Short Story: Chan Tui

[this is the short story that I read on Public Radio ("Aloha Shorts") a couple of years ago. I'm not certain where to place it... It's about love, but timewise, it occurs much later than the previous three stories. I was thinking about creating another "Part", "Part III. (A) Way" about living away from home... But everything's still up in the air]

VII. Chan Tui
“Language is hollow
like the echoes of the molted shells of cicadas
at the end of summer”
-Shodo Kawabe, Rinzai Buddhist Monk

“One day I am gonna grow wings
a chemical reaction
hysterical and useless
hysterical and
let down and hangin’ around
crushed like a bug in the ground”
-Radiohead, “Transport”

“Chan Tui,” he murmurs, his eyes half-closed. “Periostracum Cicadae. Salty, Cold. Enters Lungs and Liver. Main functions are to clear wind head, benefit the throat, benefit the eyes.” He scans the flash card. “Close,” he sighs, disappointed.
He’s a 3rd level intern at an acupuncture school in Chinatown. The national board exams in acupuncture and herbology are coming up, and he’s using the down time between patients to brush up on his herbs. He’s sitting in the middle of the herb room, surrounded by wooden drawers up to the ceiling, all with Chinese characters painted on their fronts.
One of the drawers is open before him. It is filled nearly to the brim with what the casual observer would think were a bunch of giant brown fleas. Closer inspection would reveal that, unlike the flea, it is the forelegs that are the most developed in this insect, folded in like the pincers of a praying mantis. Also unlike the flea, the eyes seem well-developed, resembling the ends of Q-tips. Perhaps the most striking thing about these insects is that they are hollow. A split in their backs reveals where the living insect escaped seasons ago.
These are the molted shells of the larval stage of the cicada. Every 17 years in the summertime, these larvae suddenly awaken and dig themselves out from their subterranean nests. They scale nearby trees, and shed their skins. The insects that emerge are the winged, singing cicadas, whose cries fill the humid summer air in Japan.
He remembers that sound well, and as he stares into the hollow eyes of a cicada larva, he can almost hear the incessant, mocking whine.
“Hey!” He turns to see the student-receptionist. “Wake up! You’ve got a patient.”
***
“Hi.” The croak that emerges is dry and raspy, so instead, she whispers, with exaggerated mouthing. “Sorry,” she says, pointing to her throat. “This is why I’m here. I caught a cold and my throat is really sore. I can barely talk.”
He finds, for a moment, that he suffers from the same problem, but for an entirely different reason. Finally, he regains his composure. “Erica Miyasato, right?”
She smiles uncertainly. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I mean, no.” She raises her left hand. A delicately shaped diamond ring adorns her finger. “It’s Erica Kitani now.” She tilts her head, her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry. You’re-“
”We were in Koteki band together,” he answers quickly. “Once, we went to Japan together for the summer pilgrimage.”
“Oh yeah,” she says, placing his face, but still unable to name him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m alright,” he says, with a brief smile. “Guess you can tell what I’ve been studying.”
She looks around him at the cramped confines of the treatment room. It’s not impressive, but she still manages a grin. “Cool.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence as he struggles to say, or not say, something. Finally, he shrugs his shoulders. “Well, let’s get started, alright?”
***
She is just as he remembers her, only more mature, more solid, more real. It makes her that much more dangerous. A man in the desert can ignore a simple mirage of an oasis, but if that mirage appears right before him, beckoning him with the smell of water, then he is much closer to giving in to his illusions.
He had come up with a way of thinking about the skin for just such situations. Skin was the container of being. It might take different forms, some pleasing and some not, but ultimately, as innocent as a cup holding water. So long as he only dealt with the cup, he didn’t have to worry about drinking or spilling the water.
He usually found the metaphor effective.
Except today.
“Do you have any questions before I start?” he asks coolly.
“Well, yes,” she answers in a whisper. “You’ve explained why the points are special. But how do they affect my body inside?”
“Hmmm,” he stalls. Like most of the people that come to this school clinic, Erica is a first timer, wanting to find how the medicine works. And although he is able to explain a few things with more or less verifiable scientific evidence, there are many mysteries opaque even to him. This is one of them, and is perhaps the greatest of them all. It’s easy to say that the acupuncture points are distinct because they have a demonstrably lower electrical resistance than the surrounding skin. But to go from there and explain how needling those points on the skin effects inner physiological changes? That’s another matter entirely. “Well, there’s no Western scientific way to explain it. You just have to take it on faith that there are channels connecting the skin to the internal organs.”
He knows she is dissatisfied with his answer, but what can he do? “Okay, are you ready?” he asks.
She nods.
He prepares himself to needle the first point, which must be bled. He swabs the skin with alcohol, gloves his hands. Then, he grasps her index finger, strokes it from the base to below the nail, summoning the blood to the tip. He exposes the lancet. Just before he punctures the point, he closes his eyes and recites its name (he is, after all, studying for his acupuncture boards as well): “Shang Yang, Shang being the fifth note in the Chinese musical scale, and Yang from Yin-Yang. When bled, the point releases blockages in the Large Intestine channel, and is particularly effective for resolving a sore throat.”
He needles the point... and something strange happens. A memory, brief but complete, blossoms...

SHANG YANG
He is still getting used to the accordion. The keyboard part of it’s easy, since he plays the piano outside of Koteki band. But he’s finding the pumping difficult. He’s been struggling to coordinate the music with the drawing in and the drawing out of the pump, but somehow, he always ends up playing the last notes in every musical phrase flat.
Why did they assign him to play the accordion? He looks longingly towards the other end of the practice room, where the fife players are assembled. Erica is there, teaching a group of younger kids to play, among them, his little sister. Why couldn’t he be there as well? He was a pretty good fife player. But no. The band director needed an accordion player, and he was the only viable candidate.
He’s not concentrating on his playing, and he accidentally hits a key while compressing the pump forcefully. The accordion blares out an E-flat. The room goes silent for a moment, everyone shocked by the sound. Then, Erica looks at him, points, laughs warmly. The laughter is contagious (and, from his sister, a bit too raucous and exaggerated), and before he knows it, it’s coming from his lips as well.

He dabs at the point, removing the last few traces of blood.
“Why did you bleed that?” she asks, and then is shocked by the quality of her voice. There is a distinct change in it; it is not as raspy and hoarse. “Whoa.”
“That’s a Jing-well point,” he responds matter-of-factly. “It’s like a pressure valve. We bleed it to release pressure in the channel.”
“That worked well,” she says, experimenting with her voice.
“Ready for the next point?” he asks. “No bleeding this time.”
She smiles and nods.
In his head, he once again recites the name of the point. “Lie Que. So named because it is located on the styloid process of the radius, out of line with the rest of the points on the Lung channel.”
And once again, as he closes his eyes right before needle insertion, he catches a glimpse of their shared past:

BROKEN SEQUENCE
He’s in Japan. It’s hard to believe it, but he’s here. The whining of the cicadas in the background’s the proof.
But what’s more unbelievable is who he’s walking next to.
“Thanks for helping me with my sister,” he says quietly.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Erica replies warmly.
The Tenrikyo Aloha Band had been marching in the Koteki Parade in the city of Tenri when his sister somehow got it into her head that she wanted to get a Fanta Orange Drink from one of the vending machines that they passed on the course. She broke formation and ran towards the sidewalk, scrambling through the crowd that had gathered to watch.
He had tried to give chase to her, but the bulky accordion made things clumsy and difficult. Erica, on the other hand, only had a fife, and she was closer besides. By the time he’d gotten to the vending machine, Erica already had his sister by the arm, and was dragging her back into line.
Now, the parade is over, and his sister is safely in the custody of the adult chaperones.
The two of them, Erica and he, are walking side by side back to the dormitory.
He’s grateful to Erica, but that’s just skin over the well of his feelings. Deep down, underground, something rumbles, something swells to burst the surface, vibrating in its urgency to taste air and fill it with song. He never was aware of it before. It took this very moment, this aliveness in her proximity, to stir it awake.
He tries to look her in the eye, but his stuttering vision only manages a quick glance at her delicately featured face before slipping down to other, innocuous details in their surroundings: a water skipper skimming across the surface of the water in a canal beside the sidewalk; a huge mural of Japanese Anime characters adorned across the top of one of the dorms.
“Erica,” he begins, his throat suddenly dry. He feels unshaped words churn violently within his chest, wanting out. It is said, in such instances, that one has “butterflies in the stomach.” What a euphemism! He feels like he is an expendable cast member in an Aliens movie, and the creature’s about to get out.
She stops walking, looks at him, holds his wandering eyes. “Yes?”
He wants to tell her she’s beautiful, she’s kind, that he feels so- he doesn’t know the word, happy, around her. He opens his mouth-
-and he hears the cicadas whine with intense insistence. The insects, ubiquitously hidden in a million trees across Japan, all suddenly join in a single chorus, their voices mocking, drowning.
“Sorry,” he apologizes breathlessly, finally. “Nothing.”

She seems relaxed, so without pausing, he proceeds to the next point. “He Gu,” he silently mouths. “So called because it is located in the fleshy valley between the first and second metacarpal bones.”
Once again, he closes his eyes before needling, and once again, he receives a vision.

UNION VALLEY
Sheltered somewhere within the verdant walls of Nuuanu Valley is Dendocho, main church for the Tenrikyo religion in Hawaii. It’s where the Koteki, a children’s marching band, holds weekly practices every Saturday.
Across the Pali Highway from Dendocho is Queen Emma Park. He sits between ridge like roots of an old mango tree at the summit of the park’s grassy field.
His eyes are unfocused at first. Then, as a light breeze rustles his loose white T-shirt, stirs the leaves and branches in the tree above, his eyes try to follow its invisible course. He sees it ripple across the grass, all the way to the border of the shade, and out into the sunlight. As the breeze dies, he hears a distant sound, the very sound that drew him here, the very sound that drives him away. He hears the chaotic strains of fifes played by untutored lips, and the booming of rhythmless drums.
She is there, he knows. It’s been almost three years since he saw her in Japan, and now she’s 17, as he is. Unlike himself, she has consistently participated in the Koteki, teaching the next generation of children how to play the fife.
Why is he here? He can’t say. He feels a longing to see her face again, but he doesn’t know how to respond if he himself is seen- or what’s worse, seen through. So, he sits on this rock, beneath this tree, in the same valley, in a different world.

“Okay,” he says quietly, waking her from an endorphin induced slumber. “I’d like you to
sit here, and rest your head on the treatment table.”
She blinks her eyes sleepily, and complies, folding her forearms on the table, and resting her forehead on her hands. Her hair is in a ponytail, and the pale curve of her neck is exposed.
“Last point,” he whispers. His fingers stairstep down the vertebrae of her neck, stopping below the large seventh cervical. He closes his eyes. “Da Zhui,” he thinks to himself silently, before inserting the needle.

GREAT HAMMER
Every summer, towards the end of August, the Tenrikyo church holds a bazaar at the Dendocho. There, they sell used clothes, toys, and other goods, along with a lot of foodstuffs like andagi and huli-huli chicken. It’s a popular event, and the place is always overcrowded.
He’s here, ostensibly to spend the $30 of scrips that his grandmother gave him. For a while, he wanders through the crowds like a shadow, his eyes drifting across the endless faces like a leaf on the wind. He pauses at a few booths to pick up a plate lunch of stew and an iced tea, eating them while standing in the shade of a large pitched tent (there are no seats open).
At around noon, a voice over the PA system announces that the mochi pounding demonstration will begin shortly. Having nothing else to do, he walks over to the roped off section, where a heavy stone mortar sits. Three young men in happi coats and hachimakis wrapped around their heads surround the mortar, holding wooden mallets over their shoulders. A young woman dumps the contents of a steaming basket into the mortar, an amorphous blob of mochikome.
He feels a distant thundering in his chest as he recognizes who the woman is. Erica is as beautiful as ever, dressed in a garish happi coat, her hair tied back beneath a bandanna. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, and drops of sweat bead on the skin of her neck.
“This time,” he thinks to himself. He takes a halting step towards the ropes.
Suddenly, the mochi pounding demonstration begins, and he is shocked to see that she is part of it. The three men pound the mochi in succession, raising their mallets high above their heads, and letting them fall like shafts of lightning. Erica, her hands doused with water, deftly steps in after every third strike and folds the mochi over, before the first man begins the cycle anew. Her job demands timing and swiftness; to go too early would put her at risk of being hit by the ascending third mallet, while going too late might cost her a fractured hand from the impact of the first. But she’s an expert at it. Before long, the rhythm of strikes, punctuated by breathless shouts, takes on a heated, frenzied quality. “Ichi- Ni- San- Shi- IchiNiSanShi!”
When it is finally over, he discovers that his heart is still thundering rapidly. He struggles to still it, breathing deep and slow. He takes another step forward. “This time,” he repeats to himself.
Then, he sees the third mochi pounder lay his mallet aside and embrace Erica fully, his fresh sweat leaving stains upon her happi coat. She seems shocked at first, but then accepts his rough and breathless kiss.
The beating stops.

The clear ringing wakes her from her nap.
She rises from the chair, stretches her arms up, and yawns. It’s only then that she realizes that the needles are out. She looks around the treatment room and notices that he’s nowhere to be found.
She walks out of the treatment room, looking a bit disoriented.
“Uh- hello?” she calls, and notices her voice is almost clear.
The ringing stops.
“In here!” he calls from the herb room.
She follows his voice, and sees him standing over a small brass mortar, crushing something with a wooden pestle. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” she says, smiling warmly. “What are you doing there?”
“I’m completing an herbal formula for you,” he says. “I’m just grinding up the last ingredient. To make it more easily absorbable.” That last part is a half lie.
He pours the contents of the mortar, brown waxy fragments, onto a square of parchment paper, beside the honeysuckle, chrysanthemum and other herbs. Then, he folds the paper into a wide burrito-shaped packet. He deposits the packet into a bag, along with a sheet of paper. “Here you go,” he says, handing her the bag. “An herbal formula, along with instructions on how to make it.”
“Thank you,” she says. Then she touches his hand, and catches his eyes. “Really, thank you.”
Long after he sheepishly mumbles his reply, long after she has left the clinic, he hears the echo of her voice ring inside his head. He’s unaware that he’s smiling as he sweeps up the few remaining fragments of Chan Tui into his hand and throws them away.
Then, he scans the drawers looking for the next herb on his study list.