by Ruth Ozeki
“What’s happened to your morals, Yumi?” His voice sounded dead.
You couldn’t raise your eyes from your dinner plate. “I believe anything is okay as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”
Cassie’s dad would have whipped her for talking back. You got sent to your room, which was where you wanted to be in the first place.
At the Thanksgiving pageant, Mr. Rhodes slumped in the front row, and standing center stage, you felt him watching. The play seemed silly, and you’d long outgrown your role, but even so, the words were never as rich in all the years you’d said them.
“Noble Pilgrims,” you recited, voice trembling, “my people and I welcome you to our land. We know that your journey has been a hard one, and we will help you. Pray, take our seeds and plant them. . . .”
You wanted him to know that you welcomed him, understood him, even though there was a petition circulating at church to have him transferred out of the school district. You knew that Lloyd had signed it. Shoot, he’d probably started it.
When you returned for your curtain call, his seat was empty. Your heart sank.
The following day he asked you to stay after school. He paced back and forth in the empty classroom, ranting about historical accuracy. “It’s revisionist bullshit! It was genocide—we stole their land, and then we exterminated them. And now we call it Thanksgiving?”
He seemed very angry, like he was yelling at you. “Don’t you know anything about the Shoshone and the Bannock who’ve lived on this land for thousands of years, before there even was an Idaho?” Staring at him, your eyes burned, and you wanted to cry. Then he stopped and stood in front of you, and before you knew it, he had pinned you in his arms against the desk, and he was kissing you, hard. It was not at all what you’d imagined, involving a lot more bristle, more teeth and tongue than romance, but he whispered, “So lovely . . .” and ran his fingers through your long hair, and that was enough. It was plenty. This is it, you thought, shivering uncontrollably. It’s happening, and you tried to pay attention so that you could remember how his hands felt against the skin of your heart and tell it all to Cass.
He had a baby blue Volkswagen Beetle in a town of Fords and Chevys. On Saturday you skipped 4-H and he picked you up behind the school. He was wearing jeans and an old fisherman’s sweater. He took you to a tiny clapboard house on the outskirts of town, which he was renting for the school year. He made a big pot of split-pea soup on top of a woodstove. You helped him peel the carrots, and afterward you ate the soup with big hunks torn from a loaf of French bread. The crust was burned. He had no chairs, so you sat on a mattress in the corner of the living room. You put the empty bowls on the floor when you were done. The room filled with steam from the simmering soup, clouding the windows. The sheets were speckled with grit, and the flattened pillow smelled like the scalp of his head. It was the best smell in the world, and you buried your face in it, hugging it, wanting to take it home with you. There was no toilet paper in the bathroom, only a stack of dusty newspapers, and afterward you found yourself wiping his semen from your aching adolescent pussy with the headlines of an old New York Times: NIXON RESIGNS.
You phoned Cass right after dinner.
“I did it!” you whispered, and she cried, “No way!” and you could almost hear the screen door slam as she came rocketing out of her house, down the road, and up your driveway. You grabbed her wrist, hauled her panting through the kitchen and up the stairs, slipping past Lloyd, who was headed toward the bathroom. Barricading your bedroom door, the two of you sat, legs crossed Indian style, head touching head.
“I can’t believe it!” squealed Cass, “You really—!”
You reached over to clamp your hand across her mouth. Lloyd gargled in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. When you could trust her to be quiet, you let your hand drop.
“All the way?” she whispered.
You nodded.
“What was it like?” Her eyes were glistening.
You savored her awe, lay back on the pillows.
“It was . . . unbelievably romantic,” you said. “He made split-pea soup.” You smiled dreamily, staring up past a constellation of phosphorescent stars. When you were little, Lloyd had pasted them onto the ceiling for you, following the diagram from a book that he had bought—Orion, Andromeda, and the Dippers. It had been years since you’d really noticed them.
“Split-pea soup?” Cass sounded unimpressed.
“Mmm. I peeled potatoes while he washed peas. He chopped up carrots and—”
“Yummy, I know what’s in split-pea soup!” she cried, bouncing up and down on the bed. “What happened after? ”
“I’m getting to that. The room was hot, so we took off our sweaters.”
“And he was driven wild with desire?”
“No. He played his guitar.”
“Ooooh, how romantic! What did he play?”
“Jefferson Airplane. Some Dylan. ‘Lay Lady Lay.’ ”
“I love that! And then did you do it?”
“No. Afterward. First we ate the soup.”
“Did it hurt?” she asked.
“Just a little. The first time.”
“The first time! Oh, my goodness, Yummy! How many . . . ?” Her face was bright pink now as she pressed her fingers to her mouth. Sweet Cassie, you thought, feeling so mature all of a sudden—and that was when time did a weird, elasticky thing, like a cartoon slingshot, sending you zinging way out ahead of her in years.
“I don’t know,” you answered, from far away. “Three? Maybe four?”
“Did you, you know . . . ?”
“What?”
“You know . . .” She hesitated again. She sounded lonely, left behind like that. “Did it feel good?”
“Mmmm,” you said, smug and inscrutable, adding to the distance between you. “It felt great. Totally far out. No . . . it was soulful. . . . I can’t explain.”
It wasn’t really soulful, but you were already rewriting the experience. The real story, as you dimly recall it, twenty-five years later, was that it didn’t feel great at all, and it just went on and on. What you identified as pleasure started in the silence after the sex part was done and the winter afternoon was growing dark. You lay there, staring at the ceiling in dim light, and held a naked man for the first time in your life. For a little while, maybe fifteen minutes or so, you honestly felt that this was what it was like to be all grown up and happy. Then he rolled out of bed and put on his jeans and started looking for his car keys.
Lloyd left the bathroom and stopped outside your closed door. He cleared his throat.
“Aren’t you girls supposed to be studying?”
“We are.” Your tone ripe and condescending. “We’re doing our homework. ”
Cass looked alarmed.
Lloyd hesitated. “Sounds like just a lot of chatter to me,” he said. “Finish up and go on home, Cass. It’s getting late.”
You listened as he descended the creaking stairs.
“Lady,” Elliot crooned, strumming at the strings of his guitar, “you keep askin’ why he likes you? How come?”
You knew not to ask questions like that. Still, he teased you:
“Wonder why he wants more if he just had some. . . .”
He told you all about San Francisco, about the brown hills of Berkeley, about the scene. There was no bullshit, he explained. That’s what was so great about it. None of the crappy materialism of middle-American capitalist culture. You looked around the bare room in the small house. There was very little materialism in evidence. He could use some new sheets for his bed. He slept under a military green sleeping bag with a nubbly flannel lining, printed with hunters and ducks. He could use a new frying pan.
You had an idea. There was some extra stuff at your parents’ house. They were going to give it away to the church fair anyway. You could bring it next time? It was such a good idea, and you were excited and proud to have thought of it, but to your surprise he smiled and shook his head. “No than
ks,” he said. “I don’t need ‘stuff.’ ” And the way he said it made your heart sink, like there was a larger point you were missing completely.
He told you about his friends. One was an anarchist sandal maker. One built drums. Another walked through a plate-glass window while tripping on LSD.
“Was he okay?” you asked.
“He died.” He was staring up at the ceiling. “He thought he was going to Europe.”
You couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“You know,” he prompted. “When he walked though the plate-glass window.”
You still didn’t get it.
He sighed and lit a cigarette. “Larry was tripping, and he wanted to go to Europe. So he walked through the window, as though the physical laws of gravity and, like, glass, didn’t apply to him anymore. Like he’d transcended all that. But he hadn’t. And he fell. And he died.”
Wow. You took the cigarette from his fingers and dragged, hoping that this was an adequate response. You worried about other girlfriends. Surely he must have had lovers, way more experienced than you, who would have known how to participate in a conversation like this. Had he ever been in love with them?
“‘Made for each other, made in Japan.’” He crooned the lyrics of Grace Slick’s song, grinning as he wound a strand of your long black hair around his finger. When he sang, sometimes it sounded like love, and you imagined it at night, under the glow-in-the-dark stars, where the air was thick with your dreaming. He would look deep into your eyes. “I love you,” he would say. “I love you, Yumi.” And you would sob and hug your diary, where you were writing it all down, doubled over with a heartache that was the closest thing you knew to a body’s pleasure. “Oh, Elliot,” you whispered under your father’s starry sky. “I love you, too.”
“Woman with a greasy heart,” he sang.
What was he talking about? Your heart did not feel greasy, but you wished it could be, if that would make the song be about you.
“Woman with a greasy heart, Au-to-ma-tic Man.”
You faced each other, naked and cross-legged on the mattress, and he reached out to trace your nipple. He moved his fingertip up the center of your rib cage, like a zipper to your mouth, and you sucked on it like a lollipop to make it wet.
“Mmmmm, Yummy,” he murmured, as he drew the finger back down your stomach and slipped it between your legs. “You’re so open. I love that about you. . . .”
And there it was. He’d finally said it. He loved you.
You threw your arms around his neck. “Oh, Elliot,” you breathed. “I love you, too!” Pressed your cheek against his, feeling the tickle of his mustache, the rasp of his unshaved skin, holding him for a long time. Then, slowly, you realized that something was wrong. That you were the only one doing any holding. That he was not holding at all. In fact, he was merely sitting there, his arms at his sides. You let go of him, sat back, hugged your legs to your chest. If you could have died, you would have done so, gladly.
“Oh, wow,” he said.
You had nothing more to add.
“Of course, I love you, too, Yummy,” he said. “It’s just that there are so many different levels of love, you know. . . .”
You didn’t know, but you were finding out.
“What a downer. I don’t want to hurt you, Yummy. Maybe we should just—”
“No!” you cried out, too loudly. “I knew that. That’s what I meant, too.” You pressed your chin into your naked kneecap. You were shivering, so you pulled his sleeping bag up around your shoulders. The metal zipper was ice cold and bit into the skin of your neck as you wrapped yourself tight in the grimy flannel with the hunters and the ducks. The bag was so old that the waterproofing was peeling off the surface fabric. You concentrated on scraping the flaking plastic with your fingernail. It came off like dead skin. He reached over and placed his hand on yours, to stop you fidgeting.
“Yummy?”
You snatched your hand away. “Don’t call me that.”
He was surprised. “Why not? It’s your name. . . .”
“My name is Yumi.”
“Yummi?”
“No. Not like gummy. Like you. And me.”
“You-me.”
“Say it quicker.”
“Yumi.”
“If you can’t pronounce it right, don’t say it at all.”
He laughed. “You’re fantastic. This is what’s so great about you. You’re very mature for your age.” He reached for your hands again. “Yumi, Yumi, Yumi. . . . Life can be complex, but you understand that.” He played with your fingertips. “I’m glad we can talk about this stuff. It’s so important to stay open.” He lay back on the pillow, pulling you toward him. “Don’t ever change, lady,” he sang.
Your heart swelled. You couldn’t help it.
“Mmmm,” he whispered, nibbling your neck. “You’ll always be yummy to me.”
lloyd
How do you tell a story, after so many years? How do you peer into other people’s hearts, when life is so complex, and your own heart has grown over, close and impervious?
Lloyd’s heart, multiply bypassed by now, had once again been jump-started, leaving him in a rehab ward, curtained off from the other beds. He lay there, an old Bible heavy in his hands, its spine digging into his stomach. He struggled to keep it propped up. His stiff hands fumbled with the pages. The skin on his fingertips was so callused he could barely feel the softness of the paper, and as the book slipped once again and he grasped for it, the tissue-thin pages of the psalm tore under the clumsiness of his touch. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
That was it. He wanted to roar.
Momoko sat next to the wall, in a reclining chair on wheels. Her head lolled back, and her mouth gaped open. Her woolen hat, which she wore indoors even with the heat on, had tipped off and was lying on the floor by her feet, upturned like a beggar’s. Her white hair was tamped down. Her cheeks glowed like old wax.
Maybe she will die before me, Lloyd thought, and no sooner had the notion crossed his mind than he reproached himself for the relief it brought. He closed his eyes. He was very tired. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
The nurse snapped back the curtain.
“How you doing there, Lloyd? Hope you’re good and hungry!”
She balanced a tray on her palm, slid it onto his bedside table. “Just let me do your fluids,” she said, pushing up his sleeve. “Then I’ve got you a nice piece of Thanksgiving turkey for dinner. You’ll enjoy that.”
He kept his eyes shut as she tapped the needle of the intravenous tube. They pierced my hands and my feet. . . .
She traced the line to the valve and changed the bag. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
“Now, how’s about sitting up and tucking in to some turkey. Hold on, here we go.” She touched the button that raised the back of the bed.
Lloyd grimaced. “Let us eat and drink,” he said, “for tomorrow we die. . . .” His eyes stayed closed. “Is that you, Grace?”
“Yes, Lloyd. You seem a little peaked today. Anything the matter?”
“Well.” He sighed. “It’s dinnertime. What do you expect?” He still kept his eyes closed. “I can’t eat that slop. You can take it away.”
“You haven’t even looked at it.”
“I don’t have to. Take it away.”
“You have to eat, Lloyd.” Her voice contained a warning.
“Let me out of this hospital and I’ll eat just fine.”
“Can’t let you out until we know you’re eating.”
“I’ll eat when I get home and get some real food.”
He opened his eyes to stare her down. The nurse leaned a hip against the guardrail of his bed and crossed her arms.
“You don’t have anyone at home to take care of you.”
“We’ll man
age. We always have.”
“Well, that’s just what we don’t know. Your wife can’t manage. I’m sure you realize that.”
He struggled to sit up taller in bed. He looked past her to Momoko, slack jawed and sleeping in the chair.
“Doc says you have a daughter. Maybe she—”
“No,” he said. “I have no daughter.”
“Why you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Look like crying to me.”
The nurse was gone, and Momoko was awake now. She gripped the guardrail of his bed, raised herself up on tiptoes, and peered into his face. “Mmm. Look like crying. Something wrong?”
“Oh . . .” Defeated. “I can’t explain. It’s the food. I can’t eat it.”
“What’s wrong with food? Looks like some good food.” She picked up the fork and patted the instant potatoes. “Mmm. Here. I gonna feed you.”
She brought a bite of boneless turkey to his mouth. He screwed up his face but parted his lips and let her put the fork in. He tried to chew, to swallow, but the turkey tasted like pasteboard.
“Oh!” He shuddered, spitting it into his tissue. “It’s horrible! I can’t eat that!” He sank back in bed, exhausted.
“You acting like a little kid. How you gonna come on home if you don’t eat?”
“Momoko, please!”
She shook her head and frowned. “Shame for good food gonna go to waste. If you don’t want, then I eat. Okay?”
Through half-closed eyes he watched as Momoko cut the turkey slices and finished off the vegetable medley. The potatoes stuck to her dentures and made them smack against the roof of her mouth. The meek shall eat and be satisfied. . . .
She mopped up the last of the gravy with a soft, white bun, then returned to her chair. She spotted her hat on the floor and picked it up and put it on her head. It had a small brim like the flange of a mushroom. She leaned back and folded her hands across her chest. Within minutes she was snoring softly. Lloyd watched her. His mind drifted to thoughts of their seeds and the future, but he brushed away the worry, for now.
