Butterfly's Child (2 page)

When Pinkerton had asked to be her danna, she'd said yes without hesitation, for he seemed steady, a man who could bring her a new ease.
As she made her farewell at the okiya, she did not put red beans of uncertainty into the rice presented to her geisha mother.

Benji was born nine months after Pinkerton's departure, and these have been the happiest years of her life. In her time at the geisha house in Maruyama, she could not have dreamed of being able to care for a child of her own. There was sensual pleasure in nursing and bathing Benji when he was a baby, and in smelling his sweet feathery hair and playing with his toes. She carried him everywhere, but now he is big enough that he can walk with her and hold a parcel or two when she goes to market like a housewife. They stroll along the bay to look at the ships and the changing shades of sky and water. He knows all the colors in Japanese and English, and he asks astonishing questions: How far does the water go? What makes the waves? Where is America? She knows he is a prodigy, even though Suzuki laughs at her for saying so. When Pinkerton returns, he will marry her and give up the Navy to become a Nagasaki businessman, as he had said he would like to do, and they will raise Benji to be an educated man, perhaps a scientist or doctor. She will never again have to dress for geisha parties with vulgar men who made her tie the cherry stem with her tongue, then giggled like schoolgirls when they boldly took the cherry from her lips with their own. So when Pinkerton arrives, she will please him in every way, and she will wear his favorite kimono, black with a river of butterflies.

One morning, a thunderstorm rolled in from the bay—ink-black clouds, lightning, a heavy downpour—but then there was a sudden clearing: a brilliant blue sky, sun shining through light needles of rain. Fox wedding weather, auspicious weather. She sent Suzuki to the harbor for news, and an hour later, when she heard Suzuki's geta clattering toward the gate, she knew.

“He has come!” she cried, when Suzuki entered the room.

“Yes, madame.” Suzuki gave a deep bow.

“You see?” She embraced Benji, who was sitting beside her, playing with the new string ball she had made him.

“But, madame.” Suzuki came closer; her face was grave. “I am sorry to tell you that Pinkerton has come with a wife—an American wife.”

She stared at Suzuki's plain face, her wrinkled eyelids. “Then it is not Pinkerton.”

“I have seen them myself, entering a hotel. The owner said Mr. and Mrs. Pinkerton had registered and could not be disturbed.”

“She must be his mother.”

Suzuki shook her head. “She is too young. A young woman with yellow hair, fresh like a lemon.”

“His sister,” she said.

“I'm sorry, madame, but I have made several inquiries. There is no doubt. She is his wife.” Suzuki nodded once, twice, for emphasis.

For a moment the air went black before her eyes.

“Mama?” Benji leaned against her. “Is Papa-san coming?”

She turned to him, taking his rosy, innocent face in her hands. “Yes, Papa-san is coming.”

She jumped up. “Stay here,” she told Benji. “Be a good boy. You will see Papa-san before long.” In the kitchen, she packed some fried tofu, then hurried outdoors. The rain had ended. Pinkerton's white cat crouched below the maple tree, staring up at a nest of young wrens, his tail swishing. Bad-luck cat. She threw a pebble at him and he streaked from the yard.

She went down the hill and up another, to the pleasure district of Maruyama, passing small shops and teahouses crowded with people. A geisha she knew well, Mayumi-san, who'd had to give up her son last year, waved at her from a balcony. At first Mayumi-san had tried to disguise him as a girl, saying there would someday be a new geisha in the house. Now people said Mayumi-san was crazy.

She looked down at the street, studying the cracks in the flagstones. Some fortunate few geisha sons were adopted by wealthy parents, but this would not be the fate of a mixed-race child with yellow hair.

The plum trees around the borders of the shrine were wet, their oval leaves glistening with rain. She pulled down a branch; the fruit was still green, but she plucked two plums and took them to the stone vat of sacred plum seeds, where she made a prayer. Slowly she approached the stone fox, placed the tofu on the ground before him and bowed, then gazed at his mysterious eyes, his wise smile. “Help me, Inari-san.” A breeze rustled through the leaves above them, sprinkling her with drops of rain. She closed her eyes. If she were very clever, Inari-san said, she could find a way.

As she walked out of the shrine and down the hill, a plan began to take shape in her mind. She stopped at Taiko's carpentry shop and called to him from the entrance. Once a houseboy for Americans, Taiko-san not
only spoke but wrote English. Many geisha and courtesans came to him when they needed love letters for their foreigners.

He soon appeared, greeting her with a lively smile. “Ah, you have been away too long,” he said. “Please take some tea.” He was a winsome man of middle age, his hair still black; he had always favored her.

She explained that she needed assistance quickly, a brief note.

“Hai, hai.”
He disappeared into the dark recess of his shop and returned with paper, pen, and ink; they sat together on a bench.

She dictated her words and he translated, writing in careful English script:
Mr. B. F. Pinkerton: Come immediately to see your son, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton the younger, or Benji as he is known. Sharpless-san says this knickname may sound both American and Japanese, as indeed he is by birth. That he is your son I swear by my life, my honor, and all the gods. Some few poor words of English he can speak but not many. He is very good and smart and can count to 100. He likes fresh fish but not salted ones. He must go to America with you now. Sincerely, Cio-Cio
.

Postscript: Take care of him always, American wife of Pinkerton
.

Taiko-san, no longer smiling, put the letter into an envelope, hesitated, and gave it to her with a deep bow. “Please be in good health,” he said. He did not meet her eyes.

She bowed and walked back up the hill, her body heavy, as if the air were pushing her back. She must be resolute.

She found Suzuki in the kitchen, boiling potatoes. Speaking in a low voice so Benji could not hear, she told Suzuki what they would do. Suzuki gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.

“First show this letter to Sharpless-san and entreat him to accompany you to the hotel. Do not return until the letter is in Pinkerton's hands.” Sharpless would make certain that Pinkerton did as she asked.

While Suzuki was gone, she packed Benji's trunk, the one she had brought when she came here from the geisha house with Pinkerton. The chalky odor of the interior almost made her buckle; she would never again embrace him or cook his favorite soba noodles. He would be wild with grief at first. She could see him curled on the floor, his arms tight over his face. She took several shaky breaths. She would never see his young man's face. But Pinkerton would give him a home, a bright future in America. Her son would not live in the back alleys of Maruyama, picking through garbage, his face streaked with dirt. She could not falter. For Benji's sake, she must summon all her courage.

Suzuki entered the room and knelt beside her.

“The letter has been delivered to them privately at their hotel. At first Pinkerton cannot believe the boy is his, though Sharpless-san assured him this is so.”

“He will believe when he sees him. The wife?”

“She is shocked. But she has a soft face.”

“Good. Help me prepare.”

In the room where she kept her kimonos, she knelt before the small round mirror to apply the makeup. She would look exactly as she had that first day when she struck his heart. She rubbed wax into her skin, then, her brush trembling, applied thick white paint over her face, covering her lips and eyebrows, leaving a subtle line of natural skin just below the hairline. Using fresh brushes, she painted the lids of her eyes a delicate pink and feathered on brown eyebrows. Bright red for the mouth. The mask gazed back at her from the mirror, her Cio-Cio face.

Suzuki painted the white makeup on the back of her neck, leaving the serpent's forked tongue of unpainted skin below the hair. Her hair was thick but for the bald spot on the crown that was caused by the tight hairstyle of her maiko days, when she was training to be a geisha. Suzuki arranged the hair on the top of her head in hills and valleys, using a swatch of yak hair at the top.

Just as she had done in the geisha house, Suzuki helped her dress: a gauzy red petticoat, a white cotton blouse with a red collar and long red sleeves, and a floor-length petticoat of white. Then the kimono, an explosion of colorful butterflies down the front, swirling around the hem and up toward her shoulder as if in flight.

In the reception room, she set a bowl of irises on the tokonoma and hung a scroll of a mountain shrouded in mist. At one side of the room was a folding screen, on it a river of plum trees; Suzuki helped her move it to the center, dividing the space. The sword—a souvenir from one of her patrons—she placed beside the tokonoma, on a fresh white cloth, then went outside.

Benji was in the garden, watching a frog in the pond. On his face was the solemn expression that she found uncanny and a little frightening: At such times he looked like a man in a child's body. He would need his wisdom now.

“Benji, Papa-san will arrive soon. Come dress in your Western clothes to greet him.”

“Papa-san!” Benji jumped up and skipped into the house with her. He practiced his English phrases again as she helped him dress in the white sailor suit she had made for him.

They went to the reception room to wait.

She set the string ball before him on the tatami and put in his hand the small American flag she had bought at a shop by the harbor. “Sit here and play with your toys. Papa-san is coming soon. If you be very good and quiet, Papa-san will buy you new toys.”

She wanted to grab him and run. Perhaps they could go to another city, but she had no training other than that of a geisha and no connections elsewhere; they would be paupers.

In the distance, there was a long yowl. “What is that?” Benji asked.

“Shh. It is nothing.”

She embraced him as long as she could bear it, then rose and went to the other side of the screen to kneel beside the tokonoma. She stared at the scroll, the brushstrokes meaningless. Pain seared her chest. He would see her dead, lying in blood, but it was the only way. In America he would become a successful man. She must be stronger than the blade of steel.

Suzuki entered, very pale, carrying a ceramic sake bottle. She placed it beside the tokonoma, then bowed and left the room.

“Mama?” Benji called. “Is he here?”

“We must wait a little longer,” she said. “We must be patient.”

Benji fell silent behind the screen. She had taught him to be obedient.

She bent forward, a sob trapped in her throat. For his sake. He had been born without good fortune; she must provide it for him.

A grasshopper on the tatami, pale green as a young leaf, made a tiny clicking noise as it jumped. She closed her eyes.

She knows how it will be, like a scene from a Kabuki play. They will climb from the harbor, Pinkerton and the blond wife; already they are on the way. Suzuki will come to announce them, then begin to wail. When Pinkerton runs in, there she will be, lying on the tatami, a bloody sword loose in her hand, her geisha face turned toward the side, his Cio-Cio-san, looking just as she did the day she met him, and beside her will be Benji, staring down at her, the flag of his new country in his hand.

Kate imagined
how odd they must appear to people who strolled past them on deck, casting covert glances their way: a blond, blue-eyed man and woman sitting in silence, on the man's lap a child with a Japanese face and light hair. All three of them motionless, staring out at the sea like revenants, the boy immobile as a statue, clutching a multicolored string ball.

She drew her blanket more tightly about her shoulders. She should say something. They would look less strange in conversation.

“How can it be so cold in May?” she asked, trying to smile.

“The black current,” Frank said.
“Kuro—kuroshiwo.”
He made a snaking motion with one hand. “It's a mysterious, shifting current that runs along the coast of Japan and then out to sea. We should be leaving it soon.”

She gazed out at the gray water, the dark line of Japan receding, then at the boy. Yesterday they had carried him kicking and biting to the hotel, but he hadn't made a sound since recovering from the sedation. The doctor said he was in profound shock—how much did the doctor know about the circumstances? she wondered. Poor child. She looked at him, his small hands gripping the ball as if his life depended on it.