I.

All we have to cover ourselves is a washcloth. My four older sisters-in-law and me. Our mother-in-law is here, too. We’re fussing about hair and humidity, mildly aware of our American-ness, our suitcases, our skin.

Hakone is known for its hot springs, and my newest sister-in-law and her mother have brought us to this sacred space. Maybe we say the views of Mt. Fuji are stellar; maybe we say the air smells like eggs. All I know is that, aside from this washcloth, I am fully naked with these women. And apart from the middle school panic of the girls’ locker room, it is the first time in my life that I’ve shared such an intimate setting. I don’t have a sister. I resent the cage of the kitchen and live hostage situations like Pampered Chef and other pyramid schemes like families. I don’t like small talk about weather. Sometimes, often, I forget to eat. I view my sisters-in-law’s nude bodies and witness stretch marks like screams. I regard the C-section scars with horror and admiration.

An attendant leads us into a private room with its own jetted hot spring, and we all climb into the tub. While we talk, my washcloth drifts downstream. For a moment, I am completely exposed. A sister-in-law gestures toward the towel. The other sisters laugh, and I laugh, too, but, internally, I am terrified to be a body. And, in this family, that is simultaneously my own and not my own, I am only a body. And I will only ever be a body for other bodies.

II.

When I gave birth to Dahlia, my youngest daughter, something was wrong. The routine C-section stretched well beyond its natural conclusion. The baby was born and cleaned and wrapped, but still the doctor worried over my torso. She’s still bleeding.

I was still in the hospital bed, just wheeled into recovery from the delivery room, when it happened. The nurse secured my bed, but the room wobbled. My body felt shaky. Was it the bed or me? Another nurse wheeled in Dahlia, placing the hospital bassinet next to me. The room narrowed.

I was in a tunnel.

A rush of blood leaks out of me and then another. I’m sinking. I see my baby, and I’m sinking. The room narrows even more; the edges tear. Seeping black and visual fuzz, but I hear the nurse: Here is your baby. She places the baby in my arms as someone sounds the all call. Stay with me. Look at Dahlia. Stay with me, Mama. Stay here with Dahlia.

III.

I don’t like to think about this moment, don’t like to think about how much blood I lost and how they couldn’t stop the bleeding and how this birth experience necessitated an emergency second surgery to find any internal bleeding. This was the opposite of Julia’s arrival: Julia had refused to come out so they had to go in. Julia: my first C-section. And the doctor pulling out Julia with the hole in her heart.

Three abdominal surgeries: Julia, Dahlia, and the emergency one. There is a fourth scar: the foot-long zigzag up from my pubic bone to several inches above my belly button from a later, botched, hysterectomy.

IV.

I remember Hakone every November when I hang my daughters’ baby bunting, their names carefully embroidered on vintage fabric, above their birthday cake. I hadn’t seen my ex-sisters-in-law for over a decade the November I fell and gashed my leg clear to the bone. I snake-crawled through the yard, hobbled across the street, and knocked on my neighbor’s back door. I needed a woman. I needed a body who took care of other bodies. I figured if I passed out from blood loss, my neighbor who was a nurse would find me when she let out her dog to pee. She opened the door and had me sit down. I worried I’d bleed on her sofa. By this time, I was hyperventilating. Stay with me, she said. Stay here.

But I was back in the tunnel.

Well. You’re gonna pass yourself out if you keep breathing all huffy.

V.

The worst part of divorce is leaving your own life. When I divorced, I never said goodbye to my four sisters-in-law. What I wish I could ask them: How is your weather, and how are you? Do you remember that time we were naked in Hakone?

Do you remember my body?

Can you see my scars?