Like Venus Fading. Marsha Hunt
room above Mack’s undoing crocheted doilies so that she’d have yarn for crocheting the next day.
I can’t remember what Lilian and I used to do for the hours Mother wasn’t home. All that California sunshine allowed us more street life, but I was a loner, especially after Lilian seemed to have no more time for me. I know that I had a skipping rope and used to wander the streets collecting bits that I dreamed of selling to the rag-and-bone man.
Toguri may have been in his late twenties like Mother, because he had youthful interests. He liked to Charleston and kept the radio blaring, because with Meyerdorf gone, Toguri was his own boss. He remained in the house alone when Meyerdorf was away and grew dependent on Mother to help stave off the dullness of those Southern Californian afternoons when big houses can feel like cemeteries. Places for dead people. The posse of Mexican gardeners, who spoke no English, were employed by the owners to maintain the garden three days a week, but Toguri and Mother were the only people who entered the house.
She worked every day but Sunday and came home with Toguri’s copy of the newspaper to pore over every line, scrutinizing the obituaries and want ads as carefully as the front page, preparing herself for the following day, in case Toguri might want to discuss something he’d read. But when I used to see her studying the want ads, I was afraid that she had to find a new job. I stayed confused and worried about bills like I was the one paying them.
Toguri was second-generation Japanese from Toronto and filled her head with new words and bizarre notions that she wanted to impose upon us. ‘I want you girls to breathe deeply when you’re out walking. Fill your lungs with fresh air and take time to observe nature. Stop when you see a eucalyptus tree. Break off a leaf and smell it. The world is beautiful and you take it too much for granted.’ That was surely Toguri talking … Negroes in our neighbourhood were on the breadline and Mother was picking up a Japanese inflection. She was like a teenager who starts running with a fast crowd, but Lilian and I still needed her. We still needed a home but didn’t have one, moving from one rooming house to the next and living out of her carpet bag.
She’d come back late with fanciful talk about some radio programme that Toguri had had her listening to which was of no interest to us. Her manner grew so stiff and detached that she thanked us for everything from scrubbing floors to making her sweet tea. ‘Good evening, girls,’ she’d say in a slight daze. Like a walking zombie she was some nights, but what could we say? Little girls weren’t bold and never speaking until spoken to was a virtue. I thought the world was for grown-ups and knowing that people were out panhandling made my generation obedient. But Hollywood has always been wild and for all I know, Mother could have been at Meyerdorf’s smoking opium every day. I’ve lived long enough to know that kids never know what’s really going on, because more often than not, people make a point of not telling them.
Mother had described Toguri to us as handsome but on the only occasion when Lilian and I met him, I took more notice of his graceful, birdlike movements than his face. He flitted across the carpeted floors, his feet in black slippers, never making a sound.
He greeted us at the front door, giving a slight bow as though we were Meyerdorf’s guests. Mother had already lectured us so long and hard that I was afraid to breathe. Tying the ribbons in my hair, she’d said, ‘Don’t touch nothing, don’t sit on nothing, and don’t dare take nothing to eat.’
I imagined that I looked beautiful because I was wearing Lilian’s communion dress, but the moment we entered Meyerdorf’s hallway, I was faced with a full-length mirror, and the truth stared back at me. An enormous red ribbon flopped over my brow and that dress hung on me like a teepee. My legs were pretzel sticks and I nearly cried because I felt so betrayed by my image.
Owning a pair of tap shoes, having a mother who worked for a rich man, having known a woman who was a friend of Charlie Chaplin’s, having been praised for my Bible recitations, I was a child with delusions and to discover that I looked like a little brown clown wounded my pride. But Lil and I sang for Toguri that afternoon anyway. Our a cappella harmonies were improved by the echo in the courtyard. ‘These two are better than the Cochrane Twins on Children’s Hour
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