And always, above everything else, I would make men feel good. I’d learn how to entice them with the curves of my body and bring them sexual excitement. Like a bee savoring its first taste of the nectar or a hungry bird pecking at the peach and melting the soft pulp in its mouth, so the world of pleasure would be my world, embracing me like a lost daughter.
Gathering up my curious and girlish spirit and putting it away into a secret spot in my heart until I could let it run free once more, I turned to Simouyé and bowed.
“I’m ready to begin my training to become a geisha.”
3
Snip-snip. Snip-snip.
My stomach clenched with fear. What was that noise? It sounded like scissors cutting. I tried to open my eyes to see what was going on. I couldn’t. I lay helpless, unable to move, as if I were under a spell.
Then I heard a different sound. A sigh, then another, followed by more snip-snips and a paper door sliding open. A girl’s voice asked, “What are you doing, Youki-san?”
“Cutting off her golden hair.”
My hair? Oh, no! I struggled, struggled, but I couldn’t raise my arm to protect my hair.
“Why, Youki-san? She’s so beautiful.”
“Don’t you understand, Mariko-san? She’ll ruin everything for us with her hair the color of silken gold threads.”
Ruin what? I kept trying to open my eyes, move my arms, my legs. I couldn’t. My lids weighed so heavy on my eyes while the rest of my body lay helpless like the cold, slimy fish I’d seen tossed up onto the pier when Father took me down to the wharf to meet the ships arriving from across the sea.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move. I lay on my back on a scratchy mat digging into my skin, shielded from its prickly weave by what I perceived to be a sheer kimono underrobe, its silkiness hugging my body. A cool breeze swept over my skin when someone walked near me. I heard the swish of long robes on the tatami mat and the glide of soft feet. Salty drops of perspiration wet my lips and drizzled down my chin. I let out my breath and relaxed. The girls had gone.
Where am I? What happened?
I remembered following Simouyé down a shining corridor and upstairs to a long, low room divided into three sections by screens of dull gold paper. Before she could stop me, I ran to the open balcony of polished cedar and looked out into the night, hoping to see my father. But he had vanished.
My heart ached so, I couldn’t help but sink down to my knees in front of a wall screen and claw at the delicate branches painted on it, crying. I prayed the gods wouldn’t look unkindly on my actions, but I had the strange feeling I’d never see my father again. My loss brought up so much anger in me, so much sorrow, I pushed aside everything the missionaries taught me. In my anguish, I grabbed the flower vase out of the alcove in the wall and threw it across the room to vent my fury. Simouyé stood and watched, her face showing no emotion, as was the way of the geisha. Panting, out of breath, my emotions spent, I stood there, watching her watching me. It was the most spiritual moment of my life up to that point. Strange, but that lack of emotion calmed me down, made me dry my tears.
I shivered now as the coolness played tag over my bare breasts, bringing my nipples to hardness like the buds of a cherry tree. A pleasant feeling washed over me as I began to move my fingers, then my toes. Were the gods releasing me from the sleep of dead spirits? If so, I must escape before the two girls returned. I wiggled my hips and the silk robe fell away from my belly. My entire body quivered as if I’d been touched by a probing hand. I spread the palm of my hand between my legs to cover myself and the softness of my bare skin slid under my fingers, then—
A gasp caught in my throat, pressing into my brain a truth I didn’t want to believe.
My pantaloons were gone. I was naked down there.
Where were my clothes? Yes, I remembered. Simouyé had called her house servant, Ai, to help me remove my wet garments. Ai said little, except to criticize anything done differently from the way it was done in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree, and this included my request to keep my clothes. They disappeared along with the servant when I wasn’t looking. I was so embarrassed, standing naked in the cool room.
Was this part of my geisha training?
I wrapped myself up in the futon and, racing into the corridor, bumped head-on into the old servant woman. Mumbling about “stinking foreigners,” she gave me a white silk robe and a cup of tea with a strange taste that burned my lips. With Ai watching me, I finished the green tea—laced with rice wine, I’m sure—then fell into a deep sleep. I awakened when I heard the sound of the scissors.
I tried to sit up, but my muscles stiffened. I cursed the gods who tied me to the floor with invisible bonds from the effects of the strong drink. I tried to move again. Nothing. My breathing became sharper when I heard voices. Girls’ voices.
They were coming back.
“She’s done us no harm, Youki-san. Why do you wish to make her lose face?”
“Is your brain as soft as duck feathers, Mariko-san?” the girl named Youki scolded. “Don’t you know what the emperor has decreed?”
Mariko answered in a timid voice, “No.”
“He has much august respect for the ways of the Westerners and he has expressed his wish our men marry white women.”
I could hear Youki rattling on about how everything was changing because of these Westerners, these speakers of English, who talked nothing but politics at geisha parties and ignored the geisha and her accomplishments. I wanted to tell her what I thought, but the effects of the rice wine made me sluggish and fuzzy-headed.
“What can we do if the emperor wishes these marriages?” Mariko asked. “We’re servants.”
“I will soon become a maiko. And if the gods smile upon your plain face, Mariko-san, someday you’ll also be a maiko.”
“I wish to be a maiko with all my heart.”
“Then why do you want this girl to get all the attention, Marikosan? What will happen to us?”
“Don’t worry, Youki-san,” Mariko assured her. “As long as men have sexual desire, there will be geisha.” Her voice was childlike yet silky, soft and smooth. I detected a longing for fulfillment in the young girl that matched my own. I squeezed my eyes shut harder, saying a prayer she would help me.
“Okâsan, mama-san, says this girl is also going to be a maiko. That means someday she’ll be a geisha,” Youki said, her words filled with ire and contempt for what she saw as a direct threat to her future.
“Are you certain this is true, Youki-san?”
“You wait and see, Mariko-san. She will capture the hearts of all the men who come to the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree, and you and I will have nothing.”
“Nothing?” Mariko asked, her voice not believing. I began to lose hope she would help me.
“Nothing. No benefactor to give us a teahouse of our own when we’re old. We’ll be poor and worth nothing more than a sack of bones to be tossed to the dogs for their dinner. Is that what you wish, Mariko-san?”
Mariko was silent for a long moment, then she said, “The blond gaijin won’t do this to us, Youki-san. I know so in my heart.”
“I’m warning you, Mariko-san, we must rid ourselves of this girl or we’ll all pay a price to the gods who rule our fortunes.”
“No,