continued, then drew in her breath. Slowly.
I looked at Mariko, who was waiting for me to speak. Never speak of him again? I couldn’t. Couldn’t. Never speak of him again? I wasn’t ready to act as if my father never existed. I couldn’t dismiss the emotions pulling at my insides, so I asked her instead, “How long have you been in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree?”
“Since I was five years old.”
“How old are you now?”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” I said, surprised. “You look much younger.”
“Okâsan says I’m like a wildflower springing up on a dung heap.”
I shook my head. All these strange ways of speaking confused me. “What does that mean?”
“That I don’t have the face nor the figure to be part of the world of flowers and willows, but if I have endurance I will grow up to be a geisha in spite of everything in my way.”
Disbelieving, I studied her soft moon face, round cheeks and tiny pink mouth. This girl was going to be a geisha? She was so young and plain-looking. I believed geisha were mythical creatures of great beauty who started the fashion trends and were immortalized in songs. They were the center of the world of style and often called the “flower of civilization” by poets.
I continued staring at her, shocked by the girl’s honesty. As if embarrassed by my stare, Mariko pulled her kimono around her nude bosom in a shy manner. I looked away, but I had new respect for this young girl. She reminded me of bamboo bending in the breeze. Strong but flexible.
I was also dying to ask her more questions about life in the geisha house.
“I’m curious, Mariko-san, why do you call the woman named Simouyé okâsan?”
“Many girls who come to the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree to become geisha lost their families when they were very young and have never known their mothers. Simouyé-san nurtures us as if she were our mother,” Mariko answered with much feeling in her heart. I could see by the wistfulness in her eyes, like a leaf filled with dew after it falls from the tree, she was such a girl.
“Simouyé-san is a difficult woman to understand,” I said, thinking, then I found myself saying, “and very beautiful.” Why did I feel I had to add that? Because my father had touched the woman’s breasts, held her in an intimate manner? As if that excused his actions?
“Yes, she’s hard on us, Kathlene-san, but it’s our way that all geisha in the teahouse give Simouyé-san much respect and follow her authority, as they would their own mothers.” With her eyes lowered, her lips quivering, she tried to keep her emotions from spilling over into her words. “It pleases me that okâsan has said I’ll become a maiko soon, then a geisha in three years.”
“You’ll be a geisha in three years?”
Mariko, in that knowing Japanese way, must have sensed my perplexity at hearing her words. She added, “I have much to learn before I can become a geisha.”
I leaned in closer to her. She didn’t back away. “Tell me, Marikosan. I want to know everything about becoming a geisha.”
She explained how an apprentice geisha was expected to be both observer and learner, that words didn’t have the same power as a telling glance or sway of the head.
“Geisha must learn how to open a door in the correct manner,” Mariko continued, “to bow, to kneel, to sing, to dance, to have undeniable charm, but it’s the main purpose of a geisha to converse with men, to tell them jokes, and be clever enough never to let them know how clever a geisha is.”
“How does she do that?” I challenged.
Without any shyness, Mariko said, “A geisha learns many ways to please a man, Kathlene-san. She presses her body against him and says something outrageous, then she allows him to slip his hand into the fold of her kimono and touch her bare breasts as she pours him sake.”
I knew my mouth was open, my eyes wide, but I couldn’t help it. I never expected to hear anything like this.
“What else does a geisha do?” I asked.
“A geisha must also master artistic skills like flower arranging and tea ceremony,” Mariko said without hesitation. “Okâsan says these skills are the most important treasure in a geisha’s life.”
“More important than falling in love?” I heard the plaintive cry in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. My image of the geisha as a fairy-tale princess was dissipating into thin air, like a wisp of smoke hanging from the end of an incense stick.
“Yes, Kathlene-san. Okâsan says geisha don’t fall in love with men. They fall in love with their art.”
An ongoing sense of apprehension settled over me, yet I couldn’t resist asking, “Do you think I can become a geisha?”
“That would be difficult, Kathlene-san. Okâsan is very strict with us.”
“She can’t be worse than the teachers at the missionary school,” I said, remembering the stodgy English women with their padded bustles widening their hips and woolen rats tucked into their hairdos.
“The stricter your teachers are, okâsan says, the more you will learn, and the better geisha you’ll become and…”
Mariko hesitated.
“And what?” I asked, hanging on to her words.
“You must follow our way of doing things…and the rules.”
“Rules?” I made a face. I found it hard to follow rules of any kind, having had no mother to guide me. “What kind of rules?”
After thinking a moment, Mariko rushed forth with a list that made my head spin. “Geisha must get up in the morning no later than ten o’clock, straighten their clothes, then clean their rooms, wash their bodies, paying special attention to their teeth and their dear little slits—”
“Their what?” I’d never heard that term before and it shocked me, but it also piqued my interest about obeying the rules of the teahouse.
“You know…down there.” She pointed to her pubic area. I nodded and she continued, “…making certain their pubic hair is properly clipped—”
I gasped, intrigued with this rule, but Mariko continued without drawing a breath.
“—fix their hair, pray to the gods, greet okâsan and their geisha sisters, then have breakfast of bamboo shoots and roots—”
“Is that all you eat for breakfast?” I dared to ask her.
Mariko hesitated, then shook her head. I smiled. So, she was teasing me. Her playful spirit surprised me. Life in the geisha house would be fun with her.
She continued with, “A geisha must also be careful not to have caked face paint under her fingernails or splotched on her earlobes. She mustn’t have smelly hair, for that is a geisha’s disgrace, and she must be sure to take her bath in the public bathhouse by three o’clock. And she can’t use familiar terms with her manservant who carries her lute, lest anyone sees them and forms a bad impression.”
“I’m afraid I’ve already made a bad impression on your okâsan, acting like I did,” I blurted out, getting to my feet. My movements were quick and not too graceful. Would I ever learn to move like a geisha? “And that girl, Youki-san, she doesn’t like me either.” I rolled my cut-off hair into a ball and tied it with my kimono ribbon. I had nothing to hold my kimono closed to hide my nudity, but I felt more naked without my hair.
“Youki-san wishes you no harm,” Mariko said, surprising me.
“How can you say that? Look what she did to my hair.” I held up my cut-off strands. Why would she protect