“Sort of minimal, no?” Sam asked.
“I like way of my country. American way not always better.”
And then Suki asked Sam to please leave, as it was time for her daily meditation.
They balanced each other out. In fact, one dreary afternoon, when the first of the season’s rainstorms had driven everyone indoors, Suki poured Sam a cup of tea that Sam would have preferred to drink standing up rather than crouched awkwardly on Suki’s cushions and said, “We are yin and yang.”
“That’s a Chinese idea, isn’t it?”
Suki laughed. Her teeth were as tiny as she was, and brilliantly white. Sam’s teeth were big and sturdy, with a distinctly yellow tint that no amount of brightening toothpaste could help.
They didn’t have anything to talk about, having nothing in common. The invitation to tea was Suki’s payment for the kindness Sam had done her. Sam cut the visit short. A big girl like her did badly trying to sit cross-legged on the floor, especially with a bum leg.
Then certain information began to reach Sam about Suki, courtesy of Suki’s next-door neighbor. She went by Mrs. Hopp. She wore loud Hawaiian dresses and green eye shadow. Her dyed hair was more orange than red. Sam admired her stacked bracelets though. Many had small beads in tones of blue and purple. Mrs. Hopp managed to run into Sam in the laundry room every time Sam was down there waiting for some cycle to finish.
A small lace camisole was left in the dryer. Mrs. Hopp said it had to belong to “that Japanese girl.” Sam agreed. Although she didn’t know many other tenants by name, she’d seen quite a few from her perch at the window where she often sat in a second-hand rocking chair she bought at Goodwill. The men and women who came and went across the parking lot weren’t hideous nor were they prime specimens, and almost all tended to be on the large side, with sloppy, elongated American builds. None could possibly own something so fine and delicate as the camisole.
“Shame to put a silk garment like that through the dryer,” Mrs. Hopp said, and tossed the camisole onto the yellow plastic table flecked with gold that the management had graciously provided for folding.
Sam continued to sort her own things: size 10 underpants, size 18 shirts and jeans, and her trusty flannel nightgown, which she wore out of habit, though it was far too warm for the gentle climate of Southern California.
“I can take it up to her,” Sam said.
“Oh, no, dear, you don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“She has another guest.”
Mrs. Hopp looked sly and held her tongue. Something rose in Sam’s blood that Mrs. Hopp seemed to recognize as a threat. She quickly relented. Suki, she said, had “gentlemen callers.” Young Japanese men, mostly, though sometimes an older Japanese man.
“How do you know that?” Sam asked.
“I like to know who comes and goes on my floor.”
Sam had trouble seeing Mrs. Hopp get to her feet to peer out the peephole every time steps passed her door, but anything was possible, especially for an old woman with time on her hands.
Suki’s bedroom was on the other side of the wall from Mrs. Hopp’s, and good heavens, you should hear the ruckus sometimes! Mrs. Hopp had to actually bang her hand on the wall to say that enough was enough. She knew she was right about Suki because Suki never met her eye when they passed in the hall.
“You think she’s in business?” Sam asked. She wasn’t naive. These things happened, particularly in a tough economy.
“Well, I hate to speculate, but it’s really the only thing that makes sense.”
To Sam’s surprise, Suki admitted as much after Sam invited her down for a beer. Suki sat on a wobbly bar stool, which was too low for her to put her elbows on the counter.
“It not bad as you think. Men are nice men. They come here on business. Miss home. Miss their wives or girlfriends.”
“You’re taking money to have sex with them. It’s illegal. What if the building manager finds out?”
“He seldom on premises.”
That was true. Sam had trouble with her kitchen faucet, and the guy was never in when she stopped by.
Suki sipped her beer. Sam could tell she didn’t like it.
“How do they find you?” Sam asked.
“Agency.”
“Agency? What agency?”
Suki explained that the agency was an answering service where the caller made his request, and one of the girls there recommended Suki or any of a number of other young ladies, depending on the caller’s specifications.
“And how did you find this agency?” Sam asked.
“I see ad in paper. Ask for Japanese girl to give lessons.”
Sam snorted.
“Language lessons,” Suki said. For the first time, a merry twinkle came into her black eyes. She shook her finger at Sam. Sam was charmed! Every fiber in her wanted to be Suki. Small, pert, enchanting. Life was so unfair; sometimes she just wanted to kick God in the face.
“And they offered you another position. One with greater earning potential,” Sam said.
“Yes.”
“Must be nice to have lots of cash.”
“Most pay credit.”
“Credit?”
“My phone has plug in. I swipe card.”
It was hard to imagine this.
“But, don’t you mind it? I mean …” Sam’s experience with sex amounted to a single encounter with Jasper Kline after school one day in her senior year of high school. Afterward, he said she should be grateful that she wouldn’t have to go through life as a virgin. Then he told her not to worry about getting knocked up, because she was so fat, people probably wouldn’t notice. When Sam kicked him, he howled in pain and went off limping.
“Not so much now. In beginning, I mind more,” Suki said. But Sam could see her distaste in the way her shoulders suddenly seemed to harden, giving her an air of firm resistance.
She’s trapped in it. She wants to get out and can’t.
Suki thanked Sam for the beer and went on her way.
Sam didn’t see Suki again for a little while because one of the other maids at the motel quit and there were extra shifts to be had. Sam was a hard worker. It was suggested that one day she might be promoted to head housekeeper. Sam didn’t exactly see herself making a career in the motel business. But what else the future had in store, she couldn’t say.
Suki went out of town for a few days and asked Sam to water her plants. Along with the orchid, she had a number of African violets that needed to be watched closely, she said, so their soil, once dry, wouldn’t remain so. Sam took her time with the watering. She wanted to soak up the atmosphere and get a firm sense of Suki’s private life.
What she found was evidence of a young woman with a taste for luxury and comfort. She had cashmere sweaters that would never be wearable in L.A. Hand-painted silk scarves, French perfume, fine gold necklaces that Sam didn’t remember seeing Suki wear, mother-of-pearl hair clips, even her dishes were a designer name, so was her crystal stemware. There were no books or magazines, and Sam assumed their absence reflected Suki’s struggle with English. There were no photographs, not of people, at any rate, only one badly composed shot of the beach. Sam wondered if Suki had taken it herself, but there was no camera in the apartment. Sam was careful to put everything back as she had found it. She stood a long time by Suki’s low bed and imagined, with distress, the things that happened there. Men were brutes. Her own father. Her grandfather, who had whipped her with his belt more than once while her mother cowered in the corner and pleaded. The sports nuts who stayed at the motel when there was a football game, idiot drinkers who left vomit and pi
ss on the bathroom floor, holes in the wall, used condoms in the bed.
Once again, as thanks for a favor performed, Suki poured tea while Sam bore the discomfort of having to sit on the floor. Sam asked where she’d gone. Suki shook her head. Sam guessed that the trip had been arranged by a client. Sam sipped her tea, which she didn’t care for. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Silence fell. Sam grew uneasy. Finally, Suki mentioned that she was going on another visit soon.
“Oh, where?” Sam asked.
“See family.”
It hadn’t occurred to Sam that Suki had a family. But that was dumb. Everyone did.
“Family very important,” Suki said.
“Sure.”
“You no talk about family. You tell me now.”
Sam stretched her legs. What to say? Her grandparents had despised her.
“Dirty rotten seed, that’s what you are!”
Her mother told her to stay out of their way, and not provoke them.
“Honestly, Samantha, if you’d eat a little less and give up all those cookies, your grandfather would have no reason to call you fat!”
Since leaving Dunston, Sam and her mother were seldom in touch. Whenever Sam had a letter from her, it was full of whining and fear about what terrible things were certain to happen to her so far away. Sam’s mother had never gone more than a few miles from the town she still lived in. The larger world was full of mystery and menace.
“I have a big family. Four brothers, three sisters. That’s why I booked out. Got tired of having to share a bathroom,” Sam said.
“You miss them?”
“Oh, sure, sometimes. Especially Adele. She’s only six.”
“You oldest?”
“Yup.”
“You no want to stay, help raise children?”
“Hey, I may love ‘em, but they weren’t my idea, if you know what I mean.”
Suki’s eyebrows came together, causing a line between them. “Maybe one day I marry one of your brothers. My family want me marry American boy.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. My brothers are all kinda nuts.”
“You have picture?”
“No.”
Sam didn’t feel bad at all. Why tell the truth when a lie was so much more entertaining? She could go on like this all afternoon, inventing one tale after another. Suki, though, looked far away, almost sad. Sam got up to go. Suki invited her to visit a Shinto shrine over in Little Tokyo the following day.
“You’re religious?” Sam asked.
“Of course. Only empty people do not believe.”
“In Shintoism?”
“In anything beyond their own existence.”
Sam’s grandparents had been Lutheran. To her, the whole paradigm was cold, harsh, and dull as toast. She turned away from Christianity at an early age. Yet she found wonder and beauty in the world, and didn’t know how to account for it.
The day was stale and hot, although Thanksgiving was only another week off. The bus was slow, crowded, and gave Sam a headache. Suki sat perfectly straight in the seat next to her, her hands, with their thin white fingers and crimson nails, clasped quietly in the lap of her blue silk skirt. Sam’s hands were sweaty, as always.
They reached their stop, got off, and made their way along a wide sidewalk with flecks of mica that sparkled. Sam’s shadow covered Suki’s completely. Sam wore a dress, one of two she owned, because of the formality of the occasion. Her thighs rubbed together. She thought bitterly of the heat rash she’d develop later and wondered if she had any Vaseline at home.
The entrance to the shrine stood past a concrete wall, then a chain link fence. They walked through a wooden structure that reminded Sam of a doorframe, into deep, cool shadows provided by a line of poplar trees. A stone column with Japanese lettering stood just beyond. Suki stopped to look at it, then ran her fingers lovingly along the carved grooves. Sam had a sudden sense of not belonging. She didn’t want to continue, and told Suki she would wait for her there, on a bench in the shade. Suki made no reply, and went slowly through the sliding wood and rice paper doors into the shrine itself.
Sam felt like an idiot. Why come all that way, on a stinky hot bus, just to plant her ass on a bench? She should get up and go inside, too. She couldn’t. Her mind was in turmoil. She was on the edge of something bigger than she was, but it wasn’t a higher power. It was something deep within her, completely at odds with any notions of peace.
As the quiet murmurs of the devoted reached her there, in the darkness of the trees, it occurred to Sam that she needed to fix her life. Her task list was long: weight loss, a better haircut to tame her wild dirty-blond curls, decent clothes to wear when she wasn’t at work, higher education, a book club. Maybe if she met new people she wouldn’t need Suki so much.
Suki returned, looking as though she’d been washed from the inside out. She strolled silently past Sam, who got to her feet and followed. Neither spoke. Around the corner, a man in an ice cream truck handed a little boy a cone with two scoops of ice cream—one white, one pink. Sam desperately wanted some and suppressed the urge. Suki looked at the small curved stone she’d gotten at the shrine. An amulet of good fortune, she said.
They fell silent again on the bus. At the door to the Betty Lou, Suki said, “I am ready now for journey.” Sam nodded dully and went on her way.
That night she slept fitfully. The heat of the day seemed to soak into her skin. The bedroom window’s small, pathetic air conditioner didn’t do anything but make noise. Around midnight she lurched to her feet and turned it off. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water. There was urgent knocking at her door. Sam willed the intruder to leave her alone. The knocking continued. Through the peephole, she saw Mrs. Hopp, frantic, yet resplendent in her bathrobe and curlers. Sam opened the door, and remembered at the last moment that she was in her underwear. Her flannel nightgown was too heavy for her that night.
“There’s trouble at Suki’s place,” Mrs. Hopp said. She was out of breath. There was something odd about the way she spoke. Sam realized it had to do with her teeth, or lack thereof. She’d removed her dentures.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Well I did. Go see what it’s all about,” Mrs. Hopp said.
Sam rubbed her eyes against the glare from the hallway light. Her head felt woolly and thick.
“Oh, all right,” she said.
She got dressed. She slipped on the flip-flops she used when she went to and from the laundry room, which was across a courtyard that always collected puddles from the automatic sprinklers. They smacked loudly as she went up the stairs. Behind her, Mrs. Hopp huffed step by step.
The sound of wailing filled the hall. Sam told Mrs. Hopp to go back to her place and stay there.
“Should I call the police, do you think?” Mrs. Hopp asked.
“Well, if you were going to, why did you come get me?”
Mrs. Hopp didn’t know. She went inside and closed her door.
Along with the wailing was a man’s raised voice. He was speaking Japanese, Sam was certain, though if pressed she probably wouldn’t be able to tell it from any other Asian tongue. He wasn’t angry so much as desperate. His voice dropped to something softer yet more urgent, followed suddenly by the sound of something shattering. Sam thought of the lamp by Suki’s bed. Solid crystal, it looked like.
One of her clients was acting up, and Suki was fighting back. Sam took three deep, slow breaths to ready herself, then pounded on the door with her fist. All noise inside stopped. She banged again. The door opened, and Suki’s head appeared.
“Make no more noise. Sorry for trouble,” she
said. Her eyes were red, her face streaked and grimy. And she reeked of booze, gin to be precise.
Sam pushed the door open and went inside. The man was in the kitchen, filling a glass with water from the tap. He was slightly built, like Suki, but taller, though not nearly as tall as Sam.
“Get out,” Sam told him.
“Sorry?” the man said.
“Bet your damn ass you’re sorry. Beat it.”
“Will not. I stay. I have right.”
“Fuck your rights. Get going.”
Suki said something in a plaintive tone. Her bad English was worse under the effects of alcohol.
Sam crossed the living room. She grabbed the man by the arm and was surprised by how thin it was. Yet he put up a decent struggle when she yanked him. Even so, he was no match for her energized bulk. She dragged him to the still open door and shoved him out. She slammed the door against him. Suki resumed her wailing, and Sam told her to shut up. Suki dropped onto one of her floor cushions and sobbed. Sam looked through the peephole. The man was still there. He shouted something in Japanese.
“If he’s saying he’ll call the police, tell him the neighbor already did,” Sam told Suki.
“He want jacket.”
The man’s jacket was on a stool next to the kitchen counter. Sam took the jacket and opened the door. She dropped the jacket and told the man once more to get lost. The man tried to see around her to where Suki sat, but Sam blocked him. He said something else, and Suki lifted her head for a moment. Sam closed the door. Suki wept.
“Don’t be embarrassed. One of them was likely to pop sooner or later,” Sam said.
“No understand.”
“You know—johns, they’re not right in the head. It was only a matter of time before one of them took a swing at you.”
“He no hit me. He brother.”
Women Within Page 18