The Japanese Lover(35)
Her niece wanted to go and study far away, and Lillian eventually gave in. A couple of years’ higher education won’t do her any harm, she thought. They finally agreed that Alma should go to a girls’ college in Boston, where Nathaniel was still studying. He could protect her from the city’s dangers and temptations. So Lillian gave up presenting her with potential husbands and instead began to prepare her wardrobe with frilly skirts and outfits of fashionable pastel-colored angora tops and sweaters, even though they did little for a big-boned young woman with strong features like Alma.
Although her aunt was desperate to find someone she could trust to accompany her east, Alma insisted on going on her own. She flew to New York, intending to take the train from there to Boston. When she disembarked, she found Nathaniel waiting at the airport. His parents had sent him a telegram, and he had decided to come and meet her so that they could travel together by train. The two cousins embraced with all the pent-up emotion of the seven months since Nathaniel had last been in San Francisco, and hurriedly brought each other up to date with family news as a uniformed black porter loaded all her luggage onto a cart to follow them to the taxi. Nathaniel counted the suitcases and hatboxes and asked his cousin if she was bringing clothes to sell.
“You’re not one to criticize, you’ve always been a dandy,” she retorted.
“What are your plans, Alma?”
“What I told you in my letter, cousin. You know I adore your parents, but I’m suffocating in that house. I have to make myself independent.”
“So I see. With my father’s money?”
Alma had not noticed that particular detail. Her first step toward independence was to obtain a diploma of some kind or other. Her vocation was yet to be defined.
“Your mama is determined to find me a husband. I don’t have the courage to tell her I’m going to marry Ichimei.”
“Why don’t you wake up, Alma? It’s been ten years since Ichimei disappeared from your life.”
“Eight, not ten.”
“Get him out of your head. Even in the unlikely event that he should reappear and still be interested in you, you know very well you can’t marry him.”
“Why not?”
“Why not! Because he’s from another race, another social class, another culture, another religion, another economic level. Do you need any more reasons?”
“Well then, I’ll be an old maid. What about you, do you have a girlfriend, Nat?”
“No, but if I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
“That’s good. We could pretend we’re a couple.”
“Why?”
“To put off any idiot who comes near me.”
His cousin had changed a lot in recent months. She was no longer a schoolgirl in white socks, but although her new clothes made her look like an elegant grown-up woman, Nathaniel knew her too well to be taken in by the cigarettes, the navy-blue suit, or the hat, gloves, and cherry-colored shoes. Alma was still the spoiled little child who clung to him, frightened by the crowds and the noise in New York, and only let go once they had reached her hotel room. “Stay and sleep with me, Nat,” she begged him, with that terrified look she used to have in the wardrobe of sorrows, but he had lost his innocence and sleeping with her now meant something different. The following day they caught the train to Boston, hauling her mound of luggage with them.
Alma imagined that the Boston college would be like a freer version of her secondary schooling, which she had completed with ease. She was eager to show off her new wardrobe, lead a bohemian existence in the city cafés and bars with Nathaniel, and attend a few classes in her spare time so as not to disappoint her aunt and uncle. She soon discovered that nobody looked at her, that there were hundreds of girls more sophisticated than she was, that her cousin always came up with an excuse not to meet, and that she was poorly prepared for her studies. She found herself sharing a room with a plump girl from Virginia, who whenever the occasion arose presented her proof from the Bible that the white race was superior. Blacks, Orientals, and redskins descended from monkeys; Adam and Eve were white; Jesus might have been American, although she wasn’t sure about that. While she didn’t approve of the way Hitler had behaved, she said, one had to admit he wasn’t wrong when it came to the Jews: they were a condemned race, because they had killed Jesus. Alma asked to be moved. This took two weeks to arrange, and her new roommate turned out to suffer from a whole host of manias and phobias but at least wasn’t anti-Semitic.
For the first three months, Alma felt lost, incapable of organizing even the simplest things in her life such as food, laundry, transportation, or her college schedule; previously it had been her governesses and then her selfless aunt Lillian who had seen to that kind of thing. She had never made her bed or ironed a blouse: that was what the domestic staff was for; nor had she ever had to keep within a budget, since in the Belasco home it was rude to talk about money. She was taken aback when Nathaniel explained her allowance did not include restaurants, tearooms, manicures, hairdressers, or masseuses. Once a week he appeared, notebook and pencil in hand, to teach her to keep a record of what she had spent. She always promised him she would improve, but the next week she was always in debt again. She felt foreign in this stuck-up, proud city; her fellow college students shunned her, and boys ignored her, but she never mentioned any of this in letters to her aunt and uncle, and whenever Nathaniel suggested she return home she would insist that anything was better than having to face the humiliation of returning to Sea Cliff with her tail between her legs. Just as she had once done in the wardrobe, she would shut herself in the bathroom and turn on the shower so that the noise would cover the swear words she shouted to curse her misfortune.