The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing to anyone and slowly lost her mind. One of us wrote home for advice to her mother, who always knew what to do, but never received a reply. I must cross this bridge by myself . One of us filled the sleeves of her white silk wedding kimono with stones and wandered out into the sea, and we still say a prayer for her every day.
    A FEW OF US ended up servicing them exclusively in pink hotels above pool halls and liquor stores in the seedier parts of their towns. We shouted out to them from the second-story windows of the Tokyo House, where the youngest of us was barely ten years old. We gazed at them over the tops of our painted paper fans at the Yokohama House, and for the right price we did for them whatever their wives would not do for them at home. We introduced ourselves to them as Mistress Saki and Honorable Miss Cherry Blossom in high, girlish voices at the Aloha House, and when they asked us where we were from we smiled and said, “Oh, somewhere in Kyoto.” We danced with them at the New Eden Night Club and charged them fifty cents for every fifteen minutes of our time. And if they wanted to come upstairs with us we told them it was five dollars a go, or twenty dollars to keep the room until morning. And when they were finished with us we handed their money over to our bosses, who gambled nightly, and paid regular bribes to the police, and would not let us sleep with anyone of our own race. A pretty girl like you is worth a thousand pieces of gold .
    SOMETIMES , while we were lying with them, we found ourselves longing for our husbands, from whom we had run away. Was he really so bad? So brutal? So dull? Sometimes we found ourselves falling in love with our bosses, who had kidnapped us at knifepoint as we were coming in from the fields. He brings me things. He talks to me. He lets me go for walks . Sometimes we convinced ourselves that after one year at the Eureka House we would have enough money to pay for our passage back home, but at the end of that year all we had was fifty cents and a bad dose of the clap. Next year , we told ourselves. Or maybe the year after that . But even the prettiest of us knew that our days were numbered, for in our line of work you were either finished or dead by the time you were twenty.
    ONE OF THEM bought us out of the brothel where we worked and brought us home to a big house on a tree-lined street in Montecito, whose name we shall not reveal. There were hibiscus in the windows, marble tabletops, leather sofas, glass dishes filled with nuts for whenever the guests stopped by. There was a beloved white dog we named Shiro, after the dog we had left behind in Japan, and we walked her with pleasure three times a day. There was an electric icebox. A Gramophone. A Majestic radio. A Model T Ford in the driveway that we cranked up every Sunday and took out for a drive. There was a tiny maid named Consuelo, who came from the Philippines, and baked wonderful custards, and pies, and anticipated our every need. She knew when we were happy. She knew when we were sad. She knew when we’d fought the night before and when we’d had a good time. And for all of this we were forever grateful to our new husband, without whom we would still be working the streets. The moment I saw him I knew I’d been saved . But every now and then we’d find ourselves wondering about the man we had left behind. Did he burn all our things the day after we left him? Did he tear up our letters? Did he hate us? Did he miss us? Did he care whether we were dead or alive? Was he still working as a yardman for the Burnhams on Sutter Street? Had he put in their daffodils yet? Had he finished reseeding their lawn? Did he still eat his supper alone, every evening, in Mrs. Burnham’s great big kitchen, or had he finally made friends with Mrs. Burnham’s favorite Negro maid? Did he still read three pages from the Manual of Gardening every night before going to bed? Did he still dream of one day becoming majordomo?