My Year of Meats (13 page)

The congregation watched politely. The church hadn’t been this hushed since the service started. The members were all dressed in their Sunday best and were being remarkably patient and tolerant, to my mind, given that as far as Miss Helen could recall, no white person had ever crossed the threshold of the Harmony Baptist Church. Miss Helen had been very hesitant when I first contacted her. She didn’t really understand what I wanted.

“We want to bring a camera to the church. To film there ... ,” I explained.

“Uh huh.” Miss Helen’s voice was barely a whisper and it was hard to hear her over the phone.

“Do you understand what I mean?” I felt like I was screaming. The noise outside the East Village office was deafening, police sirens, ambulances, jackhammers in the street, drowning out our conversation.

“You want to bring a camera to our church,” she whispered.

“Yes, to film the church for Japanese TV. And then to film you and your family too.”

“I don’t think we ever had no white person inside of our church before....”

“Well, we’re not technically white, Miss Helen. We’re Japanese, so really we’re mostly yellow....”

“Uh huh.”

I was excited about doing a program with Miss Helen Dawes. She lived in the tiny Mississippi town of Harmony, which hugged the Tennessee border. Miss Helen and her husband, Purcell, had nine children: one son, followed by eight daughters, the youngest of whom was in grade school. Mr. Purcell and the boy, Lewis, were both members of the Harmony Five and were quite well known in the Southern gospel circuit. Miss Helen was known in Harmony for two things, her chitterlings and her fast sinking curve ball, and all her girls took after her, excelling in either cooking or sports. In the field in back of their house, Mr. Purcell had built a real baseball diamond, with bleachers, a scoreboard with numbers that hung on hooks, and a chain-link fence for a backstop behind home base. Every summer Sunday after church, the family and neighbors would gather for fast-pitch softball games. Miss Helen would make chitterlings. Sometimes a neighbor would bring fried chicken, or beans, or biscuits and gravy. The girls would make lemonade and cake and hit home runs all afternoon. Miss Helen was proud of the way her family and friends stuck together when times were hard, “which is just about most of the time, I guess,” she had whispered to me over the phone.

I had been working hard for weeks to explain the program to her and to overcome her reluctance. She just couldn’t seem to understand why we found her interesting. Finally she had agreed to let us come, at least for the location scout, and now Ueno was about to blow it.

“I ...” Ueno had recovered his voice. It was unbelievably hot and he was sweating profusely and looking more red than yellow at the moment. The black faces surrounding us were gleaming with sweat too, and there was an oddly unsettling quality to the scene, caused by the rapid flicker of hundreds of identical white paper fans, all printed with the name of the church. Ueno took a deep breath. I could tell he was ready now, and I braced myself.

“I am Joichi Ueno,” he announced, “but you may call me by my nickname. That is ‘John.’ You get it? ‘John Wayno’!” He paused expectantly. “It’s joke!” he said. But no one laughed. There was no reaction at all, just the politely suspended anticipation, the sound of the fans, beating the air like bird wings, and a single sour note from the organ, which trailed its reverb behind it like a wake as Ueno deflated. “Thank you,” he mumbled, and sat back down.

I stood and the organ changed key. I looked around and smiled.

“I’m Jane Takagi-Little.” At moments like this I hated the arcane complexity of my name, but I persevered, speaking slowly and, I hoped, sincerely.

“Thank you for letting us come to your church today. We are so happy to be here. We have come all the way from Japan to make a television program to teach the Japanese people about America. Miss Helen Dawes and her family have generously agreed to help us, and she asked us here today to meet you, because you are part of her family. We believe that people all over the world should try to learn about each other and understand each other, and that is what our television program is about, so I am here to ask you to share your faith with the people of Japan and give us your permission to film you all here, inside the church, during a Sunday service later this month. Thank you for listening. God bless you.”

As the organ swelled, the congregation broke into smiles and applause. I sat down and an ancient lady with mahogany wrinkles and snow-white hair grasped my forearm with one wizened claw and patted me with the other. Perched on her head was a tiny hat made of straw and tulle and decorated with tiny cloth flowers on stems that wobbled like antennae as she nodded her vigorous approval. A nodder and a patter, just like a Japanese auntie.

My neighbor to the other side was Ueno. He was damp all over and was staring at me with an abject look of defeat and resentment. It wasn’t really fair. I knew we’d be called upon to introduce ourselves and I’d prepared my speech in advance, but I hadn’t warned Ueno. Like I said, I was mad at him.

I had spoken to the Preacher on the phone several weeks earlier and he said that he could give us permission to film, but if I wanted to gain the acceptance of the congregation, I should come to church and petition them myself, in person. So I arranged the scout for that Sunday and had flown into Memphis two days earlier. Unfortunately, so had Ueno.

When I checked into the Holiday Inn on Friday, the desk clerk handed me a fax. At first I thought it was from Sloan and my heart leapt. I hadn’t seen him since Fly and had left a message on his answering machine, inviting him to Memphis. I wanted to see him so badly. But the fax was from Tokyo.

I appreciated Kato’s support, but frankly Ueno’s participation was not good, was quite detrimental, in fact, both to my personal needs—I wouldn’t be able to see Sloan—and to my agenda for the show.

It was customary for the New York office to propose two wives for each shoot. The first, and as far as I was concerned the only, candidate was Mrs. Helen Dawes. The alternate wife was Becky Thayer. She was the owner of a bed-and-breakfast in Magnolia Springs, a small but well-known town along the plantation tour circuit. She and her husband, Tom, were eager for us to come because so many of their guests these days were Japanese tourists, part of the
Gone With the Wind
boom that had mysteriously swept that country, and they thought an appearance on
My American Wife!
was just the thing to increase their exposure. Mrs. Becky Thayer was a gourmet cook and an antiques collector, and the bed-and-breakfast was her hobby.

“I had no choice!” she exclaimed to me on the phone. “I had to start the B-and-B just to have somewhere to exhibit all my junk! But I never expected it would turn into
this!”

By “this!” she meant a thriving business that was ranked at the top of every B-and-B guide in America for authenticity of decor, gracious accommodation, and mouthwatering cuisine. She had started offering dinner on the weekends too and she faxed us sample menus to choose from, with entrées ranging from a regional Southern-style Filet Mignon served with black-eyed peas and a purée of collard greens, to an exotic Chicken-fried Steak Orientale, marinated in seasoned soy sauce, then dipped in a delicate tempura-style batter made with free-range eggs, cornmeal, and Szechwan peppercorns. She always served a salad garnished with nasturtiums and daylilies from the kitchen garden, which, she assured me, looked real charming on-camera.

Mr. Thayer was a real estate agent and the head of the Magnolia Springs Chamber of Commerce. They had two young children, both of whom were in day care. Oh, did I mention the Thayers were white?

The New York office had sent profiles of both families to Tokyo, but I was so dead set on the Daweses, I hadn’t intended to visit the Thayers at all. Now that Ueno was coming with me, clearly I was going to have to change my plans. So I phoned Becky and made an appointment for noon the following day, left another message for Sloan, rescinding my invitation, and then booked two rooms at the Peabody, the best hotel in Memphis.

In my experience, Japanese men on business trips are generally more tractable if you put them in one of the better hotels in town, and I knew Ueno was particularly susceptible to this treatment. On the way back from the airport, he was gruff and taciturn, but the ornate lobby with its palm-and-gilt decor sweetened his mood. He’d eaten dinner on the plane, so we had a perfunctory meeting in the bar and I filled him in on the location-scout schedule. We were sitting adjacent to each other in large overstuffed armchairs, with a low coffee table in between. He leaned back into the velvety forest-green upholstery and raised his glass of Rémy.

“To
My American Wife!”
he said, and took a long drink. He sighed with contentment. He was feeling rich. He looked around the room, and his eyes came to settle on me. “So, now you became a director....”

“Yes.” I smiled, trying to look benign and neutral.

He frowned. “I tell to Kato is not good idea. You are still incompetent and cannot make correct choices for proper program topics. So I must come here to teach you.” He waited, watching me to see how I would react.

“Thank you. I appreciate your guidance.” I smiled again, I hoped demurely.

“No problem,” he grunted. He took another long sip, set the glass on the coffee table, then reached over and squeezed my knee. “It is my pleasure,” he said, leaving his hand there. I stood up and excused myself. I rode the elevator up to my room, muttering darkly, vowing to teach him a lesson. As it turned out, I didn’t have to.

In the lobby of the Peabody Hotel there’s a pond with real ducks that swim around during the day. The ducks spend the night on the roof and every morning at eleven they are herded into one of the elevators and brought downstairs. This is an event full of pomp and circumstance: a red carpet leading from the elevator to the duck pond is ceremoniously unrolled, the pianist starts to play, the elevator doors open, and out waddle the ducks, all in a row, down the red carpet and across the lobby to the pond, where they plop into the water, one by one. Lots of people come to watch. It’s the tourist thing to do when you’re in Memphis.

I don’t know how he got into that elevator, but on Saturday morning, when the music started and the elevator doors opened, out waddled Ueno. Gripping his briefcase, he headed straight down the middle of the red carpet. A snicker or a stare from an American tourist must have clued him that something was wrong. He glanced around nervously, then tripped over his feet when he saw the neat row of ducks following hard on his heels. Catching himself before he fell, he kept walking, trying very hard to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was happening, that he wasn’t being followed by ducks or jeered at by a gauntlet of American tourists lining the carpet on either side of him. When he reached the edge of the duck pond, he stopped and looked around in panic, then, realizing this was precisely where the ducks were heading, he veered quickly out of the way. The crowd was disappointed and started to boo. The ducks continued in a straight line to the edge of the pond, where one by one they raised their rumps in a sporty salute and slid into the water.

I’d been standing behind a potted palm by the side door and didn’t want to add to his embarrassment, so I slipped outside, walked around the block, and reentered the building from the front. I found Ueno sitting in an inconspicuous corner.

“Good morning! Did you sleep well?” I asked him cheerfully.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” he said, surly as hell.

“Oh, great! You must have seen the ducks, then. They usually walk right by here....”

It was a beautiful day, and we drove to Magnolia Springs through the emerald-green kudzu-drenched countryside. The Thayers were entirely predictable and by afternoon Ueno was considerably mellowed by Becky’s gracious Southern hospitality. But I was beginning to worry. At dinner back at the hotel that evening, he started making a shot list of all the areas in their exquisitely appointed home that he wanted to see in the program. I reminded him that we had a second family to scout, but he flapped his hand dismissively and continued to design the opening camera dolly through the foyer. This was not his job. This was my job. I ordered him a double shot of Wild Turkey, wondering if I could make him black out retroactively. I was hopeful. I was determined not to do the Thayers.

I took him to a blues club on Beale Street—I didn’t care where we went, as long as it was too loud to carry on a conversation. Ueno was really happy, because the atmosphere was a hundred percent authentic. I could tell by the casual way he slouched, one loafer balanced on the edge of the chair in front of him, trouser leg hiked up to reveal the white sock, and also by the way he flagged down the waitress, arm in the air, with his head ducked and his eyes half closed—but the real clue to his mood was the upturned collar on his golf shirt. I don’t know exactly when he flipped it. One minute it was lying down, the next minute it was standing up. He continued to pop back shots of Wild Turkey and by the time we left he was loaded.