My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

  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.

  Of course, I’d seen him this way on the commercial shoots, so I knew what to expect, but I’d never had to deal with him single-handedly before. He was heavy. His big blocklike head lolled and swayed to the echoes of the blues in the night. Random notes bounced around its hollow interior. He could barely waddle. He draped his arms around my neck for support, knocking his head against mine and occasionally turning to face me, square on, and confide the innermost feelings from his heart. The feelings were noxious enough, but they were borne along on gaseous clouds rising from his innermost bowel and they made me gag.

  We made it up the elevator to his floor and all the way to his door before he collapsed. I thought about just leaving him there, but then I took pity on him. However distasteful, I had to find his key, so I stuck my fingers gingerly into his pants pockets and fished around, trying not to touch anything. I found the key in his wallet, opened the door, and tried to drag him inside, but he was too heavy, so I got a wet towel from the bathroom and slapped his face with it for a while. Finally I managed to bring him around enough to get him up on his feet. Once standing, he swayed like a top, then he fell against me, pushing me through the doorway and onto the floor.

  Suddenly something kindled in the man. He was a sneaky bastard, and quick too. He kicked the door shut with his heel, and before I knew what was happening, he had landed on top of me. I couldn’t fight him off. He was enormously heavy and put all his weight into his shoulder to pin me to the floor. He ripped my shirt open in front and grabbed my breast and started squeezing it and moaning, while he got his knee wedged between my legs and my skirt up around my hips.

  “Yarashite, Jane-chan, yarashite—let me do it, please. I want to do it so bad....”

  He pulled down the front of my underpants and jammed his fingers into my crotch and I felt them, blunt and cold, fumble at the opening of my vagina. I struggled but couldn’t shift his weight, and this just seemed to excite him further. He moaned again.

  “Jane-chan, wa kawaii—you are so cute. Listen to me.... My wife, she is fruitless woman, but ... Jane, akachan ga tsukuritai—I want to make baby with you....”

  That was his mistake. The idea of being impregnated by this foul-breathing man gave me the jolt of strength I needed to jam my knee into his groin and my knuckles into his windpipe and roll him over. I stood up. He lay on the ground, writhing and groaning.

  “Tsumetai, Jane. How can you be so cold?” He gripped his crotch in both hands.

  It was revolting. I suppressed an upsurge of nausea and an overwhelming urge to kick him as hard as I could.

  “Oi, Ueno. Call time’s at seven.” I paused. “Did you hear me?”

  He groaned and I turned to go, then stopped at the door.

  “Take the right-hand elevator, you dickhead. The left one’s for the ducks.”

  I took about ten showers that night. By the following morning I was still feeling queasy, but most of that was psychological. I had managed to circumvent the worst of a physical hangover by taking a tonic of kudzu that Suzuki had made for me in New York. However, when Ueno stumbled out of the left-hand elevator at seven-fifteen, I felt like throwing up all over again. Still, I could tell he felt worse. It was like seeing his face on a TV monitor when the color bars haven’t been set correctly and there’s too much green in the skin tones. He was sweating. When he saw me in the lobby he mumbled an apology for being late and waddled meekly after me to the front, where the valet had my car waiting. I was still too angry to talk to him, and during the drive to Mississippi I had to pull the car over three times so that he could vomit on the side of the road.

  When we finally arrived in Harmony, I stopped the car on the outskirts of town.

  “Ueno, listen to me. I have worked very hard to gain this family’s trust. They are not used to people like us, and unlike the Thayers, they do not know a lot about the way the TV business works. I don’t care how rotten you feel or how rotten you are, but we are going to church now and you are going to behave like a decent, civilized man, do you understand? Not a sleazy agency rep. Not a television producer. A human being. That is all you are for the next few hours, until we leave this town. If you have to throw up again, do it now. This is your last chance. Do you understand?”

  He nodded meekly, opened the car door and retched.

  We reached the church. The small dirt parking lot was full of cars, but there was no one outside and the doors were closed. I parked and led Ueno up the steps, straightened him, stood to one side, and knocked quietly. I was still somewhat hungover, and feeling ill, so when the doors opened and a nurse stepped out to greet us, it made perfect intuitive sense to me. But not to Ueno. He saw her, a monumental black woman dressed in a starched nurse’s uniform so tight it accentuated every pinnacle of breast and palisade of thigh, and he gasped and reeled and almost fainted.

  “Shhh!” she hissed as she caught him by the cuff with her white-gloved fist and dragged him through the door.

  We stood with a group of latecomers, guarded by the big nurse, in the foyer between the church’s outer and inner doors. They all had their heads bowed as though in penance, so I kicked Ueno and bowed mine too. The Harmony Five were singing the opening hymn, and when they finished, the doors opened and we were all let through. Two more nurses—I realized now they were ushers—met us and took us by the arm. I’d been hoping to find seats near the back, where Ueno could slip out should the need arise, but instead the nurses led us to the very front pew, the seats of honor, which apparently had been reserved for us. We sat down. I looked around, hoping to recognize Miss Helen or Purcell, but I’d never met them, and everyone in the church was staring at us with equally curious attention.

  The Preacher was talking, and it took me a while to identify him as the same man I’d spoken with on the telephone. He’d had an accent then, but nothing compared with this thick blanket of honeyed sound, from which I could extract neither words nor meaning. It would be offensive for me to try to re-create it here and I also have to confess that I wasn’t paying much attention. At the time, I was concentrating less on the intricacies of the Preacher’s theology and more o
n whether Ueno was going to throw up. I was worried. We were sandwiched on either side and it would not be easy to escape. It was a bad situation.

  But at that moment, the Preacher segued into the next hymn, which was “Without Your Help, Sweet Jesus, We Are Lost,” and the Harmony Five burst into song and the congregation followed:We are lost, we are lost, we are lost, we are lost ...

  O Lord ...

  And as the music gathered momentum and people got to their feet, singing and clapping, I discovered that my worries were dissipating. There was no room for them. The music filled every crevice of heart and soul and washed away my sickness, and it was clear that although we were lost, we would be found.

  And when the song subsided and the Preacher called for our introductions, I understood perfectly the words he was saying, and I spoke, and it was all right. And the old ladies around us commenced their nodding and their patting, and I think they reminded even Ueno of his aunties in Japan, so I felt him relax a bit too.

  And then the Preacher launched into the body of his sermon, which was about how the world seems so big and strange, but really it’s just made up of countries, which are made up of states, which are made up of towns, which are made up of communities, which are made up of neighbors, which are made up of families, and so on. And when there is sickness in the family you must turn to your neighbors and to your community to help cure that sickness, because the community is there to help each member and the community is only as healthy as each member. And then a young man from the congregation stood up and turned his palms to the sky to give testimonial. He told of how he had grown up in Harmony, gone to school here all the way through high school, but had turned his back on his family and community for a job in the big city.

  As he spoke, he moved from the back of the church to the front, until he joined the Preacher near the pulpit, next to the Harmony Five, who were giving him a little background vocal support. He testified that he knew he was blessed to be given the chance of a job in the big city, but he had become seduced by the big-city ways and had abdicated his responsibilities to his family and his community and had committed many sins, including drinking liquor and sins of the flesh, and he was sickened....

  And now, whenever he was emphatic, when he came down on a word, his knee would jerk up and his elbows would contract into his sides.... And he told them how, one day, he realized how the job and the big city were working a change on him, and it was up to him, it was his duty, to come home to his neighbors, to his community, and stay true to his church, that here is where his true health is, here is where he can be delivered from sickness, from temptation....

  And now, suddenly, he was overcome with spastic convulsions, and his limbs shot out, first an arm, then a leg, and the Yamaha punctuated each syncopated spasm with a chord, and the Harmony Five roused the congregation to a frenzy. They were waving their palms over their heads, shouting out “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen, brother!” and “That’s right, tell it like it is!” The young man threw his head back and fell to the ground, kicking his feet until his shoe loosened, flew through the air, and landed in Ueno’s lap. Ueno responded as though it were a live thing, brushing it off in terror, and then the Preacher started in again. The ladies on either side responded, grabbing Ueno and me and wrapping us in their arms, then passing us off to another neighbor, to be similarly embraced. Catharsis was close at hand. I dimly understood it, felt it gathering all around me. And the miracle was, so did Ueno.

  The combination of terror and hangover had pushed him over the edge. All around him, people were dancing and writhing and singing and shaking and speaking in tongues, and others were caring for them, laying on their hands, supporting their frenzy. Sweat was pouring down Ueno’s face, pure distilled alcohol by the smell of it, and he was sobbing. A tall, sturdy woman, wearing a navy dress with little raised Swiss polka dots, cradled his head like a baby on her bosom and patted his heaving back. He raised his head and it wobbled a bit, as though his neck were not yet strong enough to support the weight. His puffy, tear-stained face retained the impressions of her little polka dots. He smiled at me, blissful, then he laid his head back down again and sniffled. The polka dot woman just kept patting and patting, and she looked at me over his shoulder and smiled.

  “Hi,” she said softly. I recognized her voice. It was Miss Helen Dawes.

  Just then the Preacher’s words started to rise. His voice focused the congregation, gathering up all the disparate frenzy into a single concerted expression of faith and healing, cresting now, teetering on the razor edge between earthbound speech and song, and when it broke, it soared up to the vaulted ceiling of heaven. This man could sing! The Harmony Five led the congregation in the background refrain, and when the song was over, the Preacher bade us all to take the hand of our neighbor in prayer. The skinny old lady grasped my right hand and Miss Helen held Ueno’s. He and I stood there and just looked at each other. Then we turned and faced the pulpit. I could feel the link of brotherhood, broken and dangling limply between us, but as the Preacher commenced praying, Ueno surprised me. He reached over and took my hand in his damp, sticky paw and held it, quietly, firmly. All through the prayer I let him hold it, clenching my teeth as nausea alternated with forgiveness.

  It wasn’t so unreasonable. I mean, after seeing him stripped so bare, sobbing and raw on Miss Helen’s shoulder like that, how could I hold a grudge? I was astounded that this tightly wound Japanese businessman was able to let himself go. Maybe I’d underestimated him. Maybe he was simply starved for affection, and the warm and generous contact here in Harmony had broken the bonds of his repression and liberated his wellspring of love. It was possible. Anything was possible. At the end of the prayer the Preacher bade us embrace our neighbor in the spirit of brotherly love, and I allowed Ueno to take me in his sweaty arms and even managed to suppress a violent shudder. I was never going to like this man, I realized as I gritted my teeth and hugged him back. On the other hand, I could be generous—I was going to get to do my Helen Dawes show after all.

  After the service, Miss Helen and Mr. Purcell claimed us and proudly introduced us to the members of the congregation, all of whom, even down to the littlest child, wanted to shake our hands. We were very exotic, but more than that, I think Miss Helen had been honestly moved by Ueno’s religious feeling. We drove to the Dawes house, which was just down the dirt road from the church, and went inside. We were going to have lunch with them and then see a bit of the softball game, but first I wanted to do a quick interview with Miss Helen and Mr. Purcell, to get more information about them for my script and to lock down a few details of the shoot.

  Filming food preparation is always difficult with amateur cooks. Since the Flowers show, I’d learned that you have to work with the wives to break down their recipe into stages and then explain how each stage must be prepared in advance so that during the actual shoot we would not have to wait for the food to cook. In addition, each stage must look like the one that came before, so the audience won’t know that there’s been. a cheat. Miss Helen was going to make chitterlings for us and I wanted to prep her and to figure out what the rest of the menu would be.

  We sat in the small living room. The faded pastel-green walls were decorated with department store portraits of all nine children. A collection of gilt trophies for softball, baseball, and basketball, and singing awards for the Harmony Five, covered the side table, spilled over onto the bookshelf, and reached all the way to the top of the television. A dusty bouquet of blue plastic roses sat there too. When the children ran in and out of the kitchen, thudding down the corridor into their rooms, the walls shuddered and set the roses quivering. But the running children seemed very far away all of a sudden. As the world outside receded and the living room closed in around us, I realized that we had entered one of those funny warps in which the social paradigm shifts out from under you. After all the commotion and the naked outpouring of emotion at church, we were suddenly all alone together. And silent. Stricken with self-consc
iousness.

  Miss Helen sat on an upright wooden chair from the kitchen with her hands folded in the lap of her polka dot Sunday dress, still wearing her hat. She was a large woman, but lean and strong, and you could see the muscles running down her calves, underneath the thick nylon stockings. She knew how to hold perfectly still, head bowed, barely there. Next to her, Mr. Purcell sat on the couch, wearing a shiny green suit with big wide lapels. The springs of the couch had collapsed and the seat cushions sank so low that his knees stuck up, and this in turn hiked up the cuffs of his pants to expose his skinny callused ankles. His shoes were worn but meticulously polished. He was nervous and smiled at us broadly, flashing a mouthful of huge, crooked gold-capped teeth.

  Ueno and I were seated side by side on the two chairs that were obviously meant for guests. It was up to me.

  “Miss Helen, I wanted to ask you a bit about your family’s diet—the kind of things you like to eat?”

  Miss Helen sat very still and stared at her lap. Mr. Purcell just smiled and smiled.

  “I was wondering if you could tell John here a little bit about your chitterlings?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” whispered Miss Helen.

  The “ma’am” caught me by surprise and threw me off. It was so formal. We waited for her to continue.

  “You know, the chitterlings that you’re famous for?” I prompted.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Again, she was silent.

  “What do you eat with the chitterlings?” I didn’t know what to do. The “ma’am” had turned me into a teacher or a social worker giving her a test, its questions so inane as to be incomprehensible. It was safer for her just to say nothing. “Do you eat something with the chitterlings?”