Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar Part 28

Sometimes she would take a crate and sit outside the stoopless apartment building and try to re-create the neighborhood feeling she'd had at home with Miss Gloria. The sun would shine hotly on the pavement, and the movement of people everywhere, busy and self-absorbed, would have to stand in for the human music of Baltimore. The corner grocery stores back home were comforting in their dinginess, packed high with candies in their rainbow-colored wrappings, menthols, tallboys and magnums, racks of chips and sodas, but best of all, homemade barbecue sandwiches, the triangled white bread sopping up the orange-red sauce like a sponge. Oh, how she missed it. The men who loitered outside playing their lottery numbers and giving advice to people too young to take it, the mothers who yelled viciously at their children one minute, only to hug and kiss them the next. How primping young boys played loud music to say the things they couldn't say. How they followed the unspoken rules of the neighborhood: Never advertise your poverty. Dress immaculately. Always smell good, not just clean.

For a few minutes, the daydream would work, even in j.a.pan.

Once, when looking for a job in Shibuya, she eyed a cellophane Popsicle wrapper nestled up against a ginkgo. It was gaudily beautiful with its stripes of orange ooze from where a kid had licked it. Just when she felt a rush of homesickness, a j.a.panese streetworker, humbly brown from daily hours in the sun, conscientiously swept the little wrapper into his flip-top box, and it was gone.

The day after Sayeed tried to kill her, she took the train to Roppongi, and though she had no money for train fare, she pounded on the window of the information booth, speaking wildly in English, peppering her rant with a few words of j.a.panese. She said the machine hadn't issued her a ticket. The j.a.panese girl at the information counter looked dumbly at the Plexiglas, repeating that the machine had never broken. They would not outwit her: Dina knew that the j.a.panese did not like to cause scenes, nor be recipients of them. She pitched her voice loudly, until everyone in the station turned around. Finally, the information girl pressed a hidden b.u.t.ton and let her through.

She did not want to go back to Roppongi, where she'd first lived, where she had unsuccessfully searched for jobs before, but Sayeed's knife convinced her to redouble her efforts. She hoped to get a job from Australians or Canadians who might overlook her lack of visa. She wished she'd taken the job at the pac.h.i.n.ko parlor, but now it was gone; she hoped for a job doing anything-dishwasher, street cleaner, gla.s.s polisher, leaflet pa.s.ser-but she did not get one.

They could not go starving, so they began to steal. While Ari was away at work, Zoltan swiped packaged steaks, Sayeed swiped fruit and bread and one time even couscous, opening the package and pouring every single grain into two pants pockets. Even though she never would have stolen anything in America, stealing in j.a.pan gave Dina the same giddy, weightlessness that cursing in another language did. You did it because it was unimportant and foreign. She stole spaghetti, rice, fruit, Keebler cookies all the way from America. But Petra outdid them all. She went in with a sack rigged across her stomach, then stuffed a sweater in it to look as though she was pregnant, and began shopping. When the sack got full, she'd go to the bathroom, put on her sweater, and pay for a loaf of bread.

But Petra's trick didn't last long. She went to get Zoltan a water-melon for his birthday and the sack gave way. She gave birth to the watermelon, which split open wide and red, right in front of her. The store manager, a nervous j.a.panese man in his forties, brought her to Zoltan, telling him, in smiling, broken English, to keep her at home.

Since then, the stores in the area became suspicious of foreigners, pregnant or otherwise. They'd all been caught. They'd all made mad dashes down the street, losing themselves in crowds and alleys. And they didn't even have the money to get on the train to steal food elsewhere. It was impossible to jump the turnstiles-they were all electronic. Eventually they got to a point where they never left their one-room flat, knowing that they would see people selling food, stores selling food, people eating food, people whose faces reminded them of food.

And then they simply gave up. Some alloy of disgust and indifference checked the most human instinct, propelling them into a stagnant one-room dementia. It was a secret they shared: there were two types of hunger-one in which you would do anything for food, the other in which you could not bring yourself to complete the smallest task for it.

Ari came home from work and declared that they must all go to the park. They looked at him uncomprehendingly. Sayeed went to his corner of the room and said, under his breath, "They know." Zoltan stood there, looking as though he had somewhere to go but had forgotten where. Petra bit her fingernails, her sunset-blond hair in unwashed clumps, framing her scars.

"Why the park?" Dina asked.

"Look," he said, reaching into his back pack to show them a block of cheese that was hardened on the ends, some paprika, a box of crackers, a plum. Dina remembered that all that was left in the refrigerator were two grapefruits. She salivated when her gaze settled on the bunch of bananas on the countertop. These he did not take.

"Let's go," he said.

Sayeed rose from where he'd been sitting on the tatami; Zoltan grabbed Petra's arm and led her toward the door. Once they'd gathered at the doorway, they looked at one another in silence, as if they had nothing further to say. Ari did not bother to lock the door.

They sat in Shakuji-koen Park, dazed with the sunlight, surrounded by an autumn of yellow ginkgo trees. For the most part, the sky was gray, shot through with fibrous clouds. The j.a.panese families sat like cookies arranged on a plate. The son of the family closest to them was as bronzed as Dina, a holdover tan from the summer. He bit into the kind of neat, crustless sandwiches Dina had seen mothers unwrap at Summerland. The girl was singing while her mother was talking to another mother, who agreed, "Ne, ne, ne!" as she bounced a swaddled baby on her hip. The father dozed off on a blanket of red and white squares.

The boy nibbled at his sandwich as the five of them watched. When the boy saw the foreigners staring at him, at his sandwich, he ran to his sister and pointed. Five gaijin, all together, sitting Buddha-like. The boy looked as though he wanted to come right up and ask them questions in the monosyllabic English he had learned from older boys who had spoken to gaijin before. Do you have tails? If so, would you kindly show them to me and my sister? Do you come out at night and suck blood? He would look at Dina and ask if the color rubbed off. He wanted to ask them these questions and more, if his limited English permitted, but the girl had enough shyness for the both of them, and held him back, a frightened smile on her face.

Ari took out the crackers, the cheese with the hard ends, the paprika, the salt, and the plum.

"I lost my job," he said.

Quietly, shamefully, they mustered out their Sorrys. She'd expected him to lash out, tell all of them to leave, but he didn't.

"I'll pay you back," Dina said, "every penny."

"You mean yen," Ari said.

They ate the crackers with sliced plum and cheese on top. Then Petra spoke.

"I do not like cheese," she said. Everyone looked at her, her pouting lips and unblinking eyes. Zoltan clenched her arm. Petra had taken her slices of cheese off her sandwiches and Zoltan grabbed the slices with one fist and thrust them at her. They fell humbly into the folds of her shirt.

"You don't have to eat them," Ari said. But Petra knew she had to eat the cheese, that the cheese mattered. She ate it and looked as if she might cry, but didn't. They sat for a while. The food melted in Dina's stomach just as the sunset melted, their synchronized fading seeming to make the whole world go dimmer and volumeless. Then she felt a sharp pain, as though the corners of the crackers had gone down her throat unchewed. None of them spoke, and that seemed to make the pain in her stomach worse. They watched the people and the lake and the sun, now only a thread of light.

"Look," Sayeed said.

Geese. Stretching their necks, paying no mind to humans. Zoltan bolted upright from where he lay and ran after them. For a few moments, the geese flew hysterically, but then landed yards away from him, waddling toward escape, all the while snapping up bits of crackers the j.a.panese had thrown just for them. When Zoltan started the chase anew, Dina realized he was not after the crackers but the geese themselves. She imagined Zoltan grabbing one of the thin, long necks, breaking it with a deft turn of wrist. And what would all the j.a.panese, quietly sitting in the park, make of it all? She skipped over that scene, speeding ahead to the apartment, everyone happily defeathering the bird, feathers lifting and floating then descending on their futons and blankets, the down like snow, the underfeathers like ash. They'd land on Petra's trunks, empty now that all her clothes had been sold, and they'd land on the tea table at which they used to eat. They would make a game of adjusting the oven dials, then wait out the hours as the roasted gamy smell of the goose made them stagger and salivate. And there would be a wishbone, but it wouldn't matter, because they'd all have the same wish.

Zoltan ran as haphazard as a child chasing after them, and when he seemed within grasp of a few tailfeathers, the geese flew off for good. When he returned, he dusted off the blanket before sitting down, as though nothing had happened.

All j.a.panese eyes were on them, and it was the first time Dina thought she had actually felt embarra.s.sment in the true j.a.panese sense. Everyone was looking at them, and she'd never felt more foreign, more gaijin. Someone laughed. At first she thought it was Sayeed, his high-pitched laughter that made you happy. Then Dina saw that it was one of the j.a.panese picnickers. Families clapped, one after the other, cautious, tentative, like the first heavy rains on a rooftop, then suddenly everyone was clapping. Applause and even whistles, all for Zoltan, as though he had meant to entertain them. Ari made a motion for them to stop, but they continued for what seemed like minutes, as if demanding an encore. They did not stop, even when Zoltan nuzzled his head into Petra's gray corduroy shirt so no one could see him weep.

It was a week after they saw the geese that Ari sliced up the grapefruit and banana into six pieces each. Dina watched them eat. Sayeed, his face dim as a brown fist, took his banana slice and put it underneath his tongue. He would transfer the warm disk of banana from side to side in his mouth until, it seemed, it had grown so soft that he swallowed it like liquid. He nibbled away at half a wedge of the grapefruit, tearing the fibers from fruit to skin with his bitten-down lips. He popped what was left of his grapefruit into his mouth like a piece of chewing gum.

Petra let her slices sit for a while and finally chewed the banana, looking off from the side of her eye as if someone had a gun pointed to her head. She wrapped up her grapefruit slice in a bit of leftover Saran Wrap and went to her corner to lie down.

Zoltan rubbed his eyes, put the banana slice on the flat side of the grapefruit and swallowed them both whole, grapefruit peel and all.

Ari ate his slices with delicate motions, and after he'd finished, smiled like a Buddha.

Dina ate her fruit the way she thought any straightforward, normal American would. She bit into it. One more piece sat on the plate.

"Anybody want that?" Dina asked. No one said anything. She looked around to make sure. No one had changed. She ate the last piece, wiped the grapefruit juice from around the corners of her mouth, looked at the semicircle of foreign faces around her, and knew she had done the wrong thing.

She needed to go to Shinjuku. Once again, she claimed the turnstile wouldn't issue her a ticket, and although the girl at the counter didn't look convinced, she gave Dina a ticket. When she got to Shinjuku, it was going on noon. Sararimen hurled by, smiling with their colleagues, bowing for their bosses to enter doors first. Mothers shopped, factory workers sighed, shopworkers chattered with other shopworkers. The secretaries and receptionists-the "Office Ladies"-all freshened their lipstick and straightened their hairbows. The women in the miniskirts rushed past as though late.

She stood in the Shinjuku station, though she hadn't ridden the train to get there. She read an old magazine she'd brought along. Finally, a sarariman approached her.

"Verrrry s.e.xy."

He paid for the love motel with a wad of yen. "CAN RENT ROOM BY OUR!" screamed a red-lettered sign on the counter. Dina ascended the dark winding staircase, the sarariman following. The room had only a bed and a nightstand, though these simple furnishings now seemed like luxuries. He watched her undress and felt her skin only after she'd taken everything off. He rubbed it as if he were trying to find something underneath.

The inside of her closed eyelids were orange from a slit of sunlight that had strayed into the room. The sarariman shook her. She opened her eyes. He raised his eyebrows, looking from Dina to the nightstand. The nightstand had a coin-operated machine attached.

"s.e.x toy?" he asked, in English.

"No," she said, in j.a.panese.

The motel room sheets were perfect and crisp, reminding her of sheets from home. She touched the sarariman's freshly cut Asian hair, each shaft sheathed in a sheer liquid of subway sweat. The ends of the shortest hairs felt like the tips of lit, hissing firecrackers.

He was apologetic about the short length of time. "No problem," she told him in j.a.panese.

She left with a wad of yen. While riding the tokkyuu she watched life pa.s.s, alert employees returning to work, uniformed school children on a field trip. It all pa.s.sed by-buildings, signs, throngs of people everywhere. When the train ran alongside a park, yellow ginkgo leaves waved excited farewells as the train blazed past them. Fall had set in, and no one was picnicking, but there were geese. At first they honked and waddled as she'd seen them a week ago when Zoltan had chased them, but then, as the train pa.s.sed, agitating them, they rose, as though connected to a single string. Soon the geese were flying in formation, like planes she had once seen in a schoolbook about j.a.pan.

The book told of kamikaze pilots, flying off to their suicide missions. How each sc.r.a.p-metal plane and each rickety engine could barely stand the pressures of alt.i.tude, how each plane was allotted just enough fuel for its one-way trip. The pilots had made a pledge to the emperor, and they'd kept their promises. She remembered how she'd marveled when she'd read it, amazed that anyone would do such a thing; how-in the all-knowing arrogance of youth-she'd been certain that given the same circ.u.mstances, she would have done something different.

J. F. Powers.

THE VALIANT WOMAN.

They had come to the dessert in a dinner that was a shambles. "Well, John," Father Nulty said, turning away from Mrs. Stoner and to Father Firman, long gone silent at his own table. "You've got the bishop coming for confirmations next week."

"Yes," Mrs. Stoner cut in, "and for dinner. And if he don't eat any more than he did last year-"

Father Firman, in a rare moment, faced it. "Mrs. Stoner, the bishop is not well. You know that."

"And after I fixed that fine dinner and all." Mrs. Stoner pouted in Father Nulty's direction.

"I wouldn't feel bad about it, Mrs. Stoner," Father Nulty said. "He never eats much anywhere."

"It's funny. And that new Mrs. Allers said he ate just fine when he was there," Mrs. Stoner argued, and then spit out, "but she's a d.a.m.ned liar!"

Father Nulty, unsettled but trying not to show it, said, "Who's Mrs. Allers?"

"She's at Holy Cross," Mrs. Stoner said.

"She's the housekeeper," Father Firman added, thinking Mrs. Stoner made it sound as though Mrs. Allers were the pastor there.

"I swear I don't know what to do about the dinner this year," Mrs. Stoner said.

Father Firman moaned. "Just do as you've always done, Mrs. Stoner."

"Huh! And have it all to throw out! Is that any way to do?"

"Is there any dessert?" Father Firman asked coldly.

Mrs. Stoner leaped up from the table and bolted into the kitchen, mumbling. She came back with a birthday cake. She plunged it in the center of the table. She found a big wooden match in her ap.r.o.n pocket and thrust it at Father Firman.

"I don't like this bishop," she said. "I never did. And the way he went and cut poor Ellen Kennedy out of Father Doolin's will!"

She went back into the kitchen.

"Didn't they talk a lot of filth about Doolin and the housekeeper?" Father Nulty asked.

"I should think they did," Father Firman said. "All because he took her to the movies on Sunday night. After he died and the bishop cut her out of the will, though I hear he gives her a pension privately, they talked about the bishop."

"I don't like this bishop at all," Mrs. Stoner said, appearing with a cake knife. "Bishop Doran-there was the man!"

"We know," Father Firman said. "All man and all priest."

"He did know real estate," Father Nulty said.

Father Firman struck the match.

"Not on the chair!" Mrs. Stoner cried, too late.

Father Firman set the candle burning-it was suspiciously large and yellow, like a blessed one, but he could not be sure. They watched the fluttering flame.

"I'm forgetting the lights!" Mrs. Stoner said, and got up to turn them off. She went into the kitchen again.

The priests had a moment of silence in the candlelight.

"Happy birthday, John," Father Nulty said softly. "Is it fifty-nine you are?"

"As if you didn't know, Frank," Father Firman said, "and you the same but one."

Father Nulty smiled, the old gold of his incisors shining in the flickering light, his collar whiter in the dark, and raised his gla.s.s of water, which would have been wine or better in the bygone days, and toasted Father Firman.

"Many of 'em, John."

"Blow it out," Mrs. Stoner said, returning to the room. She waited by the light switch for Father Firman to blow out the candle.

Mrs. Stoner, who ate no desserts, began to clear the dishes into the kitchen, and the priests, finishing their cake and coffee in a hurry, went to sit in the study.

Father Nulty offered a cigar.

"John?"

"My ulcers, Frank."

"Ah, well, you're better off." Father Nulty lit the cigar and crossed his long black legs. "Fish Frawley has got him a Filipino, John. Did you hear?"

Father Firman leaned forward, interested. "He got rid of the woman he had?"

"He did. It seems she snooped."

"Snooped, eh?"

"She did. And gossiped. Fish introduced two town boys to her, said, 'Would you think these boys were my nephews?' That's all, and the next week the paper had it that his two nephews were visiting him from Erie. After that, he let her believe he was going East to see his parents, though both are dead. The paper carried the story. Fish returned and made a sermon out of it. Then he got the Filipino."

Father Firman squirmed with pleasure in his chair. "That's like Fish, Frank. He can do that." He stared at the tips of his fingers bleakly. "You could never get a Filipino to come to a place like this."

"Probably not," Father Nulty said. "Fish is pretty close to Minneapolis. Ah, say, do you remember the trick he played on us all in Marmion Hall!"

"That I'll not forget!" Father Firman's eyes remembered. "Getting up New Year's morning and finding the toilet seats all painted!"

"Happy Circ.u.mcision! Hah!" Father Nulty had a coughing fit.

When he had got himself together again, a mosquito came and sat on his wrist. He watched it a moment before bringing his heavy hand down. He raised his hand slowly, viewed the dead mosquito, and sent it spinning with a plunk of his middle finger.

"Only the female bites," he said.

"I didn't know that," Father Firman said.

"Ah, yes . . ."

Mrs. Stoner entered the study and sat down with some sewing-Father Firman's black socks.

She smiled pleasantly at Father Nulty. "And what do you think of the atom bomb, Father?"