Jennifer Macaire "Ningyo" (Short Story) for Literary Potpourri)

Can you see her? She swims just under the surface of your dream. Her hair floats, golden, around her shoulders. Just beneath the waves there is a calm place. There can be storms and water can crash and buck in white foam like horses, but if you go deep enough, you will reach stillness. She swims deeper into the ocean and dreams that dolphins play with her. Their sad eyes wink at her and they smile, smile, without ever stopping. Joy fills her heart - she sings.

Once upon a time she was a little girl. Her name was Aki. Sometimes her mother called her Ningyô. That means 'my baby doll.' Now she is Ningyô, the mermaid.

Itano was her brother. He was small and his black hair grew straight up on his head. He laughed, and it sounded like gurgles underwater. Her mother gave her rice in a blue bowl, and her father watched television and laughed, rice spilling from his mouth. Her mother scolded him. She can't remember his face, or her mother's face, but if she closes her eyes, she can see the living room and the low, black table with blue bowls upon it. There were blue bowls full of rice, so she knows it was real.

She had a favorite doll. It slept with her, cuddled under her chin, her arms wrapped around its soft body.

One day she never went back home. He found her. He took her and made her into his baby doll. When he grabbed her, he put his hand over her mouth and pulled her into his car. It happened too fast - one minute she was behind her mother on the street, the next minute she was gone. When she tries to remember this day the only thing she can see clearly are the backs of her mother's legs.

When she stopped crying, the man told her she was his doll now. His doll now. HIS doll now. And she had no more tears left inside her head. He found her, and when she woke up she was in this place. She never saw her little brother or her mother and father again. Most of the time, she slept.

A woman in a store called the police. He'd been coming in for years, nine years to be exact, and each time he bought a package of hair bleach. Golden Sun hair bleach. She called the police because he'd forgotten to pay her and he'd left in a hurry. She told them about the bleach - it suddenly occurred to her. He was a single man, a very quiet, polite, single man with black hair. Whose hair did he bleach? The woman in the store apologised for telling them about something so insignificant, but could they please go to the man's apartment and get her money? He owed her one thousand yen. The police knocked on his door. They waited a long time for him to answer. When he did, he was wrapped in a bathrobe and his hair was wet.

"Who is the bleach for?" One policeman asked.

He stepped backwards, fear on his face. "What bleach? I have no bleach."

That was when they heard the singing.

"What is that?" And the hair on the back of the policeman's neck prickled.

Dolls sing, dolls cry. Dolls wet their pants and have to be changed. She thought she was a little girl, but now she is a doll and the dreams she has about another family come from evil spirits who want to see her cry. He told her so. He knows what's best. He took all the tears out of her head. He puts her on the bed, and moves her arms and legs. She must be a doll - otherwise, how could he do that?

She lives in a room with no windows, and the doors are always closed. One leads to the bathroom. One goes to the outside. She stopped trying to go through it. The punishments were too awful.

The bathroom has a bathtub big enough for two. She is always clean. When she cries, she is beaten, and then he comforts her afterwards and it makes her ill.

She is often sick and He gives her medicine and she sleeps. Her stomach hurts all the time, but she is used to it. He bleaches her hair - and never cuts it. It hangs down her back like a golden waterfall. He takes pictures of her and tells her she is the most beautiful creature in the world. The pictures are all over the wall, and they stare at her with huge eyes and legs spread wide. It's her. It's a doll. Even her hair looks like plastic.

"My ningyô, my baby doll," He whispers, as he holds her tight. He sleeps with her tucked under his chin, his arms wrapped around her.

There are no windows and the door is always locked. She asks for sweets but he's afraid she'll get fat and change. He doesn't want her to grow, to change. She sleeps, and in her dreams there are other children and other dolls. They look at her with huge eyes and if she tries to speak, they say 'hush, hush, hush.' When she listens, she hears the ocean. Ningyô! When he runs the bathwater, she hears the waves crashing on the beach. If she can only get out of this room, she will swim away.

"Why do you want to leave?" He always asks her that when she begs him to let her go. "You belong to me. You have clothes and books. I read you stories. Here, let me run you a bath."

There is a knock on the door. They have come back for him. Then He leaves - and the door is ajar. She can escape now. The ocean is calling. She hears waves on the beach and already her feet are turning into a fish tail.

She tries to remember Itano, her baby brother and her mother and father, but the memory of floating in the waves is stronger. Once upon a time she was a little girl, and then she was stolen and made into a doll - now she will be a mermaid. Ningyô means mermaid too, if you say it right. You have to say it right, and it will come true. If she moves her arms and legs just so - and lets the water close over her face - ningyô will become ningyô, and she will go home.

Now - water is green all around her and the light softly dims in her eyes. Ningyô - She was a doll but now her body is sleek in the water as a mermaid.

Here come blue dolphins with sorrow in their eyes.

NINGYÔ

by

Jennifer Macaire