Memorial(28)

Nothing.

Then she whispers something in Japanese, under her breath. And she’s crying again. Slapping at both of her cheeks.

I reach out to touch Mitsuko’s shoulder, and she immediately jerks away. But then she grabs my hand, squeezing it.

It’s fine, she says. It doesn’t matter.

We should both get some sleep, she says.

And since it isn’t a suggestion as much as a demand, I nod along. I tell her I’ll be around if she needs me.

Mitsuko purses her lips, standing up to lay on the sofa, but I’m not entirely sure that she hears me.



* * *





When I check my phone, there’s a text from Omar, some emojis.

There’s a text from Lydia just saying hi, everything’s okay.

And then there are texts from Mike.

But there’s also a voice mail, which is something Mike never leaves, and I’m sitting on the bed when I open it.

His voice is calm. I can actually picture him speaking.

He says, We’re cremating him tomorrow.

He says, My father, I mean. He’s dead.

And after that, says Mike, I’m headed back to Houston.

Mike says he’d appreciate it if I could pick him up from the airport. That would really mean a lot.





Mike





My fam’s last apartment was the largest. Once we’d made it to the States we bounced from Alief to the South Side to the West Loop, settling wherever Eiju could keep a job, and this new spot off Bellaire was way way way way way over budget. We weren’t skipping meals or anything but my folks were always strapped. Neither of their families in Japan were helping us. As far as they were concerned, we’d left. We had to figure shit out on our own.



* * *





The new complex had us parking under these busted-ass streetlights. You’d push a buzzer to open the gate but the gate just wouldn’t budge so the Filipinos smoking by the basketball court would drag it open for whatever quarters you kept in your car. Ma told Eiju that something had to change. Had to be him, or our surroundings. I’m realizing all of this later. You don’t see any of that shit when you’re a kid; you don’t have the context to flesh it all out.



* * *





I hadn’t started expanding yet, eating the entire world, but once my clothes stopped fitting Ma just stuffed me into Eiju’s. They were the fits he’d brought from Osaka. All baseball jerseys and tank tops and mesh shorts, and Eiju never thought he’d need them again but Ma wouldn’t let him trash anything and here they were, eleven years later, halfway across the world, and every now and then I’d catch a blip of myself in the mirror, thinking that this is what my father must’ve looked like as a kid.



* * *





That summer in Bellaire, Ma and I lazed around the new spot. Eiju didn’t want her out in the world. That shit had less to do with tradition than with his very particular vanity—but Ma entertained it anyway. At least at first. Less out of allegiance to her man, I think, than something else entirely.

The place was big but our pipes stank. Our carpet stank. The tap water stank. Eventually cash got even tighter than it already was. Eiju’s shouting turned physical, shoving and pushing and squeezing, and Ma started planning her escape, but we spent that season revolving around our living room.

I picked up cardboard boxes left over from the last move and set them back down. Ma watched soaps on the television—Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless; Ma swore that shit was bad for me but I’d still post up on the sofa beside her. She’d mouth phrases in Japanese—the Tokyo Japanese she’d grown up with—and ask me to spit them back at her. When Eiju overheard, he’d ask Ma, in Kansai dialect, why I wasn’t speaking fucking English.



* * *





Some days, Ma and I kicked our bare feet under the kitchen table. That was our thing. I was still twelve. I’d touch my heel with her heel and her toes with my toes. We’d keep them there until one of us pulled away but the one who gave up was always me. Ma could stay stone-faced through anything. Which was a sign, I think. Even then.



* * *





But again: hindsight, 20/20.



* * *





Eiju lost his gig that fall. He’d been prepping at this Chinese restaurant on Dashwood. Some strip mall enclave. He blamed his fate on the Mexicans, who cooked longer hours for less pay, and Eiju joined the tiny constellation Ma and I had constructed—but our orbit couldn’t support him. He threw everything off.

Whenever we sat at the table, he’d ask why we were wasting time.

Whenever we flipped on the television, he’d flip it right back off.

Then he’d drink up what little we saved. Had Ma counting coins at the end of the month. One night, I knelt beside her, sorting dimes into piles, sprawled on the carpet, and when I found a quarter lodged in the sofa, my mother actually collapsed in tears. She straight-up wouldn’t stop shaking. Eiju had no idea. He was still snoring from yesterday’s binge.



* * *





Eventually Ma finessed a situation selling discounted jewelry by the Galleria. You rarely found anyone speaking fluent Japanese in Houston. The manager was a Hawaiian transplant, an older Black dude, and he hired Ma on the spot, and eventually Eiju found another job bartending for white people around West U and their incomes were enough to keep us mostly afloat. But we didn’t know all that would happen.