He tells her a week after kissing her, “I miss you.”
“Because of one kiss, Ray?”
“Another kiss under the ear.”
Raymond doesn’t know Aurora at all, except for their talk at the party, except for a kiss that grew out of an abrupt infatuation stalled by distance. If he were there he would know what to do.
“What would you do if you were here?” Aurora offers her own answer, “Would you take me on a date, Ding?”
“Maybe we’re past the formal date period.”
“We never had a date.”
“The Lincoln Memorial.”
“That wasn’t a date. I met you there after work and you go and kiss me.”
“You wanted me to kiss you.”
“I wanted it. Listen to you! That’ll stand up in court, bud.”
“You know it’s true.”
“Cliche number two.”
“What did you do today?” Raymond wonders if she would let him wimp out and change the subject.
“I got my first photo in the newspaper.”
Raymond is relieved and pushes congratulations to her much too loudly.
“Yes, Ray,” Aurora sighs, “years of training, months of hauling camera equipment around and setting up lights for other photographers and just when the newspaper is short staffed I get my chance and the editor sends me out on my own to do what? Take a photo of the President? Perhaps some visiting King? Stalk a bad boy Con gressman? No, none of the above, I, Aurora Crane, hit the big time, hit the pages of print with a photo of a pothole in front of the White House.”
“Is your name on it? Send me one. Signed ‘Love and kisses.’ ”
“When are you coming back?”
“Do you want me to?”
Raymond finds out later that Aurora doesn’t say the word “yes” much, one simply knows when she agrees. “I wish I were there now,” Raymond says while searching for some way to find some detail, some familiarity in imagining her at home, but he’s never been to her apartment and has seen her in only two different dresses. He resists asking, “What are you wearing?”
“I’m in bed,” Aurora says. “Say it again.”
“I wish I were there.” There is a silence on the line then he hears her breathing change.
“What does your room look like?” Raymond retreats.
“It’s a mess.”
“Let me guess. The shoes are thrown in a jumbled mess on the closet floor, there are old magazines and newspapers on the floor, an old coffee cup from this morning sits on the bed stand with a little cold coffee in the bottom, the bookshelf is too small for all your books, there are photographs unframed and thumb-tacked to the wall, none of the photographs are your own, there are sweat pants, jogging shoes, and a bra lying on the floor. You’re wearing an extra large Columbia University T-shirt in bed.”
Aurora is silent.
“Aurora?”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Home.”
“Did you talk to my roommate? You have a sister you’re not telling me about? You left out the color of my panties.”
“No. And, no to the second question. I was being polite on the third. The panties on the floor have purple dots and the ones you’re wearing have Mickey Mouse on them.”
“You’re wrong, they’re both on the floor.”
“I guess this means we’re past the formal date period.” Raymond’s breathing has changed.
“I’m wet.”
Without hesitation Raymond proposes a scene in a lower voice, raising the humidity over the phone. “You are seated on top of your desk when I come into the room. Your legs are crossed. I walk up to you and put my hand under your knees and uncross your legs.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m doing the same thing you’re doing.”
“I didn’t know forty year old Asian men masturbate.”
She knows he’s thirty-nine, but he lets it go. “We can even use the other hand to calculate logarithms on our Hewlett-Packard calculators.” Aurora doesn’t laugh. Her breathing sounds muffled as if she’s talking from underneath the covers of her bed. “The backs of your knees are moist as I hold them down on the desk. I slide my hands up the sides of your thighs, feeling the muscles of your thighs tighten. I’m moving so slowly that you relax. Your legs part slightly. I can feel your breathing on my neck. I reach around your hips, up the fabric of your panties to the waistband.”
“I have tights on.”
“I reach for the waistband of your tights.”
“You can’t get to them from where you are.”
“My fingers are feathers. You can barely feel them, but they can lift you, they can warm you, they have a tropical humidity of their own. Your tights melt away. Your panties are a warm breeze that comes up suddenly then vanishes, exposing a humid scented moss. My feathers flutter and nestle on the mound. My tongue is an orchid petal.”
“That’s too pastoral, but I like the fluttering.”
“I’m trying to be polite on our first seduction. More graphic, dear?”
“No.”
“How about mythic and heroic?”
“Yes, try mythic.”
Like the voice that narrates NFL Films, Raymond is mythic and heroic. “The pulsating and golden aura of my manhood rises majestically in the east and blocks the sun. It presses, advances, draws you quivering toward me. It beckons you to embark on a voyage on the surging waves of a melting earth, a field of erupting, heaving mountains pouring white hot magma down down down to the crashing waves of the ocean pounding the burning sand of your desire. We are reborn. We are immortal. Come with me. Come.”
“Your manhood blocks the sun?”
“Yes, child.”
“How big is this golden aura of manhood?”
“How big do you want it to be?”
“Big as a cucumber.”
“How about a pickle?”
“I’m hanging up.”
Long distance phone sex and making love with Aurora in person are the same seduction to her. A good lover must be articulate first and skillful and attentive second. Aurora’s bedtime stories. Raymond has to flirt, and be romantic, and be seductive, and undress her, and make love to her in complete sentences and full paragraphs. She wants to be the center of his fantasy while they’re making love. Each time the details must be different; different clothing, different order in which the clothing comes off, different circumstances, different places. They are characters in a story that has a beginning and a middle.
She pins Raymond to the wall and pulls his shirt out of his pants, presses her face to his chest and tries to smell him through the fabric of his shirt. She unbuckles his pants, lets them slide to the floor around his ankles, and blocks his attempts to kick his shoes off and free his pants by placing her knee between his legs. She wants him to be slightly hobbled and awkward.
She whispers in his ear and pressures him, “What do you want to do to me?” She wants him to think and be coordinated and be skillful at the same time. She turns her back to him and leans against Raymond, pinning him between her and the wall. She reaches behind her and tucks her fingers in the waistband of his underwear and pushes them down. He lifts her skirt. She stands on his shoes so that she’s taller and accepts the way he nestles his erection between her legs. She likes the feeling of him being hard against the crotch of her panties. He presses his penis against the fabric pretending to be frustrated by his inability to enter her. He covers her right hand with his own hand and places it on the buttons of her blouse. He kisses her neck and watches her unbutton her blouse. He kisses her under her ear and whispers his story. The story is told slowly so that Raymond never has to change his mind, or revise, or edit. The sex stories he tells Aurora are plotted to indulge Aurora’s point of view and descriptively polite in his choice of words. It is Aurora who interrupts and poses questions. Her questions are partly her own voice and partly Raymond’s. She says the words “suck” and “cunt” and “fuck�
� deliberately as if she were quoting Raymond, as if Raymond had said them, as if one could hear the quotes surrounding each word. Each question pursues Raymond’s motives and each question can only be answered with “yes.” She likes to hear him say “yes.” Sometimes he stops in mid-sentence as he searches for ways of speaking with his hands. Aurora unbuttons, unhooks, unsnaps, unzips.
It’s very hot. Very humid. We couldn’t sleep the night before. In our exhaustion the following afternoon we’ve fallen asleep fully clothed on our bed in a hotel room with enormous windows and billowing white curtains.
We’re bathed by the filtered sunlight of the opaque curtains. We’re only one floor above a noisy street. Each time the breeze separates the curtains, there’s a view across the street of other buildings, of windows mirroring the reflection of our hotel.
Are we in a foreign country? I’m not sure. The noise from the street stirs you from your deep sleep.
My hand rests inside your loose blouse cupping your breast. Before opening your eyes you can feel my thumb brush lightly against your nipple each time your breathing rises and falls. You push my hand away and the sweat pooled there is cooled by the breeze pushing through the curtains.
Was it a tire screech or a bottle shattering against the pavement that woke you? You unbutton your blouse, but you’re too tired to sit up and shed it from your damp back. Your skirt is twisted and gathered and folded in the sheets. Some of the fabric of the skirt is matted against your thighs where you’ve been sweating. It irritates your skin. You push your skirt off. You’re not wearing underwear and worry about the curtains parting.
You’re beginning to remember your dream. You’re angry with me. Something you dreamt made you angry. I was with two women and we were laughing at you and how you discovered my infidelity. You’re angry now for being naked and vulnerable while I’m fully clothed and disloyal. Your heartbeat is pushed by your anger. Another bottle shatters on the street. You weren’t dreaming, you say.
Your fear wakes me. You turn on your side and look into my brown eyes before I’m fully awake to see where I’ve been, to confirm my infidelity. Instead of seeing guilt and fear, you see a sleepy insouciance. Your anger changes to irritation at having been woken by your rapid heartbeat. By the time your hand reaches across and feels my slow heartbeat, you are convinced of my innocence.
“A little boy, a woman’s fear,” you whisper. I can’t hear you over the noise from the street. Other people are talking. We are in a foreign country.
I lift your hand from my chest and place your palm against my forehead. “It’s hot.” You feel my cheeks with the cool backside of your hand. When I lick my dry lips you rest a fingertip on the tip of my tongue. I expect to taste the salt of my own sweat, instead I taste you. You push your finger down against my tongue. I take your hand from my mouth and place it back down there, our fingers intertwine, you push my finger inside you, pull my hand from you, brush the wetness against your clit. My finger is cradled by yours. You teach me each delicate stroke. “The curtains,” you say, “people can see us.” My tongue circles your nipple. “We are in a foreign country,” I whisper.
After Raymond and Aurora make love, she lays her head against his chest, listens to his rapid heartbeat, his deep breathing, and she feels his body heat. Aurora is always amused by his exhaustion which she once thought was an exaggerated performance as if he were trying to please her. Aurora thought that men could not be so consumed by their orgasm, that in reality they are only consumed by the satisfaction of having completed a task that required coordination, timing, and unselfishness. How was I?
Aurora accepts and shoulders the guilt for why she and Raymond are separating. He’s hurt but rarely shows it. He tries to be strong and tries to say things that are meant to be ironic and wry as if they had just met, as if she had no knowledge of how much he loved her. He can do this because he knows she still loves him. He thinks if he can keep Aurora talking and if he pretends he’s strong, she’ll be able to find her belief again. He tries not to give in to everything Aurora wants. Raymond picks an argument, but he’s not very good at it.
“It’s the age thing.”
“It’s not the age thing.”
“It’s the voice of experience thing.”
“It’s not the experience thing.”
“I give too much advice.”
“I ask you for advice.”
“I’m Chinese and you’re not.”
“It’s not racial.”
“I’m a bad lover.”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I think your friends are young and silly.”
“Some of them are.”
“I patronize.”
“You never patronize.”
“I’m perfect.”
“It’s my fault, not yours.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I think I’m frightened by something.”
“What is it Aurora?”
They both know, but can’t say. It’s hard for Aurora to believe in her own safety, that she can feel protected, that she believes she wants Raymond to protect her. Protect her from what? From what happens, from what ifs? No. It’s identity. A sense of self. She wants to be as strong by herself as she is with Raymond. She wants to have a “son’s” sense of the world. She wants an inheritance from her father. She wants her father to pass his power and authority to her as if she were a son. Perhaps he has already, she thinks. She wants people to witness and acknowledge King Lear handing the kingdom over to the loyal daughter. Give me the pocket watch from Grandpa, turn over the business, pat me on the back when I follow you into the Navy, live your life through me, your son, and grab me another beer, will ya? The witnesses Aurora sees only hear her saying, “Hey, sailor.” She can’t be part of the same inheritance. She’s not white. She’s part white, but it still makes her not white. Was Raymond the father that makes sense and joins two mutually agreeable identities together? He’s more than just my lover, Aurora admits. It upsets her that Raymond knows he’s not as strong without her. Has she had enough chances to prove herself, like Raymond has? “I’m older,” Raymond has said more than once, “maybe I know there are things I simply can’t do anymore, I can’t prove anymore, or there are things I don’t want anymore, or things I accept as is.” Aurora remembers how Raymond talks about himself like a car, “As is, no warranty.”
Raymond wonders if it is racial. Raymond argues with himself about race and gender, about race and identity being a flimsy excuse, a coverup, a scapegoat. He’s interrogating himself and his answers sound defensive. “What is it you don’t know? What is it you can’t find out with me?” he wants to ask her.
Aurora wonders if it is racial. Perhaps Raymond makes too much of the race issue. Their union was never always just love and desire and friendship. Race was always present in public and in private. Sometimes she felt that he treated his ancestry as a gift to her that would make sense of who she was. She knew she didn’t have to be with Raymond to simply say to herself that she was Japanese American and that she felt Japanese American even though some people found it difficult to see it in her face. Being with Raymond people assumed she was Asian and didn’t have to guess. She found herself explaining less, but at the same time wanting to harbor the definition of herself that she had to defend against while growing up. Sometimes it was “the age thing” between them. Raymond knew himself better because he was older. Aurora sometimes wanted to be more adrift, more unsure, make more decisions. Raymond and Aurora fit together. There’s a common bond. People can see it when they’re together. She likes being in a city with a huge Asian population. She can identify with the city in the same way she can be identified with Raymond.
The first few months with Raymond was like being in a college ethnic studies class as they compared notes about being Asian in America and being biracial. Raymond spoke of the sixties and self-determination, then the seventies and used terms like “multicultural” that she had only heard in school and n
ever between two lovers. Perhaps Raymond and Aurora were no different, neither one really knew they were Asian when they were young and each had to prove it in their own way. For Raymond the opportunity to find his identity came in the sixties. Negroes became Blacks and Raymond became “Asian American” without a hyphen. She knew all this information in a general way, yet Aurora would listen and be kind, but in reality only wanted to know how long Raymond’s hair was and what he wore. Sometimes he lectured in bed about Berkeley in the sixties.
Aurora is afraid that she’ll never forget the way she and Raymond make love.
“How can you be afraid of that?” Raymond asks. “Is that something you want to forget?”
Weeks later, after their separation, Aurora is sitting on the edge of the bed, her bathrobe is untied and hangs open, she is naked underneath. The phone rings. She doesn’t move to answer it, instead her phone machine answers. When she hears Raymond’s voice, she pulls her bathrobe close around herself. He sounds distracted, admits there is no reason he called, then says there was a reason, but he’s forgotten. Then he remembers that he called to tell her his new phone number, but he doesn’t tell her. He’ll call again.
THE BROWN HOUSE
Hisaye Yamamoto
In California that year the strawberries were marvelous. As large as teacups, they were so juicy and sweet that Mrs. Hattori, making her annual batch of jam, found she could cut down on the sugar considerably. “I suppose this is supposed to be the compensation,” she said to her husband, whom she always politely called Mr. Hattori.
“Some compensation!” Mr. Hattori answered.
At that time they were still on the best of terms. It was only later, when the season ended as it had begun, with the market price for strawberries so low nobody bothered to pick number twos, that they began quarreling for the first time in their life together. What provoked the first quarrel and all the rest was that Mr. Hattori, seeing no future in strawberries, began casting around for a way to make some quick cash. Word somehow came to him that there was in a neighboring town a certain house where fortunes were made overnight, and he hurried there at the first opportunity.
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