Then she is given the remains and drops them in the bag. The doctor doesn’t even look at her. For this, she is grateful. The weight of the remains. She is never sure where or how to hold the bag. If she puts both hands on top, she can feel the weight sway and jiggle in there. If she holds the bag with one hand by the top and one on the bottom to keep it from moving, then she touches it, the mole-size head, the miniature feet and hands. And there are times when it isn’t her imagination at work—with those late-term abortions, five, six, even seven months into it, everything is there, legs and arms, but the skull collapsed by the doctor so it can be pulled out of the womb. She waits with the trash bag open until the doctor throws in the placenta; then she closes it and leaves the room. And it is perfectly clear—and, she is certain, takes no imagination whatsoever—that she is a party to the killing.
She wants to run to the garbage bin, out in back of Clinic B, but she knows that she mustn’t let them know of the terror that grips her. She walks, lifts the lid of the garbage bin, sets the bag in there. There have been times that the weight has shifted, horrifying her, leading her to believe that the fetus was moving, struggling to get out. Now, no matter how quickly she wants to get rid of it, she sets it in there gently, then slams the lid shut.
On those days, while in the room during the second abortion, she tries imagining that this is a day when there is only one to perform, and that this is that one, but the exhaustion, the crazed exhaustion, tells her this isn’t true. Somehow, she makes it back to her room. One of her roommates goes and tells the patients whom she is to massage that she can’t. She drops onto the futon, which someone has prepared for her, and she will lie there, hide under the blanket whether it is the dead of summer or winter. It is on nights such as this that she wishes the disease would ravage her, incapacitate her; then at least someone could take care of her, feed her, bathe her, massage her, until it is time to cremate her.
ARTIFACT Number 0357
A wedding band made of seashell
Again, tonight, for the fifth time this week, he sneaks into the room and joins his wife on the futon. They are only three futons away from her, and she pretends to be asleep. She listens to the rustling of the sheets, aware of them trying to keep quiet, when that is the most difficult thing for them to do. She imagines it is like resurfacing from a dive and trying to control her breathing.
Mr. and Mrs. Matsu were married a few weeks back, and that first late night he came into the room, it took her awhile to figure out what was happening. She had noticed the blankets heaving up and down; she had thought of running over to one of the adjoining wings to get some help, not certain what was happening. She knew a little about these things, how the divers used to joke and tease about their husbands and all, but she was only a listener, never a participant, never understanding much of it.
Now, on those nights when he comes into the room, she waits until the blankets settle and then, after awhile, she can fall asleep.
Three months after their marriage, Mrs. Matsu confronts her while she is on night watch.
“I know that you work in Clinic B and what they do there. I am pregnant and I need your help.” She leans in close, whispers.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. I need you to say nothing.”
“They’ll never allow you to have the baby. Besides, I have no say in the matter.”
“If they don’t know, then they can’t take it.”
Mrs. Matsu stares her straight in the eye, the light from the kerosene lantern bouncing her huge shadow on the wall behind her.
“I would never say anything to them. I hate what they are doing, but I have no choice. That is where they have assigned me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I know that you have no choice.”
“That’s okay. Just because you are late-term doesn’t mean they will allow you to keep the child, Mrs. Matsu.”
“But if I can deliver full-term, then maybe I can keep it.”
“There have been babies aborted in the sixth, even seventh month.”
“I’m willing to take that chance. I need your help in concealing it.”
“You should be okay for another month or two, but after five months, it will be almost impossible.”
She remembers some of the pregnant women back home on Shodo Island wearing wide
obi
belts that pressed tightly against their bellies and how they didn’t seem pregnant if you weren’t paying attention, looking for it. They make one for Mrs. Matsu, and during the fifth and even into the sixth month, the pregnancy is concealed. It helps that Mrs. Matsu was never one to go out all that often; she works in her room, sewing the cotton-padded lining into the quilted uniforms they wear in winter.
Before leaving the room each morning, she checks on Mrs. Matsu, who, although weak, has a glow about her, a glow she never recalls seeing, not only here but even back over on Shodo Island. It is Mrs. Matsu who pushes her through the days at the clinic, particularly on those days when there is a patient on the table and she is given a sack to throw into the garbage bins. On the worst days, she thinks ahead to going back to her room at night, when only a kerosene lantern will be lighted, and how the six women will gather around their secret, touching the taut belly. “Like the skin of a
taiko
drum,” one of them says, and they laugh, laying their faces against it, the miracle of feeling the kick of the baby, the sounds inside.
Then, late in
the eighth month, it is Mrs. Matsu who is on the table in Clinic B. The tray of medical instruments, cold and heavy no matter the season, awaiting the doctor to come in. When he enters the room, his eyes meet Miss Fuji’s, which are the only things visible to each other behind the masks. His eyes tell her that he knows who she is and her connection to the woman on the table. It isn’t until this moment—his look as he walks by her, never stopping or slowing his steps, looking directly at her and then over his shoulder as he passes—that she feels fear for herself and Mrs. Matsu. Any hope that she had harbored for this to turn out right is crushed.
Throughout the procedure, her eyes aren’t anywhere near the table, anywhere near Mrs. Matsu, not even at her feet, the swollen feet of a pregnant woman. She tries digging up a song, but this time she can’t find a single one. She can’t even remember the names of the songs; not a note comes to mind. The only thing she remembers hearing, however, is a slight popping sound, like when one of the divers would remove a fin. She thinks that she hears Mrs. Matsu say the lone word “No,” but this she isn’t certain of, will never know.
More out of habit than awareness, she holds out the bag, turns her head away, waiting for the weight in the bag to tell her it is in there and it is time for her to turn around, open the door, walk down the hallway, out the back door, open the lid of one of the garbage bins, and drop it in there. But there is no weight, only the bag held out until it is ripped from her hands, tossed to the floor all in one sweeping motion by the right hand of the doctor, his left hand holding out the baby as someone would a drowned puppy.
“Take it. Be sure to tell as many patients as you know. This will never happen again.”
The baby is in her arms, the deflated, collapsed skull; the doctor walks out of the room, leaving her and a nurse, and Mrs. Matsu, who is still on the table. The nurse bends down and picks up the bag, takes the baby from her arms, and for a slight moment she feels herself not wanting to let go of it, but then it is gone from her arms and into the bag. Then the bag is in her hands, the weight in it telling her it is in there, and it is time for her to turn around, open the door, go down the hallway, out the back door, open the lid of one of the garbage bins, and drop it in there.
ARTIFACT Number 0623
A cherry tree bonsai
She walks across the damp brown blossoms. The cherry blossoms were cheated of their week of beauty, as the heavy rains beat them to the ground only two days after blooming. This is her first time back to the western shore of the island since the uprising.
Many times she has thought of the boy and girl. That is what got her through those days in the isolation room. It was the children whom she thought of throughout the winter, and she thinks of them now.
Cherry blossoms are matted to the driftwood, to the bottom of her sandals. She sees nothing across the way, allowing the maybes to gather. Maybe they have started school, maybe it is too cold for them to play, maybe they have lost interest in playing on the shore, or, after receiving the last set of soap figures and not seeing her return, maybe they gave up on her.
She waits, staying back from the cold water. The tide is up, but it doesn’t matter; there is nothing across the way that she wants to get closer to. As she is about to go back, she hears a voice, then a couple of them. She hesitates, thinking it is her imagination or that maybe someone on Nagashima is talking. For a moment, she can’t make herself turn back toward the channel. First, a glance over her shoulder, and this leads the rest of her body to follow when she sees them. She is nervous; shards of shyness overcome her. It is only when they wave that she returns theirs. She stands on a piece of driftwood, but this isn’t high enough, so she climbs onto a rock. This is better, but not much; the children can be lost, if only for a second, on the choppy channel.
She waves and they wave. It is she who stops first and she who turns her back on them. A strange emptiness settles inside and stalks her all the way to the room, sits in her all evening, gets under the blanket of the futon with her. And she knows that she shouldn’t have made and taken those soap carvings over to the children, not the first time or the second. She berates herself for not being satisfied with only waving to them, for having to go and make the figures, her desperation for the boy and girl to take something of her back home with them.
A few days later, she is back and it isn’t long before the boy and girl show up. Although the tide is out, she doesn’t go to meet it, even up to her ankles. They wave, but for her, the game has lost some of its verve, the jolt of energy it once gave her.
They have waved only a couple of times, back and forth, when she sees someone running toward the children. An adult. A woman. The boy is the first to turn back to the woman, who is now shouting something. When she reaches the children, she grabs them both by the arms.
The boy glances back across the water. The woman smacks him across the head, pushes him ahead of her. The woman turns, points back at her, screaming. Words she will never know. Words that she craves and that horrify her.
Before they are out of sight, something strangles her, shoves her away from the shore. She trips, falls, crawls up the edge of the embankment through the weeds and shattered shells and rocks. Runs, stumbles past the clinic, where she is scheduled to work that evening. And although she doesn’t realize it at the moment, she will soon be devastated by the reality that the island of Nagashima, for her, has become even smaller today.
ARTIFACT Number 0624
A scrub brush
Across the channel, in a house in Mushiage, a mother has her son and daughter in the bathroom, scrubbing them with soap, hot water, and brushes. She scrubs as much to clean them as to release some of her rage. The children have finally told her everything.
“Satomi, you are supposed to be watching your brother. Didn’t I tell you that you could burn your eyes by looking over there? What you have done is so much worse than looking!”
She goes on with the story that her uncle had told her when she was her children’s age. A story she never believed all that much, but it gives her some sort of justification for the fear that is choking her. She sends the children off to their room, goes about cleaning the house and the children’s and her own clothes with the same vengeance.
She doesn’t tell her husband, or anyone in town, what has happened, worries that she and her children, too, will be shunned. She wants to take the children to the doctor’s, but she thinks that maybe they will be taken from her.
For many months, she goes about checking her daughter and son after they bathe, telling them that she is searching for dirt left behind from their day of play, while she checks for spots, for a droop of the mouth, a shortened finger. She knows only what little she has seen, has heard, has imagined.
And she goes on living in silence and terror, for she has no one with whom to share it.
ARTIFACT Number 0638
A teacup
The long walk home after a day in Clinic B. When she arrives at her building, she keeps going until she comes to Miss Min’s room. She leaves her shoes at the door and enters. Miss Min is preparing the futon when she sees her standing there.
“What are you doing here, Miss Fuji?”
“I don’t know. I’m coming from the clinic.”
“Do you want some tea or something to eat?”
“Tea, thank you.”
While Miss Min makes the tea, two of her roommates leave the room; three others are asleep on the floor.
“Here. Sit down on my futon.”
Miss Fuji does, and she stares at the cracks in the wall. Today, she can’t create anything in the patterns, just stares.
“It was a long day at the clinic. One of the patients died on the table. She bled to death.”
“Who?”
“I’m forbidden to tell any names. I’m sorry.”
“I understand.”
Miss Fuji sips her tea, still staring at the wall; the other roommates still haven’t returned.
“Why don’t you lie down a little?”
Miss Min takes the teacup from her and sets it on the floor in the corner. Miss Min covers her with a blanket, her hands stopping and remaining on Miss Fuji’s shoulders.
The hands are cold on her shoulders, the fingers bent like claws, but Miss Fuji doesn’t mind, doesn’t resist, for they feel good resting there.
“It was Miss Hashimoto.”
“It’s okay. Just rest.”
Miss Min’s hands begin moving on Miss Fuji’s shoulders, clumsy, sometimes pressing too hard or not hard enough, having trouble, due to the lack of feeling in her hands. But Miss Fuji says nothing, for this first massage she has ever received at Nagashima feels good, helping to give her a break from the memories of the day.