How to Be an American Housewife (9 page)

And yet, when I danced with Yuki’s boyfriend—not even a slow dance—Tetsuo cut in, enraged. He shoved the boy aside and drew me in to him. “I can’t stand to have anyone else touch you,” he said, putting his hand on the side of my face, gripping my jaw.

I drew my head back and forced a smile. “It’s only a dance.” I did not argue with him about Yuki. My mother said it was better that a man was jealous, to have him care about you more than you cared about him. It kept him close.

Tetsuo looped me next to his body. He slid his hand up and down my back. “Shoko,” he sighed, and he pressed his pelvis close to mine. I tried not to jump. “Shoko, tonight?” He took my hand and brought it to his lips.

I thought quickly. Mother hadn’t gone over this part of relationships. I’d been at a girls’ high school, forbidden to date, and I was naïve in some ways. If I didn’t give in, he might lose interest and move on. Tetsuo was too good of a catch. Handsome and smart and ambitious. But if I did give in, he might also lose interest. I decided to put him off a little longer.

I turned so my back was to him and swayed to the slowing drumbeat. “Soon,” I purred over my shoulder. “Have patience.”

He pulled me back to him again and put his lips on the soft skin of my neck. I shivered. “You drive me crazy, Shoko.” He turned me around and bent down as though to kiss me.

I panicked. A kiss meant I was telling him he could have his way with me. This was how it was during my time. Everyone would see and know. He closed his eyes and his lips landed on the side of my hair. “I do care for you, Tetsuo. But you know I am a nice girl. The sister of your friend.” I hoped that would inspire his sense of honor.

He held out his arm to spin me. As I whirled across the floor, my circle skirt flying out, I saw the eyes of everyone at our table.

 

 

A FEW DAYS LATER, I was walking through the hotel gardens, trying to figure out how to cha-cha. Back, forth, cha-cha-cha. My feet kicked up gravel. I went around the path again and again, my arm on the shoulder of an imaginary partner.

“Very good,” a voice said from where the path forked to my right. I jumped, my hand at my throat. A man stepped into sight.

It was Ronin. Wearing his gardener’s clothes, a hedge clipper in his gloved hands, he bowed. “So sorry to frighten you,” he apologized.

I drew myself up, flushing. What was he doing here? I couldn’t associate with him any longer. Holding my head high, I took the other fork of the path.

“That’s not the way to the hotel,” he said.

“No matter. I’ll find my way.”

He clipped at a bush. “You’ll find yourself in Okinawa before too long.”

I stopped. He was right. I would get lost. I spun around and headed back the way I thought I’d come.

“Still wrong,” Ronin said in a low voice.

I looked away from him. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “The Americans are here now. We’re all equal.”

I thought about what my mother would say, and my father, too, for that matter. He might have taken rice from
burakumin
, but it was another matter to have his daughter socializing with them. “My family is descended from the seal-bearer of the Emperor,” I said.

Ronin leaned on his clippers. “It’s a new era, is it not? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be working as a maid for foreigners.”

“I’m not a maid!” I said. “I’m a salesgirl.”

He grinned. “You’re too smart to work at that hotel. Why don’t you go to college?”

This floored me. “I can’t afford to.”

He shrugged. “Me neither. At least, not right now. Tell you what. You show me how to cha-cha, and I’ll show you how to get out of this maze.”

I pursed my lips. “Fine. But you cannot touch me.”

“Fine,” he said, looking at me in a way that made my insides wiggle like tofu.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I went walking in the gardens often after that. My job in the store wasn’t taxing—in fact, it was so mindless that I wanted to sleep—and I needed the diversion of a friend. Ronin was merely an interesting man. Completely innocent.

I never tried to find Ronin, but he always found me, falling into step so quietly that I leaped up in fright every time, making him roar with laughter.

Then he started bringing food. “I bought it, so don’t worry,” he said, bowing his head.

Now that I knew him, I was ashamed that I’d treated him so disrespectfully before. “Of course I would eat your food. I’m eating with you, after all. It’s no different.”

He looked shamefaced. “It’s just—I’m a rotten chef.”

I laughed.

We sat in the sun, eating from our
bento
boxes. “When I was a child,” he said, “this would have been unheard of.”

“Eating lunch with a beautiful girl or working here?” I teased.

He looked about. “Where is this beautiful girl?” Ronin swallowed his fish hard, to disguise his laughter. “Both, Shoko. We lived in the Eta village and no one would have anything to do with us.”

“Except other Eta.”

“Yes. But no one like you or your family. It was like being a ghost.” He put a cucumber into his mouth. “One day, my mother was at the market, selling the leather shoes that she had made. My mother was a beautiful woman. Almost as beautiful as you.

“She was doing her usual business when an English businessman happened by. He met her eyes and they fell in love.

“He was my father. He sent money, visited from time to time.” Ronin smiled. “I suppose he did what he could. He left for England right before Japan attacked China. He asked my mother to come with him.

“She wanted to go and take me, but the country wouldn’t let her out. They were gearing up to take over the world. No special considerations for her, especially as she was Eta.” He looked into the shrubbery at something I couldn’t see. “It wouldn’t have worked out anyway. Englishman and Japanese.”

“It’s different now,” I said.

“I hope so. I don’t fit in here, I might as well try my luck elsewhere.” He finished his lunch and replaced the red lid with a click. “I have a plan.” He looked at me sideways. “America, here I come. The land of opportunity.”

I was excited despite myself. “What will you do there? Cook in a Japanese restaurant?”

“Landscape. Like I do here, but bigger. I have big dreams, my Shoko.”

How dare he? “I am not ‘your Shoko.’ ”

He ignored that. “There is nothing for me here. I want to be my own boss.”

“I wish you well.” I finished eating my own lunch, demurely taking small bites and chewing slowly. I admired his dreams, but they were as crazy as my diplomat ones. I would not tell him this—what good would it serve?—so he continued to talk and to gaze starry-eyed at me, and I continued to feel guilty. “We are friends only, you know that,” I said to him over and over.

“Friends.” He grinned. “Whatever you say, Shoko.” There was no disguising the hope in his eyes. I wondered if mine were the same.

 

 

MY MOTHER THOUGHT it was time for Tetsuo and me to get engaged. “You can’t run around with only him unless you’re engaged,” she told me. “Everyone will think you’re fast.” Needless to say, she didn’t know about Ronin.

Tetsuo made good money, and had been promoted to work at the front desk. Everyone thought he’d be a manager one day. My brain had to agree with my mother’s logic. It only made sense, though my heart sank when I thought of spending the rest of my life on this island. She arranged it all with Tetsuo’s parents, and we were officially engaged.

Then one day I arrived home from work a little early. I unlocked my door and saw Tetsuo’s face, eyes closed, poised above my prostrate roommate. It took a minute for me to realize what they were doing, since I had never seen it done before. “Aaaah!” I screamed. Yuki screamed. I left the apartment and ran down the street.

“Shoko, wait!” Tetsuo called from the apartment window. “It’s not what it looks like.”

The engagement was off. Secretly, I thanked Tetsuo. I was free again. Then I began my American phase.

Though I flirted with the Americans (all the better for tips), I never had dated one. Plenty wanted to. Of course they did; they were a bunch of young servicemen in love with Japan.

It wasn’t worthwhile for me. There was a ban on dating Japanese girls, effective for all ranks. Not that that stopped many. A girl, Mariko, who worked at the checkout desk did. She was two years older than me, with a long face and teeth a bit too big for her features. Still, she had a nice figure and a sweet laugh.

“She’s seeing a staff sergeant and a lieutenant,” Megumi, who worked with me in the gift shop, whispered. Megumi was a decade older, married to one of the lower-level managers, and the best gossip source in the region.

“Single guys?” I was doubtful.

“And they both want to marry her.” Megumi’s painted-on brows lifted in amazement.

“Pick the officer.” I laughed and dusted another figurine.

Mariko disappeared one day. She didn’t show up for work and no one was interested in finding her.

“What happened?” I asked Megumi.

Megumi shushed me. “She is not coming back.”

“Did she get married?” I asked eagerly.

Megumi waved her hand in front of her face, indicating no.

I understood. Mariko had gotten pregnant and left. Would her family take her in? What would become of her? Poor Mariko. This was not going to happen to me.

Then something surprising occurred. Mariko had been far from the only one dating Americans. Finally the military decided they could no longer ignore the “problem.” They decided to lift the ban on dating and marrying Japanese. Now, provided the Americans got all the proper documentation, they could fraternize with and even marry Japanese. Of course, the military made sure it was nearly impossible to navigate the paperwork maze.

“A thousand signatures by a thousand different officials are required,” Megumi remarked. “No one is getting married anytime soon.”

Nonetheless, it was legal, and therefore possible. None of these Japanese men were going to do anything for me.
America is the way of the future,
I reminded myself of my father’s words.

And Ronin? I couldn’t deny how handsome he was, or how nice. Or how he made me feel, all fine and intelligent and vibrating with life.

But there was no future with an Eta gardener. It would mean everyone I had ever known shunning me. My father would likely get banned from his church. Our family would be ruined, even if I left the country.

My father heard about the ban being lifted. The next time I visited home, he sat me down. “Shoko, this is your opportunity,” he told me.

“What do you think I should do?” I was afraid to hear his answer, but I was a practical girl and knew what was coming.

“You must casually see them, find out what you can about each. Then you can marry the best one. It’s very simple.”

“But what if I can’t?” Speaking to men in a foreign language, saying not just the price of an item but having real conversations, seemed impossible. I was also thinking about Ronin, though I could not tell my father this.

“Many people have managed.” My father’s voice was warm. “Because I cannot meet them all, I have a suggestion. Take pictures of the ones you like the best and I’ll help you choose.”

I agreed.

At the gift shop, I began accepting the Americans’ offers. I had a different date every night, and ended up seeing several casually. Dinner and a movie.

They were all very interesting men in their own ways. One was from Boston, one from Atlanta, one was a pig farmer from Iowa, one was a blond boy from Los Angeles. I dropped most of the ones who tried to get fresh.

I returned home again to see my parents. “The only problem is I’m not sure they all have marriage on their minds,” I told my father as he had his tea. “They want fun.”

“Not too much fun.” He smiled and slurped at his cup, closing his eyes in thought. Perhaps he prayed. Then he opened them. “You will know, Shoko. You are a good judge of character.”

I thought of Tetsuo. Not always, I thought. I went back to work.

Charlie became one of my Americans. He came into the gift shop one night with his friends, acting very nervous.

I had never seen anyone like him. He had red hair! No Japanese person had red hair. And he had freckles, and was skinny like a little boy. He was short for an American, but still tall for a Japanese. His blue-green eyes stared at me. He wore a blue dress shirt, blue tie, and black pants.

A Japanese girl clung to him, wearing too much lipstick and a low-cut blouse. Her eyebrows were shaved and then drawn in. She looked down her nose at me.

I smiled at Charlie, and he blushed beet red. He disengaged himself from the girl. I went over to him. “May I help you, sir?”

“Cigarettes?”

I got him a pack. He pointed to some chocolates and handed me some money. “The chocolates are for you.”

“Thank you.” I smiled nicely at him, trying to figure out his rank. Not confident enough for an officer, I decided. It didn’t really matter. The American dollar was so strong that all the servicemen, even the enlisted ones, were rich here. The girl with him glowered. My heart beat faster.

“You speak English real well.”

I bowed my head. “Thank you, sir.”

His friends laughed. He blushed. “Call me Charlie.”

“Okey-dokey, Charlie.” I’d heard “okey-dokey” from another guy. I liked how it sounded. I started walking away, my wooden
geta
shoes clattering, but Charlie leaned toward me.

“Are you free later?” he asked.

I shook my head, an American custom I had observed. He probably thought I was another cheap girl.

Charlie smiled, and his face looked gentle and kind. “How about tomorrow? I’ll take you to a movie.”

“Yes, I can do that,” I said, my eyes lowered.