The Tattoo (17 page)

We took her Lexus and went night-diving out at Black Point. Behind the houses of the wealthy, we walked across the black lava rocks that separated the road from the ocean.

When we got to the edge, we dove into the cold water with our dive lights. I felt the water pierce through my wet suit. I turned on my light and saw the particles of the sea drift with the ebb and flow of the ocean. I raised my head above the surface of the water and heard the wind whistle against the hollow of my snorkel. I looked out towards the black ocean and saw an orbit of light moving further out beneath the surface. Claude was getting ahead of me and herself. I dove back down and kicked hard to catch up with her.

We scoured the water for spiny lobster even though it wasn’t in season. As we swam further and further out, I kept a closer eye on Claude, making sure she stayed close. I pointed my light down into the darkness and saw a lobster coasting slowly on the rocky, sand-colored surface. I signaled for her to dive down and grab it. I watched as she took the shallow ten-foot dive down and chased the lobster. She reached out and grabbed for it, but she was too slow and missed. She chased after it clumsily, but it was too late. The lobster kicked up a cloud of sand and disappeared into the darkness. We rose to the surface and took our snorkels out of our mouths. “You gotta be quicker then that, hon,” I said. “You gotta be sneakier. Try again, I know you can do it.”

She nodded and put her snorkel back in her mouth. We swam on. She missed a couple more. I laughed, but she didn’t hear me underwater. I decided to take a dive down. I reached the bottom and swam further on. I looked under a rocky ledge and saw a huge lobster.

Automatically, my arm shot out and I wrapped my hand around its kicking tail. I dropped my light to get a better grip on it. I put it in my netted dive bag and retrieved the light. Just as I was running out of breath, I flashed my light through the yellow mesh of the bag. The lobster was a big, ugly thing. It looked like a large prehistoric insect with its segmented, spiny armor, and its long, protruding antennas. It was an ugly, tasty scavenger. Finally I rushed to the surface, spit the water out of my snorkel, and took in a deep breath. I looked around and didn’t see Claude’s light. I spit out my snorkel and tread water in circles. I didn’t see her. I hadn’t swum very far chasing the lobster, so I figured the tide had probably pulled me even farther away from her. I flashed my light toward the shore and realized that if I didn’t have the light, I wouldn’t have known which direction the shore was. I called out for her. No answer. I called louder. When I heard splashing farther out, I swam toward it. Finally I heard her voice. “Ken!”

When I got to her, she was crying. I flashed the light in her face and saw her face mashed up with tears flowing from her eyes. I hugged her. “What’s wrong?”

“You left me, you fucking left me.”

I hugged her harder. Then I felt the bump on my leg. I resisted the urge to swim toward the shore as fast as I could. I held her hand and moved my head and light below water. I waited and listened to my quick breathing resonate in my snorkel. I flashed the light in every direction. Suddenly I saw it glide out of the darkness like a spaceship. When you see a shark underwater, you know it’s a killer, and on a whim, it could kill you. I looked at its sharp, ugly teeth which stuck out of its mouth. I looked at its eye, its dull black nothingness, and watched it grow bigger and bigger. It was an expanding black disk growing closer and closer to me. I floated still. It was a tiger. Suddenly I saw my hand flash toward the eye. The ten-footer jerked its head away and in a split second it disappeared again into the darkness.

I shot my head to the surface. I asked her if she was okay. No answer. I asked her what had happened to her light.

“I dropped it when the shark came. It went off.”

I felt for her. Being stuck in the ocean without light was a scary experience. Sometimes, when I’d dive, I’d turn the light out momentarily to check my courage. The darkness would envelop me, and I’d end up turning it on sooner then I’d planned. For a second, I thought about searching for her light. Instead I grabbed Claude’s hand and we swam back to shore. We had a hard time getting back because it’s difficult for two people to share the same light. One leads while the other blindly follows. It takes trust.

We lifted ourselves on the rocks. I suddenly realized that I’d dropped my bag with the lobster. I turned to Claude. “Don’t worry, that was my friend’s great uncle. But, just in case, remind me to buy a bang stick tomorrow.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Suddenly I felt jealous of her ability to cry. I felt like if I could cry, it would make me feel a lot better, it would make my heart grow calmer, the heart that still felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. “You fucking left me out there,” she said.

I looked at her through the darkness. I couldn’t really see her. “I saw a lobster and went for it. I couldn’t have been gone for more than a minute.”

She threw her mask at me. It hit me on my face. I guess she could see fine. I stepped toward her, my fear suddenly transformed to rage. She stood there waiting for me. Her tears had stopped, and she looked at me defiantly. I stopped in front of her, wanting to fucking pound the shit out of her. I wondered why she was so scared of that fucking shark but totally unafraid of me. “I cannot be wit’ you every fuckin’ second of da day,” I said.

“I don’t expect you to. But I expect you to be there when I need you.”

I shook my head. I began to get calm. “How da fuck was I supposed to know what was happening? And besides, when we first got here, you took off without me.”

She shook her head. “You never should have left. But you know what? Fuck it. You want out, fine. Fuck you. Fuck off.” She walked toward her car.

I followed her and grabbed her arm. She turned around shivering. It was funny, I didn’t know what to tell her. It seemed like I had nothing good to say. I mean, I really believed she was being stupid about the whole thing. Sure, she had every right to be scared out of her fucking mind, but to hold me accountable? It seemed ridiculous. Besides, at the time, the way she was acting, it was pissing me off. But I didn’t want to tell her that. I stopped myself from saying anything. When she turned around, I just kind of looked at her in silence. When she tried to pull her arm away my grip tightened.

“I never would have left,” she said.

“You’re leaving now.”

She tried to twist her arm away but I wouldn’t let go. “You’re hurting me,” she said.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Deep down inside you want me to leave.”

“Deep down inside I want you to stay.”

When she laughed, I let go of her arm. My eyes were adjusting better to the night and I saw her smile. “We gotta put this out here right now,” she said. “What are we doing?”

My thoughts flashed to my mother and father and I wondered if they went through a moment like this. I thought about how it might have been better if I let her go. I wanted to let her go. I wanted never to see her again. But I didn’t. I had made her stay when I grabbed her arm. I made her stay and I didn’t know what to say to her. It was like I was forcing a moment, a situation that I did not want to be in. I felt like she threw a net over me. The more I struggled against it, the more I was entangled. I looked at her car. I looked at the tinted driver’s side window. I tried to force my vision through the night, through the dark glass. I couldn’t see inside. In a moment, I decided to tell her the truth. “Fuck it,” I told myself, “she wants it out. I’ll tell her.”

I looked at her. She was waiting for me to say something. So finally I said, “I feel like you own me. Like you control me. Like I’m bad for you, but you got me, anyway. It’s fucked up. When I’m with you, I’m happy. When I’m not with you, I feel like I should never see you again. What are we doing? I don’t know. Not thinking, I guess.”

I looked away, back at her car. I was getting angry because I couldn’t see through the tint. I heard her voice. At first I didn’t want to listen, I just wanted to look at the window. I didn’t want to listen and this not wanting to listen felt familiar. Suddenly I remembered my mother and how I didn’t listen to her as she was dying. I remembered regretting it. I forced my eyes off the car and looked at Claude. Her lips were moving. I forced myself to listen for the sounds. To break them down and distinguish the words. Finally, I started to hear the words. She was saying something about love, how she loved me, and something about how we can’t let our pasts control the present. I started to hear more and more. I heard, “...and you make me happy, too.”

Then I heard myself say, “I don’t love.”

She looked at me. “But you love me.”

I turned my head away from her. “You’ll hate me in a year.”

“No, I won’t.”

I looked back at her and smiled. “You’re going to want to leave.”

“But I won’t.”

I’d run out of things to say. I guess I didn’t really want to say anymore, anyway. I opened my arms. She walked to them and I hugged her. I leaned my mouth to her ear. I listened to the wind and waited for a strong gust. When one came whistling through the air, shaking the leaves and branches of trees, I whispered, “I love you.”

And so I started my residence in Schmaltz City.

And happily ever
after. Suddenly it seemed we had no obstacles. We were together and happy to be so. It was the first time I fell in love, so I figured that was that. But that wasn’t that. It should’ve been, but it wasn’t. It should’ve been, I mean she didn’t try to change me, she accepted me, and I accepted her. We were happy with each other. But the world wasn’t happy with us. It didn’t seem to like us very much, and it seemed to hate us being together. It was like that treacherous run down the mountains while being chased by the ranchers. Instead of Koa, this time it was Claudia who led me down the mountain, down into momentary safety and bliss, but down to something else too. Except Claudia and I didn’t run down completely blind, like with Koa. Claudia and I shared a dive light and jumped into the water. Sometimes I think darkness is better than partial light.

Mama-san wasn’t happy about our relationship. She didn’t really know how serious we were, in fact we tried to keep it from her, but she knew something was going on. She didn’t do anything too drastic at first, though. She cut me out of some work, but I didn’t mind. I had enough money in my books to last me a long time. Besides, she didn’t cut me completely out, I still ran around town collecting for her, I just didn’t pull any hours at Mirage anymore, which was fine with Claude. No, at first Mama-san was not happy, but she wasn’t unhappy enough to really do anything. Claude finished school and I didn’t seem to be ruining her life. I wasn’t the doctor or lawyer Mama-san wanted to see with Claude, but I wasn’t ruining her life.

It was funny how me and Claude were. Most people when they hook up, it’s like the future suddenly becomes overly important to them, it’s like a weight a couple decides to lift and bear together. Claude and I didn’t care. We looked at this boulder called “the future,” and let it lie. We liked the present too much. We’d eat out constantly. Surf, dive. It was funny, she was less hesitant to get back in the water than I was. Sometimes we’d just stay at my apartment. She’d do her homework in the living room while I’d read in bed. She’d join me when she was done, tease me about the print of Miyamoto Musashi hanging in my living room. She’d say, “That’s not art, this is art,” and point to some page in one of her texts, some painting or sculpture made by some dead white guy. I’d always welcome her return, though, it was like we could barely stand being away from each other even if it was only one room away. We’d even work out together. We were one of those couples that make others who see us sick. With each other all day, every day. We were totally wrapped up in each other, oblivious to the outside world.

We’d be in bed naked and share our pasts. I’d tell her about my mother and father, about Koa, I even told her about what I did for her mother. She cringed at this one. I told her that her mother, despite her flaws, was a great, tough lady. She was someone I respected. She told me about her mother, things I didn’t know, like how her mother’s mother was forced into the role of comfort woman for the Japanese soldiers during the occupation before the end of WWII. Raped by hundreds of soldiers. Though she never said it, Mama-san was probably half-Japanese. Claude told me how as this woman’s daughter, her mother kind of became the same thing. Except Americans replaced the Japanese. After her youth was swallowed by the appetites of young men, she’d fled from Korea poor, pregnant, and disgraced. She was raped by an American soldier when she lived in a brothel by the thirty-eighth parallel. Though most called her “whore,” she, like her mother, was more of a slave.

Claude told me that she, too, respected her mother greatly, how sometimes when she thought about her mother’s past, she was in awe. But then she told me how she thought her mother let the ugliness of her past rule her. How money became her god, how she’d do anything to get it. She couldn’t believe that after all her mother had seen, knowing where she came from, she exploited women whose situations were similar to hers when she was young.