. Not even her eyelashes move.
Tanaki steps back and laughs. “Holy shit, Kiyomi. You are a miracle worker, aren’t you?”
I smile, unable to hide my pleasure at his praise. “I do what I can. But she comes from good stock.”
He looks at her again and speaks directly to her. “Your grandmother is a mean old bitch, but she was a beauty in her day—your mother too. I met her a few times, when she was about your age. Though she was petite. You—” He breaks off to laugh. “You’ve got some meat to you, girl. You’ll make some man very happy, despite your skin.”
I stare at the back of her head and hope she can feel it. She has to say something. He will not be satisfied with his taunting until she speaks.
She meets his gaze for a fraction of a second, and her eyes are as cold and blank as a doll’s. “Thank you,” she says softly. Then she looks away.
Tanaki seems satisfied. He rubs his hands together, and I know that in his head, he is already counting all the money he will make off of her. He turns to me.
“This is good. This is very good. I’ve arranged for some prospective buyers to come see her, and they won’t be disappointed.”
I do a double take, certain that I misheard him. I see Nori turn the color of ash.
I know that I am flushing with anger. “What? I haven’t heard anything about this. I was not consulted.”
He tries and fails to look apologetic. “I know, I know. But there wasn’t time. I got a call last week, a friend of mine looking for a girl to take on his travels. He specified she must be younger than sixteen and pretty. Now, of course, to make things fair, I have to let everyone have a bite at the apple.” He laughs. “End of next month, they’ll all come here for a private viewing. I expect you’ll have her ready?”
I just gawp at him for a moment before I can speak. “I thought we were all in agreement that she was to remain under my care—that is, under my supervision—until she is sixteen. She’s just thirteen. It’s not time yet. I’m afraid I can’t approve this, Tanaki-san.”
It was Yuko’s express command that Nori not be touched until sixteen. But Tanaki doesn’t care about that. If he has been offered a good price for her, he will take it.
I glance at Nori, who is shaking like a leaf. Her little legs look like they are about to give out.
Tanaki clears his throat. “My dear Kiyomi, the matter has already been decided. The gentleman will be here in one month’s time. I believe he does some business in England, so you must be making sure she is learning English. Of course, you’ll get your cut of the profits.” He looks at his pocket watch. “It’s nearly noon. I’m hungry. Have the girls bring me some food. And that girl from before . . . make sure she comes too.”
Without waiting for my reply, he moves past me and goes out. Nori and I exchange a horrified glance.
Her eyes say, Can you save me?
I look away. And that tells her no. No, I can’t.
* * *
—
We have a sulky few days. Whenever I go looking for her, she is elsewhere. I do try to speak to her in the little English that I know, but she acts like she doesn’t understand.
I don’t push the matter. I can’t blame her for being upset. I’m upset. I had thought to keep her until she was sixteen, at the very least; I had thought to teach her more about men . . . about life. She is nowhere close to ready to leave me. And besides that, I quite enjoy her. She is educated, unlike most of the girls I have seen pass through here over the years. I can talk with her. Sometimes after her lessons she will linger and we’ll have a cup of tea and she’ll just tell me things she’s learned from her books. It’s not the worst way to pass an afternoon.
I make it a point not to get attached to my girls, especially to the ones whose ultimate destiny it is to be sold away from this place. But Nori is unconventional. So perhaps my feelings towards her have become unconventional too.
I find that I have trouble sleeping, as if my plush mattress is suddenly a bed of stone. I am too hot in the night, and I toss and turn, searching for a relief that won’t come. I find that I am short with the men who come through here, brushing off their hands and refusing to stop and chat with them as I usually do. I avoid people as much as possible, and the strain of smiling, when I can avoid them no longer, weighs on me as it has not done in years. As the month ticks away and the date of Nori’s sale approaches, I find that it only grows worse.
I know what this pain is. It is the resurgence of my conscience after long years of lying dormant, like a bitter seed trying to sprout through concrete. And it is agony.
I go into Nori’s room a little past midnight when I can muster up the gall. I find her sitting on the floor, her basket of yarn beside her. She is knitting something, her fingers moving with practiced ease. I see that she is making a scarf for the coming winter months. She doesn’t look up as I enter, but she doesn’t seem surprised when I speak.
“I’ve come to check on you,” I say.
She nods. “I figured as much. Will you sit?”
I shouldn’t, but I do, pulling out the stool in front of her vanity and lowering myself into it. I feel weary. I was never meant to live this long.
“Don’t you have enough scarves?” I ask.
She smiles a tiny smile. “It’s not for me. It’s for my brother.”
I look at her as if she’s gone mad. She knows better than this. In all her time here, I have never heard her mention him. I thought she had given him up. “Why on earth would you do a thing like that?”
“Because I’ll be dead before very long,” she says quietly. Her hands do not stop moving. “And I wanted to leave him something. This is all I could think of.”
I go cold. “You’re not going to die. Why would you die?”
For the first time, she looks at me. She looks eerily calm. “I won’t be a slave, Kiyomi.”
I hadn’t known she would go this far. I never realized she had this kind of resolve. “Don’t be ridiculous. Life is always better than death.”
She laughs, but it is humorless. “You don’t believe that.”
I am grasping for words. “You don’t know that he’ll be a monster. He could be kind. He could even be handsome.”
Nori stops her knitting. “Kiyomi,” she says, very quietly, “there’s no need to lie.”
I just stare at her. I recognize the dead look in her eyes.
Bile rises in my throat.
&n
bsp; She bends her head so that her eyes are shadowed by the veil of her hair. “I was hoping you could get the scarf to him. After I’m gone from here.”
I look at her blankly. “You know that I cannot.”
She nods. She expected this. “I’ll leave it here, then. If you ever change your mind.”
“I won’t be changing it.”
She pushes her hair back. A tear slides down her cheek, the first tear I have seen from her in two years. Something inside me rips in two.
“Yes. I know.”
* * *
—
I wait outside the room where Tanaki is selling Noriko, commanding an auction for her virtue, tantalizing men old enough to be her father with the prospect of keeping such a prize at their side for as long as they desire. And when they don’t desire her anymore? This is not spoken of. We aren’t concerned with this part.
I can’t watch. For the first time in a lifetime, I can’t bring myself to watch. But I can hear. He is hardly quiet.
“This rare young blossom . . . just thirteen, so young, so fresh! She is untouched . . . of a fine form, gentlemen, a fine form . . . Who will be the first . . . Ah, thank you, Tono-sama, a very generous offer . . . Do we have another? Mutai-sama, not your type? That’s all right, that’s all right, we have other girls arriving within the month . . . Perhaps they’ll be more to your taste. But back to the matter at hand . . . Don’t be shy, gentlemen, don’t be shy.”
I know a few of the men inside the room. Some are worse than others. There’s one, a young doctor with a terrible stutter and a clubfoot, who is not so awful. He always calls me Kiyomi-san, and he says “please” whenever he asks for anything. He would be kind to her. I don’t even think he would bed her—he never touches any of the other girls. All he ever wants is company. He would be content to listen to her read poetry in her calming voice. I hope that for her. I hope so hard that I dig my nails into my palms until they are bright red.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Miyuki trying and failing to be discreet. I gesture for her to come forward. She does so, and I can see that she is white as a sheet.
“It’s happening now, isn’t it?” she whispers. Her voice is hoarse. She has been crying.
I nod.
She wrings her hands together. “When will they take her?”
“Within the week. As soon as the payment is complete.”
She draws in a breath. “Let me go with her.”
I shut my eyes. I am far too tired to deal with this. “No.”
“I’d go for free. I don’t care.”
“What about your sister?”
She deflates. Her big eyes well up with tears. “Please let her stay here. Please, Kiyomi-san.”
I shake my head. “She is too valuable. I thought . . . I thought we’d have her for some years yet, but . . . it seems not.”
Miyuki falls to her knees in front of me. She lays the side of her face against my feet. I look down at her, horrified.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She weeps into my socks. “You can’t sell her.”
“I have no choice.”
“No!” she cries.
I try to wriggle free, but she is holding me like a desperate animal. I grab hold of her shoulders and push, but she is heavy as a slab of marble.
“What are you doing? What’s come over you? Miyuki, stop it!”
She looks up at me and our eyes meet. I see the familiar look of a girl who has never known power, not even over her own life. “She’s the only friend I have ever had.”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“You have a say—”
“I have nothing!” I say furiously to her, finally managing to throw her off. “I am a woman, just like you. I have only what I can charm out of others. I can’t stop it. Don’t you understand? I can do nothing. I have gained nothing—”
I break off. I have gained nothing. Since the days of my childhood, when I ate grass to quell the hunger in my belly, what do I have? Since the days when I was a common whore to the days when I commanded a great price, what have I gained? Some nice clothes and the right to command other girls who have nothing, just as I did. I thought that I had risen in the world. But the truth is I had more respect for myself when I was a whore than I do right now.
I turn on my heel and start down the hall. I can hear Miyuki crying after me, but I don’t turn around. I don’t stop.
I swear to God, I have had my fill of the sound of girls crying.
* * *
It was the last night. Nori’s room was full of packed boxes. In the morning, they would all be moved to somewhere else. She didn’t know where. No one had told her and she had not asked.
She glanced at herself in a hand mirror. With the garish makeup all washed away, she didn’t think she looked old enough for any of this. Thirteen, she thought, was awfully young to die. Miyuki’s wailing broke into her thoughts. It had been going on for hours. Nori turned back around to face her friend.
“Miyuki,” she said, as gently as she could, “it’s all right.”
Miyuki gasped. Her eyes were red and swollen. “It’s not. How can you even say that?”
Nori smiled, and it was not forced. There was something strangely peaceful about knowing that soon she would return to the dust from which she came. Her life had meant nothing; her death would mean nothing. Her wandering destiny would come to a final, merciful end.
“What I say makes no difference to the way of things. But I would like to see you smiling, Miyuki-chan. I would like to remember you that way.”
Miyuki wiped at her eyes with balled-up fists. “I can’t bear it.”
Nori knelt down and opened her arms. Miyuki crawled forward and, like a baby, laid her head in Nori’s lap.
“You can. You’ll get your sister back,” Nori murmured, trying to sound soothing, just as she had the first night they’d met. “You’ll get Nanako back.”
“She’ll have forgotten me,” Miyuki cried bitterly. “She won’t remember who I am.”
Nori stroked the top of Miyuki’s wild hair. “Of course she will. You are her family. Her only family. She loves you.”
“What kind of life can I offer her?”
Nori lowered her voice, cautious even now that someone might be listening. “Under the floorboards in my closet is a pearl necklace. They’re gray pearls, quite rare. Don’t take them now—someone would notice—but when it’s time for you to go get Nanako, take them with you. I hope they will help some.”
Miyuki lifted her head and sniffled. “You have given me so much,” she said. “And I have nothing to give you.”
Nori looked away. “You have given me more than enough.”
Miyuki wrapped her arms tight around Nori’s neck. “I love you, Noriko Kamiza,” she whispered fervently. “I won’t forget you. Not ever.”
Nori could not respond. If she admitted to herself what this was, she would have to admit what it was she was losing.
They stayed like that, holding each other on the floor, until the sun peeked over the clouds and filled the room with unwelcome light. Kiyomi entered. Nori let go.
Miyuki made a sound like a dying animal.
Kiyomi took Nori’s hand and led her away.
They did not see each other again.
CHAPTER NINE
IMPASSE
Road to Tokyo
October 1953
They did not knock her out this time. Nori sat in the back seat of a black car with tinted windows. Kiyomi sat beside her. The driver was a man she didn’t recognize. She thought he might be one of the men who guarded the premises. He had scars on his arms that looked like old knife cuts. She tried not to focus on him. She turned to peer out the window, at the orange and green countryside. When she rolled it down to feel the air on her face, Kiyomi did not scold her.
All she knew was that when they reached Tokyo, she would never again feel a chilly fall breeze make her cheeks numb. She would never again read or knit or play or bask in the sun. She would be a prisoner for a moment, and then, after that, she would be forever free. She let her hand hang out of the open window, and she faded in and out of sleep, dreaming of a clear blue lake with swans.
It was an odd thing, to be dying but in no pain.
The blade was cold against her inner thigh. She had stolen it from the kitchen when no one was looking. The staff had hardly noticed her these past few weeks; they had all looked through her as if she were already a ghost.
She had used three of her ribbons to bind the blade so it did not slice her. She had to wait for the perfect moment. Her ribbons had been her mother’s only gifts to her. It seemed fitting they would be with her until the very end.
Only your life is more important than your obedience.
Only the air you breathe.
She pinched the skin on the inside of her palm. I am sorry, Okaasan.
This time, I choose.
Kiyomi glanced at her. “What are you thinking of?” she whispered, her voice low with suspicion and fear.
Nori smiled. It was a reflex, like a toy reacting when a knob was turned to wind it up.
“Betsu ni,” she said. “I am thinking of nothing at all.”
Kiyomi reached out and touched her shoulder. “I know you have no love for me,” she started.
“You have been a better guardian to me than most,” Nori said dryly. It dawned on her how sad it was that it was absolutely true.
“So perhaps you will take my advice now.”
Nori turned a blank face to her. “You seem distressed.”
“And you don’t!” the madam burst out. Even underneath her painted face, Nori could see the pallor. “The question is why you don’t! You have said nothing since . . .”
