Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (8 page)

In the silence, she felt she was expanding, beginning to take up more space in the universe. She wondered if this was what being an adult meant. Over the next few days, she and Lou developed a routine: mornings spent on the beach, the scorching afternoons whiled away at the oddly named Café Sometimes. The café was a lucky find, open during the holiday week and stocked with American board games Yumiko remembered from her days in Chicago: Connect Four, Monopoly, Life. A Grand Opening banner hung above the door. Always the sole customers, they basked in the attention of the owner, who fussed over them as if
they
were the new things.

In the evenings they picnicked on the roof. Yumiko
brought up some clay and created a makeshift studio; the little objects she fashioned by moonlight—cups, saucers, vases—she left out to bake in the next day’s sun.

She threw up on Friday night. It came upon her while she was adding water to a batch of gyoza dough, and she barely managed to step over to the sink in time. When she stood back up from the basin, excitement burst through her chest and set her body tingling. She was not one to vomit for nothing. Other than one night of heavy drinking, the last time she’d thrown up was when she was pregnant.

She washed her face with dish soap, rinsed out the sink, and sank to the floor. She breathed deeply, wondering what to do. There was a convenience store nearby where she could buy a pregnancy test. But Lou was due back any minute and would wonder about the half-made dumplings. He’d be sure to ask where she’d gone, and she didn’t want to raise his hopes in case it was a false alarm. She had disappointed him enough.

As she rose to continue mixing the dough, she heard him coming up the stairs. A moment later, he opened the door a sliver and spoke through the crack.

“Yumi, come up in five minutes. I have a little surprise for you.”

“OK,” she replied. The last time he’d said that, he’d asked her to marry him.

She retrieved her makeup kit from the bathroom, which was still crowded with tools and pieces of pipe. The new toilet, complete with heated seat ring and button-activated bidet, sat in the shower, waiting.

In the kitchen, she applied blush, checking her reflection in the toaster. She brushed her hair and drank some water. They both wanted a baby girl. She hurried outside to the ladder, leaving the dough behind.

She had so masterfully avoided discussing the evening’s plans that she’d forgotten to think about them herself. Friday, of course, was the final day of Obon, when the spirits returned home, the day of the riverside festival when candlelit paper lanterns crowded the water. Once, as a child, she had seen one of the floating lanterns catch fire. The paper was so thin that the entire lantern seemed to disappear in a single flash. Her father had called it a bad omen. Secretly, though, she had found the sight pleasing, surrounded as it was by such uniformity.

She climbed up the ladder more carefully than she had in previous days. She hoped his surprise wouldn’t interfere with a trip down to the river, where they could piece together a meal from the food booths, drink some beer— no, no beer for her—and watch the fireworks.

But when she reached the top, she gasped. Lou sat surrounded by candles, cross-legged, among dishes of food and two bottles of red wine. His head and face were completely shaved.

She took a deep breath, and let her gaze fall on the candles behind him. The flames looked hardened; the air was so still she imagined there was no wind left on the planet; it had blown its last gust and given up.

“The fireworks are starting soon,” he said, reaching for her. “We’ll have the best view in the city.”

“Your hair,” she said.

“It got to be too much. So I ducked over to work and plugged in the shaver.” He rubbed his shiny head and grinned. “What do you think?”

“It’s... clean.”

He made a face.

“I think we could go down to the river. You know, for the lanterns.”

“But we’re having such a good time up here in our little settlement.”

She looked at all his preparations, tenderness rising in her, but when she thought of the river, she held her ground. “Can we please do the thing I want to do? Isn’t it enough that we didn’t see my parents?”

“Fuck, Yumi.” He took a single soft white mochi ball and hurled it off the roof. He threw another, and another. A tiny splash came from below: one must have landed in Kobayashi-san’s koi pond.

“Ehh? What was that?”

Yumiko rushed past Lou, stopping a few feet back from the edge of the roof. Nausea turned her stomach, and she swallowed hard. “It’s just us, Kobayashi-san. It was a mistake. I’m very sorry.” Had Lou gone crazy?

Yumiko saw the old woman, umbrella in hand, bend down and pick up a mochi ball from the ground. “Hey! My fish can’t eat this!”

Horrified but slightly thrilled, Yumiko turned to Lou. He was biting his lips, trying to keep from laughing. Lou picked up the plate of mochi balls and mimed flinging its entire contents into Kobayashi-san’s garden. Suddenly Yumiko had to fight laughter, too. “Yes, we accidentally
dropped one or two, unfortunately,” she called out, using the most formal verb conjugation possible. “We were... juggling. Please accept my apology regarding your honorable carp.”

“You’ll pay for this fish! I’m telling Miura-san that you’ve been living on the roof.”

Yumiko came and sat beside Lou. Kobayashi-san continued ranting in her garden, out of sight. “Her umbrella finally became useful,” Yumiko said. They both laughed. He put his arm around her and ate a piece of sushi from a takeout tray.

Yumiko watched her husband. His scalp glinted in the candlelight. She had never realized how irregular the skull was, what imperfections hair concealed. He looked vulnerable.

She was sure she was pregnant. But what if something happened to the baby? What if there were complications? She needed him to tell her that he would love her no matter what. To the west, a small white firework tested the air.
Snap.
“I have a serious question,” she said.

He put a hand on her shoulder and gestured at their makeshift bedroom, the space delineated from where they now sat by a row of small pots and vases. “Whatever comes, we’ll figure it out.
Itsumo,
always. Our problems are no match for us.”

He stood up, held out a hand. “C’mon. Let’s go to the river.”

It is her thirtieth birthday. She wakes alone.

Her right hand reaches around to feel a soft length of hair that wasn’t there when she took her bath the night before.

She shuffles to the full-length mirror, cranes her neck. The tail is three inches long and gleams silver with a lavender tinge, one end thin and flyaway, the other thick as rope. It sprouts from the asymmetrical dark button at the base of her spine—what her mother used to call her Hydrangea Mole. Her mother loved hydrangeas, but Hana
has always found them a bit over the top. Hana prefers tulips.

She slides her palm beneath the tail and runs her thumb over the strands. Such softness, it’s like a baby’s rose-petal cheeks. The phone trills; her mother’s nasal singsong tells the answering machine to keep a positive outlook; women far older than thirty are marrying nowadays.

Hana steps into the shower. It’s too early to call a doctor, and though the tail feels odd, it’s not exactly painful, and she can’t justify the expense and time of an emergency room visit. Water rolls down her back and soaks the bundle. It is thin, dark gray when wet, and the hair at the base rises out slightly from her back before wilting and following the curve of her bottom. She hesitates, then dabs shampoo into her palm and brings both hands behind her back: lather, rinse—and, why not?—condition. She lets the conditioner sit for three minutes before rinsing with cold water. Cold water closes the hair shaft and makes for a silkier finish. Perhaps later she can braid it, dress it up with ribbon. She will care for it as only she can.

Little Hana has just gotten over the chicken pox. To celebrate, her doting parents take her to the Ueno Zoo to see the red pandas, which their local zoo does not feature.

Hana does not like the Ueno Zoo. It is big, crowded, and the animals look upset. Hana wonders if the angry gorilla pounding at the glass is contagious, like her sickness. Contagious, she knows, means giving something bad
to someone else, even if they don’t want it. That was how she got those chicken pox, and how she got rid of them. She clings to her mother, whimpering, worried that getting too close to a hideous, wrinkly grandma will make her ugly and old, too.

They leave the zoo. Father even springs for a taxi. As they stand on the street awaiting an available cab, a rat scrambles out of a trash bin and across Hana’s red sneakers. The child is inconsolable all the way home, and Father must bribe the taxi driver to bring them the entire way.

The next day, it’s just as Hana expects: the pink, skinny, hairless tail sticks out just above the elastic on her underwear. She grits her teeth and summons contagion.

Hana has worked at the Asakusa Station Mister Donuts for three years.

Sometimes, when business is slow, Hana calculates the number of possible destinations a person could attain with just two steps—the step on a train, and the one off. Thirty-five platforms, each servicing two or three lines, each line hitting ten to twenty stops, depending on the time of year, week, and day. But Hana only visits platform 23, where the brown line collects and deposits her daily, to and from the thin-walled apartment she shares with her parents.

In the morning, the faces that place orders are alert, but by evening they sag, as if the population ages as the sun crosses the sky. But the next morning those expectant faces are back, ready for fresh fuel, slightly edited
versions of the person they’d been the day before. Does she change, too? She feels no evidence of it. Sometimes she gets the sensation that time has frozen for her only, a glitch in relativity, as if she’s observing herself from a great distance.

She arranges a tray of the store’s signature donut, a plain cake
O
with a baked-on handle for dipping in coffee. They have tails, she thinks.

A man in a suit orders four donuts and slides the money over the counter atop a thick envelope. She makes change. When she looks up, he’s gone. He’s left not only his money, but the envelope too. She picks it up and out spill photographs—of her.

She examines them, sharp corners pricking her palms. In each photo, she stands behind this very counter, wearing this red apron, hair tucked behind her ears as it is now.

She twitches and slaps at her lower back; something has gotten into her waistband—a flea, maybe.

THROUGH THE FOUNTAIN,
Nao had come to feel like a father to the town. He thought himself something of a priest: a hearer of confessions, witness of desires. Buying fish, he pretended not to know about the affair of Shimoto-san’s husband, or that little Shungo Saeki longed to be a girl. Only one wisher evaded identification: a woman, her voice like a skipping stone.

Most people just called it Old Castle Park, but as caretaker, he preferred the official name: Shuddering Galaxy Common Zone and Gardens. Rosebushes spiraled out from the central fountain like arms, the work of an idealistic planner after the war. Nao imagined each blossom a star.

He had officially retired from the job years ago but had found himself restless without the routine of a day’s work, so a week into his retirement he simply came back, going about the routine that had kept him in motion for so long—tending the roses, sweeping the leaves from the path, scrubbing the fountain, and clearing out the coins from its bottom.

The city warned Nao that they were unable to rehire him—red tape; he was too old to go back on the books— but if he really wanted to work, they could allow him as payment the change people threw into the fountain.

He didn’t need the money. He lived alone and drew a modest pension and lived simply, in a small wooden house built so long ago it contained just one electrical outlet. Into the top socket was plugged his half-size refrigerator; the bottom socket sat empty. A tiny red spider sometimes appeared there, which Nao thought lucky. Nao owned a small TV and enjoyed certain weekly dramas enough to pay the NHK subscription fee, but rather than use the vacant socket to power the TV, he unplugged the refrigerator. Nao believed in spiders’ rights. He also believed that life offered answers to those who stood still enough to hear them. As a young man in Kyoto, he’d worked as an assistant to a “talk doctor.” He became a skilled listener— so skilled that when the doctor passed away, his patients tried to visit with Nao. But Nao couldn’t afford rent on the Aoyama office. The business closed, and he left for a quieter place.

EVERY TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Nao carried a pair of yellow waders and a push broom to the fountain’s stone ledge. Feet snug in the boots, he stepped in, felt the pressure against his shins as the rubber resisted the cold water. When he lowered the broom head, a million tiny bubbles shot to the surface as if spooked. He swept. The broom handle was splintered, but he didn’t wear gloves; his palms were calloused and any slivers that managed to pierce the thick layer of skin didn’t get far; they stuck out like quills on a porcupine, and felt to him like a therapy.

He’d been able to hear them since the beginning. There were commands: “Make her love me,” “Give me a raise”; and questions: “Can I have a new car?” Sometimes the coin clutched in his palm pleaded. Those were the ones that wrung his heart out, the ones that started with “Dear God,” or “Please, oh please....”

The wishes came in seasons. In the autumn months, before entrance exams, there arrived a flurry from parents and students. Spring was for love, winter for family, summer for travel. The darkest time was Obon, when the wishes began to sound like confessions, and Nao knew the visiting spirits had come to cast their coins while they had the chance. The wishes of the dead were full of regret.