What Honorata said was: “Malaya has a kitten, and even when he scratches us, we love him.”
Virginia looked at her quizzically.
Molly said she loved cats, and that she’d had her cat YoYo since he was three weeks old. She’d fed him with a bottle, and he still crawled in her lap every time she sat in the one particular chair that she’d fed him in.
Just then, the priest walked in.
“So, Virginia,” he said. “What was wrong with my sermon?”
“We were talking about cats,” said Virginia.
The priest laughed. “I bet.”
Honorata didn’t know how they had ended up talking about cats. She had started it, but it wasn’t what she meant. It would have taken her a long time to explain what she meant, and it wasn’t really that sort of conversation, this Monday morning quarterbacking. It was more like a ritual, like a way to start the week, and it didn’t matter too much what anyone said. It had taken her quite awhile to figure this out.
It was confusing, being in America.
It wouldn’t have occurred to her to think about whether she felt joy or not.
What occurred to her was whether or not she was doing the right thing each day. Whether she was using the money in the best way, whether she was raising Malaya to be a good person, whether her nanay was happy, whether she was a fair landlord to her tenants, whether her work at the church was correct.
She liked Americans for thinking about things like joy, even if she thought that someone should have made that little boy stop yelling when the teacher was talking. And the man, that Mark. Maybe he was just being friendly, and there wasn’t any reason to feel afraid of him, and maybe he hadn’t meant that he knew she was not a nice woman. Maybe he didn’t think things like that at all.
But Honorata did. She regretted the mistakes she had made, how foolish she had been. It didn’t seem fair that she had won a jackpot and that she had a daughter, and that her nanay was here with her. She didn’t deserve these things. She tried to be as good as she could, to make up for everything she had done wrong before, but she knew that it wasn’t really like that. People didn’t get what they deserved, you couldn’t hold off bad luck by being good, you couldn’t say you earned your good luck. You just got what you got, and did the best you could, and tried not to be afraid of what might happen next. At least, that’s how Honorata did it.
23
She found out at her annual appointment.
“Coral, are you aware that you’re pregnant?”
She was not.
She was thirty-six years old, and she had always used birth control. No wonder the school nurse’s perfume had seemed so pungent.
Pregnant?
Her heart fluttered dangerously.
What would Koji say?
Their relationship was, well, unconventional. He wasn’t even in town most of the time. Augusta had stopped asking Coral what their plans were. The answer was that they didn’t make plans.
Two years ago, she and Koji had traveled to Japan. Coral had assumed she would meet his family; that he was bringing her home for that reason. But he didn’t introduce her. They’d had a wonderful time. Koji took her to his favorite places—temples and ball fields and gardens and the sea—and each morning, he carefully assembled a tray and fed her natto and pickled vegetables before she dressed. But she never met his father, his mother, his younger brother. It wasn’t difficult to decode what that meant.
After the trip, Coral had decided she needed to move on from Koji. Althea had been right, way back when. A lot of time could go by; a lot already had. For several months, she spent the weeks when Koji was not in Vegas living as if they had separated. She allowed herself to go on dates and told her closest friends that she was looking for someone with whom she could have a family. But each time Koji arrived in town, she accepted him right back. He was always so pleased to see her, he had one suitcase filled with food he would cook for her, he wanted to hear about everything that had happened in his absence again, even though they had often talked about it on the phone. Also, he had a present to celebrate Malcolm’s MVP award at the high school championships; he had found a kimono for Keisha that she might like; had the little girl in the fourth-grade class come back to school or not?
After awhile, Coral accepted that she didn’t want to meet anyone else, that she didn’t want another life, that she loved Koji even if it wasn’t the life she had imagined. She wasn’t ready to let him go. Still, she knew she should tell Koji how she had felt in Japan. How she had waited to meet his family, how she had started to realize she might not, how she had not known what to do, how she had lain awake, heart pounding, wondering whether everything she thought was true between them was not true. What if he had a secret life? What if he didn’t care about her in the same way she cared about him?
For months, she promised herself that she would talk with him on his next trip to Vegas, but each time, she found a reason not to do it. Finally, on a day when puffy white clouds foiled an impossibly blue sky, and the sweet smell of star jasmine hung in the air like a kiss, she asked him.
“Koji?”
He laid his head on her shoulder.
“I wanted to meet your family. We never talked about this.”
He was silent. His head was still on her shoulder, but the weight shifted subtly. Coral felt tears start in her eyes. She concentrated on staying calm, on not thinking ahead of this minute. Koji shifted and sat up, but he didn’t look at her. Instead, he looked at the pool, at the vines snaking up the stucco wall behind it.
“My family’s very traditional.”
Coral said nothing.
“I don’t care what they think, Coral. It’s never mattered to me.”
Coral kept her eyes averted.
“I wanted you to meet them.”
What did he mean?
“You’d really like my brother. His wife would love you.”
Coral concentrated on being perfectly still.
“I didn’t want them to hurt you.”
She tried not to think about what he was going to say.
“My parents wouldn’t understand, Coral. They’ve never left Japan. They don’t like how their country’s changing.”
She knew what was coming.
“My father lost his brother in the war. He hates America.”
Breathe in, breathe out.
“They don’t believe in mixing races.”
There it was.
And Coral had wept. The pain had burst out of her in great gulping sobs, and Koji had said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and held her and wept too. And when it was over, when they sat huddled on the bench under the glorious sky on the beautiful day, they had not talked more about it.
Coral couldn’t bring herself to talk about this. It wasn’t Koji’s fault. It wasn’t anything he could fix. But the pain was so fierce and so hot and so unbearably personal, it reached so far inside, to so many other experiences, to so many memories, to classmates calling her “halfie” and “zebra,” to saleswomen standing just outside the dressing room door when she needed a new pair of jeans, to certain things that had been said to her late at night in those nightclubs where she and Tonya had sung, to a thousand other moments, uncountable memories, whispers and intimations and slights so subtle they couldn’t register as slights, and yet they built up, they piled one on top of the other until the weight smothered one, until the thought of just one more assumption, one more stupid comment, one more sidelong glance, made her feel as if she would never stand again.
Not long after that morning, Koji asked Coral to marry him.
And Coral said no.
She remembered how very stricken he had looked. His face on that day was seared in her mind. But she couldn’t marry someone who might just feel terribly guilty.
Gradually things got easier. It had been a year and a half, and Koji still came to Vegas as often as he could; if anything, the relationship deepened. They settled into a partnership, one that
was almost the same as a marriage.
Now Coral didn’t know what Koji would say when she told him she was pregnant. He had mentioned children when he proposed. For the last year, Coral had told herself, over and over, that she was probably already too old.
Apparently not too old.
Coral told Ada first.
She felt closer to Althea, but it was easier to talk with Ada about some things. Her sister was an hour away in Pahrump, living with some guy who grew marijuana for a living. Nobody said that, of course. Russ was a “farmer.” Grew vegetables for some of the restaurants on the Strip. They said stuff like that. But really he grew marijuana, and Coral pretended not to know, and Ada pretended that a multi-ton marijuana operation was some offshoot of the way she’d lived when she was young: when she had followed around a couple of bands and lived in a house where nobody cared what color anyone was, or who slept with whom; where they all raised one another’s kids, and laughed about which ones might be blood related after all. In Ada’s case, it didn’t matter. Her two kids both looked exactly like her, and whoever their dad was (dads were?), he must have hardly had any genes, because Serenity was Ada’s double, and Alabaster—Alabaster, for a black man—was Ada if she’d been a boy.
Ada came to town to bring Augusta flowers. She had filled the back of her car with them, and she called Coral to bring over more vases. It was a crazy Ada idea, but they had ended up laughing harder than they had in years. Coral came right over and got things organized. She separated the flowers by stem length, nipped off the ends of each one, and then filled every pot and glass and bucket in the house. There were bowls of flowers all the same color, and vases filled with daisies and roses and asters. She had tall, spikey arrangements, and flat, floating ones, and little sprays of wildflowers to set by the beds. She was showing Augusta her work, wondering where Ada was, thinking that she’d spent an entire Saturday afternoon finishing one of Ada’s projects, when Ada finally poked her head in the door.
“There you are,” said Coral. “Well, it’s done. They look beautiful. They do. Extravagant—and beautiful.”
“Done?”
Ada stepped through the door, her arms full of more blooms. And they both laughed. Because here was Coral, with the problem all resolved, and there was Ada, with no problem at all.
They ended up giving the rest to the neighbors.
And later, after Augusta had fixed some dinner, and they had sat and talked about Ada’s kids—after Augusta had said she’d turn in early, she was an old lady now, and Ada had said, “Old lady my ass” and Augusta had reminded her kindly not to swear—then the sisters found the cognac left over from Easter, and they sat in the back, in the hot comfort of a summer night, and that’s when Coral told Ada she was pregnant.
“I probably shouldn’t be drinking this.”
“Why, you pregnant?”
Like everything with Ada, it didn’t go as Coral might have predicted.
“Girl, you got pregnant at thirty-six—we’d all about given up—and now you’re going to have a baby. It’s fantastic news. Wonderful. Why haven’t you told Mama? Why aren’t we dancing?”
“I’m afraid to tell Koji.”
“Of course you are. I mean, what are you guys doing? You’re together, you’re not. What’s your deal?”
“Wow, Ada. Easy on the judgment. When did you ever have a normal relationship? With Russ, the drug dealer?”
“Hey, let’s not go there. Come on. We’re having a nice time. You’re drinking, and you shouldn’t be, so let’s not waste it. This isn’t about me. What I did. What my relationships are. I just don’t understand your relationship with Koji. I mean, we all treat him like he’s part of the family, but he’s here, what, one week a month, and you don’t go there, and he doesn’t move here, and what are you doing? I mean, what’s it been? Four years?”
Coral thought about Koji’s family; about why she didn’t go to Japan. Ada would understand this, but she didn’t want to tell her. She didn’t want to tell anyone. She didn’t want Ada or Althea or her mother to know what Koji’s family thought.
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated, Coral. Give that up. Give up that thing you do.”
“What thing?”
“That Coral thing. That everything-has-to-be-right, my-life-isn’t-messy thing. Speaking of judgment.”
“I don’t judge you.”
“You’ve judged me my whole life. And maybe I deserve it. But I’m just telling you, let it go. Whatever’s bothering you, whatever’s holding you back, let it go. Life’s messy. Big fuck.”
Coral looked down at her hands. Ada continued.
“I don’t know what’s going on in your head right now, but this baby’s a beautiful thing. I know you want her. And I want her. And Mama wants her.” Ada stood up. “What we should be doing right now is celebrating!”
So they did.
Her sister hadn’t even stopped speaking, and the euphoria washed over Coral like a wave.
She was pregnant. She was going to have a baby. She, Coral, would have her own baby. She whooped. And Ada flew out of the chair, and wrapped her arms around her, and they both cried. Ada started it—she started the crying—and she said, “Coral, Coral, Coral, I am so happy for you.”
Augusta heard them and got up to see what was going on, so they all sat there, late into the night, talking about Coral’s baby, and what sort of baby Coral had been, and how Ada used to crawl into the crib and make her sister laugh by barking and neighing and mooing in her face.
On Monday, Coral called her doctor for a prenatal appointment and picked up a bottle of maternity vitamins at the GNC on Flamingo. Her mind was full of thoughts of the baby, of whether it would be a boy or girl, of what the nursery might look like, of whether it would be fussy or calm. The baby would be born near Christmas, and with maternity and sick leave, she could probably stay home three months.
She talked with Koji every night, as always, but somehow she kept the secret. He would be home in two weeks, and she needed to tell him in person. She needed to see his eyes, his face. If she didn’t, she might never be sure of what he really thought. She tried not to think of what he would do, of how they might live, of the changes they would make. She was sure of Koji, but she was afraid too, and this fear was deep inside, and she had to be with him in person when he heard the news.
She started to bleed two days before he arrived.
It was a hot gush, unmistakable, in the middle of lunch duty. She made an excuse and ran out the door, leaving behind everything, even her purse. She raced to the emergency room at Sunrise, but it was too late. The baby was gone.
“Miscarriages at eleven weeks are not uncommon. I’m sorry, Ms. Jackson, I’m really sorry. You should talk to your own doctor about when to start trying again. She knows your body best.”
And Coral had cried.
She had sat in the open exam room, nothing but a flimsy cotton curtain, not quite shut, between her and the child with the seizure, the old man with the chest pain, the woman who had been vomiting for days, and she cried. Her cries were great gasping shudders, mortifying cries, which she desperately wanted to stop, but she could not stop them. She sat and cried in this horrifying way, and everyone there could hear her. After a bit, a nurse said she was sorry and asked if there was someone she could call. And Coral said no, and got up, and then remembered that she didn’t have any money, she didn’t have her purse, so the nurse walked her to a quiet hall and gave her a quarter for the pay phone.
Two days later, Koji flew in. He always stayed with her, but she asked him to take a hotel room. She said she was sick, that she would see him in a couple of days; there was no sense in him getting it too.
“What do you mean, Coral? If you’re sick, I want to help you.”
“No, Koji. I don’t want you here. I just want to sleep.”
She knew she’d hurt his feelings, and that he had no idea what was happening, but she was wildly angry at him, afraid of what
she might say if he were right in front of her.
She couldn’t think what to do with herself, so she called her sister.
“Ada, it’s Coral.”
“Yeah, how ya feeling? Any fever?”
“No. I’m fine. I mean, my body’s back to normal. The doctor said it would take longer, but—”
“Did you tell Koji?”
“No.”
“Is he there?”
“No. I told him to get a hotel. I don’t want to see him.”
“You have to tell Koji.”
“I know.”
Coral hung up, but she didn’t call Koji. She got into bed and tried to sleep. The next night, he rang the doorbell, and when he came in, when he took her in his arms, when she started to cry, when he started to cry without even knowing what had happened, she told him the story.
And then she said, “I think we should break up. I love you, Koji. I always will. But I don’t want to do this. This isn’t the life I want.”
Koji looked at her, shocked.
“It’s just not what I want. I thought it was okay. But it’s not. It’s not okay.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know. But it isn’t this.”
“You’re mad at me because I was in Tokyo?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t call me. You didn’t give me a chance.”
“What difference would it make?”
“I would’ve come.”
Coral almost started to cry but steeled herself. “And that wouldn’t have made any difference.”
Koji didn’t answer her then. He looked down at his hands, for a long while. Coral said nothing. She was thinking that she might never see him again, and that she had never loved anyone more than she loved him, and still, that she could not do it. She could not have a lover one week of the month; she couldn’t keep living this way. She would not.
Finally, he spoke.
“I don’t know what you want. But I do know what I want. I want you. I’ll leave Japan. If you’ll marry me, I’ll marry you. We can live right in this house. I can get a job here in a week. And we can have another baby. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve always wanted. Please. Say yes.”
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