That Look

The older Japanese woman — in her late fifties, I suppose — stepped down the short set of metal stairs from the sidewalk to the foyer of the after-hours salon, her head crooning to the left, looking for something. She paused a few feet from the foot of the stairs, quickly scanned to her left and then back to the right, shuffled her feet, paused again. She appeared oblivious to the tall woman in leather trying to direct her by motioning the handle of her long, dark brown whip. “Honey, pay first. Over here,” the tall woman said, slightly bemused, but the Japanese woman either ignored her or didn’t hear. There was a taxi waiting outside, but then it quickly drove away.

When I approached from behind, she picked up again without turning around, perhaps sensing that someone was near, and descended slowly down the stone steps to the door that leads to the hallway and its two toilets. She finally noticed me, acknowledged me, as I reached beyond her to hold open the hallway door that she had already opened. She seemed startled, looking behind her suddenly, suddenly aware, finally aware that someone was behind her. I, too, needed a toilet, but I had traversed this path many times, could probably navigate it blindfolded or in complete darkness, though the varying heights of the stone steps I hadn’t yet memorized.

She, on the other hand, she of the weathered eyes and sour mouth, looked daunted at the head of the trail, afraid even. That look — almost of terror, certainly of concern — from where did it come? To what memories in her past was she clinging? What experiences formed the rope of fear that she seemed to be gripping during her search for a toilet? I imagined that she was not Japanese but Japanese-American, had been born in the States, grew up in a mostly white neighborhood in California, felt torn (especially in her adolescence) between the cultural ideals of her parents and the mostly Americanized versions of her friends and their parents.

She was in her late teens when the government forced her and her family into a camp in the desert of Arizona, and it was there she spent four years of her life cultivating a new idea of what it means to be isolated, to be lost in so many ways beyond the physical. She never fell in love. She was abused periodically by the camp guards who grew bored and exposed their cruelty like thick hair poking out of an unbuttoned shirt. When she was released, she looked back confusedly and with shame beyond the gate, back into the area of thin, makeshift cabins and winced when the rain fell on her head, hands, and neck. She dragged her suitcase with both hands, even though there wasn’t much in it, less than what she had arrived with.

All of this, I thought, must be at the other end of that look, must be the anchor that holds her boat still, trapped in an unwanted harbor. She stepped into the hallway, then turned left a few feet down into the women’s toilet, slowly, hunched forward slightly, her black dress snug against her ribs and hips, like a shawl tied tight against the wind and sand.