A short story by Karen Tei Yamashita ’73
You are a sansei. You used to be feisty and youthful and, quite frankly, intolerable. You might still be intolerable, but now they pretend to tolerate you because, well, you’re old. When you turn fifty, they give you an over-the-hill party with black balloons and taunt you about the last half-century, but this is just the beginning of the second half of your century, which you decide to embrace because, what the heck, maybe you can finally say anything you want and even speak for your generation since you might outlive them all. But then you realize that what the Brazilians call the merda that happens boils down to three significant things: 1. You need reading glasses; 2. You find out that you are the “sandwich generation,” meaning that you are the baloney between your needy illogical kids and your needy illogical parents; and 3. You will need a colonoscopy.
Number 1 is a minor bummer because you already had lousy eyes, coke-bottle goggles in the fifties until contact lenses came around and your high school buddy became an optometrist. Number 2 is what your parents were trying to prepare you for: oyakoko; maybe you missed the lesson in which they explain if it’s the egg or the chicken first, but now you know it’s a deviled egg and that the egg-chicken conundrum is beyond the point. Stuck between adolescent angst and elder dementia, you might accept the justice of this return to your sansei attitude and the memory of the Quiet Nisei stuck in repeat mode. After all, this is America. Life is not a domburi. Trust me, number 3 might be the real turning point.
Your experienced elders give you the lowdown on the liquid diet and the enema prep, and when they say, don’t leave the toilet, they don’t mean: don’t leave the vicinity of the toilet; they mean: DON’T LEAVE THE TOILET. Bunker in with your books and magazines, your iPhone, laptop and Netflix, and be glad you’re not having to share a communal potty without partitions. Now the boogey word evacuation takes on a whole new meaning.
The gastroenterologist asks if you want general anesthesia or conscious sedation, that is, do you want to be knocked out or semi-alert for the investigative procedure? Someone with experience who stayed awake says it was like watching the Fantastic Voyage. You vaguely remember the 1966 film with a crew of micro-astronauts voyaging through blood cells, though all you really remember is maybe Raquel Welch. To have Raquel swimming around your large intestine doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, especially since you’ve really cleaned it out just for her. Okay, you accept the challenge.
The gastroenterologist who is clearly not yet fifty eyes you with a mixture of pathos and amusement and assures you that she has performed hundreds of routine colonoscopies. The pathos is connected to the possibility that a cancerous polyp might be detected; the amusement is connected to your desire to swim with Raquel through your own butt. Raquel Welch, the gastroenterologist queries, is she still alive? You think about all the current gorgeous Hollywood pretenders who are pale copies of Raquel, the original hot cavewoman gunslinger who conquered the West plus the world Before Christ. Okay, as a feminist, you were never into Raquel, but is she still alive?
From your left-side semi-fetal position, a flimsy blue cotton gown indecorously flapped open down your back, you peer over at the gastroenterologist in her scrub cap and facemask, and, in your semi-sedated dream state, she appears to be an indigenous person with tribal affiliations. Forget Raquel. Think Sacagawea. She launches the colonoscope into your rectum. The colonoscope is a four-foot-long tube with a camera and light source at its tip. It could be La Ni a, La Pinta, or La Santa Mar a. Let’s go find India.
You stare at the monitor watching the colonoscope snake into your unknown unmapped territory. Your plumber guide is nodding with approval at the clean shiny pink walls and congratulating you on a flushing job well done. The camera spelunkers with slow precision. In the dark distance, you see a tiny slim figure in slacks. As the light positions itself, you see a woman with graying hair walking a dog. It’s Donna Haraway. Okay, the dog is not a dog but a companion species. Donna points with wonder to the walls of your cleaned-out gut, normally a microbial ecosystem of a thousand species of critters with whom you co-exist. And you just spent the previous day shatting the critters while incarcerated with your toilet. You apologize to Donna, but she’s a scientist, no apologies required; just remember with whom you share this precious space. Suddenly, shepherd companion herds Donna into the tube, and they tumble away like Alice down a rabbit hole. What happened? The doctor plumber articulates some directive to your dream team. Apparently a polyp. We’ll take a biopsy and let you know. If it’s any consolation, it looks benign.
The procedure plods on, gently turning the corner. Oh lookee here, di-ver-tic-u-lum. Diverticula are pouches in your colon where stuff collects and settles and can cause diverticulitis. Have you been eating your vegetables?
I’m Asian, you protest; we grow it; we practically invented the stuff.
The camera points and shoots. Your diverticulosis is recorded. You lookee there and blink in disbelief because the stuff in your particular diverticulum looks like a bunch of 19th century white guys on locomotives. You squint, and it’s the meeting of the Central Pacific with the Union Pacific and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on Promontory Summit in Utah. Wait, you protest, where are the Chinese who built that railroad?
Right, says Dr. Sacagawea, on native land, all stolen.
But, you continue to protest, where are the Chinese critters?
Sacagawea points and shoots from another angle. You wanna be in that picture too? An accomplice to indigenous genocide? Be my guest.
Wait a minute, I’m not Chinese.
So much for solidarity.
Check out Google Maps and go to central Utah. Right there, Delta, Utah. My people were incarcerated in a concentration camp.
Boohoo, says Sacagawea. You had no business being concentrated there in the first place.
My folks were hauled from their homes based on racism and fear with not a single incident of espionage or sabotage to justify their imprisonment.
We’ve heard that loyalty bullshit; you are the models that make everyone else’s lives miserable. Considering the path you’re headed down, this diverticulum will eventually assimilate, neo-liberalize, get inflamed. You are in for a lot of pain.
Look, you say, I eat vegetables, but I diversify my diet. Diversity against diverticulitis! You put up a weak but defiant right fist.
Sacagawea replies drolly, it might not be your diet. These days, multicultures are overrated, if not clich . Might just be your genes.
One diverticulum, two diverticula. Another pouch? Ouch. This one looks a lot bigger, but Sacagawea is unimpressed. There are some human tribes whose colons are truly impressive, pristine environments.
Pristine?
No foreign settler inhabitation. Sacagawea takes the camera in for another shot. Yours is, well, twisted and acculturated.
You scrutinize this second picture and observe what looks like a battleship sinking into your diverticulum. Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding. Isn’t that — ?
The USS Arizona.
Pearl Harbor?
Look, we didn’t invent this infamy. Depose Lilioukalani, set up a plantation system, install the military, start a war.
What, the war is my fault?
A high fiber diet might have prevented this. You know that Spam musubi you love so much?
Wait, this is my colon. My colon!
That’s what they all say. Face it, you’ve been colonized. When are you going to take responsibility for this mess? Your habits have destroyed the habitats of hundreds of native cultures.
You look back again and notice Daniel Inouye in full dress uniform with all his purple medals waving his one arm from the sinking Arizona. Sayonara, Dan. And through the black smoke and sirens, you can see a small floating vessel, a lifeboat with the demoralized faces of yes-yes/no-no Tule Lakers, MIS guys and go-for-brokers, Nisei artists with communist anti-fascist affinities, Frank Chin in an inner tube splashing behind, all drifting out that pearly harbor in search of the promised land which is certainly in no place in your big capacious colon.
Finally the colonoscope chugs into cecum Dodge, the beginning of your small intestine and, you think hopefully, the end of the line. This could be India, land of gold and spices. But there on the platform, you see it, a blooming mushroom backlit in a pink aura. Walter Cronkite’s authoritative present-tense voiceover booms through the talking cecum, and you see the Cold War frantically spin around the mushroom. Like Walter says: And you are there.
It looks like we’ve a got a live occupation! Sacagawea scrutinizes the situation. In the future, she announces, we’ll have nano-drones to take care of nuclear waste like this. But for now, we’ll be old fashioned and do some preemptive surgery. Remember? You signed that treaty, a binding contract that allows us to proceed with impunity.
You ask, why me?
Too much Kool-Aid. Refined plantation sugars. You’re an accomplice, collaborator, and co-conspirator in your own destiny.
You watch the surgical removal of your polyp morphing into serial versions of Godzilla, dumped memories, and re-visioned history screaming into the tube’s void. Never mind that Sacagawea has ripped out the last polyp of your precious dignity; maybe she’s saved your life for another half-century. Why settle for less? Good luck. She snorts through the disposable facemask. I recommend a strict diet of native grasses, acorn meal, pine nuts, foraged blackberries, basically, raw uncooked food.
The colonoscope backs out retracing its path with the same intensive scrutiny. No diverticulum, adenoma, or cancer will go undetected. The good news is there’s a four-foot limit to this tether and it’s anchored to nothing except that camera and Sacagawea’s judgment, which you’ll just have to trust. Sacagawea recommends a repeat procedure every five years. If you live another 50 years, that means Sacagawea will have ten more chances to whip you into shape before you die.
Used by permission from Sansei and Sensibility (Coffee House Press, 2020). Copyright © 2020 by Karen Tei Yamashita