1. (28-30) Kimi Learns a Useful Method and Gets a Friend.

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28: Friend

One Sunday, Olga takes Kimi to hear Baroness Ishimoto speak about birth control. They travel in taxi to back street. A slim girl in red dress & brown beret stands collecting tickets.

  “Hello, Harumi. This is Kimi. She’s OK.”

  Harumi has a man’s look. “Welcome sister.” She shakes hands firmly and seats them. Olga whispers to Kimi that Harumi is communist and a rich businessman’s daughter.

  The room fills with women. All quiets as a middle age lady in simple black dress and short hair steps to front.

Her lecture: History is made at night with woman in role of man’s pleasure object and baby maker. Woman shall be sex slave until she controls baby making. Condom is sanctioned because men control use. We need our own method to prevent pregnancy. She glances left and Harumi steps onstage, placing a stand that holds a 2-meter side-length cardboard square with pictures.

It shows three stages of inserting a contraceptive cup more commonly called the diaphragm. Insertion of the cup can be done privately and it may be kept in, day & night, without a man’s knowledge. She says it works as barrier to the semen that contains millions of baby-making sperms and she calls it Woman’s Friend. “With Friend inside we can choose time, place and man for baby making.”

She pauses for questions: A young kimono woman with red-face infant strapped to back and holding another suckling at breast asks “Where can I get Friend?  My man plans to saddle me with ten red faces like his mother had.” Another woman, from dress and make up, a sex worker says she thinks Friend will help her sisters in work who are dying from the illegal unclean abortions because thoughtless men do not use condoms. A Korean woman hopes Ishimoto will translate it into Korean.

  Ishimoto answers patiently and says: “Anyone interested in getting Friend, please put name and place of contact on the sheet that will be passed around.

  Olga and Kimi sign up.

29: Noodle Shop After-talk

Olga and Kimi sit across from Harumi in a downstairs noodle shop. As Harumi orders, Kimi scans her. In early 20's, brown beret tipped left, close cut black hair, no cosmetics or artificial fragrance and her slim figure – if slimmer, skin and bones – encased in cloth coat revealing flat contour. She does not smile and has a way of looking directly into one's eyes as she speaks. Kimi feels positive toward this upper class girl who is working for a new, better society.

  “Well, sister,” says Harumi, turning her intense eyes on Olga. “What do you think?”

  “I’m all for Friend, darling, but your propaganda does not move me.”

  “And you?” To Kimi.

  “I donno politics, I got no education; but I want Friend.  I’m for we women and I wish Baroness Ishimoto well.”

  “Good for you, sister.” She places left hand on Kimi’s right shoulder. “But do not call her ‘Baroness’. She gave up her title. She is against titles."

  Waitress arrives with 3 bowls of student noodles, so named because one serving is a day’s meal for university student. Atop the noodles are white shreds of shrimp, thin strips of black seaweed and pale green pieces of Chinese cabbage. An egg in tan shell fits a small dish beside the noodles. Harumi taps the egg shell on top edge of bowl and drops the raw egg on the noodles. Olga and Kimi do same. Then they pour a brown fish-based peppered soup over the noodles and eat, making loud slurps as they suck the noodles up from bowl, held close to face and with chopstick assist.

  “When and where do we get Friend?” asks Olga. “I just met an absolutely delicious Russian guy. He’s strong and silent, and those types, once they decide to have you, just throw you on the ground and do it natural, which I won’t mind at all only I’m not interested in having a squalling baby to show for it forty weeks later.”

  Harumi replies, “Next clinic session is soon, sisters. Can’t say more but your names are on the list and you will be told where and when. Sorry for the secrecy but Ishimoto has twice been arrested for her clinics."

30: Underground Meeting

Outside Shimbashi Station a sex worker greets them. “You sisters friendly wit’ Harumi?”

  “Yes,” says Olga.

  “Foller me.” She leads them to an old 4-door Chevy car. Behind the steering wheel they see Harumi in gray jumper with hair tucked under visor cap, looking like a boy taxi driver. They get in and share seat beside her. In back, Kimi sees 2 women crouched on the floor and 4 others crowded together on seat.

  Harumi drives south; the car crosses a bridge, passes an industrial section, and pulls up at old 3-story loft building in dingy working class area.

  Inside, downstairs, 6 women are waiting and Kimi recognizes the kimono woman with baby, the Korean woman, and the streetwalker sex worker, all from the meeting. Harumi fits her key in the door and they enter a large loft with boarded windows and well lit. It has bare wood plank floor and along wall to right a single long table and, next to it, a table with clean white cloth on which are 12 Friend contraceptive cups neatly arranged in rows of four. Ishimoto in brown cotton smock and white headband welcomes them. Everyone has come as instructed: in skirt with no underpants.

(A speculum or vaginal clamp. For woman self examination it is turned upside down)

Harumi gets up on the table, lies down on her back, raises her skirt,

and expertly inserts a handle-up spreader clamp into her sexual opening between widely spread thighs; then, manipulating the clamp with right hand, she shines a flashlight into the space made by the clamp, showing to the intensely interested gathered-around women what a female sexual-tunnel and birthing-exit looks like.

  The women cry out in wonder as the lower tip of Harumi’s uterus pops into the vaginal view created by the open clamp.

“Ooh! It really do look like a li’lle peach,” says the Kimono woman. “My momma was right!”

  “It looks more like a apricot with a dimple where the stem should be,” says the streetwalker straining forward to see.

  Ishimoto instructs. “It is the neck of the uterus, called cervix, and that dimple is the opening into which sperms go and out of which, 40 weeks later, a baby comes. The Friend will prevent that by blocking. All right Harumi, now show how to position the Friend.”

  Harumi removes the clamp and Ishimoto hands her a Friend. The women watch open-mouthed as the squatting Harumi expertly presses the Friend’s circular flexible rim together to form a slim forward curving arc and deftly slips the circle-rimmed, contraceptive rubber cup inside her opening.

  She checks the Friend’s correct position, tucking it back under her pubic bone using her right index finger.

  “Do you feel it in you?” asks the Korean woman.

  “Not at all.”

  “Can a man feel it when he in you?” asks the kimono woman.

  “Not unless you are foolish enough to tell him,” says Ishimoto, causing giggles from the women.

  “How long can you leave it in?” asks the streetwalker.

  “I leave it ten days without problem,” boasts Harumi. “Then I pull it out, wash it and put it back inside me.”

  “But doesn’t it smell bad after so many days?” asks Olga.

  Ishimoto answers. “The Friend has been soaked in honey for one week before starting use. Honey is a natural preservative; you will notice it will not get moldy or smell bad. That gives the nickname Honeycup.”

  “Wow!” Olga exclaims. “All we need do is put it in 3 times a month. It’s more than a woman’s Friend it’s a woman’s dream. But can we do anything we wish, like take a bath or play volleyball with Friend in? I read somewhere you must use gooey disgusting jelly with these cups.”

  “You may do whatever you please,” says Ishimoto. “As for jelly, Friend does fine without it. Jelly can get in the way just because most women consider it, as you said, gooey and disgusting. When women are taught to put in jelly all the time, many throw it away and end up suffering from having unwanted children.”

  “The jelly tastes terrible too,” adds Harumi, causing giggling laughter.

  “What about the blood of my monthly?” Kimi asks.

  “It still comes out, but you don’t see it right away. Sometimes I don’t even know I’ve had my friend till I pull out Friend and see blood in the cup.” She says using double-word play for her menstrual period.

Next hour they practice putting in and taking out Friend, with Ishimoto and Harumi supervising. When everyone can place one correctly, Ishimoto says “Congratulations, sisters, you have done well. I am satisfied no one will get pregnant.”

  In celebration of their newly acquired skill, ramen noodles are ordered and when the fragrant steaming bowls are delivered everyone sits and slurps, which is the way ramen  is normally eaten.

  Kimi and Olga thank Ishimoto and get Harumi’s telephone number.

  “I feel prepared for the advent of a Handsome Stranger,” quips Olga.

   Kimi feels a quiet happiness: No more worries about getting pregnant because of torn condoms or men who refuse to use. But more than that she feels satisfaction in sisterhood; feels too her woman-ness and, encompassing it, her human-ness.
  End of Chapter. To read next, click 1. (31-33) An Intervention, A Meeting And a Tour