Baby Geisha (3 page)

 

Humming along to Cajun songs, folding sweaters, and shoving them into drawers, I left the curtains tied open to let in what little daylight existed. Halfway through the job, I looked to the window and noticed an old woman staring in. She squinted, head leaning in, not quite pressing against the glass. Was she admiring my sweater collection? I went to the front door and opened it.

“Hello, ma'am,” I said. She was shivering under a scrawny black shawl.

“Hello, little girl,” she said, even though I am mother-aged.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I am cold,” she moaned. “Old, and cold. Could you spare a sweater, my dear?” She had an overbite, and yellow teeth peeked over her bottom lip as she talked.

“Of course,” I said. I would survive minus a sweater. “I'll be right back.”

It seemed a trap. But I'd expect more a trap
taking
something from a stranger. She wasn't giving. I opened my bottom dresser drawer and chose a black one. There were three other black sweaters and, besides, this one made me look gaunt. I walked over to the door, opened it, and stepped out.

“Here you go,” I said. “I hope it fits.”

“Bless you, my child,” she said, pulling it immediately on. I said goodbye and closed the door.

 

“Don't you think it's odd that I just
happened
to be putting sweaters away, and this woman peeped in and guilt-tripped me into giving her one?” I said to my best friend, Elise, on the phone the following week.

“People get cold where you live,” Elise said. “There are lots of old women there who need sweaters.”

I nibbled a bagel chip. “What's she doing with that sweater now?” I mused, picturing it bundled with string on a chalked-out pentagram in the dirt, deep in the woods.

“She's probably wearing it,” Elise said.

“She's doing more than wearing it,” I said. “Trust me.”

“Call the police,” Elise said. “A woman is wearing a sweater.”

“Shut up,” I said, noshing another chip. “I'm going to find out what she's up to.”

The next day the lady returned. She peered in the same window, through light snowfall, squinting with her hand as a visor. I didn't open the door at first, but ten minutes later she still stared in. I got a grip—the worst she could do was bang my shin with her cane. I opened the door. “I'm sorry, ma'am,” I said. “But I don't have anymore sweaters for you. There's a thrift store a couple blocks down.”

“I don't need a sweater, dear,” she said. She pulled at her black sweater sleeve, and displayed it under the shawl. “You gave me one. But I wonder if you have any bagel chips?”

“Bagel chips?” I asked. “I don't have any. The bagel store is near the thrift store,” I said.

“Excuse my nosiness,” she said. “But I walked by yesterday and couldn't help but notice that you were eating bagel chips while you spoke on the phone. I thought you might have a few leftover for a little old lady who's too frail to bake her own.” Her long silver hair ends blew in the wind from beneath the scarf tied over her head.

Was this a joke?

“I ate them all,” I said, feeling guilty for not saving her some.

“Woe is me!” she cried. “What shall I eat?”

I mentally rummaged the pantry. I didn't want anyone starving.

“I'll be right back,” I said, closing the door.

The pantry contained a few sundry items that wouldn't alone make good meals. Dried beans, mustard, cardamom pods. I had two hundred sweaters but not a single can of soup. I found some pasta and took it to the door.

“Go make some spaghetti,” I said to her. She snatched the noodles out of my hands.

“God bless you, my child!” she yelled, and scurried down the block. I watched her turn the corner before I shut the door.

 

I installed thick velvet curtains patterned with fleur-de-lys, and vowed to keep them closed until this lady chose a new begging route. I might as well have been moving into a cinderblock bunker, it would be so dark with the curtains cutting out the already dim winter light. But I couldn't have homeless people stopping by. Once the drapes were up I went outside, and I couldn't see in. Pride surged through me, sweet triumph. But back inside, staring at the fleur-de-lys repeating in diagonal rows, I felt snooty.
Keep Out Old Ladies
, fleur-de-lys say. My senile grandma came to mind. As she would have said,
What makes you so high and mighty?

I took the curtains down. They wouldn't solve this. I'd sensed the woman's presence staring at the closed curtains from outside. I felt sorry for her; she looked so helpless. I called Elise, and after chatting, told her that the old woman might as well just move in. I'm a Yes addict. Elise said it could be worse.

“Worse than what?” I asked.

“Being homeless,” Elise said.

“We're lucky, aren't we?” I asked.

My mind drifted to a week prior, when I was so naïvely putting sweaters away, singing Cajun songs, oblivious to the world of poverty and famine.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll keep giving her stuff.”

Elise and I hung up. Maybe Elise was in cahoots with the old woman.

 

I dreamed of an elephant who wore metal sandals—bronze coins strapped on. He blasted through the wall on his way into my living room, letting in cold winds that froze my cat and the houseplants. That elephant, on television, usually represents the family's drug addict or past history of abuse. I figured it was easy to analyze. The elephant sauntering through my house was thunderous and disruptive, but there was a certain novelty in having an elephant visit. Maybe it was an honor? I couldn't decide. He stuck his trunk out at me. I put a spaghetti package in it that he curled up into his mouth, plastic and all. Then I opened another package and shoved single strands of spaghetti straight up his trunk, the long way. He blinked his eyelashes, signifying pleasure. It reminded me of how boys used to stick pencils up their noses in class.

 

The woman showed up three days after the elephant. I went to the door and opened it; there was no use pretending. She made eye contact then glanced down at my outfit, as if deciding what item to ask for.

“Make it quick,” I said. “I'm busy.” She didn't need to know I had been putting butterfly stickers on a letter to Elise. My patience dwindled even though I was supposed to nurture the elephant. She squinted at me and waved her cane at something.

“Tell me what you need.”

The woman had a handbag this time. She dug through it and removed a list, presumably full of necessary items.

“I don't know how I live without these few basics,” she said.

At least fifty things, including potted plants, a furry pet, and several hundred sweaters. A television set. A red carpet. A tan corduroy blazer. Green galoshes. A desk. My life. Stalking me, she'd memorized my possessions.

“Go away,” I said, attempting to shut the door. The woman wedged her cane into the crack.

“I will die,” said the woman, “if you don't help me. It's so cold outside.” She put her hands together, praying to me.

I looked at the heavy elephant-blue clouds dotting the sky. A steely wind gust blew by, and the woman shivered, even through her shawl and new sweater.

“I am not a genie,” I said. “I will give you one thing off this list. Decide fast. It's too cold to stand here with the door open.”

“I want your cat,” she said.

“You can't have my cat,” I said. “Choose something else.”

“Your hands.”

“They're attached to my arms.”

We settled on a set of silverware and a heat lamp. As she walked away I pictured her in a warm, well-lit hovel, twirling hot spaghetti with a fork. I went inside and re-hung the curtains.

I thought drapery kept your house warm, but that night I fell asleep with the comforter pulled up over my face. Three sweaters were layered over my pajamas. My toes ached through their wool socks. In the middle of the night I got up to check the thermometer: 29 degrees. Cranking the heat hadn't helped. I wanted to shed sweaters in general but tonight I needed every
one of them. Sure, this justified my sweater obsession. But I was tired of wearing so many clothes. I lay in bed with my eyes open, and my cat huddled under the covers next to my thigh to thaw.

I dozed. When I woke up the first time, I was in an ice hotel, rolling in furs. The cat was an orange tiger sleeping on a white tiger skin rug at the foot of my bed. Feline stripes coagulated into jail bars. I fell back asleep, and the next time I woke up I was a penguin, huddled en masse with millions of other penguins as blizzards threatened our bird fortress. Looking down, an egg teetered on my webbed feet, and I struggled to tuck it into my chest feathers. Claustrophobic. I passed back out. Next morning, entering the kitchen to make coffee, icicles lined the sink faucet where water had trickled. I dialed the landlady and told her the heater was broken.

It must have been a curse. The cold house was punishment for my lack of sympathy. I was going to freeze my ass off for the rest of my life in an eternally frigid hell. Contemplating this, I realized I was tied to that woman by body temperature. She was now home, in her hovel, staying toasty. My simultaneous struggle to get hot only drew us psychically closer. It's only hell if I believe it to be so. Cut the cord. I tugged at my purple pullover and set it on the kitchen counter. Then I unzipped the snowflake cardigan. The turtleneck came off, then the long-johns. Slippers kicked off, socks, and lastly my underwear, until I stood there nude. Goosebumps took over. It was the coldest I've been in this century, and the chill was magnificent.

PURA VIDA

“Sloths? I'm on it,” Joanne said, hanging up with her editor. She was on the way to her bedroom, practically sprinting towards the closet door to read the travel list she kept tacked up there. Ten essentials for her valise:
Big round sunglasses, steno pad, pens, phone charger…
She made this list after discovering that Joan Didion kept one.
What Would Joan Do?
she often asked herself. This assignment entailed flying a few countries south to pet sloths, and she vowed to cover the sloth story as if her life was on the line.

Joanne had just finished a feature on Alaskan giant vegetable farming. She was proud of it, though it was no Pulitzer nominee. For it, Joanne had tracked one farmer's journey from farm plot to county fair during Alaska's short, potent growing season. During summer there, round-the-clock, steroidal sunlight makes cabbages and pumpkins, among other things, grow to the size of economy cars. This time her editor assigned her a weekend in Costa Rica, not to cover the annual Ridley Sea turtle breeding like every other sentimental glossy magazine on the planet, but to visit a sloth hospital. At the height of turtle coverage, the sloth hospital was the spin. This clinic adopted orphaned sloths, who in turn performed human therapy. Joanne's job was to discover how these sloths healed humans with their dark, charming eyes. Packing for the trip could have gone smoothly, were it not for Joanne's roommates—her two pesky sisters. They were unemployed performance artists who, at the most inopportune times, tainted Joanne's dutiful existence.

That evening, before the flight, Joanne packed toiletries in the bathroom.

“This movie's so good you don't even have to watch it!” VV yelled from the living room.

Joanne put her doll-sized bottles down to go see what was so good. But VV started playing jazzy clarinet over the film's dialogue, so Joanne couldn't tell what was happening.

“What's the film about?” Joanne asked.

VV tooted out a mellifluous but unintelligible woodwind answer.

Joanne stomped back into the bathroom to pack the hell out of her toiletries.

VV had the ethereally disjunctive habits of those drunk on bubbly. People assumed VV was an airhead but Joanne knew it was a massive cover-up. VV had choppy blond hair that frequently changed to red-brown or orange. Currently, one side of her hair was shoulder-length while the other side was shaved, like vintage Cyndi Lauper. Joanne's unwavering dark brown Didion bob dulled in comparison.

“What are you doing?” Dena called into Joanne a few minutes later, coming in from the porch stoop to watch Joanne pack.

“Getting rid of these hair brushes,” Joanne said. Her toiletries were adrift in drawers crammed with her sisters' junk; it was delaying her task's completion. “Why do we have so many?”

“How many do we have?” VV called in, taking a clarinet break. Their brownstone was small and eavesdropping was inevitable.

“Just enough,” Dena called back, leaning on the bathroom's doorjamb, “to…”

“Host a salon?” VV asked.

“Exactly!” Dena yelled.

“I'm throwing these out,” Joanne said.

“Yeah, about that,” Dena said. “We might want those brushes later.”

“Actually… can I have one right now?” VV asked. At this point, VV was loitering in the doorjamb too.

Joanne slapped a brush into VV's hand. “I'm chucking the rest.”

“Don't you have anything better to do than to throw our cherished possessions out, Chore Boy?” asked VV. “Why don't you try going on a date?”

Joanne rarely had luck recruiting her sisters to perform organizational tasks. Chore Boy was code that meant Joanne was passive aggressively bossy. But, Joanne figured, someone had to keep these jokers in line. Joanne was thirty, while VV and Dena were twenty-four and twenty-six, going on twelve.

“Journalism is extremely social,” Joanne snapped back.