Koi Skin Deep

I took off the sailor collar first.

The white stripe against navy blue came loose in my fingers, and I laid it on the grass beside the pond. The fabric was warm from my skin, from the afternoon sun that pressed down on everything like a damp hand. My mother bought this uniform three months ago. She said it made me look like a proper young lady. She said it with her mouth tight, the way she said everything now, like the words cost her something to push out.

I unbuttoned the front. Five black buttons, each one smaller than the last, sliding through their holes with a sound like seeds dropping into dry soil. The pleated skirt came next. I stepped out of it and left it in a heap, the hem brushing against the koi pond's edge where the moss grew thick and green.

The water was darker than I remembered.

I stood at the edge in my undershirt and shorts, and the fish were already moving beneath the surface. They knew something was coming. They always know. Their orange bodies slid through the murk like lanterns underwater, slow and deliberate, tracing circles that meant nothing and everything.

I used to come here with my grandmother.

She would sit on the wooden bench under the persimmon tree, her legs too short to reach the ground, and she would tell me that koi remember the faces of the people who feed them. She said they never forget a kindness. She said they never forget a cruelty either. She said the fish store everything in their bodies, every moment, every touch, every shadow that falls across the water.

She died in April.

I pulled off my shorts. The grass was cool against my bare thighs. The undershirt went next, and I stood there in nothing but my underwear, a seventeen-year-old girl in her backyard, and I could feel the neighbors' windows watching me even though I knew no one was home. The Takahashi house sat empty. The Yamadas were at work. The old man next door had been dead since winter, and no one had bought his house yet.

I was alone.

That was the point.

The first toe touched the water and I felt it. Cold. Not the sharp cold of a mountain stream, but the thick cold of something that has been sitting in shade for a long time, holding its breath. The mud squished between my toes and I thought about what lived down there. Worms. Beetles. The bones of dead fish. The things that settle at the bottom when no one is looking.

I stepped in deeper.

The water climbed my ankle. My calf. My knee. The koi scattered at first, then came back. They circled my legs, their mouths opening and closing, asking for something I didn't have. One of them brushed against my shin and I flinched. Its skin was smooth and strange, like wet velvet over something harder underneath.

I kept walking.

The pond was deeper than it looked. My grandmother told me once that her father dug it himself, back when this house was new. He dug it by hand, she said. Took him three summers. He wanted something beautiful in the yard, something that would outlast him. She said that with her eyes fixed on the water, and I knew she was thinking about the other things he left behind.

The mud gave way to something slick. I felt the bottom drop. The water hit my waist and I kept going. My underwear floated around me, the fabric lifting like a jellyfish. I thought about my mother finding them later, wet and heavy, draped over the fence to dry. I thought about what she would say.

She would say nothing.

That was the worst part.

The water reached my chest and I stopped. The koi were all around me now, a dozen of them at least, their bodies pressing against my skin. They were not afraid. They had never learned to be afraid of anything that entered their world. They accepted. That was their gift and their curse. They accepted the bread crumbs and the fingers that reached in to touch them. They accepted the heron that came once a year and took one of them away. They accepted the rain and the heat and the cold and the girl who waded into their home wearing nothing but white cotton.

I took a breath and went under.

The world went quiet. The sound of the cicadas disappeared. The sound of the highway a mile away disappeared. The sound of my own thoughts, the ones that had been running in circles since April, the ones that told me I should have been there, should have answered the phone, should have known something was wrong, all of it went away.

Underwater, there was only pressure.

Pressure on my ears. Pressure on my chest. The weight of the pond pushing down on me like a blanket made of water. I opened my eyes and the world was green and brown and full of moving shapes. The koi swam past my face. One of them looked at me. I mean really looked. Its eye was black and round and it held me in its gaze for a long moment before it turned and disappeared into the murk.

I stayed under until my lungs burned.

Then I stayed a little longer.

When I came up, the air hit my face like a slap. I gasped. The water ran down my hair, my shoulders, my chin. I wiped my eyes and looked at the house. It stood there the way it always did, white walls and blue roof tiles, the sliding door to the kitchen half open. My uniform was still on the grass. My shoes were still by the bench. Everything was exactly where I left it.

Nothing had changed.

I had been hoping something would change.

I floated on my back and looked at the sky. It was that pale summer blue that happens in July, the color of a faded kimono, the color of something that used to be brighter. Clouds moved slowly from left to right. I watched them and let my body go limp. The water held me. It didn't ask questions. It didn't want anything from me except my warmth, and I had plenty of that to give.

The koi came back.

They nudged my shoulders. My neck. The soft skin behind my knees. They were curious about this pale thing that had entered their world, this creature that breathed air and made ripples. One of them nibbled at my hair and I laughed. The sound was strange. I hadn't laughed in weeks. It came out of me like something that had been trapped, surprised to find itself free.

I thought about my grandmother's hands.

They were small and wrinkled and always cold. She used to hold my face between them and tell me I was going to be something. She never said what. Just something. She said it like it was a fact, like the sun rising in the east, like the koi remembering. She said it with such certainty that I believed her. I believed her the way I believed in gravity, in the multiplication table, in the fact that the floor would hold me when I stood.

But the floor did not hold her.

The floor gave way and she fell and no one caught her. She fell in her kitchen, alone, with the rice cooker still steaming and the television still playing her favorite show. She fell and she hit her head and she lay there for six hours before my mother found her.

I was at school.

I was taking a test on the Meiji Restoration.

I got a ninety-three percent.

I stopped floating. I stood up. The water came to my chest and I felt the mud between my toes again, thick and cold, holding my feet like it didn't want to let go. The koi scattered and then regrouped, watching me from a safe distance.

I looked at the house again.

My mother would be home in two hours. She would find my uniform on the grass. She would find my shoes by the bench. She would find me in the kitchen, maybe, or in my room, or maybe she would find nothing at all because I would still be here, standing in the pond, waiting for something to happen.

But I was not waiting anymore.

I was done waiting.

I waded toward the shore. The water fell away from my body in stages, my shoulders first, then my chest, then my waist. The koi followed me to the edge and stopped. They would not leave the water. They could not. That was the rule of their world, the boundary they could not cross.

I stepped onto the grass.

The air was hot and heavy. The water ran down my legs and darkened the earth. I picked up my uniform and held it in my hands. The fabric was still warm. The buttons were still black. The collar was still white and crisp and perfect.

I could put it back on.

I could go inside and dry my hair and pretend this never happened. I could be the girl my mother wanted me to be, the girl who took the test and got the grade and never made a sound. I could be that girl for the rest of my life.

I looked at the pond.

The koi were waiting at the surface. Their mouths opened and closed. Their eyes watched me with that ancient patience, that acceptance that had nothing to do with forgiveness.

I dropped the uniform in the grass.

I walked into the house naked.

The sliding door was still half open. The kitchen was empty. The rice cooker was off. The television was off. The whole house was holding its breath, waiting to see what I would do next.

I did not know yet.

But I was going to find out.