One Hundred and One Ways

by Mako Yoshikawa

  An oversized rat crosses the path in front of me: I cannot tell whether it presages good luck or bad. As I hobble back towards my apartment, a blond little boy looks up from his truck, and when I smile at him, he gazes at me with the lovesick eyes of a puppy and clambers after me, his truck forgotten. “Tommy, come back here,” says a large black woman in a very bored voice and he stops, still staring at me, but held tight by her call. Children follow me around even when all I do is look at them; Phillip used to say I had Pied Piper blood coursing through my veins.

  I pass a girl, maybe in her mid-teens. She is dressed all in black, in spite of the heat, and her bare arms and legs, scrawny and long, look stark and pale in contrast to her clothes. Ten years ago, Russia might have looked something like this girl.

  Russia and I naturally gravitated towards each other because we were among the youngest graduate students in the English program, and because we were different from the others: I by virtue of my skin and the slant of my eyes, she out of choice, by virtue of her half-shaved head, her dyed black hair, her long black dresses, and the five small rings she wore on her left earlobe, as well as the golden one dangling from her left nipple. Her skin is very pale, tinged, as she used to say, with the slightly bluish tone of skim milk.

  “Look” was all she said when she pulled her shirt up, so high that she exposed the two sharp points where her collarbone strains hardest against her skin.

  I barely knew her then. We sat next to each other in our Post-Colonial Theory seminar, and during the break that came in the middle of class, we had gotten into the habit of sharing our snacks, walking to the water fountain, or going to the bathroom together, as we had done that day. I barely knew her, but I knew enough of her not to be surprised that she would bare herself to show me her newly pierced nipple, right in the middle of a large, echoing bathroom in a Columbia University building, which professors, administrators, and other graduate students were liable to walk into at any moment.

  Her belly pushed forward a little in what was purely the result of the laziness of her spine, for her torso is thin and long, almost—but definitely not quite—too skinny to be beautiful. She has the curveless waist and hips of a boy.

  She was not wearing a bra that day. Her nipples were small and very dark against her skin, and they turned up towards me as if they were asking for something mutely, as if they were meant to receive food rather than give it. They brought to mind the upturned beaks of hungry birds.

  I studied her with some attention. Her eyes, peeking over the shirt crumpled up around her neck, watched me just as carefully and seriously, a small smile hovering all the while on her lips.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked, and then, unable any longer to resist the mute plea of those upturned nipples, I reached out a finger and brushed softly against the small golden hoop that cast its shadow on her breast. Her nipple grew even smaller and darker under my touch.

  She nodded. “But the pain was worth it, in the end.”

  While we became good friends after that, inseparable, really, I betrayed her in the end. Although I lose friends the way that other women lose hairpins, Russia’s case was different. After I became close to Phillip, I stopped returning her calls, not because I liked her any less, but because I felt ashamed in her presence. I had robbed her and she had known it, but she had forgiven me without a word, and without expecting anything in return. I could not bear her generosity, and even less the fact that she never once reminded me that it was she who had introduced me to Phillip.

  As I limp towards a bench and ease myself down onto it, two Asian women around my age stop talking to look at me. They had been speaking in what sounded like Japanese. They covertly glance at me with tacit recognition and as usual, I turn away without acknowledging our kinship. Like my college roommates and my adult lovers, my childhood friends were white. Still, it usually seemed that no matter how hard I tried to disassociate myself from other Asians, we were all inevitably linked together in everybody else’s mind.

  When I was too young to attend school, it seemed as if I was always alone and never lonely. I had a childhood filled to overflowing with the company of my parents.

  In my earliest memories, the sky is blue and the sun is a golden ball. My father is beside me, and the air is filled with the smell of freshly mown grass.

  Thirteen years ago, four years after my father had left home, I was a newly minted teenager, and angry all the time. I acted out this rage in spectacular performances for which my mother was the sole audience member: I bottled them up for her throughout the day, releasing them only when she returned home for work. In a frenzy I cried and screamed and cursed at her. One time I smashed a plate and it shattered perilously near her bare feet. While cleaning up the shards of glass, she cut herself on a splintered piece, and her hand bled.

  She made no physical effort to stop my tantrums, and only once did she even speak to me during those moments. Still in her raincoat and with her briefcase in her hand, she was watching me from the door of my bedroom as I beat my fists and kicked my feet against the bed.

  “You’re just like your father,” she said: a lie by omission, for in my rage I was like her, too.

  Her words shocked me into silence at least for a second. I soon began screaming again, but my heart was no longer in it, and later, after I had calmed down, I went to the bathroom and carefully studied myself in the mirror. Even back then, I kept a photograph of my grandmother, the first Yukiko, whom my mother said I took after, in a special box in my desk. I had seen how my hair and my body and the ovaline outline of my face resembled hers. My eyes were my mother’s. I looked into the mirror, then, and thought about how all of my other features had to have their source in my father, whose face I had already forgotten. The nose, the slope of the cheekbones, the arch of the eyebrows, and the height and the breadth of the forehead might be his as well as mine.

  I did not want to be like him, any more than I wanted to be like my mother. From that moment on, I tried to swallow my tears and my anger, and I became better and better at controlling myself, until eventually I was as quiet at home as at school.

  Apart from my crush on Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, in high school I nursed a more carnal passion for a football player two years older than I was. He was stupid and crude, given to loud burps in the cafeteria and coarse jokes about different parts of the female anatomy, but I hungered after the width of his shoulders and the length of his thighs. I was well aware, though, that my lust was doomed to be unrequited: even in comparison to other adolescents, a group not generally famed for its beauty, I was among the most repellent.

  I was an overweight teenager and unattractive even beyond the question of weight; only as my face matured did my features regain the harmony they had known when I was young. I was skinny throughout my childhood even though I ate an extraordinary amount, and I can pinpoint the exact moment that I discovered my eating habits had caught up with me. Fourteen years old, I was easing myself into a hot bubble bath when I suddenly became aware that the water, displaced by my weight, was spilling over the tub’s edge and making bubbly puddles on the rug and the floor: Eureka. I looked down at myself and saw that my calves were thick and unlovely, and that the hugeness of my breasts, stomach, and thighs was terrifying. I got out of the bath. With suds dropping off me, I stood on the toilet seat and faced the wall, and then I craned my head over my shoulder so that I could get a view of my rear. I wanted to scream. Seemingly overnight, my body had become an unfamiliar thing, fleshy and laden with strange curves.

  My mother noticed soon afterwards. This was a triumph of sorts, for she did not notice much in those years. I saw her eyes studying my body when she thought I was not looking, and one night at dinner she did not move when I asked her to pass me the mashed potatoes. “You shouldn’t eat so much,” she said. I looked up, momentarily startled: we hardly ever spoke during dinner. I then reached over her plate and picked up the bowl. I loaded my plate with an enormous serving and ate it all, glaring at her def
iantly, although I began to feel sick and full after the second bite. She pressed her lips tightly together and turned away, and once again silence reigned over dinner.

  I do not even like mashed potatoes.

  While I tried to cut down, I found myself eating more and more instead. I bought bags of cookies and ate them secretively at night; always I slept on sheets strewn with crumbs. After midnight, when the cookies were all gone, I sneaked into the kitchen and ate what I could find by the light inside the refrigerator. My cheeks became puffy with an unhealthy sallow tinge, the line between my chin and neck all but vanished, my stomach was perpetually distended, and my thighs were so large I gave up jeans and wore only loose-fitting skirts. I moved ponderously.

  I hated myself in high school, and so I resolved to become a new person when I got to college. It was there that I became Kiki. I filched the name from the captain of the cheerleading squad, a redhead who probably had the best figure in my entire high school, and it seemed to work a certain magic on me. Since there were far more than three Asians at Princeton, I started to feel less conspicuously different, and while the other freshman girls were becoming heavier with fleshy curves of their own, I kept on losing weight, as naturally and easily as a snake shucking off its skin.

  I lusted after the tapering legs of tennis players, and by the end of my four years at Princeton, I had gone out with almost every single one on the team. Politely I encouraged the young men who surreptitiously pawed at me at dinner, and I was always ready to leave rowdy parties for the comparative quiet of a dimly lit bedroom.

  I have always been bemused by the irony there, that it was not until I abandoned my grandmother’s name that I began to look like her; that it was not until I became Kiki that I was able to adopt out of choice the life that she was forced into leading.

  My transition to a new way of life after college was abrupt and painless. I simply stopped going out, and I did not miss it. I did not like the postcard-perfect town of Princeton, and after graduation, with most of the students gone, it seemed even stuffier and more staid than usual. But I form deep attachments to places and I have a hard time leaving anywhere, even a town I despised as much as Princeton, so I got a job shuffling paper in one of the administrative offices, and deferred my admission to Columbia for a year. At the end of my year of shuffling, I vacationed alone at the New Jersey shore for a few weeks. There I slept with a lifeguard, also a Princeton graduate, and the last of my college flings.

  I arrived in New York three years ago, and in spite of the crime, the filth, the poverty, and the pollution I fell in love with it. In the suburban comfort that characterizes Princeton as well as my hometown of Garrison, I always felt vulnerable and exposed, but in New York I am cloaked in an anonymity that makes me feel secure even in the midst of a million human beings. The anonymity confers freedom. Other than Mrs. Noffz and the doormen, I know no one in my apartment building, and I therefore owe nothing to my neighbors, not even a civil response to their chatter as I ride down the elevator with them. The city itself is filled with strangers who leave me alone, and ask nothing more than the same treatment in return. The people here are so indifferent to my presence, and indeed all presences, that by a paradoxical turn they make this city the most accepting place in the world. In this respect all New Yorkers are equal. I fit in here more than anywhere else because I am as faceless as the best of them.

  When I got to Columbia I was surprised at how much effort it took to make friends. It may have been only the difference between living in a dormitory and living in an apartment by myself, but it was easy to fall into the simple rhythm of going to class and talking only at the most casual level to people there, fulfilling the most minimal requirements of social contact, and then going home alone. Many of the other graduate students already had a social life within the city; some were living with boyfriends or girlfriends, and one or two were married. I could have started conversations with students at the Law School Library, or joined the organizations that other graduate students joined; I suppose I could even have sat outside on the big steps outside Low Library during the warmer days and chatted with the sunbathers there. But I did not get around to doing any of those things, because once I met Phillip, I did not care to meet anyone new.

  By the time my grandmother arrives, of course, Phillip will not even be a shadow in my apartment, and my blissful future with Eric will be assured.

  So there I was, I will say, telling her the story of this day. So there I was, sitting on a bench in the middle of a painfully hot summer afternoon, stalling on going home because I had hurled an old loafer at a ghost.

  By then, two months hence, we should be able to laugh at the absurdity of this scene, at least a little. Yet my grandmother (understanding all the sides of this many-sided situation) will sympathize, too, nodding when I explain to her that what made it hard was that Phillip was different from anyone else I have ever known.

  Obaasama, I will say, you do see my dilemma, don’t you? How I wanted to rush home to see whether Eric had called, but how I was also glued to the bench, terrified of the possibility that Phillip might not be there when I returned?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I MET PHILLIP in a bar. I dislike bars, and if Russia had not shown up that night to make sure that I came, I would not have gone. We talked in my bathroom as we often did, with me perched on the edge of the tub while she reapplied her makeup.

  “You’ve got to come,” she said. “Please. When have I ever asked you to do anything? Never, right? So just do this one thing for me.”

  “What are you so nervous about?” I asked, smiling at her habit of answering her own questions. “Is it this guy?”

  “Well, I guess I am a tad antsy about Phillip. I really kind of like him and I don’t want to mess it up. He’s a bit shy.”

  “What’s so special about him?” I was amused and curious, since Russia seldom gets excited about men.

  “He’s got sexy eyes,” she said, and paused.

  “Go ahead,” I said, laughing. “Describe them—you’re obviously dying to.”

  “They’re kind of strange,” she said. “They move back and forth—actually, there’s something wrong with him. He’s got terrible vision, so bad that he can’t drive. I don’t know how he managed to do so much by himself, when he can see so little. But his eyes are beautiful, regardless,” she said, thoughtfully twirling the makeup brush in her hand. “They’re blue with little bits of yellow inside them. Sometimes they look green.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Wait, there’s more. He originally lived on a farm in Iowa, but he dropped out of high school and hitchhiked down to Mexico and worked there for six months, and then in Africa for about a year, and then in Australia, and then I don’t know where else. He’s been all over the world. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Now he’s bartending at a place on Columbus. You know, he’s by far the most promising man I’ve met in New York.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be alone with him, then?”

  “No,” she said. “No, we’re not ready for that yet. You’ve got to come, Kiki—we need a third person. After all, what else are you going to do? I’m not going to let you sit home alone another night.”

  “But don’t you think I’ll get in the way?”

  “How can you say that?” She made a face at me in the mirror. “You’re the best friend I’ve got in this godforsaken town.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Likewise. But if I’m there you two won’t be able to really talk together. I mean, out of politeness he’ll have to talk to me at least some of the time.”

  “No, I’m not worried about that. You’re not really his type. And he’s not yours.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, to prepare against that eventuality, I laid it on a bit thick about your genius abilities in English. He’s intimidated by intellectuals, and I kind of made it seem as if you’re the Einstein of British literature. Which you are, of co
urse.” Her reflection grinned wickedly at me. “To be honest, he’ll probably be too scared to speak to you.”

  “Great,” I said. “Sounds like I’m in for a really good time.”

  “I even bought new lipstick for tonight. Look, it’s a great shade: Frais d’Or.” She pronounced the name with a heavily exaggerated accent, and she uncapped the lipstick with a flourish.

  “Does that mean you’re going to sleep with him?”

  “I’m certainly going to try. As usual my nerve will probably fail me at the last moment, but I brought condoms just in case. Rumor does have it that even though he looks so innocent and boyish, he actually gets around quite a bit.” Pensively she dabbed at her lips with some toilet paper, and then she turned around to look at me. “At least you guys have that in common.”

  Russia swears a lot and she has an impressive repertoire of very risqué stories, but she was shocked when I told her that I had had sex with almost twenty men. She herself has had just three boyfriends, and she slept with only two of them.

  Russia glanced at herself one more time in the mirror. She was stunning.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get ’em.”

  As we were walking out the door, I hesitated. “By the way,” I said, “just out of curiosity—what is my type?”

  Russia pursed glossy lips and thought for a second, a modern prophetess in action. “Someone steady, probably a little older. Maybe a lawyer?”

  The bar was noisy and smoky, and filled with Columbia people. In the confusion and the darkness, I could not at first distinguish anything or anybody, but Russia immediately began to pick out friends and acquaintances from the crowd. She even waved at a few of them, and they waved back. I saw a figure detach itself from one of the barstools, and so my eyes first focused on Phillip.