Most esteemed Wendy–
Please excuse this sorrowful woman for contacting you in this way. It is not her intention to embroil you in her romantic misfortunes. This foolish female only wishes to enlighten you as to nature of one whom you have allowed into your cadre. He was once as dear to this misguided woman as her own child, but now I see him as nothing more than a serpent in a feline’s pelt.
I am what you Occidentals refer to as a “single mother,” and those responsibilities have prevented me from taking part in your Fictional Characters For Real Life Social Change group. But I would hear all about the wonderful work that you are doing from my Bill. He would tell me all about the wonderful work that your group had planned, his head resting in my lap, wrapped in the folds of my kimono, as I stroked his tired brow to ease the cares he had seen in his life. We met two years ago, when we were both still two wounded butterflies, battered by the storms of heartbreak. The shadows that lost loves had left on our broken hearts drew us together. Many were the nights that we would spend in my garden, when I would strum my shamisen and try to make Bill forget about his departed Jeane. And Bill, in turn, promised me that I worthy of a love greater than that of the faithless and departed Pinkerton. In time, I felt like I could have a future with this wonderful creature.
I had not heard from my Bill for several months, so I assumed he was busy with his good works. Needless to say to say I was shocked to read in the minutes for your last FCFRLSC meeting that “Bill the Cat and Tiger Lily…are on their honeymoon.” How could this blind and trusting fool been deluded by yet another American with colonial goals, out to do nothing more than “go native” with a luckless daughter of Nihon? I only hope that your friend Tiger Lily fares better than I did with this orange scoundrel.
This poor fool asks for no pity or retribution from you. Merely that you pass an invitation to your associates, the Amazon princess Wonder Woman, and the wise woman one known as Jemima. I hope to one day welcome them into my garden as my guests, so that they can share tea with me, and enlighten me on that which you call “female empowerment.”
Respectfully-
Cio-Cio san, known as Madama Butterfly
Dear Cio-Cio san:
Thanks for getting in touch. It’s really important that we all trade information of this kind, don’t you think? Love rats will be love rats; there’s not much to be done about that, as you so wisely point out yourself. Bummer about Bill. But, as you say, it’s good for me and the FCFRLSC to have this extra bit of info about him. Good for Tiger Lily, too. Though from what she emails me, about his behavior with a certain Persian cat met on their honeymoon, I think she’s already got an idea.
I notice you don’t ask any advice, and I hope you won’t be offended if I offer some, purely in the spirit of sisterhood and in recognition of your strong personality, which it would be a pity not to use to its fullest extent, both for your own sake and the world’s. We really can’t help who we fall in love with (speaking as a woman who was daft enough to clean house for a man who not only would never grow up, but whose taste in clothes was depressingly elfin). We can’t help getting hurt. We can’t help the world being full of people (and cats, you know what I mean anyway) who think about themselves more than about any one around them.
What we can help is what we do with all of this stuff. As you say, it’s more important that you focus on being a single parent. I notice there’s no nonsense about killing yourself, the way they say you did—I’m glad about that. In this kind of instance, suicide is just the weakling’s way of getting back at the world. You have better things to think about.
Come join our group. We’ll understand if you give the most of yourself to your own child rather than us—in fact, we’d be upset if you did anything less. But come join anyway. Put what understandable anger and hurt you feel about Bill’s betrayal to some good use. It’s all energy. And we can use it. The world can use it. And, speaking of your child, it’s always better for the next generation to see their parents being constructive and active, rather than victimized and passive.
Also, consider this: you got rid of the bum. Now he’s poor Tiger Lily’s problem. Well, we’ll see what happens next.
Sincerely yours,
Ask Wendy