Baby Geisha Read Online Free PDF Page A

twelve.
    â€œJournalism is extremely social,” Joanne snapped back.
    â€œNo, it’s not,” Dena said. “And you don’t have to write a report about us, so stop counting our brushes.”
    â€œYou are not our mom,” VV added, brushing her hair.
    â€œCan we not do this now?” Joanne asked. Their ambitious mother had also been a second-rate journalist who never won her Pulitzer. The three girls agreed on one thing: that their single mom, who had taken even the lamest assignments out of financial desperation, and who, in the years before the Sexual Revolution, had voiced constant frustrations about sexist news coverage and low pay, had lived a Sisyphean existence that none of them wished to emulate. Their mom had died of a stroke, and Joanne wanted retribution in the form of major journalism awards.
    The room grew sullen. Joanne pulled a drawer out of its cabinet, dumped the brushes on the floor, marched off to her bedroom, and slammed the door shut; she remained holed up until the next morning when she left without saying goodbye.
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    After transferring in Mexico City, Joanne rode in a ten-person plane that teetered over volcanic peaks socked in by clouds, to reach the rainforest. She thought she’d die flying straight through
this thunderstorm. Lightning flashed all around her, fracturing the sky into scary gray shards. She felt two pangs of guilt for leaving the conflict unresolved back home with Sylvia and Jardina, VV’s and Dena’s full names. Their mother had always referred to the three girls by their full, more florid names. Joanne felt a third guilt pang, sharp as a cramp. Her sisters would never change, but they were the only family she had left.
    Joanne sent loving vibes to North America from the seat of the janky plane, watching boxy, brightly painted shantytowns punctuated by palm trees whiz by below. There were seventeen species of palm here, more than anywhere else in the world, Joanne had read in the previous airplane’s magazine. On this last leg of her journey, Joanne realized that she had completely neglected to research the kinds of trees sloths lounge in. She wouldn’t have a clue where to look for them. Hello, sloth journalist, is anybody in there?
    As the plane landed in a strip shaved out of banana plantation that looked like Earth’s bikini wax, Joanne took notes about the setting in her spiral notebook for her first draft due in five days. As thundershowers whipped banana leaves and palm fronds into feathery green tornadoes, there were three minutes of Heart of Darkness effect—feeling the foreignness of the place and wondering how she’d escape alive—until Joanne remembered she had just landed in Costa Rica, a country with no military.
    She secretly hoped her cell phone wouldn’t work in the jungle, but she was compelled to try it and the reception was excellent. She had several work-related messages. Joanne, call me asap.—Joanne, guess what? You’ve been invited to lecture on sloth healing! I’ve already accepted on your behalf.—Joanne, where are you? Call me back… The speed with which her editor relayed messages seemed ludicrous at this podunk airport—two benches, a small attendant booth, a soda machine, and the one-plane landing strip. Pressure to come back with shamanic jungle revelations, wearing a sloth-claw necklace, was insinuated in these brief voicemails. What did
these people expect from a woman who pets a sloth for a few minutes? Hailing a cab, she thought again of her sisters, hanging loose, probably reciting spoken-word poems to each other in a shared bubble bath. Joanne, in her own rekindled bubble bath of rage, fumed knowing this article would be paying their rent.
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    â€œ Le gusta la selva? ” the driver asked, glancing in the rear-view at Joanne. Do you like the forest?
    As the small taxi crossed streams and rutted-out, muddy washes on the way to the lodge, Joanne