Passions

“What do you do?” the girl asked me. The candlelight illuminated her face in a series of freeze frames. In front of us, the house band played Duke Ellington’s “The Star-Crossed Lovers.” We sat at a circular table three rows behind the stage, a bit off center. I hated making eye contact with musicians. They looked at me as if they knew I’d lost something. The back of my chair touched a man’s knee, which he kept jerking back and forth. I wanted to leave.

“I sell things,” I told her. “Then I buy more things and I do it again.”

“But your passions,” she asked. Some words taste bitter. “What do you do?”

~

When I was ten, my mother thought I was a ballerina. After school on Tuesdays, she would take me to the Y on 92^nd and Lexington to dance. Her punctuality on Tuesdays felt miraculous. The other four days of the week, I was a tried-and-true member of “Late Pick-Up,” which meant sitting in one of three plastic chairs in the school office until sundown. I made friends with the rotation of neglected children, Derek with the scotch-taped glasses, Julia with the trumpet, Sam with the broken left arm then right arm then left arm again, and Kevin with the putrid sports jerseys. I always wished for Julia—her blonde curls so tight they seemed a bundle of freshwater pearls. We would escape to the bathroom, and she’d play for me something like “Baa Baa Blacksheep” and I’d tell her Oh! You’re really good! The brassy sound would vibrate through the stalls like quivering water. You’re really really good, I’d tell her again. Some nights, the school psychologist would pity me and walk me home, even though I lived five blocks farther from school than she did. When I graduated from elementary school, my mother sent Mrs. Marcel a lavender perfume from Diptyque, thank you for taking care of my sweet Ruby. Xo.

On Ballerina Tuesdays, I was thankful to experience the light of day. Under the barely visible Manhattan sun, my mother would hold my hand for that twenty-minute walk to 92^nd street. Her brown Hermès Birkin flopped about in her left arm. I was jealous of it, always beside her. We’d practice counting the passing building numbers in Japanese. She’d tell me I was atama ii, a good brain. I would hold her smooth hand tighter, my little fingers fastened into hers. Maybe Freud would say I was in love.

This love only lasted until we’d reach the studio. She’d unveil from her Birkin two options, either the pink or the black but you must wear one. “Nothing!” I’d say. “Nothing at all!” No tutu, fine! But the leotard, you must! You must! And as I convulsed on the floor, my mother would roll my legs into pink tights and those stiff dancing slippers. “Mrs. Marcel taught me foot binding is illegal,” I’d tell her as I limped into the studio. “Mrs. Marcel smells bad,” she’d say. “And that’s China. Everything’s wrong with China.”

My mother was Japanese and a racist. I often wondered whether this was correlation or causation. But she wasn’t a maniac nationalist. She returned to Japan only twice since leaving and rarely spoke of her family. When I’d ask why she came to the United States, her face would go taut as a drum, and she would say something curt like I felt like it or don’t ask too many questions.

The studio was a well-lit room with windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Mother paid a pretty dollar for the hour. Giacomo was by the barre, always waiting in his black tights that outlined the shape of his enormous cock. His hair was gelled in place and when mother would enter the room, he’d give it a good pat. He breathed in Italian. Everything he did was enormous.

We’d begin with changement. The silly bouncing and ankle crossing. And then pirouettes. I’d open my arms, and my mother would scream with delight, “Wider! Wider!” and Giacomo would guide my leg and help me twirl in place, triggering my motion sickness. “Oh, show her how to do it, Giacomo!” mother would cheer. And we’d watch the Italian man bounce and breathe around the room.

Giacomo dedicated the latter half of the lesson to the waltz. Every ballerina must know how to ballroom dance. But I didn’t want to touch his big hands and pretend we were in love. So, I’d ask for five to get Fritos from the vending machine. My mother would never let me eat an oily thing, but at ballet she allowed it. And I would leave the room and come back, crumbs scattered on my pink chest, to see mother in Giacomo’s big arms. They took little steps and moved in careful circles. Cara mia, he’d whisper in her ear. Mio, mio, she’d whisper back.

One Tuesday, my mother decided ballet was for prissy girls and rude men. And why did I ever ask her to take me to that god-awful dance studio with that god-awful Italian man. That’s the thing about Italians, she said swirling her wine glass, they’re not Japanese. My father looked at her confused. Of course, they’re not, he said. They’re Italian. And my mother said, I mean, Japanese men would never do ballet. Your father and I never dance.

“Do you want to dance?” my father asked.

“No!” she yelled and threw her glass on the floor. The cup shattered and red wine soared upward onto my father’s white button-down. It looked like murder. “I love that we never dance,” mother said. And she left the room as my father whispered, “I’m sorry.”

~

After Giacomo, my mother became a very serious woman. A woman needs to know how to defend herself, she told me on the way to kendo, a modern Japanese martial art. For my twelfth birthday, she gifted me a shinai—a bamboo practice sword. And together, we’d walk through Central Park to Tsuyoshi-san’s apartment where he’d teach me how to be a stronger woman. Tsuyoshi’s apartment was dimly lit and had no sense of time. When we arrived, he would already be wearing his bōgu, protective armor. His face peeked through his face shield, which he was careful to never take off. He smiled only once.

Tsuyoshi had no furniture in his living room. And so, we would stand at opposite ends of the room with our swords protruding outwards and bow. We would stab at each other for three rounds of ten minutes. He would guide me through his ki-ken-tai. I never really understood what this meant, something like, coalescence of spirit, sword, and body. Tsuyoshi was very firm on the kiai, spirit, which meant we must shout at each other during an attack for an ippon to be scored. “Only fighters engage in kiai,” he said at our first lesson, so as not to distract from zanshin, alertness. And he had no problem shutting mother up when she got too enthusiastic.

Because of this, kendo was a great experience. But there was one session, when my mother bowed her head and asked, “Tsuyoshi-san, may I join you?” He nodded and she bowed again. She asked for a wooden sword because she was naturally very coordinated. I moved to sit on the warm floor and watched them stare into each other’s masks, inching closer with every second. They stood like this, swords tremoring for a minute or so, before mother struck his torso and he smiled.

When our lesson was over, my mother gave me twenty dollars to call a cab home. “Tsuyoshi-san is going to help me with my spirit,” she told me. And so, I sat in the taxi, watching building numbers pass and fade at twenty miles per hour, my hand fastened to the car door. At home, my father served me gyudon and excused himself. As I slurped away, I heard him breathing in the living room, which turned into panting and crying all at once.

The next passions were the same. Tennis with Idan, painting with Esteban. Mother would find them interesting, and sometimes, I would too. But it never mattered once enough time passed. Until Miss Genevieve. My father brought home a dusty saxophone one evening because you’d better learn an instrument if you want to get into college. And moments later, she was at our door. Her curly hair, wet from the rain, separated into slippery sections on her back. She shook her umbrella in our foyer, water projecting onto the apartment walls. “My god, I’ve got no manners,” she said.

My father took her coat and we all went into the living room, where she played for us Ellington, Fitzgerald, and Coltrane. How did she make music out of breathing? I wanted to know what her favorite songs were, to memorize her lips. “May I join you?” I asked.

I never returned to Late Pick-Up after elementary school. But each session with Miss Genevieve was the closest thing to time travel. Like seeing that pearly hair again, those plastic chairs, in Miss Genevieve was the sound of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and quivering water. And when I held my hands around the saxophone’s beaded neck, I never feared it would pull away. Or wondered how long it would last.

A few weeks into our lessons, I asked Miss Genevieve if I could play something I learned on my own. I found I had a real knack for the instrument. She seemed delighted that I had taken some initiative, not any student would do that, Ruby. I began to play the song that I had practiced just for her. Flatter and more desperate than the original. She nodded with the music, trying to piece together the shriek-like notes that I played. Then her eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers together. Singing along, she harmonized my substandard creation. It’s autumn in New York, it’s good to live again.

I realized then that I had never attempted to play the saxophone for more than three consecutive minutes. I was dripping in sweat, she was pink in the face, and we smiled at each other for five seconds too long as if we had just made love or something. I built up the courage to ask her then what I had been curious of my whole life.

“Am I good?”

“Yes, Ruby,” she said. “You’re very good.”

One evening, mother closed the living room door during our lesson. Immediately, the saxophone’s echo shrunk from a rich tremor to a flat whine. In the quiet, I could hear the muffled sound of begging from the adjacent room. I asked Miss Genevieve if I could use the restroom and followed the hushed whispers. Through a crack between the post and the wall, I saw my mother with her knees on the wooden floor. “You get rid of that woman and I’ll stop,” she begged. “I’ll stop, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.”

When I returned to the living room, Miss Genevieve was gone.

~

“So what do you do?” the girl asked a third time, the candlelight still flickering.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

The saxophonist moved their hand up and down in slow arpeggios. There she was, her or the scattered image of her, erupting into a thousand floating notes. Miss Genevieve, little Julia, my mother, the whole of them sprinkled around the room.