eighteen. Haven’t I earned the right to turn back my collar and become a geisha?
How much longer could I stay in the teahouse, sneaking around the city with white makeup smeared on my face, my blond hair covered by a black wig? Was I destined to hide in the teahouse until my womanhood no longer blossomed? Or until someone discovered my identity?
More than once I saw curious strangers pointing to their nose when they looked at me, meaning my long, straight Irish nose. Why was it so important no one knew who I was? My father was gone and out of danger. Why couldn’t I take my place in the world of flowers and willows?
I’d done everything okâsan asked me to do, everything. Used dried nightingale droppings as a facial treatment to smooth and condition my skin. Washed the veranda twice a day on my knees, scrubbed the soiled futon sheets, trimmed the bamboo in the garden.
I’m a grown-up woman, I was proud to acknowledge, judging by the stares tossed at me earlier today. Although I knew it was naughty, I walked with my buttocks wiggling like I’d seen the older geisha do, my green, hand-painted kimono with yellow and pink morning glories pulled snugly over my hips. Pinkish silver pins sparkled in my hair.
Everywhere I went people stared at me. Oh, I’m not beautiful like Simouyé, but I’m taller than all the other maiko in my six-inch high clogs with tiny bells, since I had long ago outgrown the clogs my father gave me. And it’s unusual for an apprentice geisha to travel alone. We’re always chaperoned, except when we ride in jinrikishas in pairs. I feel so grown-up then, swaying my pretty paper parasol back and forth with Mariko doing the same as our open-air conveyance winds its way through the narrow streets.
Today I ignored the looks of the curious Japanese, keeping my head lowered, taking care not to let anyone get close enough to see my green eyes. It was important I slip away from the teahouse unnoticed so I could complete my errand.
Alone.
How long had I been gone? An hour? Not longer. I clasped my package neatly wrapped in a yellow cloth and tied with a red cord to my chest, my full breasts bound and flattened by the band I wore underneath my kimono. My insides were squeezed up just as tight. I was nervous about facing Simouyé. Whatever excuse I made, I could already see her swaying her body back and forth in that disapproving rhythm I’d come to know so well, scolding me for endless minutes when I made a mistake, while the other maiko pretended not to listen.
I shook my head in dismay. Yet it was okâsan who made one excuse after another when I asked her when I’d be ready to enter the geisha world. I was ready now, but Mariko told me I must accept okâsan’s decision to wait, as I’d accepted the rain.
I hadn’t completely accepted the rain. I’d never forget my first night in the teahouse. The scene never blurred in my mind: the red lantern on the wooden walkway leading to the garden, the deep green of vegetation, the way the rain fell straight down. The scene never blurred in my mind. The hot, damp room. The power of the large artificial penis made of leather and okâsan giving herself entirely to her passion, pushing up the penis to meet her flower heart, wave after wave of joy coming to her as Mariko and I watched.
All this flooded my mind, rekindling my melancholy as I slid open the door to the veranda. I cried out in surprise. It was empty, its straw-mat flooring gleaming, unshaded and bursting with sunbeams. No bells on high clogs ringing out as they were placed facing the way they came inside the entrance hall by small, dainty hands. No swishing of kimono on the floor as stockinged feet tapped out soft sounds. No girlish chatter filling the air.
No one was there.
I smiled. That suited me, for even if okâsan didn’t discover my lateness, Mariko would insist I write a poem asking the gods for forgiveness, then fasten it to the branch of the plum tree, for only then would okâsan have the honorable privilege to forgive my disobedience.
I made a face. Mariko always had an answer or a saying for whatever the problem. I carried a mental image of her with me, her head tilted just so, smiling, laughing, that was more real to me than any portrait could be. She was a living haiku, the seventeen-syllable poem divided into three lines. The haiku was delicate in sensitivity and deep in sentiment, yet both restrained and subdued in its expression.
Like Mariko.
What would I do without her? Whenever I couldn’t endure the strictness of Simouyé or the petty remarks of Youki or the strangeness of this land that tried my patience where what I was feeling didn’t matter as much as what I showed to others, Mariko was there. Laughing with me at the sight of a fat merchant splashed with mud by a reckless jinrikisha driver. Crying over the birth of a litter of kittens. Listening to the whispered conversations of a geisha with her customer from behind a screen—the woman’s half resisting, half yielding responses giving him an erection.
Or, I remembered fondly, watching the candy maker spinning barley sugar into various animal shapes. Covering our mouths and giggling, we licked our lips when the candy maker made a brown crystallized penis and gave it to us. Forming big O’s with our mouths and making sucking noises, we ate the candy, pretending it was a most honorable penis.
We were inseparable, doing everything together, talking to each other in our delicious Kioto geiko dialect and indulging in our favorite pastime: looking at the pillow book and fantasizing we were beautiful geisha trying out all forty-eight decreed sexual positions with our lovers to find out which ones we liked best.
My favorite woodblock print was by the artist Hokusai, depicting a sighing woman in the slippery embrace of two octopuses. They were strategically draped over her body, arousing her, attaching their mouths to her breasts and sucking on her nipples, her lips, pulling the breath out of her, and wrapping their tentacles around her belly, her waist, pushing their slippery appendages inside her vagina and her anal hole, and tickling her with ecstasy.
The funny, fluttering feelings wiggling through me when I looked at the erotic drawings had given me the courage to confess to Mariko how Hisa had grabbed me near the graveyard and rubbed up against me with his bare chest, teasing my hard nipples under my kimono with his sweaty, muscular body. I couldn’t deny the jinrikisha boy made me tingle with heated desire. Wearing a short, sleeveless robe, every muscle of his tanned body was revealed to my curious eye. Taut biceps. Bronze chest. And what I couldn’t see, meaning his most honorable penis, I could dream about.
And desire.
I’d cast off all my reserve, so hungry I was for the touch of a man, allowing myself to fall into his arms with utter ease. But it was wrong and I knew it. I ran away from him when he tried to untie my sash, though I wanted to stay and untie it for him, slowly, very slowly, teasing him with the promise of my wet vagina underneath my many layers of kimono.
“Haven’t you dreamed about making love with a man such as Hisa-don?” I’d said to Mariko late yesterday afternoon after our lessons as we looked out at the garden, listening to the chatter of the birds and the occasional splash of a frog. I often daydreamed about the jinrikisha boy, though I was careful to speak of him in the proper manner dictated when one spoke about a servant.
“Yes, Kathlene-san, I wish to make love to a man and to feel him inside me,” Mariko said, “but it’s our duty to cast our eyes away from Hisa-don.”
I wet my lips with my tongue. I was thirsty. My mouth had gone dry thinking about Hisa touching me, and Mariko was talking about duty? Again?
“Why do you say that, Mariko-san?”
“A geisha must follow the
