One Hundred and One Ways | Asian American Bookview

One Hundred and One Ways
by Mako Yoshikawa
Bantam, New York, 1999, 278 pp, $21.95
Faced with a dilemma of love and identity a Japanese American woman seeks answers from her geisha grandmother.
EXCERPT

ometimes I can smell him, rain and salt and cigarettes and something else, curiously, like cucumbers, when I step out of the shower. Out of a sense of delicacy, perhaps, he has never appeared to me in the bathroom, but whenever I smell him I dress myself slowly, making sure to hold in my stomach. I wring my hair and whip it back from my face, I clean the mirror of steam and stretch and strike a few casual poses in front of it. I lather lotion onto my body, first my legs, one foot up on the sink at a time, then my stomach, smoothing in the cream in small circles, and then my arms and last of all my breasts. I dress at a leisurely pace, pulling my underpants up and sliding into them with a swivel of the hips, snapping on a bra with all the strut and reluctance of a striptease. I may have spent most of my life in New Jersey, but the blood of a geisha courses through me yet.
When I first saw Philip he was only a flicker in the corner of my eyes, gone even before I turned. Only gradually did he become bolder, moving out of the dusty corners to reveal his full form in quick flashes. Now he will stay in one place for hours. If I am reading I can look up at odd moments and he will be there, watching me. Often he will remain with me until I finish the book.

He is fond of small spaces. Lazy as ever and cured, apparently, of his wanderlust, he likes crouching in a fetal position under my desk, and he enjoys folding his long body into an improbably tiny package so he can fit into the fireplace, along with the violet moths. Less frequently he peeks out from behind the door or he stands picturesquely shrouded by the curtains; every once in a while he lies on his side with his head propped up by an elbow. One day as I was reading, I reached for my iced tea and saw him through the clear glass of the coffee table, his face pressed right up against it and his eyes peering out at me as if I were a goldfish in an upside-down bowl. He is always naked, he hardly ever moves, and his expression never changes. Even his eyes are still.

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