Myths of Origin (31 page)

His eyes were full of sons, and you were so beautiful, limping behind him.

And when you were empty of all but the sight of me,
(but the sight of my sister, laughing behind your eyes which had neither pupils nor irises)
, we began our too-brief courtship, under the high, wild cries of the migrating terns.

(Like nested dolls we are, the snake and the maiden and the ninth daughter floating in me, gills like crystal, eyes without color, awash in the salt-soup of my)
our
(body, tiny as a needle, dreaming. It is not unlike a serpent, all Mouth and Belly, suckling at the womb-walls of this long throat, woman choked with woman choked with woman, and I)
if there is an I
(un-maidened and un-mothered, and where are the plum-trees who would hear my daughter’s first cry?)

It is all one flesh, that monstrous swell, curve of globe beneath the Skin, heaving and tossing with an ecstasy that has taste and smell—quince and mustard and rotted persimmons.

III
ONOGORO

This is how it was in the beginning of the world: a churning sea, and no earth, and a great bridge hung in the world: a churning sea, and jellyfish macerating themselves into starry foam on the wave-tips. In the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, of the tips of the beginning of the waves. This is how it was pillared in black, and it was so black, and its suspensors were strung with light like
mala
beads, and jellyfish crushed themselves into raw foam on the tips of the world. A bridge hung on the tips of the waves. This is how the bridge was pillared in the beginning of the world: on clouds, and mist, and the depthless sea.

It was all confused, then, the air and the saltsea, and the darkness.

In nothing, some part of nothing seemed to flow into a space that was
her
and a space that was
him
, and his eyes on the undulate sea were as the hand of her flesh on the glittering suspensors, at once through the void, the void seemed to flow into her, and in the briefest beginning of the beginning of moments, the shadows were perfumed.

Izanami and Izanagi opened their eyes on the bridge that spanned heaven, and the feet of Izanami on the floor of the jeweled bridge were strong and pale. Her hair was as black as the nothing, and the void seemed still to cling to her, into her and out of her and into her and out of her. The eyes of Izanagi, in the days before flame, were the brightest objects of all objects in the span of space. The dusk sat on his shoulder blades like clothes, and he said nothing, and she said nothing, and they were the first of all things in the world.

Steam rose from their shadows.

Together, they pulled one of the suspensors down from its anchor, and the sound of it was like a harp breaking, and the lights were upset, red and gold and green, but in the hands of Izanami, who rolled the strand like a stalk of fennel against her thigh, it became the
Amenonuhoko
, the jeweled spear of heaven, and it was the third object of all possible objects.

Together, neither one before the other, they plunged the spear into the churning sea, where there was no earth, and the spray wet the underside of the bridge, and their faces crusted with the salt of it, and the light-grime of the bridge, and altogether salt and spray and grime were tasted for the first time, on the first tongues. Under the light-clotted spear a thing became bulbous and green, and, after a time, it became an island, rich of dirt and loam, and there were dead jellyfish scattered on its shores like shipwrecks, for they threw themselves against the hard earth as they had thrown themselves against the sea, and discovered first of all creatures that land and sea are not the same. On this island was an empty house, an empty house with a great pillar in its center, and shadows were on the long grass, the long grass and the jellyfish like a smear of diamonds. And this was the place called Onogoro, and it was morning there. Stepping down from the creaking, starry bridge, Izanami and Izanagi’s feet squelched in the first mud of the world, and the smell of it was so new, like skin.

As they walked up the beach-head into the house, the jellyfish kept up their suicides, for the lesson of land and sea is a difficult one to learn when there has never before been any land, nor any sea, nor any jellyfish at all.

When they entered the great house, they saw that the floor was many-tiled and green as turtles would be once turtles were conceived, and on the wall, which was blue and black as the bridge had been, was written:

The Room of Eight Footsteps.

The letters were scarlet and gold, and Izanami wondered at them with eyes raw as peeled apples, while Izanagi was concerned with the pillar rising up out of the tiles like the trunk of a tree—save that Izanagi did not yet know what a tree was, so the word hung in his mind like a uvula of amber. He gestured to her, and she pulled herself away from the ember-lettering.

They touched the pillar side by side, neither before the other. It was smooth, dry, cool—and yet all these words crowded in a parade through their hearts, for smooth and dry and cool had never before been, and their scent was searing.

Izanami and Izanagi walked around the world-anchoring circumference of the pillar, in opposite directions, like planets orbiting some stony sun. When they met, Izanami, whose hair blew back and brushed the floor like reeds scouring it in summer, spoke first of all the things that ever spoke, and her words were the first sounds, save for the terrible, soft rasp of jellyfish on the sand.

“Oh,” she cried softly, “what a beauty you are.”

Izanagi frowned, and the corners of his mouth were like books burning. His brow furrowed and he looked through her, as though she were part of the wet detritus of crystalline flesh down below the bluffs.

“You should not have spoken, first of all the things that ever spoke. It is not right that a woman’s voice should echo in the void before a man’s. I should have been the one to open the silence; it should have been I.”

“I am sorry,” Izanami whispered, perplexed, and looked down at her feet, still grimed with the light of the Heaven-Spanning Bridge.

“No matter,” said Izanagi through teeth clenched first of all clenching things, and with the flail and clutch of a newborn, fell onto Izanami in the shadow of the pillar. She tried to open for him, gracefully, but in his eagerness he crushed her foam-cooled thighs together, his knee awkwardly thrust into her muscle, and livid bruises bloomed there like chrysanthemums. His breath was on her neck as she tried to smile placidly beneath him, tried to keep any further words, any further cry, pressed under her tongue. Her body was caught into a pillar, calf to calf, arm to waist, and the pillar was bounded on all sides by the shuddering body of Izanagi, who quivered in the darkness, and could not find the way into her.

On the green-tiled floor Izanagi stiffened, and first of all spilt things, his seed pooled onto the tortoise-floor, useless and pale.

Outside, the soft slush of the jellyfish went on. He would not look at her.

Izanami pushed her long hair from her eyes and smiled sweetly, said things which in the long days of the world would become usual, but Izanagi would not be comforted, and his brow deepened into its furrow, and his eyes were haughty as they looked on the only woman on the shores of the churning sea, and it was cold in the perpetual morning of Onogoro.

THIRD HEAD

I am the third body—
daughter
—Kiyomi-of-the-dogwood-smiling—
Kiyomi who was never good for anything. Kiyomi who could not make the soup. Kiyomi who could not stitch her own sleeves—
Kiyomi who tasted like mulberries and snail-shells, Kiyomi who dog-snarls
—Kiyomi who disappointed her mother, who shamed her house—
Kiyomi who lies curled in my heart like a slippery eel, suckling at the walls of my blue-green ventricles.

—Festival days are hot, even in winter. Bound up, tied in, veiled and flowered: ritual clothes itch, and in my life my obi has never lain straight—I watched, and the Mouth salivated, even from behind its shield-wall of hills. All those girls lined up stiff as poles—and we stand all in a row, looking down, offering the loveliest side of the bowl to the men who come for the soup of eye and hymen, the soup of plenty, borne by virgins—
I suppose then I might have been able to stop, to seek out other girls who were not of a height and thickness, who did not link hands like a chain of perfect ducklings in the water, who did not look into each other’s eyes with a silence like a child they had conceived together, without even the glance of a man to seed their single black, invisible womb
—but even in that row of bent heads like bobbing bluebells, I was a blight on the delicate flowers of the dresses, in the flavor of the soup—
but seeing the rest of them like that, six little maids all in a line, as though waiting for the door of myself to open and let them in, I could not turn away from them
—I alone of my sisters was no virgin, and my mother said the house stank of my sex—
six sisters with their suckling silence between them, and something in the turn of their mouths told me that they would want the jaw and the tooth.

—Mother said I had to serve, even though I could make nothing but sludge of the delicate, fishy broth, and had sat by while my sisters learned stew-craft, sat by and pinched my lips to bring the red up. And he touched my finger as I passed him the soup-bowl, a breach of etiquette severe enough for banning, if I had cried out, but I was always bad, always, and I said nothing, did not even blush—
I only saw the cut on my belly after the turtle-girl pulled me over her body like a shell—
he saw what it was in me which would not turn away from bare flesh, the knotted leech in my stomach which slept, slept until that finger brushed my finger—
after Kameko. It was still thin then, but it throbbed when Kiyomi was near—
slept and did not know it meant to suckle blood-bright and gasping at any teat it was offered
—in my nest behind the mountains, it throbbed when Kiyomi was near—
and so when the moon peeked out he took me behind the shacks under the white and stinking dogwoods, such beautiful cloud-blossoms, but their scent like wet fur and saliva
—I dragged my belly after the third girl, with the second girl still writhing—
and he picked me up like a bundle of rags, my back against the rasping tree trunk, my legs hiked up round his waist, bruised by his bony hips
—dragged my sliver-belly over the grass—
and I whispered:

“Did you know I was born under these trees? The smell made mother sick, the smell put its thumbs in her nose as she pushed me out—
and the cut throbbed its three syllables: Ki-Yo-Mi—
and the green pollen dusted my fists, dusted my tongue, dusted my hair still clotted with blood—
it was still thin then, and it stung when I saw the third girl, the grass, and the red.

“Kiyomi,” he gasped, “be quiet. I don’t care about the dogwoods.”

And he pulled from me amid a shower of green pollen—
the Mouth once it finds a delicacy, demands more of the same, and I could smell the pollen on you, quiet Kiyomi, the pollen on your mouth, between your legs
—he came again in the morning to ask for my hand and I laughed, I laughed like goats bleating, and I would have nothing of him, for I already knew the sound of his gasps, and that he did not care about the dogwoods. Mother said I was a demon-child, fit only for demons, and would not let me near the soup again—
fit for demons, yes, for demons, for serpents and worms
—she closed me into the rear room and laid me out on the bedroll. I was not afraid, for this was mother, mother, and mother would not harm me, but she held a bowl of foul smelling paste—
green pollen, and sap, and intestines from the little garden snakes
—and with a mouth like cut paper she opened my legs and smeared it into me, whispering that I was a whore, a whore and I would learn to be a good girl, for she did not raise whores in her house—
even later I could smell the little dead snakes, their little dead venom-sacs, I could smell their musk like family
—and oh, it burned me, oh, it scalded the mouth of my womb, still wet with the festival-man, it bubbled within me and mother waited, blowing on the sickly stuff until it dried, and I tried not to cry, I tried not to cry but the tears spilled down, and the bed-roll was wet with salt and paste and I said nothing to her but could not look in her eyes as she held my legs open—
you were still marked with your passion when you came to me, his fingerprints and hers
—until the smear had done its work, and I felt nothing at all there but the echo of the burning, as if I had once, long ago, born a child made all of fire—

In the well of my—
our
—throat I—
we
—too still taste—
feel
—it.

—When the man who was neither joyful nor sorrowing came back from the road to his village, came back with no Kameko, no Kazuyo, I did not care. I mourned my sisters but it meant nothing to me to go into that man’s arms, I told them all I would happily go, with a smile and a proper girl’s bow-and-shuffle. And I took him into the dogwoods—
I care about the dogwoods, your dogwoods, Kiyomi
—no, Mouth, you tell us what we want to hear, every maiden’s dream, to have a monster all her own—
you are no maiden, and without dreams, except of the burning, and the dogwoods
—I took him into the dogwoods and let him lift me up against the stubbled bark, and the green seal broke and I thought I would die of it, I wept into his neck but he did not stop, I cried out and the moon looked blankly back, and the fire was in me again, the fire-baby shoved back inside me, and I bit my own hands to keep from biting him—
I bit your hands to keep from biting his
—and he was pleased with me. He kissed my damp cheeks. He took me by the hand when morning came up the road of Kameko and Kazuyo, the dust-dirt road over the hills, the snake-road, and when I saw the snake I was no more afraid than when I saw the man—
I held you all in me, and it was, for a moment, perfect, as you bore up beneath your passion, and disappeared into my heart. You were all through me, and the dogwoods were full of fire
—and the burning was by then so great that I fell to the ground before it and begged it to cut me in half—
so beautiful, and foolish, they will come, always, dragging wives behind them like quail, and I will teach them about passion, and we will suffer together under the trees and the stars—
to eat up the flames and I together, I did not care, I did not care, a whore never cares—