Hopeful Monsters Read online

  She heard the squidge squidge squidge of shoes going past her door. The soft murmur of voices.

  Heart pounding, Hisa held her baby snug. She stepped through the doorway and walked down the long, clean hallway. The bite of pine cleanser and ammonia. The sound of babies squawking behind closed doors.

  She could feel something behind her.

  Hisa’s heart clenched.

  She did not look over her shoulder.

  A weight. A balance. A graceful length that slid through air, weaving a subtle pattern.

  Hisa smiled.

  All Possible Moments

  Sunlight drapes a thin orange fabric and the breeze describes the movement. The clothes ebb and flow. I watch you breathing the hot summer air. The library was cool after the mid-day pavement, cars exhausting all possibilities of a still moment. That afternoon. The subject of love and the object of love were filed together. The yellow index cards creased and stained with thousands of hands before me. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands, how could I know? I caught my breath. A woman looked up from her cool, smooth table and our eyes met for a moment. Threads of saffron, gold, and blood oranges. The fabric breathes with your breath. The play of light through silky fibres. Your skin. The whirring hum of cold air circulated through the glass room. Frowning, sweating patrons stumbled through the automatic doors, a moment of loss and confusion when the summer heat turned into cool reflection. Oblique anticipation. A shiver of breath across sticky foreheads, half-circles of sweat cupping their armpits. Their cells died. Every day. Water lifting off skin, a salty residue. They came for books on hold, special collections, translations of molecules. Out of the volume of heat into a container of quiet. “Of Love” the index card read. Subject/Object. The index cards filled five-and-one-third long, wooden drawers. Moth. Mother. Mouth. “Mouth,” I mouthed. Did they mean lips? Lost Love. Lover’s Leap. Love’s Lie. The heart leapt. Then pattered back to normalcy. Your skin darker than cedar. The sun’s gold catches in the fine hairs of your arms. The dappled play of light ripples like water. Fresh. A book lying face-down, waiting to be read. A book I will read. Breathe. A whisk of sound, soft soles on cold marble floors. The cart creaked with books, hard soft covers beading with condensation. The librarian’s mouth pinched disapproval. A towel draped over one shoulder. “Air conditioning,” she muttered. And strode toward a small door marked Private. Water droplets marked her passage. I licked the beading above my upper lip. Closed my eyes. A cool trickle of air flickered across my skin, my back shuddering spine. You roll over, your leg sliding from beneath the thin cotton sheet. The muscle curves, dimples behind your knee, a pocket of summer cupping heat. I purse my lips and blow gently. The thin orange curtain waxing and waning with my breath. Breathing. Dizzy, my hand dropped on open drawer. The heavy wood collided with the cold floor, the sharp sound ringing down long hallways, the high ceilings, patrons jerked from narratives of first love, lost loves, longing. Startling beyond subject and object. The index cards fluttered like leaves, flower petals. Sara, sara, sara, sara. Para, para, para, para. That afternoon. Picking up the index cards of love the insides of my hands were saturated with something oily. I was repulsed before I felt desire. It seeped into my skin. The perfume held within my cells. By the time the librarian and her assistant returned, annoyed and brisk, I was drunk on the smell. It filled the room, condensation running down the glass of tall windows. People rose from their chairs, left open books on cold tables, and waded dreamily back into the summer heat. The thin orange curtain cannot keep it out. But the breeze prevails, describing all possible movements. The waxing and waning of your breath. Breathing. You smile in your sleep as I wait your waking. A book face down on the floor beside the bed. Oblique anticipation.

  Your eyes open.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to all who have made this book possible. My family, friends, communities surround me, and my writing life and living life spill messily and joyfully into all arenas. Thank you to Koji and Sae for keeping me real and sharing with me the magic of your lives. My gratitude and love to my family, near and far. Tamotsu, Kyoko, Naoe, Naomi, Nozomi, Chris, and Craig, your support is every writer’s dream come true. Tiger, thank you for teaching me early to delight in the absurdities of life. Your ganbare attitude, generosity, and big laughter during hard times I truly respect. And thank you, Ayumi (my sissssterrr), for always letting me know you believe in my writing.

  I cannot express my gratitude to dear friends, Rita and Tamai, who’ve graciously answered my middle-of-the-night-pleas-for-feedback-before-the-deadline calls. Bless your generous hearts.

  Ashok, could anyone else have a sweeter, kinder, separated-at-birth-twin brother than you? I think not. (Plus, you make a damn fine martini. . . .)

  Thank you, dear friends, whose love, humour and support keep me smiling in spite of the (global) madness. Especially Rita, for tonkatsu sleep-overs and your love of sweet mackerel, Susanda, for your gift of listening and sharing your laughter, and Eva, for the fine lunches, cutting to the core of the matter, and your poetic heart. Big hugs to Ivana, Larissa, Ritz, and Aruna, my life would be dreary without you.

  Roy, you’re a great (and funny) travel buddy! Thank you for supporting my work.

  Rita, Chieko, Margarida, thank you so much for all your help with child-care. Writers who are mothers could never make it unless they have people like you in their lives.

  Editors who have helped me through earlier drafts of these stories are gratefully acknowledged. Aritha van Herk, Nalo Hopkinson, Emily Pohl-Weary, Alana Wilcox, Rosemary Nixon and the fiction editors at Ms, thank you for your keen eyes, astute observations. I am also thankful to Leslie Ellestad for medical feedback. Errors of facts (or outright weirdnesses) are my own.

  A few of these stories go back many years. I would like to acknowledge my classmates in the fiction courses at the University of Calgary and my wonderful teachers there, Aritha van Herk and Fred Wah.

  The fabulous folks at Arsenal Pulp Press: my thanks to Blaine, Brian, Kiran, Trish, and Robert. I’m so happy to have a book with you.

  The title story was influenced, in part, by Wendy Pearson’s excellent paper, “Sex/uality and the Hermaphrodite in Science Fiction, or, The Revenge of Herculine Barbin” published in Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. The quote on “hopeful monsters” is based on a 1977 article by Stephen Jay Gould entitled “The Return of Hopeful Monsters” published in Natural History 86 (June/July): 22– 30. The quotes on breastfeeding in “Tales from the Breast” were found in Your Child’s First Journey by Brinkley, Goldberg, and Kukar, 1988, 2nd edition. The cover image of this book is a dental x-ray taken by Barb Sindell. Thanks to Sandra Semchuk who suggested the image be used for the cover.

  The follwing stories were previously published in slightly different versions: “Night” in West Coast Line, Spring 1993 and subsequently anthologized in Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature, 1996. “Tilting” in Boundless Alberta, Aritha van Herk (ed), Newest Press, 1993. “Tales from the Breast” first published as “Are You A Suitable Candidate to Breastfeed Your Baby?” in absinthe, Winter 1995 and subsequently published in Ms and anthologized in Witpunk, Claude Lalumière and Marty Halpern (eds), 2003. “Stinky Girl” in Due West, Aritha van Herk (ed), 1996, and Girls Who Bite Back, Emily Pohl-Weary (ed), 2004. “Osmosis” in Millennium Messages, Kenda D. Gee and Wei Wong (eds), 1998. “Drift” in Ms, Volume ix, No. 3, April/May 1999. “Home Stay” in WestCoastLine, No. 29, 33/2, Fall 1999 and subsequently anthologized in And Other Stories, George Bowering (ed), 2001. “From Across a River” in This Magazine, Winter 2001. “All Possible Moments” in Windsor Review, 2004.

  I would like to gratefully acknowledge the generous support of The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, and especially the 2003– 04 writer-in-residency at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in conjunction with the University of Northern British Colum
bia and Powell Street Festival.

  HIROMI GOTO is the author of the novels The Kappa Child, winner of the James Tiptree, Jr Award, and Chorus of Mushrooms, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for First Book (Canada-Caribbean) and co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award, and the children’s book The Water of Possibility, a selection of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. She lives in Burnaby, B.C.