If You Follow Me (25 page)

“I love it,” I say, and I mean it.

“It's too dark,” he says.

“It's honest and open.”

“Too honest and open. If I made this speech, I would feel kind of naked. I could only share such private thoughts with you.”

The other teachers are returning from their classes to the faculty room and I can feel them looking at us, wondering what we're up to, huddled together like this.

“You found these sex-ed posters at a high school in Eureka?” I ask, and he nods. “The town this American mayor just happens to come from?”

“My host-sister is married to the mayor. It's how I could invite them.”

“So why don't you write about what it was like to live in an American family.”

“But she was there,” he says. “Maybe it's boring for her to hear stories she knows.”

“No way,” I say. “She'll love to hear your memories of that summer. And I'm sure your English was useful to you then.”

“Okay,” he says. “I will try once more. But this becomes final attempt.”

kirei:
(
ADJ
.)
beautiful; lovely; clean; tidy

T
his morning when I wake up Carolyn is in the kitchen, standing over a pot of boiling water, wearing boxer shorts and a gray T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, her skin flushed and damp. I watch her use chopsticks to pull steaming rings of dough from the pot and deposit them on the toaster oven tray.

“Hey,” she says, startling at the sight of me in the door frame. “Happy birthday.”

“You remembered,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she says. “You only turn twenty-three once.”

She reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, then kisses the corner of my mouth, a compromise between lips and cheek. We haven't talked about our fight, or the fact that I've been sleeping on the couch downstairs.

“I can't believe you made bagels,” I say. “My favorite breakfast.”

“They're no H&H,” she says.

“They look amazing. You really didn't have to go to so much trouble.”

“I know,” she says. “I wanted to. It's your birthday.”

I feel a pang of sadness, remembering that we had an exchange
almost identical to this one on the first night that we slept together. Every ending is written in its beginning, but you can't see it until you look back.

“I wish it wasn't my birthday,” I say. “Twenty-three is such a nothing number.”

“At least you've got two years before you become a Christmas cake.”

For some reason, lovers in Japan get together to eat sponge cake on Christmas Eve. These sponge cakes go half off on December 25, when no one wants them anymore. At twenty-five, an unmarried woman is referred to as a Christmas cake.

We set the coffee table in the living room with a makeshift tablecloth and Carolyn carries in a platter of bagels and cream cheese. I thank her again as she hands me a mug of coffee, the milk whisked to a froth so it looks like a cappuccino. She sits across from me on the floor and watches while I cut a bagel in half, spread it with cream cheese and take a bite.

“It's really good,” I say. “Aren't you eating?”

“I'm not hungry,” she says. “I couldn't stop picking.”

She tells me to open my present, handing me a large flat object wrapped in the front page of the
Daily Yomiyuri
. I peel the tape back carefully from the newspaper, unwrapping a book with a green Lucite cover and rice paper pages. “Did you make this?” I ask and she nods. “It's beautiful.” On the first page, she has written the word
mukou
—abroad, the other side—over a drawing of our house. On the next page is a drawing of Amana, lying with her chin tucked between her paws. I turn this page fast, swallowing hard. On the third page she has glued the photograph of our digital daughter, half her, half me, posed between us on a park bench, looking so much like a real child that it hurts. There's nothing else after this, just page after blank page.

“Thanks,” I say.

“I didn't get lazy,” she says. “I left the rest for you to fill.”

“With what?” I ask.

“Photos, drawings, whatever you want. It's a scrapbook. I know you like to get rid of things, but this way you have a place for your memories.”

“I can't imagine my life here without you,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “Me neither.”

The secretarial students don't seem shocked by my “Risky Behavior” worksheet, which has no illustrations decorating its borders, nothing to give its content away. I was surprised when Miyoshi sensei suggested that we try the sex-ed lesson on them before giving it to the boys. “I want to see if they can catch the meaning,” he said. The first three girls manage to answer the questions correctly with no translation assistance. I read the fourth question and he calls on Ritsuko Ueno.

“I want to have unprotected sex…you,” she says.

“Can you fill in the blank?” I ask, but she only shrugs. “With,” I say. “I want to have unprotected sex
with
you.”

“Okay,” she says flatly.

“Do you understand the word ‘unprotected'?” I ask, and no one answers. I look to Miyoshi-sensei for help, but he is squinting at the worksheet again. I ask if they remember the lesson in
New Horizons
, when Yumi, Ken, and Paolo had “to protect” the earth from litter. They nod and I say, “So what does ‘to protect' mean?”

“To keep safe,” replies Haruki in his raspy whisper.

“That's right,” I say. “Good job!” My praise has the effect of a finger poking a snail. His chin folds into his neck and his shoulders hunch around his ears. “What's the opposite of protected?”

“Basshimasu
,” he mutters.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I don't understand that word.”

“To punish,” Miyoshi-sensei translates.

“Hmm…” I stall. “That's an interesting guess, but the word I was looking for was
unsafe
. Unprotected sex is unsafe.” I write this on the board and then I read the final question, “I want to come…you.”

“I am confused,” Miyoshi-sensei says. “I think correct answer is, ‘I want to come
with
you.' But you wrote that correct answer is, ‘I want to come
inside
you.'”

“Both sentences work grammatically,” I say.

“But meaning is different?”

“Sort of.” I hope he won't press for clarification.

“Prepositions are so difficult,” he says. “I want to come near you. I want to come next to you. I want to come beside you. I want to come close to you…. To me, it's so many ways to say the same thing. Can you hear something I don't?”

What I can hear, for the first time, is the way these little words—words distinguishing the relationship between one thing and another, one person and another—also keep them apart. No matter how close you get, you are still separate, still stuck in your own skin.

 

Carolyn and I are at Sakura Ueno's home. She is dressing us up in kimonos to wear to the festival to welcome the mayor from California. Before we got here, she laid her entire collection on the floor of an otherwise empty room at the back of her house. The tatami was covered in a patchwork of folded silk in every hue and pattern imaginable.

Through the sliding glass doors at the back of the room, a cherry tree is in full bloom. The blossoms look like popcorn against the branches, which have no leaves yet. It's the first blossoming cherry tree that I've seen in Japan.

“Totemo kiree desu
,” I say to Sakura. It's so beautiful. In Japanese, she explains that her tree blooms early because it's in the courtyard, protected from the elements.

“It's not time yet,” she says. “The flowers will fall fast.”

She tells me to undress and then she walks in a tight circle around me, taking the measure of my curves, no doubt figuring out how to say—in the politest way possible—that none of her kimonos will fit my Western body. But finally she picks up a white cotton
kimono that hits me mid-shin. I'm disappointed by the plainness of her choice, but it turns out that this is just kimono underwear. Over it she layers a coral kimono covered in giant purple morning glories that look like old-fashioned phonograph heads. The sleeves hang like pillowcases, so long that they almost brush the tatami.

“Furisode
,” she tells me these sleeves are called. “Like a butterfly wing. Only unmarried girl wears this style. It means you're available.” She stands behind me and pulls the kimono tight around my body, folding the cloth at the waist so that the hem just grazes the tops of my feet. She loops a cord around my rib cage, so tight that I feel like I'm being squeezed by a boa constrictor. Over this cord she wraps an obi covered in psychedelic swirls of purple, green, blue, and gold, slipping a foam bustle into the back.

“Kiree desune
?” Sakura says to Carolyn.

“Beautiful,” Carolyn agrees. “But the obi doesn't match the kimono.”

“That's right,” Sakura says in Japanese, explaining that the obi and the kimono shouldn't match perfectly, that a too close match is boring, that some difference creates interest. I wonder if this is the same formula she uses when she matches two people. For Carolyn she chooses a pale blue kimono with a cherry blossom print, the center of each flower dusted with gold pollen. Then we stand side by side in front of the mirror, taking in our transformed selves. “You look so Japanese,” Sakura says, but this is not true. We look more Western than ever, the way a man in drag can look like more of a man through the makeup and the gown. But the kimonos have erased the nip of our waists, flattened our breasts, given us new silhouettes, and Carolyn likes the effect. I can tell. Sakura calls to her daughter, asking her to come and see, and a minute later Ritsuko appears in the hallway, dressed in pajamas and frog slippers, her face puff y.

“Daijoubu Ri-chan
?” Sakura asks her.

“I'm fine,” she says in English.

“Kiree desune
?” she prompts her too.

“So beautiful,” Ritsuko says, barely glancing at us.

“Shall we all have some tea?” her mother suggests.

“I have homework,” the girl answers. “Sorry.” She shuffles back to her room and Sakura frowns. “I don't know what's wrong with her,” she says softly. “Lately she's so moody.” She shrugs and returns her attention to us. “At the festival,” she tells me in Japanese, “you will have to wear this kimono all day. You should practice walking and sitting in it.” I nod, turning around so that she can unwrap my obi. Instead she suggests that we take a trip to the supermarket, as a kind of dress rehearsal.

“Right now?” I ask. In the mirror, Carolyn and I lock eyes. She looks frankly horrified, silently pleading with me to get us out of this. But Sakura is already squatting at our feet, dressing us in ankle socks and wooden-soled slippers, telling us how much fun it will be, how everyone should see how beautiful we look. Not knowing what else to do, we follow her down the hall to the front door. I'm glad when she drives away without waiting to make sure that we follow. It's hard to climb into a car window wearing a kimono.

 

Slung across the front doors to Jade Plaza, a sign reads, Supa Singuru Naito!—Supermarket Singles' Night. Inside the front doors, the two farmers sit on folding chairs in front of a table covered in a pyramid display of burlap bags, each one stamped with the promise that the rice was grown locally, perhaps by these very guys. Next to them stands Lone Wolf, dressed in a three-piece suit of contrasting plaids seamed with safety pins. As we walk in, his cameraman captures our entrance on film, the red light blinking.

“You need rice,” Sakura says, steering a cart toward their display.
She applied lipstick in the car and styled her hair in a French twist. She is camera ready.

“We have rice at home,” I say. “Lots of it.”

“You can always use more,” she chirps. “It's my present.”

“What's going on?” Carolyn whispers.

“I don't know,” I say, although I can guess. Sakura is the town matchmaker. Tonight is Supermarket Singles' Night, a chance for these farmers to meet eligible girls. Maybe that's why she dolled us up in kimonos: to try to make us seem more familiar, less intimidating to these two hayseeds. Rice seeds. If so, her plan seems to be failing miserably. At the sight of us, they trade looks that I recognize from my most reluctant English pupils. One doesn't hand me a bag of rice so much as shove it at me.

“Arigato
,” I say.

“No English,” he replies, crossing his forearms in a big X.

Sakura takes the rice from me and places it in a grocery basket, then leads us away from the two farmers. Maybe I was wrong in my suspicions, I think as we begin shopping for the ingredients to make sukiyaki. Everyone is staring at us. They seem bemused, but also oddly approving. An old woman strokes my sleeve as I pass and whispers, “
kiree.
” Men nod and children grin. Lone Wolf and his crew continue to trail after us, filming everything as she picks out a tray of meat sliced ribbon thin, a basket of mushrooms and another of sugar snap peas, bottles of sake and soy sauce and dashi, and a bag of sugar. At the checkout counter, Sakura insists on paying for the groceries, a birthday present to me.

“Thanks,” I say. “How did you know it was my birthday?”

“Miyoshi-sensei told me,” she says, beaming. “Let's enjoy birthday donuts together, okay?”

“Okay,” I say with a shrug.

As soon as we enter Mister Donuts, I see Joe sitting at a booth
across from a black-haired man whose back is to us. Two coffees and a plate of crullers sit on the table between them, alongside an ashtray in which a cigarette is burning unattended, sending a finger of smoke into the fluorescent light. When Sakura stops by their table and clears her throat, Joe looks up and presses a fist to his mouth. The man across from him turns and startles. Sakura places her hand on my back, gently pushing me onto the seat next to Miyoshi-sensei. Carolyn sits next to Joe.

“What's this?” Joe says. “Is there some costume party I wasn't invited to?”