Comfort Woman

  That night I dreamed I drowned in blood, unable to fight the arms that pulled me under, while the fins of sharks sliced the water like knives.

  My mother slept through the next day, and when Max came to pick me up that night, she still slept. We drove to Aku Ponds, and for the first time, I noticed the sign nailed to the bridge as we drove up to it: “Kapu! Violators will be prosecuted!” When I slipped out of the car to undo the chain, the picket stuck. “Someone must have fixed the bridge,” I hissed to Max. I pounded on the railing until the chain swung like a jump rope.

  Max opened his door, the light from inside the car creating an aura around his body until he stepped into the dark toward me. He lifted my hands from the bridge. “You all right?” he asked. When he tapped the top of the picket, it creaked sideways and the chain popped loose. He turned back to the car, leaving me to replace the chain after he drove over it, and I answered, “Are you?”

  Though my voice seemed especially loud to me, Max didn’t answer, only continued driving as if he didn’t hear.

  That night as we made love, I kept asking, “Are you all right?” sometimes not even waiting for an answer before asking again. At least I think I asked; I might have just been thinking it, beginning for the first time to doubt that he was “all right” for me. I remember thinking that this was supposed to be spiritual, but what I was most aware of was that his knees kept getting in the way, knocking against mine, and that the insides of his elbows seemed very white, very feminine in the dark. And that a mosquito kept buzzing in my ear, louder even than Max’s fevered “I love you”s.

  I held Max tighter, telling him I loved him even more than he loved me, and all the while I thought: What’s wrong? and wondered if I had imagined the previous times, when I seemed to leave my body and float through a universe of colored sound. Now, after my subsequent experiences with sex, I am almost positive I am mistaken about the intensity I thought I felt when he slipped inside me, the way all sound and sight spiraled into blackness so that the only thing I knew was the rhythm of our bodies, elemental as the river’s song.

  After my mother sliced the air around me, cutting me loose from the demons she thought were holding me, I began to watch Max again. I discovered little things—the way he licked his top teeth before he smiled, the way his head lolled as if unanchored by his spine when he played the drums, the way his jaw slackened, then gaped when he slept—that started to bother me. And I began watching the two of us making love, the way we groped and lunged, as if from another’s eyes. As if from my mother’s eyes.

  When I finally told him it was over, I could not bear to look at him; his face, hovering so close to mine, seemed grotesque. “Why, Beccah, why?” he cried, not caring that his nose had begun to run. “What did I do?”

  Sickened, I hugged him so I would not have to see his blotchy, swollen face. “Nothing,” I mumbled. “It’s just time to move on.” I held him, letting him cry, and it was like holding a stranger. I felt pity, uncomfortable about the pain I had no connection to, but also I was irritated, as if he were wasting my time.

  I heard from someone who knew us as a couple that Max now sells electric guitars and drum sets at Harry’s Music in Kaimuki, that he has a small place in Palolo, a wife, and three children under the age of five. In fact, the person who told me said he had heard a rumor that I was that wife. I laughed, joking, “Me with three kids? God forbid! I can barely take care of myself!” but I clenched my hand, thinking of the dimples on my fist that I once tried to count.

  Years ago, I was the one who told Max that it was time to move on, yet it seems he is the one who has done so. He composed his life in steady measures, fulfilling with someone else the plans we made at Aku Ponds. And I am the one who is stuck, envious of the normalcy of his unexceptional life.

  Auntie Reno, who has long since given up on pairing me with eligible bachelors, has come to the conclusion that I am “that way.” She has now started hinting that Sweet Mary’s daughter Precious—whom I sometimes baby-sat when we lived at The Shacks—is also “that way.” I laugh, letting her think what she wants, then tell her I’ll find someone on my own when I’m ready.

  “Not supposed to live alone,” she scolds me, trying to sound biblical, ominous. “Or die alone.”

  My latest lover, Sanford, will not die alone. I am sure that when Saja calls for him, he will be surrounded by his family: his boy and two girls and the tennis-playing wife with the lipo‘ed thighs and Sun-In hair. But he will be looking out the window, waiting for me.

  He says he has never loved his wife the way he loves me, but I know he will not leave her. Just as I know that, despite his avowals, his marriage isn’t platonic; I can tell by the way he touches me, looks at me, even the way he E-mails me—quick and businesslike—when he has had sex with his wife. I wonder if I should be hurt, but realize I don’t care. Already he is starting to irritate me. I cannot stand the way he combs his hair forward to disguise his receding hairline, then asks—uncertain and vulnerable—if he looks too old for me.

  I resent this vulnerability, his attempts at youth.

  When he first interviewed me for the job, Sanford seemed at once self-assured and shy, solidly suited and tied to middle age and family life. I loved to knock timidly at his office door, then enter boldly and stare at him over the desk, across the stacks of clippings and reports, the homemade lunch and framed family photos, until he blinked and blushed. I played with him, testing my sexuality, my attractiveness, yet was surprised—and nattered—when he responded.

  Dignified and serious, at least at first, Sanford introduced me to cocktail parties, journalism conferences, black-tie fund-raisers. Though I could not, of course, attend in place of his wife, Sanford always made sure I received an invitation and an escort. And afterward, perhaps the next afternoon, during a “business meeting,” we would discuss the event, then make slow, reverent love. He treated me with what I thought of as respect, as a grown-up.

  He, in turn, received youth. Not just mine, but his own. I replaced his ties and long-sleeved pin-striped shirts with Polo and OP. I taught him to appreciate the same music—Boyz II Men and Big Mountain—as his children. And I’m the one who nicknamed him Sandy, after the most dangerous and unpredictable beach on the island. But only because I liked the irony; in his previous incarnation, I could not have imagined him near the water.

  Now, when he visits my apartment, he struts in the Jams or OPs that I’ve bought for him, flexes in front of the bathroom mirror, and talks about taking up surfing or body building. “How else can I compete with the young stud you’ll eventually leave me for?” he says, only half joking. If he were completely joking, attractive in his arrogance, I could forgive him. But it is that hint of seriousness, that insecurity in his looks, in the difference in our ages, in himself and me, that makes me know that I will leave him.

  I wanted to avoid him when I went in to work the day after I found my mother’s body.

  “Why are you here?” the police beat reporter said, drawing attention, when I sat down in my cubicle. Coworkers’ eyes peeked into my compartment, then darted away. I thought I recognized Sanford’s oily forehead bob in hesitation on the other side of the partition.

  “Pretend I’m not,” I snapped, and the reporter and the forehead backed away.

  “Maybe she needs to work to get her mind off her pain,” yelled Mirabelle Chun, food editor. She never did know how to whisper, when to keep quiet. “Lord knows I would not have the strength to go on like nothing happened if someone I loved died.”

  I ignored them and the condolences I received over the terminal—“ We are saddened by your loss,” “My sympathies in your time of grief,” “Go home, have a good cry”—until I read Sandy’s: “Need a shoulder—or anything else—to cry on?”

  I typed, “No,” and pressed Return. I can’t stand when he tries to make flippant sexual innuendos, though I am the one who teased Sanford into a hipper, lighter version of his previous self. Into the Sandy who irritates me in direct
porportion to how much I miss the old Sanford, the paternal Mr. Dingman.

  “I want to see you,” Sandy typed back, and before I could think of something to shut him down: “Let me take you home.”

  And suddenly I wanted to be home. Not at my apartment, which after a year had boxes yet to be unpacked stacked in closets and corners. And not back at the Manoa house or The Shacks. I wanted to be with my mother in her garden, when she knew she was my mother. I wanted to be held and comforted in a mother’s arms, tended to the way she tended to her plants. “Sing the river song,” I wanted to tell her, ready to be rocked and sung to sleep amidst the green growing things.

  “Okay,” I told Sanford.

  I let myself lean against him as he opened my door for me. When we entered, out of habit I played the answering machine, half expecting to hear my mother either ranting about spirits and bad luck arrows or asking what time I’ll be by for supper. Instead Auntie Reno’s voice blundered into the room.

  “Hallo, hallo? Dis on or what? I dunno if I heard dah beep or what.” After a long pause, Auntie Reno began talking again. “Beccah, we got to make dah arrangements. Dah guest list, dah body—you wanna bury it or what? Borthwick Mortuary got some fancy casket we can use for dah ceremony, den aftahwards, one cheap one we can use for dah ground. No matter, right? Call me.”

  I imagined Mother laid out in a fancy dress, her face made up in pinks and purples she would never use—Auntie Reno would probably pick out her outfit and insist on overseeing the makeup—on display for people who never knew her. And I laughed, realizing that despite her reputation and the hundreds of people who paid in time and money to see her, no one knew her. Not even Auntie Reno, who gave her her first job and decided she was a fortune-teller. Not even I, her daughter—the only person who loved her, at least part of the time—realty knew her.

  I doubled over with laughter, my sides hurting as I pushed the giggles out. “We are having a funeral for a yongson!” I gasped.

  Unsure of how to touch me, Sanford awkwardly patted my shoulder. “Yes, your mother was a wonderful woman.”

  His attempt at comfort only made me howl louder. “No!” I managed to sputter before I rolled to the floor, unable to explain that a yongson is the ghost of a person who traveled far from home and died a stranger.

  “There, there,” Sandy crooned, acting as if I were hysterical. He carried me to the bed, and we ended up sleeping together, our bodies sticky in the heat of the afternoon. Afterward I peeled my body away from his, trying to find a cool spot on the bed. I’d forgotten to put sheets on the water bed, so that our sweat glistened and glued us against the plastic mattress. As usual, Sandy sprawled across the middle. I had to brace myself against the side to keep from getting sucked into the overheated pit he created with his body.

  I listened to him breathe in his sleep, and my fist curled to my heart out of habit. I forced myself to open my fingers, to relax my vigilance, to fall asleep.

  When I dive in now, I swim for only a few short seconds before I am trapped, kicking at the shark that pulls me under. I twist and turn, trying to land blows on its snout with my fists as well as my feet, when I see not the jaws of a shark but the nebulous folds of a giant jellyfish wrapping itself about my lower body, trying to suck me into itself. I can feel myself dissolving where the jellyfish stings me. I reach out to try to tear it off me, and my hand disappears in waves of black hair dancing in the water.

  I realize that it is my mother wrapped around my legs, holding on to me as though I can save her. Instead I feel myself sinking. I cannot hold my breath any longer, and just when I open my mouth to drown, I wake and find my body sinking toward Sanford’s once again.

  13

  AKIKO

  I lie straining against my skin, feeling its heaviness covering me like a blanket thick as sleep. I wait, paralyzed, for the popping of my blood that signals Induk is near, also waiting, wanting me.

  When she was alive, she did not seem so impatient. But then I knew her only at the comfort stations, when she had to hide between layers of silence and secret movements. I want to say that I knew she would be the one who would join me after death. That there was something special about her even then, perhaps in the way she carried herself—walking more erect, with impudence, even—or in the way she gave the other women courage through the looks and smiles she offered us.

  But I am trying not to lie.

  There was nothing special about her life at the recreation camps; only her death was special. In front of the men, we all tried to walk the same, tie our hair the same, keep the same blank looks on our faces. To be special there meant only that we would be used more, that we would die faster.

  Though we were not afraid of death, were afraid only of dying under them, like dogs.

  One of the women there—I do not know her real name and will not use the one assigned to her—I think she came from yangban, high class. She spoke of a dagger her mother wore about the waist. Smaller than the length of her palm, the hilt encrusted with gems, it was to have been hers when she married. The knife would have shown her pride in her virtue; if she had failed in guarding it, she would have used the weapon on herself.

  The rest of us were envious, not of the rich things she indicated having, not of her aristocracy, but of her right to kill herself. We all had the obligation, of course, given what had happened to us, but it didn’t have the status of privilege and choice.

  That is what, in the end, made Induk so special: she chose her own death. Using the Japanese as her dagger, she taunted them with the language and truths they perceived as insults. She sharpened their anger to the point where it equaled and fused with their black hungers. She used them to end her life, to find release.

  I cannot believe she chooses to come to me, a coward. But I am grateful.

  My body grows heavy, but inside I am crackling like hot oil. She is going to peel back my skin, then cover me, like steam; gentle, insistent, invasive.

  I do not see her, but I know Induk is with me. She licks at my toes and fingertips, sucking at them until my blood rushes to greet her touch. I feel her fingers wind through my hair, rubbing my scalp, soothing me, while her mouth caresses my chin and neck. My body prickles.

  With infinite care, Induk slides her arms around my back, cradling me into her heat. Her lips press the base of my throat, the hollow underneath my jaw, then travel lower to brush against my nipples. I feel them pulling, drawing my milk, feel the excess liquid trickle against my sides and down my belly. Induk laps it up, her tongue following the meandering trails.

  She kneads my buttocks, shaping them to her hands, spreading them apart. Her fingers dip into and flirt with the cleft, from anus to the tip of my vagina, where my blood gathers and pulses until it aches. She combs my pubic hair with her long nails, pulling at the crinkling hairs as if to straighten them. I stifle a groan, try to keep my hips still. I cannot.

  I open myself to her and move in rhythm to the tug of her lips and fingers and the heat of her between my thighs. The steady buzzing that began at my fingertips shoots through my body, concentrates at the pulse point between my legs, then without warning explodes through the top of my head. I see only the blackness of my pleasure.

  My body sings in silence until emptied, and there is only her left, Induk.

  Once, I was not quiet when Induk came to me. I must have cried out, for I attracted the attention of my husband. He knelt by my bed, watching me until I became aware of the sound of his harsh breathing. When I looked at him, he moved the covers off me and crowded into my bed.

  He pushed his forehead against mine and, firmly, unknowingly, replaced Induk’s hands on my body. His fingers, rough and harsh, lifted my nightgown and pressed into the skin of my breasts and hips. When he felt the fabric of my underwear, he pulled it aside and fit himself between my legs.

  I felt his arousal probing the entrance to my vagina and tensed. He found it slick, made ready by Induk’s endless caresses, and thrust into me.

  Jesus,
he said. He pulled out slowly, then entered me again, stretching me. As he thrust and thrust again in long, slow strokes, he lifted my hips against his, forcing me into a counterpoint rhythm. Take me, he panted, for through a child will you be sanctified.

  And, suddenly, it was as if Induk was still there, between us, inside him and inside me. The buzzing that I felt with her unfurled within me, gaining strength until I could not contain it. As it burst over me, I cried out against my husband’s shoulder and was answered by his own shout of pleasure.

  Afterward, when my husband had returned to his bed, I dreamed of Induk and of him and of his shouts that sounded too much like the shouts the men at the camps gave as they collapsed over the women in release and triumph.

  The next morning, my husband told me in his sermon-preaching voice, Ah ... self-fornication is a sin.

  I blinked.

  Sungyok un chae ok-ida, he repeated in Korean, an indication of how disorientated he was, to speak my language in his country.

  Finally, realizing he was referring to what he had witnessed between Induk and myself, I laughed. How could he compare what went on between men’s and women’s bodies with what happened spiritually?

  I was not alone, I said. Did you not see her touching me where your hands touched me? Suckling me where your mouth suckled?

  When he asked, Who? I laughed harder.

  He licked his lips and looked at my laughing mouth. Succubus, he whispered. And God gave them over to shameful lusts so that even the women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Succubus.

  I howled, and still in his eyes I saw the lust, dark and heavy and animal, that I’d seen in the eyes of men at the camps. But now I also saw the fear.