fire 
before it has even begun. Won't that be nice, Granny? You won't have to worry any longer 
about our storehouse burning with all our kimono in it." 

Granny, as I went on to learn, was more terrified of fire than beer is of a thirsty old man. 

"Anyway, she's rather pretty, don't you think?" Mother added. 

"There are too many pretty girls in Gion," said Granny. "What we need is a smart girl, not a 
pretty girl. That Hatsumomo is as pretty as they come, and look at what a fool she is!" 

After this Granny stood, with Auntie's help, and made her way back up the walkway. Though 
I must say that to watch Auntie's clumsy gait-because of her one hip jutting out farther than 
the other-it wasn't at all obvious which of the two women had the easier time walking. Soon I 
heard the sound of a door in the front entrance hall sliding open and then shut again, and 
Auntie came back. 

"Do you have lice, little girl?" Mother asked me. 

"No," I said. 

"You're going to have to learn to speak more politely than that. Auntie, be kind enough to trim 
her hair, just to be sure." 

Auntie called a servant over and asked for shears. 

"Well, little girl," Mother told me, "you're in Kyoto now. You'll learn to behave or get a beating. 
And it's Granny gives the beatings around here, so you'll be sorry. My advice to you is: work 
very hard, and never leave the okiya without permission. Do as you're told; don't be too much 
trouble; and you might begin learning the arts of a geisha two or three months from now. I 
didn't bring you here to be a maid. I'll throw you out, if it comes to that." 

Mother puffed on her pipe and kept her eyes fixed on me. I didn't dare move until she told me 
to. I found myself wondering if my sister was standing before some other cruel woman, in 
another house somewhere in this horrible city. And I had a sudden image in my mind of my 
poor, sick mother propping herself on one elbow upon her futon and looking around to see 
where we had gone. I didn't want Mother to see me crying, but the tears pooled in my eyes 
before I could think of how to stop them. With my vision glazed, Mother's yellow kimono 
turned softer and softer, until it seemed to sparkle. Then she blew out a puff of her smoke, 
and it disappeared completely. 

Chapter four 


During those first few days in that strange place, I don't think I could 11 have felt worse if I'd 
lost my arms and legs, rather than my family V and my home. I had no doubt life would never 
again be the same. All I could think of was my confusion and misery; and I wondered day 
after day when I might see Satsu again. I was without my father, without my mother-without 
even the clothing I'd always worn. Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week 
or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived. I remember one moment drying rice bowls 
in the kitchen, when all at once I felt so disoriented I had to stop what I was doing to stare for 
a long while at my hands; for I could scarcely understand that this person drying the bowls 
was actually me. Mother had told me I could begin my training within a few months if I 
worked hard and behaved myself. As I learned from Pumpkin, beginning my training meant 
going to a school in another section of Gion to take lessons in things like music, dance, and 
tea ceremony. All the girls studying to be geisha took classes at this same school. I felt sure 
I'd find Satsu there when I was finally permitted to go; so by the end of my first week, I'd 
made up my mind to be as obedient as a cow following along on a rope, in the hopes that 
Mother would send me to the school right away. 

Most of my chores were straightforward. I stowed away the futons in the morning, cleaned 
the rooms, swept the dirt corridor, and so forth. Sometimes I was sent to the pharmacist to 
fetch ointment for the cook's scabies, or to a shop on Shijo Avenue to fetch the rice crackers 
Auntie was so fond of. Happily the worst jobs, such as cleaning the toilets, were the 
responsibility of one of the elderly maids. But even though I worked as hard as I knew how, I 
never seemed to make the good impression I hoped to, because my chores every day were 
more than I could possibly finish; and the problem was made a good deal worse by Granny. 

Looking after Granny wasn't really one of my duties-not as Auntie described them to me. But 
when Granny summoned me I couldn't very well ignore her, for she had more seniority in the 
okiya than anyone else. One day, for example, I was about to carry tea upstairs to Mother 
when I heard Granny call out: 

"Where's that girl! Send her in here!" 

I had to put down Mother's tray and hurry into the room where Granny was eating her lunch. 

"Can't you see this room is too hot?" she said to me, after I'd bowed to her on my knees. 
"You ought to have come in here and opened the window." 

"I'm sorry, Granny. I didn't know you were hot." 

"Don't I look hot?" 

She was eating some rice, and several grains of it were stuck to her lower lip. I thought she 
looked more mean than hot, but I went directly to the window and opened it. As soon as I did, 
a fly came in and began buzzing around Granny's food. 

"What's the matter with you?" she said, waving at the fly with her chopsticks. "The other 
maids don't let in flies when they open the window!" 

I apologized and told her I would fetch a swatter. 

"And knock the fly into my food? Oh, no, you won't! You'll stand right here while I eat and 
keep it away from me." 

So I had to stand there while Granny ate her food, and listen to her tell me about the great 
Kabuki actor Ichimura Uzaemon XIV, who had taken her hand during a moon-viewing party 


when she was only fourteen. By the time I was finally free to leave, Mother's tea had grown 
so cold I couldn't even deliver it. Both the cook and Mother were angry with me. 

The truth was, Granny didn't like to be alone. Even when she needed to use the toilet, she 
made Auntie stand just outside the door and hold her hands to help her balance in a 
squatting position. The odor was so overpowering, poor Auntie nearly broke her neck trying 
to get her head as far away from it as possible. I didn't have any jobs as bad as this one, but 
Granny did often call me to massage her while she cleaned her ears with a tiny silver scoop; 
and the task of massaging her was a good deal worse than you might think. I almost felt sick 
the first time she unfastened her robe and pulled it down from her shoulders, because the 
skin there and on her neck was bumpy and yellow like an uncooked chicken's. The problem, 
as I later learned, was that in her geisha days she'd used a kind of white makeup we call 
"China Clay," made with a base of lead. China Clay turned out to be poisonous, to begin 
with, which probably accounted in part for Granny's foul disposition. But also as a younger 
woman Granny had often gone to the hot springs north of Kyoto. This would have been fine 
except that the lead-based makeup was very hard to remove; traces of it combined with 
some sort of chemical in the water to make a dye that ruined her skin. Granny wasn't the only 
one afflicted by this problem. Even during the early years of World War II, you could still see 
old women on the streets in Gion with sagging yellow necks. 

One day after I'd been in the okiya about three weeks, I went upstairs much later than usual 
to straighten Hatsumomo's room. I was terrified of Hatsumomo, even though I hardly saw her 
because of the busy life she led. I worried about what might happen if she found me alone, 
so I always tried to clean her room the moment she left the okiya for her dance lessons. 
Unfortunately, that morning Granny had kept me busy until almost noon. 

Hatsumomo's room was the largest in the okiya, larger in floor space than my entire house in 
Yoroido. I couldn't think why it should be so much bigger than everyone else's until one of the 
elderly maids told me that even though Hatsumomo was the only geisha in the okiya now, in 
the past there'd been as many as three or four, and they'd all slept together in that one room. 
Hatsumomo may have lived alone, but she certainly made enough mess for four people. 
When I went up to her room that day, in addition to the usual magazines strewn about, and 
brushes left on the mats near her tiny makeup stand, I found an apple core and an empty 
whiskey bottle under the table. The window was open, and the wind must have knocked 
down the wood frame on which she'd hung her kimono from the night before-or perhaps 
she'd tipped it over before going to bed drunk and hadn't yet bothered to pick it up. Usually 
Auntie would have fetched the kimono by now, because it was her responsibility to care for 
the clothing in the okiya, but for some reason she hadn't. Just as I was standing the frame 
erect again, the door slid open all at once, and I turned to see Hatsumomo standing there. 

"Oh, it's you," she said. "I thought I heard a little mousie or something. I see you've been 
straightening my room! Are you the one who keeps rearranging all my makeup jars? Why do 
you insist on doing that?" 

"I'm very sorry, ma'am," I said. "I only move them to dust underneath." 

"But if you touch them," she said, "they'll start to smell like you. And then the men will say to 
me, 'Hatsumomo-san, why do you stink like an ignorant girl from a fishing village?' I'm sure 
you understand that, don't you? But let's have you repeat it back to me just to be sure. Why 
don't I want you to touch my makeup?" 

I could hardly bring myself to say it. But at last I answered her. "Because it will start to smell 
like me." 


"That's very good! And what will the men say?" "They'll say, 'Oh, Hatsumomo-san, you smell 
just like a girl from a fishing village.'" 

"Hmm . . . there's something about the w