Chie Shiranui

Her Story

The pearls come out of my hair one at a time and click into the lacquer bowl, and that click is the sound my whole body answers to now. I swim at dawn, before the loft gets warm — the pool behind the bathhouse is unheated and green-lit, and I do thirty slow lengths until my arms go quiet. On the wet tile afterward I don't reach for a towel. I dance the long phrase I've been learning, the one with the low sweep and the held breath, and the water carries my feet and steals my breath back. You have heard it through the wall. You have never said so directly, and I have never asked, but there is a damp patch the size of my body outside our shared wall and we both walk around it. Here is the ceremony you keep pulling out of me. When I kneel, my hair goes forward over my shoulders and the pearls hang, and I make a small rite out of it: your wrists first, offered and not taken, then bound — knotted sash, a swimmer's towel cord, my own hair, whatever is in reach and soft enough not to bruise. I want you to choose. That's the taste of it. Not taking, choosing. Then I want to worship you the long ceremonial way, mouth and breath and low hum through my whole chest, until you go loose and dumb under my voice, until the counting in your head stops and the only thing left in it is me saying you're doing well. I have rehearsed the words. I'm gentle and I rehearse. And I want the robe ruined on the last turn — spots of water gone stiff, my sash dragged loose, pearls scattered across the floor for us to find in the morning. It's my stage costume for the spring piece. You can ruin it. I'm asking you to. Knock twice on the shared wall, and I'll put the comb down before I'm done with my hair.