From the Bamboo Shoots, She Bore

The debris scattered across the old paved road reminded me of pictures of the streets of Hiroshima, their crumbled Earth grinding under the pressure of patchwork taped rubber tires. My father pressed on the heavy pedal, lowering the gear as we heard the high clunk of the gearshift, pushing us up the untouched path wrapped in canopies of old pine and oak. Puffs of miasma spat from the exhaust; a plume of inky smoke escaped into the heavy summer air. As my head turned, I stared into the thickets surrounding us; the unfettered eyes had been masked by foliage as they watched from their shelter.

Sunlight offered the only visible light under the natural canopy as moss scaled the trunks of trees, silk webs twinkling with dew. On the other side of the canopy tunnel were vast fields of sparse tufts of legumes on terrace-sloped platforms, chiseled stone pillows pressed against the soft, fertile soil. Telephone poles strung high over the edge of the road; the wires were taut, stretching from all directions like roads on a map. Something about those wires wrapped around my brain like rabbits caught in a rope trap, their resolved acceptance of fate regardless of their will to live.

The valley below was difficult to see from the car window, but my eyes were trained on the flower buds that wavered with the whirling wind as we drove past like a rising wave before crashing against the rocky shore.

“Almost there, Mei,” my father shouted, his eyes peeled to the serpent-tail-like road as we rocked back and forth. I saw him gnashing on what must have been his lively muscle as if holding back an intense pain, or perhaps, an uncompromising desire to control the beast underneath the hood.

I called back in excitement, my legs kicking on their own. As we drove down the valley, the tree trunks flew away as we sank deeper; soil layers packed against the edges of the road revealed strata of red and orange clay as if this land were once a bed of water.

My sister peeked over the seat; her amber eyes were now a faint rouge in the sunlight that broke through the sunroof. “It’ll be nice to have your own room, won’t it, Mei?”

“Mm-hmm!” The divots in my cheeks grew with each passing second. I felt the whispers in my heart quiver and scream. Despite my restraints, I felt as if I might take flight in the car and break free. “And I’m gonna run, and run to the stream, and run to the fields and dance among the tulips too!”

“After we unpack, Mei,” my father riposted. His eyes were trained on his rear-view mirror, taking in my visage before returning to the road. He followed the telephone wires until only a single wire had been strung through the trees into the thickets that impeded us from going further. The car’s rubber tires came to a halt in the grassy curtilage, obscured by the unkempt remains of a driveway, pebbles crushed beneath the tread. Our shoes clacked against the rough terrain, kicking rocks as we rendezvoused at the front gate. Wrought-iron lions decorated the peaks, as though they might suddenly roar, their petinaed, wavering canines warding off interlopers.

My father fumbled with the keys, the clinking ring against his worn blue jeans rattled, before inserting the cold metal rod into the rusted lock until there was a loud click. As he pushed the gate open, we watched as the fine layer of dust atop the crimson metal shook free.

Walking through the long, winding driveway, the car idling on the other side of the gate, the canopies revealed pinpoint beams of light that struck our eyes like a baton, blinding us before revealing the true colors beneath the scattered limbs above. Beetles danced and scurried across the ground as if we were trespassing on their land before hiding in their burrows. I followed my sister as she reached the exit that revealed an Edo-style house, its wood-panel walls the color of moist soil, unlike the roof’s dusk maroon.

The windows were layered in a thick coat of brown and gray, as if splattered with excess paint, so much so that as we raced to peer through like interlopers, only to find dust plumes floating in the long-vacated rooms. I ran around the back of the house as my father rifled with his keys, searching for another way inside to surprise the spirits nestled in the walls. My shoes became painted in verdant green as if I had mowed down the untamed grass in my stride, leaving me to depart from them once I discovered the back door had been left ajar.

“Ooo, Daddy,” my sister screamed from behind. “Mei’s broken the door already!”

My face grew flustered. “Not so! I found it like this!”

My father’s voice echoed from inside, a faint muttering of dismissal before we heard the creaking of old wood erupt, coming closer toward us. As we stepped away, my father swung the back door open, head-to-toe covered in dust, as if he had just finished cleaning a chimney.

“—Seems fine to me, Yue.” He wiped his brow, revealing his freckled skin.

My sister buzzed, grinding her frustration between her teeth before bumping past me, slipping through the doorway, and kicking her shoes to the ground.

“C’mon, Mei,” my father said, showing his palm before me.

I untied my shoes, the streaks of green kissing the cracking stone in desperate need of a cleaning. He pulled me up and led me through the labyrinth of decorated screen doors that revealed rooms that seemed to materialize with each pass. My sister’s knocking, stomping, and trampling across the old tatami floors filled the house with rhythm like a voodoo spell. The walls shook, each beat crawled against my skin as we made our way upstairs. The air felt devoid of life, filled with a profound emptiness as mere slips of light passed through the windows. Once the knocking ceased, we stood before a pale door adorned with a red seal. Staring deeply into it, I simply couldn’t decipher the character's brushstrokes; they were something western or foreign, perhaps.

As my father reached to open the door, I stopped him, grabbing his blue jeans. “Aren’t you gonna knock?”

His face brightened in the dusty light, caught by surprise. “Ah, you’re right, Mei,” he whispered. He rapped against the pale wood door. “Yue, may we come in?”

We listened intently as the air grew silent. The trampling had ceased, but no life could be heard from the other side. He continued, “We’re coming in, okay?”

His hand clasped around the brass knob, carefully turning as the metal ground against the axle. Pushing it in, a faint glow seeped through the crack separating the room from the hallway before being pressed back into him, knocking the lock into the niche. His face grew a faint rouge. “Yue?”

The silence continued. His voice rose with concern as my skin began to shiver. “Yue—”

“—Yeah?” Her voice erupted from down the hallway before turning a corner just in view to reveal her paintbrush-dabbed pigtails.

As if our minds had been caught mid-processing, our mouths became agape as our eyes retrained on the pale door. The only sound erupting from my father’s mouth was a faint wa-wa-wa as if ellipses were blotting the air before him.

Playing with the knob again, he tried to break it free from the niche, pressing his weight against the door. “Yue, were you in this room at all?” He felt the axle grinding away at the soft wood holding the handcrafted latchwork together as the metal scraped away like the moon’s waning curve in winter.

She marched toward us. “No, Daddy.” Her stomping did not resemble the raucousness that tumbled through the house on the ground level, instead resembling a faint pitter-patter like a shrew taking shelter from the field following a flood.

“I could’ve sworn, I—”

With enough leverage, his weight pressed against the knob; the sharp shrieks of wood freed themselves from the niche as the latchwork collapsed, inviting spirits into the dusk-filled chamber. I reached out to grab my father from the door’s remains, and dust clouds of wood grains filled the air like birch pollen.

“Mei,” my sister shrieked, coughing up her lungs.

My eyes wandered over the stately remains of the chamber. A window shone in the midday light, illuminating what resembled the remains of model fighter planes; wires strung across the ceiling, indistinguishable from webwork. On the far end of the room, towers of boxes were crammed against the wall like brickwork, each niche possessing papers and spider nests glistening with mildew.

Wiping away the remains from my hair, my father held me close as we wandered the delicate space as if it might turn to white ash before us. “Looks like Mr. Yasobi left some things, girls.” He felt the bulbous pockets of his blue jeans before continuing, “I guess I ought to call his estate, too.” A deep sigh left his mouth, ruminating on what remained of Mr. Yasobi in the air. “I suppose it’s time to leave this room for the spirits, no?”

My sister and I nodded and exited the chamber, leaving my father to arrange for the moving company to haul Mr. Yasobi’s belongings once they arrive.

Once the archer had strung its bow across the sky, the gleaming daylight set over the horizon. I watched my father drinking among the movers as they tied down a large armoire in the back of a kei truck. From the first-story window, I traced my name, following my sister’s, in the condensation that kissed the glass pane: me-i-to-yu-e. I smiled at my strokes, proud that I had left my mark, unlike Mr. Yasobi’s, which was being heaved through the sliding doors.

“Mei—Mei,” my sister called, echoing through the paper-thin walls below.

“—Coming,” I yelled, and raced down the steps into the dayroom. Sliding open the dayroom door, the room was still without life, save for a grand monstera plant whose pale side waned in the overhead light. I crawled across the tatami without disturbing a fiber, peeking into the night-sky adjacent rooms, but alas, Yue was absent. The buzzing mosquitoes of the summer charged against the doors, whispering to be let in like vampires. I carefully slid open the doors to the garden and slipped through, denying them entry to find Yue’s figure husked over young bamboo shoots free from the soil.

A faint glow emanated from her palms as if she had caught the sun. “Yue—Yue, did you find something?”

She turned toward me, her pig-tails now undone. She pressed her teeth together and let out a gush of air. “She’s sleeping, Mei.” From the bamboo shoots, she bore…something. Cradled in her arms was an amalgam that was inhuman to me; pale flesh pulsated with veins of deep maroon, bruised like human flesh but white as ash. What resembled a head possessed fibers of auburn, singed with gray as if it had been set ablaze. A sickly cancer that melded with various patchworks of flesh mixed in the moist soil that she knelt in.

“Yue, what is she?”

Her head tilted up toward me, her eyes filled with moonless sky. “She’s a princess.”

“—A princess?”

“Yeah, Mei, like that old story Mama used to read to us at night.” She wiped away the particles caught on its blemished skin, impure in human hands. “I think she was called Kaguya,” she continued, craning her head like a mother nursing her newborn. She seemed entranced by the writhing of her forlorn, newly adopted offspring digging into her delicate flesh. Mei parted what hair sprouted from its head as if her fingernails were a comb, preparing her offspring, wrapped in soiled silk, for ceremony.

But my eyes didn’t obscure the truth of what struggled before me. I pictured a beautiful girl whose skin was free from sun scars, whose beauty caught the sun before the moon. “She doesn’t look like Kaguya-Hime,” I insisted, turning toward the dayroom to see if my father had returned to find us digging in the garden. “I think Daddy ought to see this, Yue.”

Her eyes shot up, now filled with the stars above. “Yes—Mei, Daddy ought to see what God brought us.” Her mind imprinted the story as if it were a prophecy, believing that this amalgam would grow to the same princess she had heard about. She rose from the uprooted soil, the cancer in her clutches, and ran to the front of the house where the movers labored to conjure her own flock of followers just as I trailed behind her, worry painted on my visage like impasto.