BAG LADY
I finally reached the bottom of my mountain, the great Kuroi-san, that dominated the surrounding scenery. Touching the mountain’s feet, all you could see were the leafy skirts of tall trees overhead. My home was located an hour up a switchback mountain path, tucked within a swaddle of hinoki cypress. I started up the sloping trail and raced the sun home. One final stretch to go.
My hip twinged as I walked up the wooden steps slotted at differing heights up the dirt slope. It was an old pathway, dotted with red torii, that led to a shrine where the villagers used to make their yearly pilgrimages. The monks came through every now and then to maintain repairs on the shrine, but the monks that lived on the mountain were recluses, and I rarely saw them along this trail. Another better-maintained trail, the one Little Sistah would have taken, looped to their side of the mountain.
Suddenly, the shadows deepened. Even with my shades on, the reds and pinks and greens exuded a peculiar contrast that made colors darker and brighter at the same time. The depths shifted and moved, until the shadows loomed larger and stretched further, grasping at my ankles, and reaching out to touch my hair.
Nope. I gritted my teeth and stubbornly plowed forward. I was almost home. I’ve had a long day.
Then I looked up to find you standing there three steps high, in my fucking way. You looked down on me with my own shadowed reflection, judging me, criticizing me, disparaging me with that single unimpressed stare.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” you asked.
I tightened my hand around my sword hilt and continued forward like a stubborn water buffalo, but you flitted beside me and followed along as if we were evening hiking buddies. Maybe if I refused to acknowledge your presence, I’d get rid of you faster. Even demons get bored eventually.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth? Were you scared she’d hate you if she knew? Would she have forgiven you if she had known the truth? You should have been there. You swore an oath. You had a duty. What sort of samurai are you?”
Each word sliced into my skin with the steel edge of a tanto, just little cuts of frustration and annoyance that battered down my patience. I tried to focus on one step at a time.
Over my shoulder, right into my ear, I heard the words, “You failed them. You let them die. You should have been there, and no amount of apologies will ever change that. Only death could ever make amends.”
“Shut up.”
“You are a terrible samurai. You are too selfish. You are too flawed. You are too imperfect. You are too scared. You are too unreliable. You are too angry. You are too snarky. You are too loud. You are too quiet. You are too distant. You are too old. You are too young. You are too fast. You are too slow. You are too impulsive. You are too emotional. You are too aggressive. You are too ghetto. You are too hood. You are too ratchet. You are too bougie. You are too preppy. You are too urban. You are too country. You are too smart. You are too violent. You are too passive. You are too crazy. You are too clever. You are too ignorant. You are too nerdy. You are too dumb. You’re too blunt. You are too poor. You are too rich. You speak too right. You speak too wrong. You laugh too much. You dance too much. You talk too much. You read too much. You run too much. You win too much. You lose too much. You complain too much. You worry too much. You eat too much. You hustle too much. You sleep too much. You struggle too much. You fight too much. You value other people’s opinions too much. You hold your tongue too much. You care too much. You compromise too much. You are too rude. You are too polite. You are too fierce. You are too timid. You are too strong. You are too weak. You are too considerate. You are too careful. You are too careless. You are too confident. You are too insecure. You are too weird. You are too straight. You are too queer. You are too girly. You are too boyish. You are too pretty. You are too ugly. You are too big. You are too small. You are too ashy. You are too shiny. You are too thick. You are too fat. You are too skinny. You are too hairy. You are too sexy. You are too slutty. You are too conservative. You are too liberal. You are too religious. You are too spiritual. You are too happy. You are too sad. You are too joyful. You are too depressed. You are too magical. You are too traumatized. You are too alone. You are too friendly. You are too sick. You are too healthy. You are too arrogant. You are too ambitious. You are too lazy. You are too soft. You are too hard. You are too prideful. You are too tired. You are too whole. You are too half. You are too mixed. You are too proud. You are too black, and you are not black enough! YOU ARE TOO MUCH”
“ENOUGH!” I screamed.
The shout echoed off the trees. I spun with a downward stroke and met the edge of your dark katana with a metal cry. Our strengths matched evenly, and neither of us gave up any ground. We stepped back at the same time. We attacked at the same time. I feinted right, you feinted left. Our blades screeched in the middle.
You met me counter for counter, stealing all the years of hard work and study I dedicated to my craft. I bit my lips in frustration at this seeming fight against myself. I was one of the best samurai the Sistah Samurai have ever produced. I’ve led squadrons. I’ve organized assaults on demon clusters. I could slaughter an army in a handful of moments. And yet, in this fight, I could gain no inch.
Your strengths were my strengths. Your weaknesses were my weaknesses. I focused my attacks on the side of your bad hip, but you did the same. Our swords shrieked at each other, and the pain in that hip wailed as I blocked another blow.
Who gives a shit about you anyway? No one cares about your sob story. You are nothing. You don’t matter. The world doesn’t give a shit about you. They want a hero they can relate to. They want someone they can root for. They want a story they can understand—a story where they recognize all the references, all the words are translated, and every detail is catered to their ignorant, narrow gazes. No one cares about your story. No one cares about you.
Who would care about a woman just trying to get home?
I lost focus for just a moment, but it was a moment enough. I moved too slow to counter the blow I saw coming. You stabbed toward me with that dark-tainted sword, and it burst on impact against my belly, splashing my vision with darkness.
The shadows thickened into an impenetrable screen, and I could no longer see a thing. I blindly sliced at the air but found myself sawing through a sludge of miasma. The darkness suffocated and squeezed my lungs. I panicked, uncertain how to fight this unfamiliar attack. I didn’t understand. How did you get so powerful, so corporal, so oppressive all of a sudden?
I squeezed my eyes shut to focus on my breathing. I had to get home. I didn’t have time for this. Did you hear me? I didn’t have time to fucking play with you!
It got harder to breathe. An inexplicable pressure choked my throat. In my sudden faintness, I fell to my knees. I reached into my obi automatically, and remembered I hadn’t prepared any talismans with the foolish hope that I could make it home without them. Instead, I clutched the ink bottle Little Sistah had given me.
I remembered how she had given it without hesitation, and I was the one who hesitated because . . . Because . . . I still felt guilty. Because now I had no choice but to reckon with my actions and condone my mistakes.
Why didn’t I tell her the truth?
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I . . . Because I didn’t want her to hate me,” I gasped out. The darkness tightened, folding down my shoulders, and curling my back, as if I had been stuffed inside a box compressing me smaller and smaller.
“I didn’t want her to reject me,” I said. “I didn’t want to lose her all over again.”
“What a pathetic excuse for a samurai. Only death can cleanse you now. Cut away your shame. Carve out your guilt. Bleed for your redemption. Die for your honor. And feed me your SOUL.”
After a while, the only sound I could hear was my own heavy panting. I couldn’t see my own hands. I was swallowed by the void. There was the pain, and the suffocation, and the migraine, but it was the weariness that pummeled me.
I was so tired.
I was so tired of fighting. I was so tired of carrying the world on my shoulders. I was so tired of pushing through, and never dealing with shit, and abandoning loose ends. I was so tired of this endless, breathless pace. I was so tired of seeking absolution for a guilt that, in the end, not even one of my Sistahs could absolve me of. If one of my own Sistahs couldn’t free me, then who could?
You.
You know how to free yourself. You know how it all ends. You know that there is only freedom in death. You don’t deserve peace. You don’t deserve forgiveness. You don’t deserve to live.
Deserve.
Deserve.
Is anyone deserving of anything? Why am I not allowed to be flawed and make mistakes? Why am I not allowed to be selfish from time to time? Why am I not allowed to enjoy my god damned ramen and come home without demons hounding my every step? Why am I not allowed to hurt or to fail? Why am I not allowed grace and mercy? Why do I always have to be strong all of the god damn time?
Because you are a samurai. Death before dishonor. That is the oath you swore.
Never abandon a Sistah. I swore that oath, too.
To keep one oath, I must deny another.
How does one determine which oath to keep? Are some stronger and more binding than others? It’s a question that has haunted me ever since that fateful day. I’ve braided it into my hair at night before I went to sleep and combed it through my thoughts every moment I was awake. I never had an answer before, but listening to you, talking like you think you know me, made me realize something: IT WAS NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS.
You don’t know where I come from. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You’ve seen one moment in time, and not my growth. You’ve read a few chapters and think you know the end. You think I am a character in a play for your amusement. You think you know my history. You think you know my fate. You think that I am blind and that I don’t see your hate. You don’t know me. Nor are you entitled to.
In the end, my honor was defined by me.
And not by you.
I planted my feet on the ground. I used the hilt of my katana for leverage. The darkness growled and shoved against my shoulders. I laughed at the feeble attempts to keep me down. I threw off the weight like an old shoddy cloak. I shook off the burdens that dragged at my ankles. I stretched out the knots lodged in my back. I shed the doubts and claimed my space and lauded my own damned story.
Still. Like dust. I rise.