My Year of Meats (39 page)

The interior hadn’t changed since I was a child: the same heavy wooden furniture, the same smell of sunlight striking dust. I had spent many hours here, studying mankind in Frye’s
Geography,
designing my progeny and daydreaming about a future, far away from Quam. And here I was, back again, bitter and aborted. The irony was not lost on me. I went to the reference section and found
The Complete Home Reference Compendium
of
Pharmaceuticals
and hauled the enormous book into an empty corner. My prescription was for a medication called Tace, a hard, two-tone green 25-milligram capsule, made by the Merrell Dow Company. I found it under “Estrogens.” It was related to the generic drug diethylstilbestrol. Among the indications, the reasons to prescribe the drug, was “post partum breast engorgement.” That was mine. The list of indications took up about one-quarter of a page. The remaining page and three-quarters consisted of warnings, precautions, adverse reactions, and contraindications, the very good reasons never to prescribe this drug. Among these was “known or suspected estrogen-dependent neoplasia.” That was mine too.

Dust motes shimmered in the afternoon sun, gave body to the angled shafts of light. I sat there for a long time, watching the air drift until the sun sank below the horizon of the leaded window and the librarian told me the library was closed. Then I drove home. I emptied the vial of Tace into the toilet and started packing. It was the beginning of a new month, time to return to New York.

 

 

I told Ma at dinner, and she nodded approvingly. “No good you just stay home with mama like little baby,” she said. “You fall off horse, you get back on top and riding again.”

“Sure, Ma ...”

“No ‘sure Ma’ to me! This is true thing I say to you. You go back to baby’s father, you get on top and try again. Maybe get married this time.”

“Ma, I don’t think I want to....”

“This is trouble with you. You
think
you want, you
don’t think
you want—always back and forth. Me, when I want, it is with whole heart. I look at wanted thing with eyes straight on. But you! Neither here or there. Your looking always crooked, from side of eye. It has no power to hold. So wanted thing, it slip away from you.”

She was right, of course. I’ve always blamed my tendency to vacillate on my mixed ethnicity. Halved, I am neither here nor there, and my understanding of the relativity inherent in the world is built into my genes. Nothing is absolute, and certainly not desire. But knowing this was not enough anymore. It was time to suspend knowing and decide, What do I want? What do I want, absolutely, with my whole heart?

When I left the house, Ma and I hugged, and when we separated, she held on to my wrist again and slipped something into my hand. It was a shiny nickel. I burst out laughing. Ma looked offended, then she shrugged.

“Maybe it work. Maybe nothing, only Oriental superstition, but American doctor Ing-san not so smart, either, after all. So you never know.”

She was dead right about that too.

The door swung open and clanged against the cinder-block wall. Akiko listened. The apartment sounded hollow and still. She took a step into the
genkan.
Inside, it felt damp, and chilly too, the way concrete apartments get when the heat’s been off for a while and no one’s been living in them. Akiko felt like a small mouse, perched at the threshold, peering and sniffing at the unfamiliar air. She took off her shoes and stepped up, listened again, then switched on the overhead fluorescents, waking the room with the flicker and hum.

“Tadaima ...
,” she called softly. She was just testing, but there was no response. That was how it should be. Still, she needed to be absolutely sure. Clutching her bag, she tiptoed from room to room, checking in the closets, in the bathroom, behind doors. No one. No sign of him. She relaxed. She went into the kitchen and put her bag down on the table, then put on some water to boil.

The phone rang while she was pouring the tea. She took her cup and stood in the living room doorway, listening. The answering machine clicked on and played her own recorded greeting. When she heard John’s voice on the other end, she walked across the living room and picked up the receiver.

“Hai,”
she said.

“Ah, iru ka.
You’re there,” said John. “I heard the machine pick up and thought you hadn’t returned yet.”

“I just got back.”

“How are you feeling? Have you recovered? You must be feeling better if they let you out.”

“Yes.” She took a slow sip of hot tea. It scalded her tongue.

“Still angry, huh?”

She didn’t answer.

“Well, I don’t blame you. You have a right to be.”

“No, I’m not angry.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” He paused. “Did you get my note?”

“Yes, I got it.”

“I meant everything I said in it. I’m very sorry I hurt you. I give you my word it will never happen again. But now there’s no more secrets between us. Now we can start over. Start fresh. I’m sure we’ll be successful this time. We’ll be more scientific about it, and make a chart and time things precisely.... I am quite confident.”

“Yes, so am I.”

“Good, I’m glad. I’m glad you are committed to trying again. Now, I’m in New York and I will have to stay here for another couple of weeks—we have decided to do the edit here. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. But I’ll be back on November twenty-first. Can you manage without me for that long?”

“Oh yes. I’ll be fine.”

“What will you do with yourself? Will you find enough things to keep you busy?”

“Yes. I will clean the house and get it ready for your return.”

“Fine. That’s just fine.”

When she hung up, she pulled out the phone directory and looked up Travel Agents.

“May I help you?” the agent asked.

“I’d like to buy an airplane ticket, please,” she said. “To New York.”

“Certainly, and the date of travel?”

“November twentieth.”

“And the return?”

“Oh. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.”

 

 

The first thing she did was to throw out all her maternity magazines. Then she cleaned the house from top to bottom, beat the futon, washed the tatami, and arranged all the cookbooks on the shelves. On her hands and knees, she scrubbed the surfaces of the bathroom until every trace of her misery was washed away. She even dusted the shelves and the tops of all the bottles of John’s mouthwashes in the medicine cabinet. Then she practiced packing all her clothes and her CDs and her Shōnagon and her pillow book (she’d found it hidden in John’s golf bag), until she could fit everything she owned into two suitcases. What wouldn’t fit she threw away.

In the evening, she prepared simple meals for herself, consisting of small, calcium-rich fishes, steamed vegetables, and a pickled plum to help her digest.

At night she lay in bed and watched her baby grow. At seven days, it was a single-layered ball of cells that folded over and over again to form layers of cells, the outermost of which, at thirteen days, began to bulge; it was the primitive streak, a marker for the main axis of the body, tracing the path for an eventual spine. The organizing design principle of human symmetry was now in place.

At eighteen days, the embryo entered the neurula stage, initiating the development of the nervous system. By the end of the month, it had grown from a single microscopic cell of perfect simplicity to an exquisitely intricate organization, the size of a grain of tapioca. Now millions of differentiated cells performed diverse functions: nervous, digestive, muscular, vascular, and skeletal.... There were rudimentary indications of eyes, whispers of ears, and even the whiff of a nose.

At twenty-two days, she watched as a nonfunctional set of kidneys appeared, looking like those of a primordial eel. (Later, she knew, these would be displaced by another pair, like the ones found in fishes and frogs, until finally the human kind developed.) The embryo now grew four pairs of gill arches and even a temporary tail; like the tadpole it resembled, it would lose both. The foundation for integrated human complexity was laid. Her baby-to-be was full of promise, from the tip of its tail straight through to the beginnings of its chambered yet primitive heart.

Akiko didn’t turn on the television, not even once.

Two days before she left, she invited Tomoko for dinner. It was her friend’s night off, and Akiko had prepared a wonderful meal: glassine mung bean noodles served cold, with crumbled bean curd and julienned vegetables in a tart, savory sauce; sliced lotus root, lightly fried with chili peppers in peanut oil, then steeped in soy sauce and
mirin
wine, and finished with a dash of Szechwan pepper; a sweet sesame
goma aie,
made with steamed chrysanthemum leaves, mildly bitter to offset the sweet; and a piece of cod, marinated for three days in sake and mild white miso, and then broiled until the skin was crisp but the insides were still succulent.

It was a party of sorts, Akiko mused. A party to celebrate their new friendship. But it was also a farewell party. And a birthday party too. Akiko took out a package she’d bought at the pharmacy and showed it to Tomoko. It contained a home pregnancy test kit.

“I want to prove it to you. So you don’t think I’m crazy.”

She went to the bathroom and urinated, then Tomoko came in and helped her with the test. It was positive. Akiko smiled.

“See? I told you.”

“I believed you.”

“It’s going to be a girl.”

“How do you ... ? Forget it. I believe you.”

Akiko cleaned up the packaging and threw it away, then wiped the sink. They stood side by side, leaning up against the bathroom counter and talking to each other in the mirror.

“That’s why I’m going to America,” said Akiko. “It doesn’t matter so much for a son, but since she’s a girl, I want her to be an American citizen. So she can grow up to become an American Wife.” She had told Tomoko all about the program.

Tomoko frowned. “She doesn’t have to be a wife at all, you know.... She could be a nurse, or ...”

Akiko reached over and took her friend’s hand and turned to face her. “I know. I’m just kidding. Sort of.” Then she took her other hand.

Tomoko looked away, but Akiko leaned over and kissed her cheek. Then she kissed her lips, once, very lightly. Tomoko’s lips were shockingly soft. It was hardly a kiss at all. Akiko pulled away and regarded her.

“Are you a lesbian?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Tomoko. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“I have,” said Akiko. “I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know, either.” She squeezed Tomoko’s hands again and then let go. “I don’t know if I’m really going to stay in America. Maybe I’ll come back after she’s born. Anyway, you can be her aunt.”

“I’d like that,” said Tomoko, following her out of the bathroom.

 

 

The day before her departure, Akiko went to her bank branch office and withdrew exactly two-thirds of the money in the joint account she had with her husband. She converted a little over five thousand dollars into U.S. currency, which she thought would do for the time being. Then she went home and reserved a taxi for the following morning.

The following day, she took the taxi all the way into the city, to the Hakone City Terminal. It cost hundreds of dollars, but she didn’t want to take any risks, lifting her heavy suitcases on and off the trains and subways. At the terminal, the driver helped her to the baggage check-in line. Then, with just a small knapsack and her CD Walkman, she boarded the limousine bus for Narita Airport. She found a seat at the back of the bus and checked the outside pocket of her knapsack for her airline ticket and her passport. Tucked inside the passport was a fax, carefully folded. She unfolded it now and glanced at the last line for reassurance. “P.S. If there is ever anything I can do to help...” She folded up the paper and put it safely away. She would telephone Takagi-san from inside the airplane, once it was too late to turn back.

Too late. Akiko’s heart constricted with quick fear, and her palms broke sweat. What would Takagi say? Takagi was a woman who went to jail. She was tough. She could take on men like John and argue with them. Other than that, Akiko knew little about her. What if Takagi refused to help, or called John, or sent her away? She hadn’t quite thought this through, but it was too late. She sat back and plugged the Walkman into her ears. Clearly there were times when it was better not to think.

Bobby Joe Creely was singing as the bus spiraled up the ramp onto the web of cloverleaf overpasses that laced the heart of Tokyo. Just outside the bus window, over the edge of the embankment, the office buildings hugged the freeway like the tall walls of a narrow gorge. They were so close she felt she could reach out and run her fingers across their facades. As the bus passed slowly by, she could see right into the row upon row of identical windows, into the sickly fluorescent-lit cubicles, crammed with desks spilling paperwork, where office workers, dressed in dark-colored office smocks, hunched over the desks or shuffled from one desk to another.

The beginning of a mournful tune, plucked from Bobby Joe’s low, slow guitar, made Akiko shiver. It was her new favorite song, and she had studied all the words, looking each one up in the dictionary. Bobby Joe started to sing.

The bus shuddered, as if to the music, straining against the tight curve of the on-ramp. It wasn’t a midnight train, Akiko thought, but it was just as good. Better, even. Because it took you to the airport.

That used to be true. It wasn’t anymore.