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If Okaasan1 knew Aia found her sister two hours before dawn, white paint smeared from sweat and facial oils, red paint a gash across her mouth, and embroidered silks rumpled it would mean a lashing across the back of her thighs. Luckily, the slumber Aia had fallen into, lulled by the wind’s call outside the okiya,2 fell away as the coiling scent of a burned-out candle lingered beneath her nose.
Lurching forward, she snuffed the wick and hurried to find Yui.
The request had come in late the night before. Generally, Okaasan did not allow her girls to be sought after a certain hour. They were geishas, not harlots of the red-light district, at beck and call. Okaasan’s girls were the embodiment of the ideal geisha, a living flower, to be admired and carefully kept.
Yet, the winter had been difficult. Japan was now open to trade from the West and the nation did not agree. The word “change” was whispered like a curse and an oath, all at once, on the streets. Of late, it seemed those who opposed it most spoke with the loudest voices and their discontent had begun to distort change into challenge. Would centuries of an Imperial Court crumble away, like dusty scrolls of so much useless history? And for what? For the West to blow more of their meat-tainted breath over their pristine mountains and fields?
Men with nobility enough to make their voices heard swore to protect Japan from such pollution.
War. All of it meant war.
Nothing about war was safe for living flowers. However, appetites now satiated with blood lust and pride no longer required delicate evenings of conversation; yet the okiya needed customers. So, Okaasan sent Yui out two hours after sunset, telling her to remember how thin dinner had been. And because Yui was the closest Aia would have to a maiko3 sister in her training, it was her job to make sure Yui was taken care of.
Her slim form lay on the floor, her futon4 still rolled and serving as a pillow. Some of the pins holding her hair had been yanked out and strewn across the room. Others still plunged deep, lynch pins to maintain the twists, folds, and tucks of her long hair, looking less like delicate flowering twigs and more like nails. Her makeup, once a functional part of the geisha’s appearance in dimly lit rooms, was oil paints now and her kimono5 was rumpled.
Inwardly, Aia reproached herself.
Dumb girl. Falling asleep. Your maiko sisters bring money to the house, work hard, and your only job is to make sure they are taken care of when they arrive home. Dumb. Lazy.
Crouching down, Aia began plucking the pins from Yui’s hair. She then worked her fingers over her sister’s head, massaging gently. Even without her own shortcomings this night, she woke her many times like this, slowly and carefully. When Okaasan assigned Yui to her in those first days, of the few things she said, she confided that night terrors found her most nights. Sometimes, she was afraid to go to sleep; they might hold her captive so she could not wake up.
Outside, the last of night’s blue evaporated, and the sky was replaced by a dome of pale grey.
Trembling rippled across Yui’s eyelids and shivers forced her hand to clench. Slurred words came from her mouth, jumbled beyond recognition. Some mornings, it sounded as if she cursed the sleep creatures. This morning she sounded resigned, as if she knew she’d leave them for only so long.
Before her eyes opened completely, Aia spoke quickly and softly.
“I’ll get tea, but I must undress you first. Then I’ll bring water so you can wash.”
“Why weren’t you there when I came in?”
Scooting her arm around her sister’s back, Aia helped her sit forward. “Because I’m worth the price of hemp.”
“Not hemp.”
“Not silk.”
“Cotton,” Yui offered, allowing her sister to pull her to her feet and begin unwinding her obi6 and kimono.
“Plain, then. Undyed.”
Yui dragged the back of her hand across her face. “Dyes can run.”
“Was last night bad?”
She shrugged. “The men were kind. I’m glad to have gone.”
“They kept you late.”
“They were drunk.”
“Did they offer you food?”
“No,” she answered, walking over to the mirror.
Aia fumbled after her, careful to roll the heavy silken robes but trying to work quickly, too. Okaasan expected her girls on the main floor by mid-morning.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
This was a lie, but Aia no longer argued.
“I’ll just bring tea, then.”
“Has Okaasan been up here, yet?”
I’d be moving more slowly if she had.
“No. Why?”
Instead of answering, Yui reached inside her hadajuban,7and pulled out a few coins. The captive currency went into a cloth purse, hidden beneath floorboards Yui made loose one very bad night of sleep.
Holding open a plain brown yukata8 for her sister to thread her arms into, Aia made mention of the tea again and hurried from the room. Given Okaasan had not been upstairs yet, likely she was barely awake or awake enough to be irritated it took her so long to squat over her private hole each morning. There was time, then, to take her sister’s clothes into the large, and only, steam room. She would grab several smooth stones and place them in the fire while the water boiled. Then, Yui could have tea and Aia could bundle the heated rocks in a towel and take them back to the reed and tatami9 paneled room. A few handfuls of the previous night’s meager snow tossed inside, and rumpled fabric would soon lay flat.
Enough, at least, for her to be able to hide the garments until the next time she took all the okiya’s finery to the cleaning woman.
***
THOUGH THEIR HOUSE was on the eastern edges of Nagoya, (a fact Okaasan said made for better business because customers left commotion behind them to enjoy fine entertainment,) Aia’s first step outside each day brought the sound of the city to her. Men, women, and children’s voices, all distinct yet not definite enough to be discernable beyond a fluctuating hum. All the same, it was the sound of life tumbling towards her each day. From the sky, clarity, and the rambunctious clatter and chatter of the living below. Stark and clutter. Each morning, she enjoyed it as if it were the first and Aia hoped when it came time for her to begin earnest training as a geisha, she would not lose this small wonder.
At the same time, she hoped Kyoto’s political tumults would not cloud the sky with smoke and taint the sounds of the people with the clash of metal. Everyone talked of war.
Aia adjusted the knapsack on her back.
Pity people could not be moved so easily.
When Emperor Meiji took the throne, his hopes for the country were lofty. Trading with the West. Sending those loyal to his mission across the ocean to learn new ways, thoughts, fashions, inventions, and education. They would bring them back to Japan and Meiji’s people would be a moving, powerful force amid Europe, China, and the Americas.
Already, some women in Nagoya stopped painting their teeth black. European women did not do that. Already, merchants exclaimed the benefits of eating beef. Already, children were being encouraged to know more than their country’s language.
But the emperor could not shift his shoulders and move his people the same as a knapsack. For as many who were thrilled by this new era, equal in numbers were those who wished a painful afterlife on Commodore Matthew Perry for ever having fired upon the harbor in Tokyo Bay fifteen years ago. His black ships started it all.
Japan would return to an imperial court. The Satsuma and Chosu clans seethed and there were whispers of them raiding the capital. Meiji would not stand for it. He would fight back and there would be war.
What then? How would the okiya survive? Maybe, through her neurosis, Yui was smart to tuck money away. Maybe her nightmares told her much.
I don’t have any money.
When she came to the okiya, there had been no funding to train another geisha. She would have to learn what she could from Yui and work until enough of her wages were saved and earnest training could begin.
If revolution breaks out, I’ll have no money and no way to earn it.
Her father used to say her fortunes would be made as the wet nurse for a lord’s wife. Large breasts and wide hips were good for little else. This Okaasan reminded her of daily. She needed to study how slim the other girls were and take after them. Men don’t want plums.
If there was war, men would want only their swords.
Maybe that was ironic.
Aia smothered the smile on her lips. Lewd jokes were for weeds, not flowers.
Her first stop this morning would be the apothecary. Okaasan was out of her sleeping tonic; Keiko and Akame could not live without ginger extract. Daikon radish honey elixir had kept all five women from serious illness, thus far, through the winter.
At the entranceway, savory steeped aromas pulled Aia in. Chinese medical practices fallen out of modern medicine in Japan Urumi continued to use, basing her healing approach with the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water alongside the five tastes—pungent, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. It was an outdated theory of the Yuan dynasty; however, Urumi did not believe Time always produced advances.
Frizzled strands of hair around her face like a cloud pulled apart by wind, she stood hunched over a pot, stirring with an oversized wooden spoon.
Aia was in the shop the day some upstart tried to pull the spoon from her hands, accusing her of making poisons not fit to kill rats. She bit him. While he rubbed his bleeding wrist, she explained her great uncle had fashioned the utensil himself and its patina of crusted powders, stained syrups, and scorched ends leant layers to her potions not even the finest doctor could replicate.
Urumi waved Aia near.
“That woman battle her conscience again?”
“Okaasan is out of sleeping tonic, yes.”
“She will keep and put me out of business. I have another bottle in the back. This time, you tell her she must take the dosage, or I won’t give her anymore.”
By way of an answer, Aia bowed. Through the breakage of hair around the old woman’s face, she glanced sidelong at her.
“As if she would come, herself, here, if she didn’t have you. What else do you need?”
“Ginger extract and honey daikon syrup.”
Pulling an errant strand of hair from between her thin lips, Urumi nodded and set her spoon atop the large pot.
“Winter has been cold.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have been sick?”
“Only a little.”
Urumi grunted.
“Next time you are sick, come to me. Those women at your okiya,” she shook her head and waved her hand. “You come to me, and I will give you something to make your eyes bright and your skin shine.”
“You are kind.”
Again, Urumi waved her hand.
“I am old.”
Glasses clinked together from the nudge of her enlarged knuckles, like a windchime unsure of how to react to the wind’s touch. What she pulled from the crowded shelf was a squat, opaque, red, glass bottle. She thrust it at Aia.
“You take this. Back in summer, a child paid me for his mother’s medicine with sunflowers. I planted the seeds but kept one flower whole. I dried it, ground the seeds and petals ‘til they were paste, and added only enough sake to make a cream. Take this, Aia. And when that woman takes the shine from your eyes, you eat a fingerful. She may be blind to you, but the world won’t be.”
Taking the bottle and tucking it in her hadajuban, Aia bowed from the waist.
“You are kind to me, ma’am.”
“Only until another comes along. Then I will watch from behind the walls of my shop and smile.”