I let myself lean against him as he opened my door for me. When we entered, out of habit I played the answering machine, half expecting to hear my mother either ranting about spirits and bad luck arrows or asking what time I’ll be by for supper. Instead Auntie Reno’s voice blundered into the room.
“Hallo, hallo? Dis on or what? I dunno if I heard dah beep or what.” After a long pause, Auntie Reno began talking again. “Beccah, we got to make dah arrangements. Dah guest list, dah body—you wanna bury it or what? Borthwick Mortuary got some fancy casket we can use for dah ceremony, den aftahwards, one cheap one we can use for dah ground. No matter, right? Call me.”
I imagined Mother laid out in a fancy dress, her face made up in pinks and purples she would never use—Auntie Reno would probably pick out her outfit and insist on overseeing the makeup—on display for people who never knew her. And I laughed, realizing that despite her reputation and the hundreds of people who paid in time and money to see her, no one knew her. Not even Auntie Reno, who gave her her first job and decided she was a fortune-teller. Not even I, her daughter—the only person who loved her, at least part of the time—realty knew her.
I doubled over with laughter, my sides hurting as I pushed the giggles out. “We are having a funeral for a yongson!” I gasped.
Unsure of how to touch me, Sanford awkwardly patted my shoulder. “Yes, your mother was a wonderful woman.”
His attempt at comfort only made me howl louder. “No!” I managed to sputter before I rolled to the floor, unable to explain that a yongson is the ghost of a person who traveled far from home and died a stranger.
“There, there,” Sandy crooned, acting as if I were hysterical. He carried me to the bed, and we ended up sleeping together, our bodies sticky in the heat of the afternoon. Afterward I peeled my body away from his, trying to find a cool spot on the bed. I’d forgotten to put sheets on the water bed, so that our sweat glistened and glued us against the plastic mattress. As usual, Sandy sprawled across the middle. I had to brace myself against the side to keep from getting sucked into the overheated pit he created with his body.
I listened to him breathe in his sleep, and my fist curled to my heart out of habit. I forced myself to open my fingers, to relax my vigilance, to fall asleep.
When I dive in now, I swim for only a few short seconds before I am trapped, kicking at the shark that pulls me under. I twist and turn, trying to land blows on its snout with my fists as well as my feet, when I see not the jaws of a shark but the nebulous folds of a giant jellyfish wrapping itself about my lower body, trying to suck me into itself. I can feel myself dissolving where the jellyfish stings me. I reach out to try to tear it off me, and my hand disappears in waves of black hair dancing in the water.
I realize that it is my mother wrapped around my legs, holding on to me as though I can save her. Instead I feel myself sinking. I cannot hold my breath any longer, and just when I open my mouth to drown, I wake and find my body sinking toward Sanford’s once again.
13
I lie straining against my skin, feeling its heaviness covering me like a blanket thick as sleep. I wait, paralyzed, for the popping of my blood that signals Induk is near, also waiting, wanting me.
When she was alive, she did not seem so impatient. But then I knew her only at the comfort stations, when she had to hide between layers of silence and secret movements. I want to say that I knew she would be the one who would join me after death. That there was something special about her even then, perhaps in the way she carried herself—walking more erect, with impudence, even—or in the way she gave the other women courage through the looks and smiles she offered us.
But I am trying not to lie.
There was nothing special about her life at the recreation camps; only her death was special. In front of the men, we all tried to walk the same, tie our hair the same, keep the same blank looks on our faces. To be special there meant only that we would be used more, that we would die faster.
Though we were not afraid of death, were afraid only of dying under them, like dogs.
One of the women there—I do not know her real name and will not use the one assigned to her—I think she came from yangban, high class. She spoke of a dagger her mother wore about the waist. Smaller than the length of her palm, the hilt encrusted with gems, it was to have been hers when she married. The knife would have shown her pride in her virtue; if she had failed in guarding it, she would have used the weapon on herself.
The rest of us were envious, not of the rich things she indicated having, not of her aristocracy, but of her right to kill herself. We all had the obligation, of course, given what had happened to us, but it didn’t have the status of privilege and choice.
That is what, in the end, made Induk so speciaclass="underline" she chose her own death. Using the Japanese as her dagger, she taunted them with the language and truths they perceived as insults. She sharpened their anger to the point where it equaled and fused with their black hungers. She used them to end her life, to find release.
I cannot believe she chooses to come to me, a coward. But I am grateful.
My body grows heavy, but inside I am crackling like hot oil. She is going to peel back my skin, then cover me, like steam; gentle, insistent, invasive.
I do not see her, but I know Induk is with me. She licks at my toes and fingertips, sucking at them until my blood rushes to greet her touch. I feel her fingers wind through my hair, rubbing my scalp, soothing me, while her mouth caresses my chin and neck. My body prickles.
With infinite care, Induk slides her arms around my back, cradling me into her heat. Her lips press the base of my throat, the hollow underneath my jaw, then travel lower to brush against my nipples. I feel them pulling, drawing my milk, feel the excess liquid trickle against my sides and down my belly. Induk laps it up, her tongue following the meandering trails.
She kneads my buttocks, shaping them to her hands, spreading them apart. Her fingers dip into and flirt with the cleft, from anus to the tip of my vagina, where my blood gathers and pulses until it aches. She combs my pubic hair with her long nails, pulling at the crinkling hairs as if to straighten them. I stifle a groan, try to keep my hips still. I cannot.
I open myself to her and move in rhythm to the tug of her lips and fingers and the heat of her between my thighs. The steady buzzing that began at my fingertips shoots through my body, concentrates at the pulse point between my legs, then without warning explodes through the top of my head. I see only the blackness of my pleasure.
My body sings in silence until emptied, and there is only her left, Induk.
Once, I was not quiet when Induk came to me. I must have cried out, for I attracted the attention of my husband. He knelt by my bed, watching me until I became aware of the sound of his harsh breathing. When I looked at him, he moved the covers off me and crowded into my bed.
He pushed his forehead against mine and, firmly, unknowingly, replaced Induk’s hands on my body. His fingers, rough and harsh, lifted my nightgown and pressed into the skin of my breasts and hips. When he felt the fabric of my underwear, he pulled it aside and fit himself between my legs.
I felt his arousal probing the entrance to my vagina and tensed. He found it slick, made ready by Induk’s endless caresses, and thrust into me.
Jesus, he said. He pulled out slowly, then entered me again, stretching me. As he thrust and thrust again in long, slow strokes, he lifted my hips against his, forcing me into a counterpoint rhythm. Take me, he panted, for through a child will you be sanctified.