Excerpt from Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawada, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter 1 Munun Speaks

Rain's really something. It washes everybody's footsteps away, and never complains. The dirt turns into a thin brown rope flowing off to the side, never to be seen again. There must be a secret entrance to an underground passage beside the road. The rain keeps washing, washing, washing until it starts to feel tired. When it's out of breath, the splashes slow down, su-pu-lash, su-pu-lash. Cleaning the street can really wear you out.

I see a woman I know, coming this way with her white parasol. She looks different without her white coat, but I can tell she's the nurse who once gave me a box of cookies called "Cats Tongues." She once told me she's always late because she has to drive her daughter all the way to school before she comes to work. I hear her high heels tap, tap, tapping as she comes closer until her knees are level with my eyes. Then, her feet make a right turn and she's gone.

We're in a half basement, below ground. Guess they can't see us from the outside.

Vita and I wash dishes down here. There's a silver metal hose spurting hot water that we call "the snake." It spits water onto a plate and the goo slides right off. When the plates are white again, we slot them into a plastic tray with little fences to keep them apart. When it's full, I give it a push to start it rattling down a tunnel, like a train going down the tracks. There must be invisible people in there, about the size of your thumb, scrubbing off the leftover bits with brushes. The plates are gleaming when they come out the other side. They even look rounder than when they were dirty.

Sometimes I stop a while to look at the patterns on the dirty plates. I wonder what the patients had for lunch. At least one always leaves a whirlpool on his plate. That's what happens when you chase the leftover mayonnaise or gravy around with a piece of bread. Maybe if you think about the same thing over and over again, you get a whirlpool in your head. Like a vicious circle. Another patient always leaves tits and a butt sketched in mayonnaise or Worchester sauce. Maybe he's thinking about somebody while he's eating. There's something I don't like about the one who draws an oval, then crosses it out with slanted lines. Some leave just one big blob. And maybe the guy who leaves little spots like measles all over his plate turns into a leopard after lunch. A used plate is a person's soul, all flattened out.

Sometimes while I'm working, my glasses slip down. I pull my shoulders in close to my chin, and use them to push my glasses back up. That's because I don't want to touch the lenses with my wet rubber gloves. I was busy reading my fortune in the pattern on a dirty plate when I felt Vita looking at me. I looked up and sure enough, there she was. That little dark space where she's missing a front tooth is really cute.

"We can't read-weed, can we?"

"Yes we can-pan."

"Munun, can you read the newspaper-caper?"

"I can read plates-mates. Plates-mates and the papercaper. And I can read the moon-loon. The moon-loon and the papercaper."

"The moon-loon isn't out yet."

"When night-tight comes, the moon-loon will rise."

"Where does the moon-loon come from?"

"I don't know-toe. We come from faraway too."

"What about the stars-mars?"

"The stars-mars stay where they are, and talk to us from there-bear."

I talk to Vita in our special language. We made it ourselves. When we try to talk like other people our tongues get in the way, and we can't make it to the next sound. We stutter, and get stuck. "You're a snake," somebody told me when I was little: "your tongue's too long." Wouldn't it be something if I really were a snake? Vita says she's got a long tongue too. Sticking in a rhyme here and there for our extra-long tongues makes it easier to talk. Our language doesn't have any set rules. Just stick in a rhyme now and then, to make things easier.

Excerpted from Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawanda. Copyright © 2024 by Yoko Tawanda. Excerpted by permission of New Directions Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.