My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

  That dank, moldy room by the interstate was a threshold of sorts. After the sex was over, we lay in the middle of the spongy mattress, and my heart pounded and swelled with all this massing, nebulous expectation. His head was on my chest, and he lifted it and shifted slightly, as though he’d felt the pulse of it too.

  “Takagi?”

  “Yes ...”

  “Thanks.”

  “Uh ... sure.”

  He rolled over onto his side and propped his head on his hand and looked at me.

  “Jane, when you said you didn’t get pregnant, that you were safe ... ?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sure? I mean, what exactly did you mean?”

  I didn’t want to tell him at first. I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that he wouldn’t take me seriously if he knew. And I wanted him to take me seriously. As seriously as I was taking him. And that’s when I realized I had to tell him.

  “Sloan, I can’t have kids.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I was married, remember? We tried, I got tested, nothing. Zip. That’s what broke us up, finally.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well ...”

  “Thanks. For telling me.”

  “Well, I guess you should know.”

  He rolled over onto his back. “You know, I’ve never had sex without a condom before. I’ve always wondered what it feels like, but what with AIDS and paternity suits and all ... I’ve never had a lover who was perfectly safe....”

  And that was that. What it all boiled down to. A discrepancy in desire. He wanted a simple answer to a nagging question, like scratching an itch. I wanted something else. With Sloan, for the first time in so long, I wanted more. But no. Not to be safe. Not perfectly safe. That was not at all what I wanted.

  It was the strangest thing. As I stared up at the stained acoustic ceiling tile, the tears started to leak from the corners of my eyes. This had happened to me once before, when I was in the hospital after the operation and the doctor showed me the X-ray of the imploded forehead of my uterus and its decrepit curling horns. The tears for my thwarted posterity just ran down the sides of my face, into my ears, and onto the pillow. I wasn’t crying, really. Rather, life and all my stupid hopes for the future were simply draining out of me. And in Fly it happened again. I couldn’t make the tears stop. After a while, Sloan got up to go to the bathroom and noticed.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Sloan, really,” I reassured him, in a perfectly normal, reliable voice. “Everything is just fine.”

  “Really, Ma, I’m fine.” She stands on the porch watching me as I carry my suitcase to the rental car parked in the driveway. She is worried, I can tell. But what can I say to her? I told her about the neoplasia, just to get her used to the idea that I might not be as durable as she imagines. But from what I’d read about DES, and what I’d seen of my imploded uterus, I can’t promise to have the baby at all, even if I wanted it, which I’m not at all sure I do. And I certainly can’t promise to marry Sloan. But at least I will tell him, I promise her. Before I abort I will tell the nice green man, just to see what he says. “Ma,” I say to her as I lean way down to kiss her good-bye on the top of her gray head. “Don’t worry. Everything will be just fine.”

  Returning from the Midwest to New York is like driving full speed into a wall. The city slams you. Middle America is all about drift and suspension. It’s the pervasiveness of the mall-culture mentality; all of life becomes an aimless wafting on currents of synthesized sound, through the well-conditioned air. In New York, you walk down the streets like that, you’re dead meat.

  I slipped back into the city and spent a week at home pretending I was still out of town. I made appointments with an obstetrician for an ultrasound and an oncologist to check my uterus for more malignant forms of life, and then I unplugged the phone, got down on my knees, and cleaned every corner of my tiny apartment. It’s a ritual I perform every year. I go through all my possessions, touching each, one by one. I reconsider everything I own and either choose it again or throw it away. It’s a deterrent to shopping, and stuff stays special that way.

  My apartment is small but fits me perfectly: a long, slim railroad with tall ceilings, exposed brick walls, and broad oak-plank floors. The walls are decorated with hanga wood-block prints and some old hand-tinted photos of my Japanese relatives that I’d gotten from my aunt in Tokyo. Some of my furniture had belonged to them too: a lacquered chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a low table made from a slab of twisted ironwood, polished to a rich, knotty glow. Mixed with these were the things from Grampa Little’s side. A scarred wood-and-enamel kitchen sideboard from the farm. Grammy’s pink double-globe lamps with their hand-painted flowers and the lace table runners that her mother crocheted. An old love seat and a couple of milking stools from the farm that Grampa couldn’t bear to throw away, even though he hadn’t used them for milking in several decades.

  At the end of my week of reevaluation, I emerged and walked over to the office to announce my return. Souvenir exchange is a ritual glue in Japanese offices, and I’d bought shot glasses for the American researchers and refrigerator magnets for the Japanese staff. We were aiming for complete sets in both categories from all fifty states. The shot glasses said “Indiana—The Hoosier State,” and the magnets had the slogan “Crossroads of America” emblazoned across the top and a cartoon of a baffled-looking Japanese tourist reading a crossroads sign with some of the more colorful Indiana town names—Brazil, Holland, Mexico, Peru, Alexandria, Delphi, Carthage, Gnaw Bone, Pinhook, Popcorn, and Santa Claus—written on rickety wooden arrows that pointed in all directions.

  My desk was covered with mail, faxes, and Post-it phone messages. There were brochures from PR firms representing small-town tourist interests, faxes from film commissions, and a couple of messages from Suzie Flowers, which I tossed in the trash. She had been calling me regularly ever since the shoot. Kenji told her the program had been canceled, but she persisted, saying she wanted some of the footage even if the show hadn’t aired. I felt bad, but it was Kenji’s job to deal with her.

  The two faxes that I was interested in were pinned to my bulletin board. One was from my mole at the Japanese Network and the other was from John Ueno. I read the mole’s fax first.

  7 July

  Dear miss Takagi,

  Congratulations on your program of Indiana’s Bukowsky family that earned highest ratings for the time slot in this season, penetrating more than 10,000,000 households, perhaps! Our Network producer is quite satisfy and say please to continue good work on authentic American family that only you can choose. But I warn you please to beware of agency rep Mr. J. Ueno who is exceedingly anger or so I have heard.

  Sincerely,

  Tashiro p.s. if you like to know why is J. Ueno exceedingly anger it is because of your show causing all of the lams to sell out of butcher stores in Tokyo on Saturday afternoon, which became so famous story as to be highlight on national evening news! Maybe this is very funny for you but not good for American sponsor and especially Mr. J. Ueno!

  The second fax read:10 July

  Dear Ms. Jane Takagi,

  This is to inform you of your grave flaw in last program of My

  American Wife!, which is the Mrs. Bukowsky program, and that is the LAMB. You must never put LAMB into the program of My

  American Wife! ever because LAMB come mostly from Australia, which is not good for program sponsor of BEEF-EX since it is unAmerican. Do you understand? I must say very severely to you even though this is a needless to say thing. TV program depend on sponsor. It is business. Please do not do again. I hope you will understand my meaning.

  Sincerely,

  Joichi Ueno

  “It’s your gig, primarily. You can handle it as you like. But I’d watch it if I were you....”

  Kenji had a habit of sneaking up behind you on his soft Italian soles. I knew he had read the faxes and posted them on the board. He
watched my reaction, then added:“Kato called.”

  Kato was a man of vision who could see beyond the narrow promotional concerns of sponsors and could imagine programming that was truly unique yet served the needs of the market.

  “What did he say?”

  “‘Congratulations. Don’t do it again.’ He told me to keep an eye on you.”

  Kenji’s position was complex, I knew, as the despised and lowly courtier, exiled from the capital of Tokyo to the island of Manhattan, U.S.A. On one hand I think he genuinely liked me and wanted to support me. On the other, he wanted me to fall on my face so he could take over directing and get to go to exotic parts of America, where he could take photographs with his antique Leica and eventually get himself noticed and recalled to the capital. And maybe find a wife. I understood his ambivalence and was accordingly a bit wary.

  “Great, so now you spy for the enemy.”

  “Baka na koto—don’t be an idiot. Here. This call just came in.” He handed me a pink telephone message slip.

  It was from the Indiana State Film Office. The number on it was Sloan’s.

  I turned my back on Kenji and dialed.

  “BEEF-EX is paying your rent,” Kenji continued. “And mine too. So don’t get all auteur on me, Takagi. It’s just too boring.”

  “Screw you, Kenji,” I said as he walked out the door. I mean, I was happy about the ratings. It wasn’t an Emmy, and eight o’clock on Saturday morning wasn’t the greatest slot in the world, but still I wanted to celebrate a little or at least have someone to commiserate with. I was annoyed that everyone was getting so bent about some dumb lamb chops, when obviously it was the story that counted. Then Sloan answered the phone, and as soon as I heard his voice my heart was in my throat, and suddenly I remembered that nothing was simple anymore. But he sounded really glad to hear from me, and the blood was pounding in my face, and by then it was too late to change my mind, so I invited him to New York and told him I’d pick him up at La Guardia.

  Sloan sauntered off the plane carrying a brown paper bag with two bottles of champagne that he’d asked the stewardess to chill in the first-class kitchen, and he looked great, a long-limbed, languid musician. I had intended to bring him home, but at the last minute I changed my mind. There was nothing wrong with my apartment. I was actually quite proud of it, newly cleaned and gleaming. But at the last moment I had a total crisis of the imagination—I just couldn’t picture him superimposed on all my ancestors’ photos and pieces of my family history as I told him I was pregnant with his child. It was far too cozy, too personal. I was scared.

  Then it occurred to me all of a sudden that maybe I loved him precisely because he was not part of my life, and what turned me on about our relationship was its anonymity. Until Fly, anyway, it had been as neutral, sanitized, and comforting as a plastic ice bucket and a well-stocked minibar. And if I couldn’t have more, I certainly didn’t want less. I flagged a gypsy limousine at La Guardia and we drove across the George Washington Bridge to the Palisades Motor Lodge, just over the New Jersey border. I imagine Sloan was relieved. He liked these semipublic spaces, rooms just recently vacated and still redolent of someone else’s miseries, spurts of joy, and jaw-cracking ennui. We spent the weekend tangled in the polyester sheets, celebrating the mouthwatering diversity of meats, and then he took a cab back to the airport. I didn’t tell him about the pregnancy. I figured it could wait until I’d seen the doctors, had the ultrasound, had more information.

  When I got back to my apartment, I reread Ueno’s fax. Of course he had never mentioned the ratings. That was fine with me. But the reprimand pissed me off, as did his attempt to curtail my freedom as a documentarian. I understood that he had to answer to his superiors at the agency, and ultimately to his American clients, and that my programming was undermining his credibility with BEEF-EX. But I chose to ignore this understanding, as I would ignore the new censorship he imposed. I couldn’t help it. “Beef is Best.” Hah. He was base. His wanton capitalist mandate had nothing to do with my vocation.

  Thinking back now, I wonder that my rage was so misdirected. The real targets were closer to home: Ma, for her credulous nature, for taking a drug that deformed me; Sloan, for impregnating me so casually and wanting so little from me; and me, for wanting so much more and yet not even able to tell him I was pregnant. Ueno was a distraction. I plunged furiously back into work again, hounding the researchers for a new American Wife. I wanted to make a real statement with my next program, really teach Ueno a lesson. I didn’t want to think about Sloan. I didn’t want to think about the baby, a small bean by now, clinging by a slender root hair to such insubstantial soil. If I had paid more attention, things might have turned out differently. But I was like Shōnagon’s archer, standing there with my trembling bow, unable to launch the arrow, yet aware somehow that when I did, it would go off in the wrong direction entirely.

  8.

  The Leaf Month

  SHŌNAGON

  Things That Give a Pathetic Impression

  The voice of someone who blows his nose while he is speaking.

  The expression of a woman plucking her eyebrows.

  AKIKO

  Prick. Prick.

  My blood

  lips lick

  dew drop

  dew drop

  pretty ruby red.

  The air in the bathroom was thick and humid. Akiko could smell her fertility whenever she peed or even spread her legs. She’d stopped wearing skirts because of this, afraid John would notice. For a while after the incident with the lamb chops, when Akiko fell into the television, John stayed away at night, sleeping in town at a capsule hotel. When he returned he seemed to have forgotten all about the incident. Now he was sleeping in the futon next to hers, but he still hadn’t touched her.

  “Still nothing?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Tell me when,” he said, rolling away from her. “Just tell me when it starts. Otherwise there’s no point.”

  She was lying to him, of course. She’d menstruated twice since the lamb chops, and she took great care to wrap up her soiled pads, tuck them into the waistline of her trousers under her shirt, then smuggle them out of the bathroom and into the deep pockets of her winter coat, which hung in the closet. She collected them there, and first thing in the morning, after John left for work, she wrapped them in a plastic bag and took them downstairs to the large cement trash can near the playground. She had never learned to use flushable, internal methods of sanitary protection. Never felt comfortable sticking things up there.

  Slash, slash,

  my pretty

  gash.

  Run,

  river run,

  so ruby

  ruby red.

  One day, chopping green onions to garnish the miso soup, she cut herself on the fleshy part of her forefinger. The cut was deep, and she stood there for a long time, bouncing her hip against the kitchen counter, watching the’blood infuse the pale walls of flesh, collect in the crevice, then swell up over the edge as she squeezed the wound open and shut. She had stopped writing articles on “Complications Need Not Be Complex,” “Breast Pumps: It’s the Fit That Counts,” and “Yes, You’re a Mother, But Don’t Forget You’re a Wife.” Now she was writing only lists and poetry. Not good poetry, perhaps, but exciting poetry, words she’d never dared write down before. And ever since the lamb chops, she had stopped purging. The animal stayed down. She felt it, rutting and brooding in her darkness, exuding its fecundity from time to time and fueling her imagination. This excitement coexisted with the dread that John would discover her new secret. The two emotions followed each other with such regularity that they seemed to have blended into a continuum, the two halves of her thumping heart.

  TWO SCENES

  1.

  Lara and Dyann stood side by side on the small lawn in front of their split-level ranch house in Northampton, Massachusetts. They were nervous, laughing and bumping softly into each other for support. From time to time the bac
ks of their hands brushed and their fingers entwined for a brief squeeze before releasing, quickly, well-trained in circumspection. Oh stood in front of them, holding up a sheet of white paper, while Suzuki set the white balance on the Betacam. When they were ready, I stood next to Suzuki, asked him to roll, focused the women’s attention on the camera, then counted down their cue for action.

  “Hi, I’m Lara,” said Lara, with a straight face and a rigid smile, “... and this is my wife, Dyann.”

  “I’m Dyann,” said Dyann, starting to snicker, ”... and this is my wife, Lara.”

  “Today we’d like to give new meaning to My American Wife!” They burst. out laughing, and we cut. The line was dumb, but the translation into Japanese would be just fine. Suzuki was beaming. He liked the lesbians a lot.

  Maybe America had radicalized him, but it was Suzuki who convinced me that it would be fine to put lesbians on the show. There was nothing unwholesome about their lifestyle, he argued. The women were pillars of their community: one was a district attorney, the other a well-published author; their tiny children were unusually smart and cute; and they were exemplary mothers, both of them. If I was serious about wanting to use My American Wife! as a platform to further international understanding, he urged, then why not do a show about alternative lifestyles, something that was not often tolerated in Japan. He was right, but I was nervous. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, with the added benefit of twisting Ueno’s knickers, but one small hitch had come up—the women were vegetarians. Lara and Dyann suggested Pasta Primavera for the Recipe of the Day, yet even with a scene of the sweet babies in the garden picking plump and luscious vegetables, I didn’t think I would get away with this. I mean, lamb was one thing, and lesbians were another, but vegetarian lesbians were something else entirely.