Page 63 of The Gods Will Sing Our Song

“Emi…she needs blood…Violet…” Words tumble deliriously from me. “Please, can you help?”

My hand gropes through the empty air. Violet grabs it tight, like I might collapse if she doesn’t. And she’s right. I might.

“It’s all right,” she says. I grip her hand too tightly. I’ll hurt her. I need to loosen my hold, but I don’t know if I can. I need help. I need Violet. “My mother is a match. She went to give blood. She can help Emi.”

“Okay.” The breath behind the word is faint and confused. I try to push the blanket back, but Violet puts her free hand on my chest and pushes me down.

“You’ll faint again. Let me get you some water.”

She doesn’t understand. Emi needs me. I’m all right, but Emi isn’t. I struggle to get up. Everything swims. I take a step forward. Or, I think I do. But somehow, I’ve fallen back into the bed and the world is wavery and…

The memory is fuzzy and doesn’t make any sense.

I know I stumbled back to the hospital with Violet supporting me, her arm tight around my waist. I heard a shriek. It was Mama, who only shrieks when she’s drunk, but she’s not drunk right now. Mr. Nomura’s face was haggard and sad. He took my arm and sat me down and told me something crazy. Something that can’t be true.

He told me Emi was dead.

Part Two

Dark

暗い

Chapter Eighteen

Ren

A baby squalls and I’m holding it.

I’m reinserted into my body. I’ve been somewhere else. Maybe in the closet where Emi reads to me. It’s the only safe place we know. She’s protecting me. She wants to change the world around us and can’t, so she turns to other ones, ones inside books, and she finds a way to get me inside them, too. She casts spells so strong as she reads to me that she saves me, over and over, so much so that the sound of drunken arguments, drunken screwing, drunken sobbing can’t touch me.

But there’s no closet.

Emi is gone.

A strange, red-faced, tiny, soft human is cradled in my hands because Mama won’t look at it and it’s a girl and I think I might vomit because Emi’s daughter is here, but she isn’t, and I can hear Emi saying, “Ren! Why are you holding my baby like a baseball glove?” only she never said it and never will because she’s…she’s…My mind refuses the word in the way the stomach refuses food when it’s ill or the lungs refuse air when you’ve been punched.

Dead.

I make myself think the word. Make myself say it. Make myself know it.

But still, I don’t believe it.

Kai goes to the administration offices. Gets baby stuff. Comes back with yellow cans of instantized powdered milk for the baby, three white cotton diapers, two glass nurser bottles, and two steel safety pins. Everything is confusing. Too loud. I want to hear Emi’s voice one more time. Mama lies in Emi’s bed. Won’t talk to anyone. Mr. Nomura sits next to her. Mrs. Wozumi shows me how to swaddle the baby, Akiko perched on her hip and waving her arms.

“Be careful with the diapers. You only have three,” she says. “I wash them in the laundry room. Don’t use the latrines. They aren’t hygienic. Remember you need to have time for the diapers to dry between use. Oftentimes, I must wait to change Akiko because I don’t have a dry diaper for her. It causes rashes, though, so I try not to wait too long. Be careful with the pins.”

“All right,” I say.

“Now, you need to sterilize bottles between uses. You can go to the hospital or the laundry room to do it. Oh, and get a hot plate for heating bottles. If you have a baby, they let you have one in your room. You’ll unplug your overhead light and use the socket for it.” She looks from me to the baby to Mama curled on the bed. “Do you want me to take the baby for tonight?”

“No thank you.”

“Have you named her?”

Cosette. Emi wanted to name the baby Cosette, if it was a girl, because of the book. The big one, Les Misérables. My eyes travel to Emi’s stack of novels, Les Misérables on top. A piece of paper sticks out from the middle, showing where we left off. How can Emi’s books be here when she isn’t? Life has always been a bad joke to me, but Emi’s death has taken me somewhere I never knew existed. I’m stupid with grief. It has stunned me, like I’ve been in an explosion and my ears are whining, my vision is bleached bright white, and my body is broken. But, somehow, I’m walking. I’m talking. I’m holding a baby.

“Cosette,” I tell Mrs. Wozumi. “Her name is Cosette.”