by Sachi Parker
Anyway, it turned out that Yuki and I had a fabulous time. We stayed at Mom’s lavish town house on the glamorous Avenue Foch, and we were virtually unsupervised. We had the run of the house—and we ran. I remember the two of us jumping up and down on the fancy beds, bouncing off the walls, raiding the kitchen at night, and gorging ourselves on crème brûlée and French pastries. Yuki’s aggressive, take-what-you-want attitude was starting to appeal to me.
We explored Paris, too, sometimes with guides, sometimes on our own. I remember watching the extravagant floor show at the notorious cabaret Lido. It was clearly a show geared for adults; I don’t know what we were doing there, two unworldly clueless ten-year-olds, but it was certainly an experience. Most memorable were the chorus lines of statuesque half-naked women parading across the stage with tassels on their breasts and huge sprays of feathers sprouting from their heads and their behinds. Yuki and I giggled through the whole show.
• • •
WOMAN Times Seven was an episodic farce in which Mom played seven different roles in short vignettes illustrating the tantalizing enigma that is Woman. It had one of those all-star international casts, and was directed by the great neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica. He was a great, warm, avuncular presence with aging matinee-idol looks, who nurtured my mom, flattered her, and lavished her with attentive compliments and adoring glances.
He was always over at our town house, and I would watch from the living room as they cooked together in the kitchen, laughing, teasing, bestowing light grazing touches as they passed each other. De Sica would burst into an Italian street song, and then he would suddenly take my mother in his arms and hug her, and Mom would gaze up at him worshipfully like a little girl.
I thought he was wonderful—his huge beaming smile was so full of love for everyone and everything—and I hated leaving the shoot and going back to Tokyo, because I feared I would never see him again. And I didn’t.
• • •
THE following year, Mom was in England working on The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom, and again I found myself on location. Her costar was Richard Attenborough (with whom she did not have an affair, I can pretty safely say). Nowadays best known as the director of Gandhi and the dotty entrepreneur in Jurassic Park, Mr. Attenborough back then was a marvelous actor who had that amazing English ability to do anything: character roles and leading men, comedy and drama, war films and musicals. He was also a lovely gentleman. He was very sweet to me when I was visiting the set. He had a special nickname for me: Poppy. I don’t know where it came from, but whenever I ran into him in the years that followed, he would immediately greet me as Poppy. He still does.
The warmth and genuine sweetness of De Sica and Attenborough reminded me of that side of my dad, which I had seen less frequently over the years. The days of ice fishing and tall tales were growing more and more distant in my memory. When I got back to Japan, I felt a powerful need to reconnect with him. I wanted to forge a stronger bond.
That may have explained why I was a little overeager to see him one morning as I waited for him to emerge from his bedroom. He’d had an especially tiring night out, and was sleeping in. I waited anxiously in the living room for him to come out and start the fire and make his tea—“Come on, Dad. Where are you?” I muttered to myself—and finally I couldn’t wait any longer. I ran down the hall and burst into his bedroom without knocking. There he was, in bed—with Miki.
She had forgotten to wake herself up in the middle of the night and sneak away. Now she had committed the unforgivable sin; she’d allowed me to see her in my father’s bed.
There was alarm on Miki’s face when she sat up. “What are you doing in here?” she hissed at me angrily, as my father stirred beside her. She waved me off, hoping I would retreat before Dad spotted me, but it was too late. A fleeting look of surprise and embarrassment crossed his face when he saw me and got his bearings, and then a dark, frightening anger settled over him. He grew furious, but not with me. He turned his glare on Miki.
Miki cringed instinctively, and then tried to deflect his rage. “She should have knocked,” she said feebly, but in an instant Dad had seized her by the arm and tossed her out of the bed. She screamed as she hit the floor. Then, before she could get to her feet, he was upon her. He slapped her face hard. I was stunned by the shocking impact of his hand against her cheek. As she reeled back against the wall, he followed her, slapping her again and shouting terrible things at her. He pounded her on the back until she slipped to the floor, and then, as she lay slumped in a heap, he kicked her over and over.
It was an awful thing to watch—and the fact that it was Miki, whom I truly hated, being beaten so savagely made it seem even worse. To know that my father could summon such explosive violence was devastating to contemplate. (When would it be my turn?) Why was he doing it now? To protect his image in front of his daughter? To demonstrate that he was a good man who had been seduced by a worthless slut?
I couldn’t watch anymore, and fled from the room. The beating went on. I could hear Miki’s screams and the dull thuds of my father’s blows. Then there was silence, and only Miki’s low, muffled sobbing. Moments later, Dad was pulling Miki through the living room, her clothes hastily thrown on. He flung open the door, pushed her out, and slammed the door shut. Then he returned to his bedroom.
Not another word was said. I knew enough not to mention it. I quietly got ready for school and left.
The real value of violence, as all the great tyrants know, lies not in punishing the individual, but in delivering an object lesson of fear and subjugation to everyone else. Very soon their relationship would resume its normal equanimity, as if nothing had happened.
For me, it was devastating. Suddenly I apprehended the true depth of my father’s unstable fury, and it terrified me. I would do anything not to have that rage turned on me. So I became, if anything, more docile and eager to please. Walking on eggs became my default mode.
It was around this time that Mike Parsons died. Mike was a friend of my dad’s in Japan, and also a business associate. (For Dad, friendship and business always seemed to go hand in hand.) They were big drinking buddies.
Dad told me that Mike was quite the womanizer, but I knew that Mike was gay. I wasn’t supposed to know this, but once, at one of Dad’s parties at the Shibuya house, I wandered into one of the bedrooms, and there was Mike kissing another man. Really kissing him. No doubt about it.
This was never talked about, because in those days homosexuality was still something to be shunned and despised. So Mike led a secret life, too.
At that time, Dad had a business office in Hong Kong. I don’t know what kind of business it was, and I don’t know if Mike was involved in it.
One day, Mike Parsons was found dead in Dad’s Hong Kong office. Shot to death.
I remember the authorities questioning Dad, and Dad being a little anxious about it. I was filled with a bewildered protectiveness: “Why are they asking Dad these questions? He doesn’t know anything about it.”
Did he? Nothing came of it, no charges were filed, and Mike Parsons was never mentioned again, but in the back of my head, I wondered why intrigue and violence seemed to touch upon Dad’s life from every angle.
• • •
AS I approached my teenage years a natural rebelliousness was rising in me. Oh, I was a model of good-girl behavior in general, but every now and then a mood came over me, and I would decide to push the boundaries.
In a very small way, mind you. I didn’t smoke cigarettes or hang out with boys or down shots of sake.
No, I started reading.
Dad didn’t want me to read books. He felt it was a waste of time. I was an idiot, anyway; what was I going to learn? So I read surreptitiously, whenever he wasn’t around (which was often). I’d steal into his study and pick out a book, leaf through it, see if it grabbed me. Dad himself was an omnivorous reader, so there was plenty to choose from.
I was about twelve when, one day, I came upon a copy of Ayn R
and’s We the Living. It was the story of a young girl in postrevolutionary Russia who refused to let the repressive state tame her independent spirit. It hooked me right away. I understood this girl. She was struggling and straining against her bonds, much like me. I kept reading, and couldn’t put the book down. I nestled into my dad’s armchair, legs curled up under me, and got lost in another world.
Hours later, I was still reading when I heard my father come home. My first instinct was to jump out of the chair and shove the book back into the shelf before he saw me, but I didn’t. I was utterly absorbed in the world of the novel, and I didn’t want to leave it. I kept reading.
Behind me I heard the knob turn, and then the door open. I knew it was Dad. He stood in the doorway, motionless. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel his disapproval. I was breaking the rules.
It was too late to hide the fact, and I knew I would do well to rise meekly and acknowledge my folly, but some kind of defiance had taken hold of me. I wouldn’t stop reading. I wouldn’t even look up at him.
The door closed, with a reproving curtness. I heard Dad move into the room. I could peripherally see him taking off his coat, and methodically hanging it over a chair back. Then he sat down on the couch and stared at me. He would normally have settled into his armchair after a long day’s work; but I had the armchair, and I wasn’t moving. I kept reading.
Dad slowly took off his shoes, letting one and then the other clomp to the floor. He stared at me. I didn’t look over, but I knew he was staring, waiting. It occurred to me that I should have been performing my ordinary duties: getting him a scotch and soda, fetching his newspaper, kneeling beside him and rubbing his feet. That’s what a daughter was supposed to do.
But I was being a bad daughter, right in front of his eyes. I don’t know why I had chosen today to push the issue, but it seemed elementally right. Kira, the girl in the novel, was fighting Communist oppression and soul-crushing poverty. I was inspired.
Of course, he had a hundred pounds on me, and thirty years of experience, and a whole culture of Japanese patriarchy behind him. My will was nothing compared to his. He knew that the longer he stared and said nothing, the more extreme the pressure on me—and that, eventually, I would crack.
But I didn’t want to crack, the way I had over those damned cream puffs. It hadn’t helped. So I stared doggedly at the book.
I was only pretending to read, by this point. I couldn’t concentrate now. I could feel his anger collecting and rising to a boil, and sooner or later it was going to erupt on me full force. But when? In what form? Would he scream hateful things at me, or lock me in my room, or would he yank me from his chair and start beating me, mercilessly, as I’d seen him beat his lover?
I knew now that I’d made a mistake embarking on this foolish course, but there was no way to back out of it. I was stuck.
I waited. He waited. We were at an impasse, one that could end only disastrously.
Then Miki came into the room.
Miki’s contempt for me had only grown since the bedroom incident. Not only had I been the catalyst for the beating, but I had witnessed her humiliation, and she despised me for that. Not for the last time, I was catching the fallout from being an innocent bystander.
Miki stood beside my father and glared at me, arms folded. Another staring contest. Finally she spoke: “Isn’t it time you helped me with the flowers, young lady?”
I had to respond now, and I knew it would be suicidal to act snotty or defiant when my father was still coiled like a cobra. So I murmured, “Okay,” and slowly put the book down. Defeated, I followed Miki out of the room.
I should have been grateful to her: she’d defused the situation and helped me avoid a lethal showdown. I doubt that was her intention—clearly she was trying to belittle me with her patronizing tone—but nevertheless, the end result was that I had escaped the apocalyptic wrath of my father, and lived to see another day.
I never picked up We the Living again. I still don’t know how it ends. It would be many, many years before I finished another book.
• • •
WHY wouldn’t my father let me read? I couldn’t fathom it. After all, he read all the time. He knew what books could do for you—expand your horizons, engage your intellect, accelerate your maturity. It was as though he wanted me to stay a little girl.
Yet, at the same time, he seemed to be pushing me toward adulthood.
“Are you wearing panties?” he would ask.
“Um—yes,” I’d reply, embarrassed by the question.
“Take them off.”
“Why?”
“It’s good to air your vagina.”
Dad encouraged me to go without underwear whenever possible. He thought it was far healthier to be open and exposed to fresh air than confined in restrictive suffocating cotton. Perhaps he was reacting to Eguchi-san’s seven-layer panty overkill. I found both choices extreme, but Dad had established his own morning nudity as a precedent, and I couldn’t argue with him.
He also liked me to open the buttons on my shirt when we were in public. I don’t know why; he was always teasing me about being flat-chested—“Two fried eggs, coming up!” he’d say—so it’s not as though I had something to show off. Besides, I was shy—after his taunts, who wouldn’t be?—and I liked to keep my blouse buttoned to the top. He insisted I unbutton it down to my prospective cleavage, though. I’d acquiesce until he turned away, and then I’d hurriedly button up again.
I remember, when I was about twelve, going to see Hair on Broadway. Dad was one of the many producers, and we had great seats, third row center. That evening, he instructed me not to wear underwear. I felt extremely uncomfortable about this—it was Broadway, after all, back in its glamour days, when everyone was dressed to the nines. Going without panties in such an august venue struck me as almost criminal.
There was so much nudity on the stage that my secret subversiveness seemed almost quaint. I had seen naked strangers before, at the Japanese baths—I’d been to the Lido, for God’s sake—but to have so many of them so close to me, proudly displaying their wares…Well, I guess I was supposed to feel liberated, but it kind of grossed me out. Especially all the pubic hair. Yuck!
Dad was clearly enjoying it, and enjoying the fact that he could watch such explicit, far-out things with his own daughter. So hip! So cool!
I thought nothing of these things at the time—that he made me go without underwear, and exposed me to adult entertainments beyond my understanding. After all, it was the Age of Aquarius. The way he would slow-dance with me on the nightclub floor, cupping my behind with his hand and squeezing—it didn’t mean anything, right? He was my dad.
When I was around seven or eight, Dad would sit beside me on the couch and say, “Let’s play the tickling game.” “No!” I’d scream, but it was too late—he had his fingers digging into me, and I was shrieking with laughter. I was so extremely ticklish that the slightest touch would set me off. I’d plead, “No! No!” Because I couldn’t stand it. I hated it.
He’d think I was joking, because I was laughing so hard, and he’d keep going. I’d fall to the floor, hoping to get away, but I was too weak with laughter to move, and he’d follow me, and the tickling would continue. I didn’t want to tell him to stop, because he was having so much fun, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but it was awful, awful…
He would stop, finally—and then it was a new game. A licking game.
He would start licking me. All over my body. My arms, my neck, my feet…
That felt good—but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that it felt good.
Then there were many nights when he’d say, “You can stay with me tonight,” and I’d get into his bed.
Then he would climb into bed beside me and spoon with me, snuggling up behind me and throwing his arms around me. It was so warm and cozy, except…What was that hard thing behind me, poking against my butt? Did it belong to Dad? Was it the dangly thing I saw every morning when he
came out to make the fire? It seemed so mushy before. How did it get so sharp?
I found it annoying, and shifted away. But Dad pulled me back, and snuggled even closer—and that sharp thing pushed its way between my legs…
What happened then? Did it go any further? I don’t remember. My mind has blocked it out. I believe that he would just hold me close and we would snuggle throughout the night. That’s what I want to believe.
When he was finally snoring, I would sneak out of his bed and hurry back to my own room. I would sleep much better there, but I always made sure I rushed back to his bed in the morning before he woke up. I didn’t want him to know that I’d left him during the night. It might have hurt his feelings.
Chapter 4
Charters Towers
My childhood in Japan came to an abrupt end in the fall of 1968. There was no drama involved: nobody died, no earthshaking scandal erupted. I had reached the awkward age of twelve, and in another Dickensian twist, I found myself suddenly transported to the other side of the world—Bexhill-on-Sea, England—to boarding school.
The funny thing was, it was my idea. At least I thought it was. Dad was often telling me how wonderful boarding school was. He made it seem so romantic and adventurous: “You get to have your own room, and you can do whatever you want on your time off, and you get to live in a whole new country by yourself…it’s like being a grown-up.” That really appealed to me. I wanted to show Dad that I was a big girl. That I was practically an adult. I was cool, not needy.