Eighth Month: 1978–1999
Always alone, my love, but since I was so close to Tokyo, I decided I might as well pay a visit to S. She’d already told me in our correspondence that her business was thriving and she’d even given it a new name: A Thousand Bloods. I think the name is brilliant. In fact I’ve put a lot of thought into this idea of purity through bastard blood, from the blend, the mongrel, the mixed race. There was a second when I thought maybe S had heard me mention it sometime. But no matter, wherever the idea came from, the name is perfect for her business, especially when you think of how the AIDS scourge is making people afraid of fraternizing, first among the same sex, but now among heterosexuals too. S added a second part to her sign that reads A THOUSAND BLOODS. The addition, written between parentheses, reads Yes to AIDS. It’s meant to contradict these countrywide publicity campaigns with a supposedly global reach that read No to AIDS. The media picked up on the slogan, and her enterprise came out of hiding as a business that caters to large minorities. Some people may see her Yes to AIDS as offensive, an unnecessary provocation, especially those who aren’t sick or who think they’re out of the disease’s reach, but AIDS persists, and it endures in the people who suffer it. If you say no to AIDS, it means you are denying that the disease exists. All that such an unfortunate slogan accomplishes is that the carrier interprets the no to be hostile toward the person suffering from AIDS; you don’t marginalize the sickness but the person who is sick. You can’t imagine the number of people diagnosed with the virus who have been in contact with S to thank her for this resounding yes, which means inclusion for them, and of course, a way of resisting the illness through acceptance.
S introduced me to the first person I’ve ever met from a continent that you and I never visited: Africa. S is, like me, a seeker of identities, though her motivations are different from mine. Singularity is to her like finding a new treasure every time she encounters it. Wealth, luxury, and social standing mesmerize some people; K’s only wish is to ascend to spiritual realization by way of that spiral staircase whose every step represents a distinctive style: sexuality. It’s the singular that is so attractive to her. So, as I was saying, S conveyed the Yes to AIDS message to the first African woman I’d ever met. Her name is K. She’s from Bamako, a city in Mali. When S introduced me to her, I had no idea where to place Mali in Africa. S spent years working out the administrative details that would allow K to travel to Japan. The woman had been repudiated in her country because female circumcision, the removal of the clitoris, had made her unable to give birth. And I say specifically give birth, because she is able to conceive; it’s just that when K is in labor, for some reason the babies die in that transit between the tenuous light inside and the brightness outside. From what I was able to find out, cases like hers are relatively common and are not generally reason enough to force a woman to leave her country entirely, since some of them are able to find help and survive in cities that are far enough away from their hometowns. What pushed this woman into such a radical break and prompted her to leave her country, her language, and her customs behind was another tragic occurrence. Her most recent and botched attempt at giving birth had resulted in the creation of a fistula, which is a conduit, a hole, uniting her vagina with her urethra and her rectum. This means she has to deal with the perpetual incontinence of her bodily fluids, producing a stench that leads to not only moral but also physical rejection. Even if she had received a helping hand, she would still probably have been rejected by others simply for a reason that, though callous and inhumane, is at the same time very human: she stinks to high heaven.
K has been in Tokyo for only a few days. They’re going to operate on her fistula next week, and luckily it’s a relatively simple operation. I noticed how she stays far away from everyone; it’s hard for her to believe that the diapers and smell-neutralizing creams available in Tokyo actually do their job. S had already explained her problem before she introduced us and I wanted to respect her need for distance, though I would have liked to give her a hug right from the get-go. I don’t know if I ever told you, my love, but I’m not put off by odors. Not that I like them, mind you, it’s just that they don’t seem to bother me as much as they do other people, and certainly if I feel fond of someone, a bad smell isn’t enough to keep me from giving him or her a hug. You know how often one homeless person reeking of perspiration and old piss can empty out an entire subway car in New York. People cover their noses and mouths with a hand or a scarf and stay that way till the next stop, when everyone scuttles over to the next car. They don’t care whether the homeless person feels humiliated by all the rejection. Take a shower, they think, without taking into consideration all the reasons that a person doesn’t wash himself or herself. If exorbitant hospital bills left me homeless, I don’t think I’d ever wash up, I’d waltz my stench around all the public places. That’s why I never cover my nose. Of course the smell bothers me, but it’s not offensive, and above all, it opens my sensory canals to a new perception: that smell, whomever it’s coming from, is always the same; it’s a democratic smell. When we’re clean, we all smell different. But when we’re piss-stained and sweaty, we all smell the same. I don’t like our common odor very much, but it nonetheless offers an unusual and mentally satisfying experience. There are things that do make me sick, like seeing some lady hold her nose ostentatiously over a stupid smell. So yes, no question, if I didn’t have a home and lived on the street, I would let layers and layers of stench accumulate too, just to make sure I couldn’t be confused with all those people clutching their noses while kissing any old ass necessary to make the money to buy the perfumes that camouflage their spite.
K is twenty years old now; she was mutilated when she was nine. One night her mother and aunt woke her up. Stroking her hair, they told her how for the next few days she would eat better than her brothers and she would receive special attentions. She didn’t understand. Everything was so quiet, her mother and aunt spoke in whispers the whole time. So she was already frightened before knowing what was going to happen to her. For the first time, she was afraid of a family member, though deep down, she told S, she understood that they would do to her what they’d already done to her older sister and other girls in town. She’d often heard how the act was necessary so that nothing bad would happen to her family. After telling her she should be happy because she would be treated with deference for the next few days, that she was becoming a woman now, they held her down, opened her legs, and sliced off her clitoris. The pain was so severe that to this day she can’t stand the sound of someone crying out in agony. They used acacia needles to sew her up, which was even more excruciating, and she screamed until she passed out.