I am the only member of my family who belongs to the Japanese American Heritage Foundation. I am proud that my maternal great-grandparents emigrated from Japan and made a life here out of nothing. I am offended that they were sent to an interment camp in the early forties as if they were second-class citizens. Someday I hope to visit the homeland of my ancestors. I want to honor them as tradition dictates they should be honored. My sister tells me I am full of shit.

Susan tends not take the kind of pride I have in our ancestors. In fact, when quizzed, she is unable to tell you our bloodlines. Susan, if you happen to read this, we are Japanese, German, Irish, and Swiss in that order. And for the record Susan, we are not Apache nor are we Sioux. Just because we live in Oklahoma does not make us Native Americans and I wish you would quit telling your friends we are just so you can fit in at school!

Susan and I aren't alike. If one of us committed a hideous Arts and Entertainment worthy crime (not that Susan is that competent) we would not be in the same police lineup – we look that different. In family photos I am the child that appears to have been adopted by the nice middleclass white family. I am the Asian waif whose biological parents didn't want her because she was born minus a penis. If you look close enough (which most people do not before uttering, "Were you adopted?") you can tell my mother has an epicanthal fold. Granted it's hard to spot with the dyed hair and the Estee Lauder veneer, but it's there dammit.

This past summer my parents thought it was a good idea to send me to my grandmother's in San Francisco while Susan competed on the Rodeo circuit – please don't make me go into details. I was thrilled to have some quality time with my esteemed grandmother. We have so much in common, for starters we both look Japanese.

I take it for granted that she and I share a special bond even if she says she loves both granddaughters equally. Assuming I didn't look like her direct descendent, she must be compelled to love me more since my future goals do not include Rodeo Clown College.

Subsequent to our summer together, I know my grandmother loves me best. After picking me up at the airport we ate at a Japanese Steakhouse, which was a sacrifice on her part since she is a vegan but she did it out of love for me. Here in Oklahoma we have a lot of steakhouses, but not a lot of Japanese restaurants so I had to press the issue. For the first time in my life I was not a minority. When I pointed this out to my honorable grandmother she shrugged her shoulders as if she wasn't quite clear about my everyday angst. Later we went back to her house where she showed me the guest room and how to work the remote before leaving so she could play gin rummy.

It was during this respite I decided to explore her home and breathe in the essence of my ancestors. Like a noted archeologist I scanned the place for treasures. After going through her checkbook and medicine cabinet, I found her cedar trunk. What I found, once I managed to pick the lock, sent chills up my spine. Packed in tissue paper were three exquisite silk kimonos in bright hues. Without hesitation I tried all of them on and then paraded in front of each mirror in the household in order to view these relics from every angle and lighting fixture. This is what I had traveled half way across the nation to find; these kimonos were my birthright.

By the time my worthy grandmother came home with her meager winnings I was wearing the green kimono dotted with pink flowers as if such a garment is normally worn when falling asleep open mouthed in front of the television. It took a second to familiarize herself to the fact that I had obviously used her home as my own decon mission but she adjusted with her usual humor. "That robe belonged to my mother. Take it off now or you'll be on the first plane back to Oklahoma!"

I tried to sidetrack her with an invitation to give me an impromptu family history lesson but she didn't go for it and ceased speaking to me until lunch the following day. We were eating tofu salad sandwiches with those yummy soy cheese slices that taste like dirty hair when she said out of the blue, "You know that my mother was a whore?" This wasn't quite the Japanese Norman Rockwell conversation I had envisioned having with her. I looked at my venerated grandmother, whom I assumed disappointed her traditional parents by marrying my German Irish grandfather. A man, whose claim to fame was saying, 'There she blows,' every time he passed gas. "She said she was a Geisha, but she was a whore."

"You know grandma, Geishas weren't prostitutes," I articulated with the authority of someone who had skimmed three books on the subject.

"No, they were artists. They danced, sang, painted, drank a lot of tea…and slept with men who paid them! What else would you call them?"

"Grandma!"

"Oh don't play innocent with me and then rummage through my belongings picking out what you want when I'm dead."

I let that comment hang in the air for a moment before asking, "Do you have anything else of hers?"

A few days later, when my dear grandmother deemed me sufficiently chastised, she told me that her mother always talked about returning to Kyoto (Japan's version of Vegas before electricity) where she dreamed of being an Okasan (mother figure) to Maikos (up and coming Geishas). She even thought about sending my battle-ax of a grandmother back to Kyoto when she was four so that she could start as a Shikomi (indentured servant who trains to become a Geisha) but her husband wouldn't hear of it.

Apparently, my great grandparents fought all the time because my great grandmother thought her husband was too Americanized and he thought he had made a mistake marrying her in the first place. "Bicker, bicker, bicker, that's all the two of them ever did. I wish they had divorced. Everyone would have been happier," recalled their daughter, obviously forgetting to view her childhood through rose-colored glasses.

I think my loving grandmother finally realized the damage she had done to my fragile self-esteem because she presented me with a Geisha makeover at a Japanese salon. She explained that it was a fad and such worship worthy people as the Hilton sisters had done it. Afterwards most women go to a tea party or a nightclub to show off their temporary look, but I chose to walk around the city. In my delicate slippers I toured such revered sights as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Haight and Ashberry district, and Alcatraz Island.

Of course I was inundated with tourists asking me in simple slow English where I was from. When I told them "Oklahoma" they would stare at me as if they didn't quite connect the dots and I would repeat, "Oklahoma, you know, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain." I could see it in their eyes that they felt betrayed by my nationalism.

I have read that Geishas are making a comeback in Japan. No longer sequestered, they have freedom to do whatever they want on their days off. Unlike my esteemed grandmother's equation of Geisha equals whore, these women have to train vigorously before they are allowed to represent their house. If they choose to sleep with a client than that is their business, but it isn't a requirement I'm sure. To be honest, I am considering it.

Before I left to go back to the land of forced Indian resettlements and bland food, my cherished grandmother gave me all three kimonos with a demand that I share them with my tobacco-chewing sister and anglophile mother. Fat chance.

I am home now and the kimonos of my Geisha great grandmother hang safely in my closet when I'm not wearing them. The Japanese flag hangs over my bed, which, by the way, is covered with a Hello Kitty comforter. I am teaching myself Japanese. With some limitations I do a fairly accurate tea ceremony and I have joined a video club that sends me DVDs of Japanese programs.

My mother has suggested counseling because she thinks I'm odd at best, and at worst a stone's through away from a school shooting. Yet, I have found a champion in my father (the man whom I assume is my father since I look nothing like him). He laughs off my idiosyncrasies and tells mother that it's just a phase. She doesn't believe him, which only makes him laugh harder, "Lois, have some pity. The poor child takes after my side of the family!"