Week 11 Theme - Words

The tatami was soft under my feet, the layers of woven rice straw giving under my weight.  It was old by Japanese standards, a bit frayed and yellow-gold (nice, new tatami is greenish hued and smells of fresh rice fields).  But I didn’t care.  It was mine.  The spare bedroom, which I entered rarely had tatami as well, but it was here, in my bedroom, that I found my little haven.

                My feet were sore from bike rides home.  Everyone laughed at me.  “You have a car!” they would exclaim, unable to understand how much I about being eco-friendly.  Students would buzz by me on the way to school, some saying hello, some ignoring me.  On the way home my head hung; I felt tired and irritable.  I would come inside, ignoring the t.v., walking into my room and feeling the soft squish, the soft give of that floor under me, and sigh.

                In the summer it was cool to the touch, but not sticky, like the vinyl floor outside my bedroom.  On the unbearable days of August, where turning in your bed caused you to break out in a sweat, all I could do was take refuge in that room, the fan blasting my stripped down body, my hand dangling from my bed to the floor, running my fingers along the ripples and ridges.  The hottest summer was the same year that the final Harry Potter book came out.

I spent hours switching from the bed to the floor, in agony from the heat, face, neck, legs and feet sweating freely.  I read for hours and hours straight, little lined imprints on my legs, my cheek, the tatami pressing into my skin.  Finally, I closed the book, rising like someone coming out of a self-induced coma.
 I could have gone home this summer, but I didn’t.  In March I chose to re-contract, another year here, at this job.  What a miserable feeling, choosing how you’d feel a half a year later.  Deciding that you would really want to stay, but not knowing how much you would miss home.  I came home every day, school hours shorter with the summer holidays and lay on my bed.  My fingers ran back and forth, back and forth, along the ridges of the tatami, staring at nothing, the click of the fan the only sound, as it reversed directions and starting blowing in its endless arc.

My decision haunted me, and soon I was tortured by other things as well.  Unfortunately the flooring of my bedroom wasn’t new, not by a long shot.  It, like everything else in that apartment, should have been replaced long ago.  Invisible to the eye, hiding in the little crevices of straw rice lived dani.  I’m not sure what that translates to in English; perhaps “bedbugs”.  Or, more accurately, “hell”.  Little red dots formed along my wrists as summer faded.  To say they itched was a mockery.  They were fire, and scratching them until they bled was the only water I had.  I wanted to strangle people who said in uppity tones that I shouldn’t scratch.  It was like telling someone whose foot is being consumed by flames, the skin blackening and peeling away, to just continue watching.  Whatever made them itch so badly spread through my bloodstream with every scratch, spreading the pestilence.  A friend bought me 5 different kinds of cream; nothing worked.  Finally a trip to the dermatologist became necessary.

As I used prescription-strength creams to heal myself, I was advised on what to do with the remaining pestilence in my tatami mats.  I sprayed with chemical sprays.  I bought plug needles, attached to cords that ran into a canister, and stuck the needles into the straw.  It supposedly fumigated below the surface.  I ride my bike to school every day, and suddenly I’m buying chemical fumigates.  Even my little haven was being taken away from me.  I bitterly regretted my decision to stay another year.

I didn’t come home and lay on the mats after that.  I hardly entered the room, even.  Every warm spell we had the dani would return, although fortunately not quite as vengeful as that first time.  I didn’t even need to worry about my ability to speak with the doctor.  I just said “the same problem again” and he gave me my cream and sent me on my way.

Finally, after a grueling, long year, it was time for me to leave my apartment.  I felt sad leaving the room, despite all the troubles.  I knew it was going to be a long time before I could feel something soft under my feet like this again.  It was summer; my flight would take me back to the U.S. at the beginning of August.  Just when the dani liked to come out in full fury.  Just for once, I ignored that fact and lay down, staring at the ceiling, one last time.