Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

She looked surprised at my words, staring at me as if I were someone she knew.

“Please,” she said, crying even harder now. “I beg you.”

A stout officer with a towel around his waist came stumbling out of the room. He was the group captain who’d come on the same transport as I. “There she is! I’m grateful to you, Lieutenant. We wouldn’t want another leaper, would we?”

“I beg you, O-ppah, let me go!”

“She’s a pretty one, isn’t she?” he said, taking her from me. He slapped her once in the face, quite hard. She fell quiet. “She goes on a little, though. Say, what was that you were saying to her?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“I thought I heard you say something, in her tongue.”

“No sir, I didn’t.”

He looked confused for a moment, but then shrugged. “Ah, what does it matter? We’re all here for relaxation tonight, right? And don’t look so concerned. We won’t be much longer. There’ll be plenty left, for you and your mates.”

“Yes, Captain.”

He led her back down the hall to the open door. She followed him, in limp half-steps. Before they reached the room, the girl looked back at me, the side of her face raised red from the blow. I thought she was going to say something again, maybe O-ppah, how a girl would address her older brother or other male, but she just gazed at me instead, ashen-faced, as if in wonder whether I had uttered the words to her at all.

* * *

I WAS THINKING of that girl as I walked around the side of the Gizzi house and its waist-high weeds and saplings; I wondered if she had survived the war and was still living now, in Singapore or Korea or perhaps even here in this country. Or whether like Lieutenant Enchi she had been killed soon thereafter, by whatever circumstance, and been cheated of (or spared) the endless complications and questionings of a life duly spent. And what would she or Enchi think of me, an old man loitering in the shadows of a party house in America, peering into private rooms?

As I turned onto the front yard, the two young men who had first greeted me were still on the sofa, the skinny one passed out over the edge of the wide arm. His largish companion was sitting up, however, simply looking out at the night and laughing softly to himself. I thought he had gone mad. But as I crossed his field of vision he said something, whispering to me in a little boy’s voice.

“What?” I said to him. “Excuse me? I can’t hear you.”

“She’s up there,” he was saying, his face screwed up in what I took to be mock fear. He repeated, “Up there.”

He tipped his head toward the dormer over the garage. There, in the window, a seam of light shone through a break in the heavy curtain.

“You know my daughter, Sunny?”

“Don’t tell him I told you,” he answered more fearfully, getting up to walk away. He was already heading down the street, holding the neck of the big bottle between two fingers. “Don’t say anything, okay?”

I ascended the flight of wooden stairs attached to the side of the house. The steep treads were spongy and rotting, and with each step it seemed the whole thing might collapse beneath me. At the landing I had to stop to catch my breath. The door was a half-window with a lacy curtain on the other side of the dingy glass.

And there she was. She was standing in the middle of the squarish room, her figure in profile. She had on only a gray tank-top and her underwear. She was dancing, slowly, by herself. Her jeans and her sweater were splayed on the floor in front of her. I looked to the side and saw her audience, two men sitting on the floor at the foot of a bed. They were calling and toasting her with bottles of beer. One was a young black man wearing a worn baseball cap; the other, I thought, was Jimmy Gizzi, whom I’d seen once or twice around town. A hand-sized mirror lay between them on the carpet, sprays of bright white powder salting the glass.

She wasn’t playing anything up for them, performing. She was simply there, moving without music, hardly looking at them as she swayed and twirled and pushed out her hips, her chest. I kept myself far enough from the window to remain hidden. I could hardly bear to watch the scene, much less allow it to go on. And yet each time Sunny turned my way I stepped back and quieted myself and hoped the darkness would camouflage me.

I had never seen her move in such a way. I knew what her body was like, of course, from when she was a young girl, and later, too, when she’d swim or sunbathe at the house in a bikini, which was hardly a covering at all. She was always lithe and strong and sturdy-limbed, never too skinny or too softly feminine. I saw her as I believe any good father would, with pride and wonder and the most innocent (if impossible) measure of longing, an aching hope that she stay forever pristine, unsoiled.

But to gaze upon her like this. She was running her hands over herself, pressing across the skimpy shirting and down her naked thighs and up again. The two men were laughing still, but there was a new attention in their faces; they were sitting up a bit more, as if riding higher on the worn carpeting. The man I assumed was Gizzi was watching her intently, enough so that he picked up the mirror without looking and, wiping it with his finger, rubbed the stuff all over his mouth and gums. I could see the foul light of his teeth. The other man was nursing his beer, his face mostly hidden beneath the brim of his hat. But I could tell he was stirred now, too, his fingers anxiously tapping at the bottle. Gizzi was calling her names like baby and sugar and sweet thing, though she didn’t respond, she didn’t look or smile or even acknowledge him. But there was no coldness from her, either, no front of unwelcoming or remonstrance. I didn’t wish to think that it was she who had initiated this moment but there was nothing to indicate otherwise. They weren’t forcing her, or even goading her, or doing anything to coerce. She was moving and dancing with every suggestion, and then finally she was touching herself in places no decent woman would wish men to think about, much less see.

The other man finished his beer and let it fall to the side. He pushed off his hat and pulled off his shirt and approached her on his knees, his fluffy Afro matted in a ring. He took Sunny by the hips and with a palpable and surprising gentleness kissed her on the belly. She ceased her moving. She stroked his hair and pulled him tightly against her by his neck. Jimmy Gizzi was watching them, too, and he was already unbuckling his belt as he stumbled up toward them. Jimmy Gizzi said something and they ignored him, and when he tried to touch her the man reached and held him roughly by the shoulder and neck and said, “You sit awhile, okay, Giz?”

“All right, man, all right…” Jimmy mumbled weakly, a pained wince on his haggard face.

The man half-threw him back toward the bed, though Jimmy didn’t lose his feet. He didn’t look in the least shocked or upset. Instead he crouched down on the floor and cleaned up the mirror with his hand, licking and mouthing his fingers and palm.

“She’s all yours, Linc. Eat her up, man,” Jimmy Gizzi said, grinning and nodding. “Eat her up.”

They ignored him again, and the man called Linc resumed kissing Sunny on the belly and down her sides, to the points of her lips. He was kissing her steadily, completely, as if he were simply there to mark her, above all else. Her body seemed tense, expectant. And then she leaned into him, hard, pressing herself into his face and hair. He bent and lifted her from the thighs, Sunny holding a standing position. She rose up as if nothing. He buried his face in the dip of her legs. Jimmy Gizzi had undone his pants and begun lazily stroking himself, and Sunny began laughing at him, first in chortles and then maniacally, in a dusky tone that seemed as illiberal and vile as what he was compelling on himself. And it was then that I wished she were just another girl or woman to me, no longer my kin or my daughter or even my charge, and I made no sound as I grimly descended, my blood already trying to forget, growing cold.