Disgrace
I sat before the mirror of the vanity, instruments of beauty lined and doubled, mocking. Tracing the patterns carved into the lacquered box, dipping my fingers inside.
It was an afterthought.
The white makeup so transparent against the blue glow to my cheeks. Over and over, trying to cover the bruise, until my fingerprints were left there. Towel rough against the abused skin, starting over. Nothing to gain. Nothing to cover.
Deliver my apparition to the evil that leaked through the pores of my skin.
Brush smoothing away the stains, mixing with the blood on my lips. No one would know, no one would see. And then I bit my bottom lip to hold back the tears, scraping with my teeth until there was nothing, no makeup left. With a finger, it trailed outside the lines.
Whip rivers into my back.
Under the kimono, my body shivered. The charcoal for my black makeup warmed me, dusting the blackness gathered from my heart, displaying it over my eyes. Piercing. Shameless.
A message to all who would come after.
Ideal. I still gazed after myself in the mirror, a better man than I was, a better future painted on my face. In the dark, those hard things about the man in me couldn't be seen, softened in a way that let the powder cover them, the shadow disperse them, the rouge shape them. Themes within me only just blooming.
Drugged me.
The beat of the drum with the call to my heart. The stage where I belonged, a specimen, an animal, a desire. I made my audience lust, I made them sin, and when they saw me this night, the lights would be low, and the music would pace us. We would dance together. I would win this game. Me and myself, bound by a red string.
Seventeen tonight.
He smiled. He smiled the same way as I saw him sharing the spotlight as it strayed from me, close enough to the stage inside my world where I was alone. He was there watching every time I performed, and I could feel the desire stemming from him as if it was smoke from the incense of his soul. But his aura was stained, and I think he would have walked wrapped in a coloured haze even when there were no lights shaded with paper lanterns on him. I was safe at a distance, shaded and bathed in lights that matched the bruises, and smoothed the colour so thinly that no one would see the things that made me fragile. I was perfect, in white pallor and ebony accents, lined with a warmth left behind on so many angels fallen from the past and gathered to my splendor. Yet there was something in that smile he showed me to be trusted beyond the gentle way of it, where the childish blush would begin, and the averted eyes of habit ran home to.
The devil in me was calmed in a way to soothe the evil and wash away the impending sin that stained me. Stained, chained, barren, long before the touch of a stranger, long before the birth of my demons that made me sane. I felt I was the only one in the world. The first mistake of many I made that night to add to the pile of sin I collected, I thought I saw trust in him.
Burn me.
"There's nowhere to belong for you, little one."
There was never a hand to hold, as our fingers laced, ghostly in the way I missed a love and fleeting infatuation. There was never a gentle touch, as I shadowed my eyes from the way he closed in on me. There was a flutter of something in the depths of me, longing for a breath of frozen air to cool, longing to be precious.
Smother me.
"Bruises can't cover your beauty, child, don't turn your eyes from me."
His words almost lost amongst the white noise of my mind, where the music vanished, and everything turned watery and grey. Running my hand along his side smudged the hard lines of reality into the painting left to dry, a blur of the moments before when rationality bled through the borders. His skin was enough to sting.
Cross me.
The wine on his breath was searing like I was a temporary illusion, a distraction from the things that made him a good man for that night, and he was living in the same moment, under the same moon that tomorrow would shine harshly. And I wasn't real, I wasn't whole, I couldn't be touched, and I couldn't hear a thing. I would vanish without a trace.
"Don't be afraid anymore."
He moved my head to his shoulder, I melted under him as he pulled the strings. He knew me. I let my head fall back, I breathed him in, as his fingers rose and fell with the hills and valleys of the expanse of my skin, away from every sense that would remind me to scream. I reached for him, but he redirected my hands. He held my chin as he turned his head to watch the breath escape through my parted lips, like frost rising and crystallizing in the air above me, a way and reason for all who gathered at the door to watch this dance.
"I can heal these things done to you."
And my breath was of it's own accord, weaving through the strands of hair falling over my face, sticking to the sweat. His fingers were suddenly sharp, as they reached the things that marred me, made me ugly, pained me and gave me a name of shame. I was perfect, unflawed, and this man with me now was sent to expose me, and he would tell the world what he saw that night.
Control me.
My body stretched in a way that made it a voyeur to my restless mind. My world upside down, searching for a mirror to look upon the light through the shadow, as the moon played over the shine on the skin of my company. My movement slow and languid, taken over by that beast within my unconscious lust, the angel losing the battle to rectify.
"Don't fight it, little one."
Strengthen me.
"All these things about you." One hand left to roam through the things that pained me, made my breath catch in my throat, made me moan and writhe like I was begging. And I despised myself, a slave to his kind words and softness. "They make you ordinary."
Use me.
"I can make you divine."
Own me.
"I can heal you."
The other hand on the floor. Torture. A touch in the curve of my back where the lines collected and pooled. Knee to the ground. Whipping boy. Fingernail in the crevasse where the wound broke open. Leverage. Vice. Head down and shrill tone of pain.
"Perfect."
Song. Laughter when he dragged the submission from me, accent on the words of the throw, setting fire to the parchment where my innocence was written, line for line, each destroyed with a new wound upon my back. His hand kept my head down. I waited, my eyes squeezing tears from the corners, my hands balled to fists, teeth scoring the flesh of my knuckles. In the next instant, my eyes splayed open.
I used to think that bruises and scars penetrated so deeply, that the inside was blood soaked, and I would be forever marked with pleasure and secrets. I used to believe that those were stains brought out when the monster awoke, entangled in my veins, and electrocuted the surface with the frayed ends. But that didn't complete me. That didn't tell me the things I wanted to hear. And I spent my life looking for reason, cleansing, after that night had soiled my purity, but it didn't take away the greed, the hate, the anger.
It wasn't enough just to love you.
You had to get obsessive.
The hours had passed, wastefully they took their toll, and all the hunger of a new day with them. I counted every second in my head, out loud to myself when the silence became unbearable, laying face down on the floor, waiting. They came deep within the fading darkness of the morning, to find me there as they expected. The slightest pet of my hair in comfort was agonizing, demeaning, and somehow torturous.
"What happened to him."
Demand.
"His performance was flawless."
Indecent.
"Someone must have seen."
Shy.
"This is not a lonely man."
Trusting.
"He must be in pain."
Hate.
"He doesn't feel a thing."
"You have to stop this, Seishin." My mother's words, soothing and harsh, both drawing me from the solace of my mind. "You're not allowed to fall in love."
The tatami room was dark, only a few candles on the table. The quiet was so thick it seemed to support the incense tendrils, keeping them floating. I gripped a tea cup hard, focused on the warmth radiating into my fingers. I felt so disconnected to my body, so oblivious to the cold in my veins until I touched the warmth of the cup. Mother sat across the table, her eyes void of any anger, disgust, or anything else I thought I might have found there. Her face was complacent, and I could see she had built a wall behind her eyes. My body was numb, as if I was floating, only the heat from the teacup reminded me I was on solid ground. The sting of my split lip, the dull throb of the bruises on my neck, the restriction of my airways lessening, it had long since faded. Like all that was a distant memory, from another life.
"Is that what love is?" I set the tea cup down on the table, trying not to make a noise, not to show that I had emotion. What love she spoke to me about was lost to me forever, drowned in the night with the less handsome, the more vulgar. She misunderstood how our definitions of love varied, and took for granted how pure and innocent hers were in comparison to mine. I didn't know what had happened to me, and I didn't define it as an act of love as I knew it, but she did. She misunderstood how poison my mind had become.
"Love is what will happen to you if you continue."
I glanced through the hair falling forward over my eyes, not daring enough yet to see her clearly. I had lost, and she had seen the things that I kept to myself, locked away. "Was I being punished?"
The sound between porcelain and wood shook me as she slammed her teacup down. "For being beautiful?" She let her head fall to one side, no tension, no staleness, just weak and wondering. "No, Seishin."
Am I wrong? Should I go? Can I be helped?
"This life chose you. Make the best of it."
Outside, the rain began to fall. It beat against the window. It showered a lonely aroma. I stood in it, waiting once again, seeking the lightening to flash in the distance, soaking to my eyes to hide my tears. I had been cornered and cage, hated and beaten, alone, unforgiven, and now hidden away like the beast I repressed. Trapped between the two people in my mind; one for passion, and one for reason, and both disagreeing on the here and now, so I was lost and would never be found. Sorrow versus kindness. Motive versus question. And all the other things now were so real. The life that spread out before me had been blanketed with gold, but in and instant sitting at the table with my mother, it had changed to black. I had rejected the only pure love I would ever receive, then it had been forever taken from me. I had trusted with the innocence of the child I was on my seventeenth birthday, and with the giving of that trust, the remainder of my childhood had been stolen. A demon's hand smeared a black stain over my existence.
She had reached across the table to me, and laced her fingers with my hand resting limply beside the tea cup. The action phased me, unwanted, unexpected, and I lifted my eyes to meet her as she so beckoned me to. "I'm not sorry these things happened to you." Her words were as empty as her eyes, as I could tell that so many days of sorrow had taken her captive, so many days she still held regret for my sister's death. The same way she looked at the body in the doorway of the room now sealed away. The smell remained even after the curse had been broken, and I was the devil my mother had been looking for.
"You are a disgraceful being."
When you die, Heaven will reject you and Hell will laugh.
"You can't be a dancer anymore, like she was. Now everyone knows what was done to you."
The angels won't cry for you.
"I have no reason to keep you in this Okiya, a man. If you can't dance at the Izakaya, the Ochaya, and make money, you can't pay for your welfare here."
The demons won't sing for you.
"Okasan." I tightened my grasp on her fingers, as she tried to pull away at the low tone of my voice. "My money paid for her funeral."
Your wings don't have feathers
There was a pause long enough to tell me the world beneath it was cast in the shadow of the day before. "I don't lie to you."
But I don't feel anything.
"You're the best there is." It hurt her to say it, to admit that she saw the talent I had over the hate she had. "I did this to you, brought you to this Okiya, made you a performer, to punish you for the mistakes your family made. I never expected you to make something of yourself. I expected you to be the fool everyone in this city came to gawk at."
Withdrawing her hand, she gazed upon me with a conflicted stare, of defeat, and other things I hadn't come to know. She had a way to look at me, as if I was such a child and yet that I had outgrown every word of comfort she could offer. I could tell that sometimes, that way was thankful, and others, that way was scornful. I knew, because I looked at myself at a different angle every morning, deciding who I wanted to be that day, the man or the woman, the dancer or the whore.
"You have a way with them."
You used to be graceful.
"They know what he did to you, all of the people in the Izakaya that night. Don't think no one saw."
You used to be tighter.
"You have ruined yourself. No one will want to touch you after someone else has soiled you and thrown you away."
You have two hands, you don't need me.
"But I don't think that will change how they watch your performance."
One to cover your mouth.
"They want you."
And one to occupy yourself.
Again in the rain, the clouds seemed to glow where the moon tried to cower, only desperately, and a futile attempt. The house was small, only one room, but it was mine. The window was mine, running in the lines where the water dripped, smearing the world outside those doors into a dream I lived inside. The tatami to sleep on in the corner furthest from the door was mine, and it still reeked of the bloodshed of the Okiya, to be a constant reminder of the life I had come from. Taken from the comfort of the life I lived within the confines of the Okiya, the fire pot lay forgotten in the middle of the floor, the water boiling over to stifle the flames, a manifestation of my passion the night let go of, all around me, there were tears. But it was mine this time.
"There is a separate dwelling I own."
Revulsion.
"For one. It's on the other side of the village from here, on the outskirts where the samurai haven't overcome the Christian population."
Petty.
"You'll be safe there. You'll be wanted by those warriors. You can make your living, and all your profits will belong to you. But you are dead to me forever."
Delicate.
"I still won't forget what you did to her."
Through the lifeless voices as I looked back down the street that lead to the Okiya, the heartless that ran for cover from the rain followed me with their eyes. They knew those sins against me, those poetic whispers in the nights to follow where my salvation rested in the crevasse of the earth where the angel fell and gave birth to me, and I still held that evil.
There was a step wide enough to walk the perimeter of the dwelling, but the train of my kimono melted off the edge. I walked the entire length of it, from the door, to the back, around to the opposite side of the door from where I started, scraping my fingernails over the wood as I traveled. I let my gaze roam up and down the walls with the lines of the wood, shaking the dew of rain from the ends of my hair. I felt the black of my makeup running in rivers over the desert of my cheeks, spread out by the tears falling from the sky. But what did I feel? I felt the splinters of wood under my fingers, I felt the power that sparked and began to grow within me knowing, it was all mine. Suddenly the inside of the one-room home was less of a cage, less of an exile, and became a place to store everything I had left. I could fill that place to the brim with innocence that I created, strength that I pulled from the air, and it would belong to me, it would be my secret.
The window was shaded, the morning light melting the disdain from the frost of my breath. The rain had ceased some time during the night when I made it my lullaby, laying face-down on the floor beside the tatami. I couldn't stand the way the lacquered floor shone in the glow of the day, my image there, under me and smothered with the shadow I cast. I wiped the trail of saliva from my mouth with the back of my hand, thinking it must have meant that my unconscious mind lusted more than I had control of. That part was holy, that part was locked away in a glass cage, hanging poised above me in the back of my unconscious mind. That was the soul that hadn't been touched, the part of my reason that hadn't been tainted. I would let it lust all it wanted. I kept it separate, quiet, so that it might never be soiled. At least one side unbroken. At least one sin repented. No matter the vulgarity blown upon me, the marks left by the calloused fingers of the crude, there would be simplicity, I would remain loving, because I had that other side of myself that would never know how bad it was.
But the katana enticed me, and that intrigue stemmed from somewhere deep inside me. My thoughts didn't linger over the origin, if it was imagined, or I had wanted it enough and it festered from my weakness, that desire for power, and the manifestation of it within a blade. I could close my eyes and every detail of the blade was mirrored behind the darkness where my fingertips caressed, like the skin of a lover, the heat of the sweat collected at the base of a spine. That other gripped my hair, slipping in between the drawn curtains while the stirring wind found its way through the window. A moment of sunlight, my eyes cast downwards, and instantly before me that manifestation of my purity held me.