Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(68)

What is my daughter’s name? she wonders. She thinks about this all the time.

The babies are everywhere. At least, she thinks she sees them. The crescent cheek in a stroller, the black silky swirl at the top of a head. Her body will recover the connection, she thinks, the recognition of her baby, some residuum of those blurry hours in the hospital. The eyes may forget but the body—it remembers.



When my mother graduates high school, she takes a job as a hostess at a posh Japanese restaurant. The managers dress her in a kimono; they don’t care that she’s not Japanese—She looks close enough. She scans the room each night, wondering if the new parents of her daughter might take her here. An Asian experience, she imagines them saying, but she never does find them. Instead, she watches as the hibachi chefs learn to throw knives, and she is there to bandage their fingers after each miss. She returns home to shower off the stink of burned onions. She falls asleep curled in a towel each night, her hair still wet.

On the weekends, she takes a job as a Floor Bunny at the downtown Playboy Club. She is weighed in each evening (an extra pound allowed during her period) by a Mother Bunny, who has taught her to Bunny Perch when serving men their drinks. Breasts forward, in their face. Left knee tucked behind right. Remember, they own you. Remember to be pretty.

You must move forward, Tao says. You’ve got a whole story after this.

But their mother and father have separated; my mother’s baby is gone. Her life feels pau, over before it ever started.

My mother moves back to Honolulu for one year. She moves into Tūtū’s sewing room, where flying roaches buzz against the walls. Although this is her island, it has changed since she was a girl—she feels malihini, new again, like a tourist—and her tūtū tries to bring back her old music, the accent on her tongue, the slow-cooked meats and body language.

During the day, my mother takes a bus to the Ala Moana shopping center, where she will try on whatever clothes she is given, climb up into a window, and pose. She is told to suck in, stretch her neck into a C, stand up straight, smile. She is good at this; I can imagine her as if I were there. I imagine her poised, eyes following each person walking by, legs buckled at the knees. I imagine my mother waiting for somebody, anybody, to stop.



FALL, 2015

NEW YORK, NY; ATLANTIC BEACH, NY

If I have the flu, I can’t be around you, I say into the phone.

Get one of those nerd masks, says my father. The ones you Asians wear on the planes.

Tell Mom thanks for passing this on; I was up all night sweating off a fever.

Mom’s making me chicken soup today, he says. I also feel lousy.

Good. It’s her turn.

You took care of me last week; that bean stew helped. It’s my turn.

I can’t get out of bed, I say. And I really can’t come, with your immune system how it is.

Have a driver get you out here—I’ll pay.

I just want to sleep. I need to be home.

You sound terrible, really.

I sound like you.

You sound like me.

Well I guess we’re both stuck, I say. At least we’ve got the phone.

I guess that’s safe.

Drink water, Daddy.

Take care of yourself, baby.

I love you. Feel better.

Okay, now. You, too.

Later that night, when I arrive alone to my parents’ dark house, the pot of water on the stove has gone cold. The chicken thighs, still pink in their Styrofoam casing. The vegetables are peeled, lined up in a row, a knife dropped with a carrot still clinging to the blade of it.

1980

MIAMI, FLORIDA



My mother responds to an ad and takes a job as a secretary. She wears an outfit that says she knows what she’s doing, that she is more than an island girl, or a Playboy Bunny, or a window and hotel model, no, she is serious here—twenty years old, a woman—with her hair pinned back, a pencil skirt hugging her knees. She will be sophisticated, yes; she is going to make something of her life.

On her first day, a man walks through the door, combing his hair. He’s wearing sunglasses, his jacket swung over his shoulder, hooked on a finger. His cologne—a velvet spice that she’ll go chasing for the rest of her life. He passes right by her at first, pauses, then walks backward to her desk.

I don’t believe we’ve met, he says. You must be my new girl.

Your secretary, yes, says my mother.

The man reaches for her hand and bows to her. He kisses her between the pointer and middle knuckles, peering up above his glasses. My mother crosses and uncrosses her legs beneath her desk. She does not know how to use her body in this moment, with this man. He is older, bejeweled. His hands, so certain.

I’m John Madden, he says.

See my parents, the moment they meet.

SPRING, 2016

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

She calls me first. It’s one fifty-nine P.M. on a Thursday, and I’m at my desk when the phone rings. Hello, my name is Marjorie, she says, from the DNA site. It is my mother’s voice, exactly, but it is not my mother on the phone. The name—Marjorie—is not my mother’s name.

Hello, I say, to the voice of my mother. I’m at work; let me step out for a moment.

I exit the building and stand on the sidewalk of Twenty-Sixth Street, next to a Holiday Inn. It’s an overcast day. Still a chill in the air. Men with briefcases walk in a cluster and bump around my body to get by.