All the Ways Home

by Elsie Chapman

  But what if they were wrong, I kept on thinking. What if she’d felt everything? What if dying was nothing like drowning, or fire, or suffocating, but something not even imaginable?

  My match had worked on the first strike, and I’d sailed the flaming brick through the Ameses’ front picture window. It split apart the glass and made it all come raining back down to earth. The curtains inside lit up, became a skirt of flame, and then Mr. Ames was running into the room, stamping out the fire with his feet.

  I saw his kids behind him, watching everything with wide eyes as they peeked out from behind their mom. They were really young, and I could tell how scared they were even from where I was still standing on the sidewalk. And suddenly I wanted to run. Not just because I could hear sirens approaching or because I knew I’d done something terrible and how Mr. Ames still couldn’t change what he did, but because a small part inside of me wasn’t very sorry at all. That small part of me was jealous of those kids for still having a mom and a dad. I felt it floating around inside my chest, the shape of it exactly like a small box full of sharp rocks.

  Mr. Ames had refused to press charges. He explained to the police that he knew who I was and why I did it. It didn’t make me feel better about any of it, though. His not being angry almost hurt, his easy forgiveness wanting something from me I wasn’t ready to give.

  I’d gone to bed at dawn, the light outside pink and purple. My fingers still felt slick with lighter fluid, no matter how much I washed. Behind my eyelids I kept seeing the faces of Mr. Ames’s kids. The police talked quietly to Grandpa inside the kitchen.

  My dreams had been bad that early morning—Mr. Ames hadn’t been able to stamp out the fire, so it’d kept going, racing throughout the neighborhood, until it reached my house. I woke up with my heart going fast, the smell of bitter black coffee and smoke from burned toast in the air.

  But now, here in Kabukicho, the only smoke I smell is the kind that comes from a cigarette, and the old man walking past me puffing away on it isn’t my grandpa. The look he gives me isn’t tired or exasperated, just kind of sleepy. And this dawn is one in Japan and not in Canada.

  My pulse still fast, I turn in the direction of Shoma’s apartment and start walking again, thinking about shores and landing places and how the ocean feels bigger than ever.

  The sidewalks are already busier than they were, with people starting their workdays, most of them dressed in black-and-white business clothes. As I pass Shinjuku Station, instead of just going past it as I’m supposed to, I veer off and heard toward one of the Reserved Ticket kiosks right outside one of the gates.

  Finding a resale shop had been the first thing I needed to do; finding out how much it would cost me to get to Sapporo is the second.

  My fingers are even clumsier at the kiosk than they were last night, when I’d first arrived at my brother’s place and was so scared I’d break something. I punch in all the information it asks of me—destination, point of departure, what day and time and for how many passengers. Whether I want window or aisle.

  The total flashes on the screen and I’m calculating fast, as though going slow would leave even more room for me to start feeling guilty.

  Forty-three thousand yen is how much it would cost to get from Tokyo to Sapporo.

  I’ve got Grandpa’s emergency cash card, worth two hundred dollars. That equals about twenty thousand yen. Along with what Shoma’s put on my Suica, I have thirty thousand yen. Which means I still need another thirteen thousand yen to reach my dad. One hundred and thirty dollars.

  I back away from the machine, thinking of my brother and his cool blue hair and open grin. Of liking him and wishing I didn’t. My stomach clenches, morphed into a giant fist. Leaving the station, I find a 7-Eleven and test my emergency cash card by taking out a thousand yen at the ATM. The bill the machine spits out is practically brand new. Like it’s not ready to be spent yet.

  “Welcome,” the clerk calls out as I move from the ATM and toward the store shelves.

  I’m not even sure what I’m doing here, to be honest. The card works. I know that now. Even if there’s a daily withdrawal max, I can take out some each day until I’ve drawn it all. On top of what I can get for Shoma’s guitar and for turning in my Suica card, I should have enough. I shouldn’t be spending much at all.

  I buy a keychain from a little stand of cheap, last-minute souvenirs. It’s a miniature stuffed mascot from an anime show for little kids, suitable for no one back home—not Grandpa, who I hadn’t meant to buy a souvenir for anyway, and not Jory or Gemma, who I had.

  The fist that’s my stomach doesn’t loosen the rest of the way back to Shoma’s, despite carrying a blameless keychain instead of my grandpa’s money. It’s what I get for wanting things that cancel each other out, the way noon means it’s not midnight, how noise swallows up silence. I’ve got questions I need to ask Dad, but I’m scared of the answers. I want to like being here, but I can’t stay. I want Shoma to be a jerk, except I’m pretty sure he isn’t.

  The lucky cat beckons at me as I unlock the door at the back of Irusu.

  I loop the plushy keychain around its shoulder and drop a five-yen coin at its feet. I want to make a wish, but I don’t know where to start. My head is too full of my family and Jory and school.

  In the end, I fumble out the stupidest wish before heading inside, stupid because of how much I actually want it to come true, no matter how much I might regret it:

  That just for the day, me and Shoma will feel like brothers.

  17

  Shoma’s still asleep, the apartment quiet and filled with low yellow sunlight.

  Moving as silently as possible, I brush my teeth and grab a shower and change my clothes. Back in my bedroom I shove my clothes back into my backpack—there’s not enough to bother hanging up. And when Dad comes (I don’t let myself think about the 7-Eleven I was just at) I might as well be ready to go as soon as possible.

  I call his cell, forgetting at first just how early it is. But it doesn’t matter anyway since the call goes nowhere. There’s just silence on the other end, not even voice mail. I remember what Shoma had said about there not being good reception up there in the mountains, and I disconnect.

  Then I’m bored.

  And because I don’t feel like writing again in my journal yet, I decide to try to find something my brother’s written.

  I pull down some of the music magazines I’d noticed earlier and begin to flip through them, looking for Shoma’s name in the bylines. When I see it over and over again as the pages blur by, I feel again that same mix of pride and sadness I felt reading that one interview of our dad’s.

  It’s cool to know Shoma’s interviewed real bands, that he’s big and talented enough as a writer to be trusted to do a good job. Just as it’s strange and hard to know how here on the other side of the world, my brother was happy and doing his thing, while me and Mom hadn’t had a clue. Shoma’s made himself a part of so many other people’s lives, bands and their fans and everyone in between, while he made himself absent from ours.

  The names of just some of the bands he’s interviewed: sakanaction. [Alexandros]. RADWIMPS. tricot.

  None of the names are familiar. They’re all Japanese bands, and my brother’s, while the only bands I know come from anywhere but here.

  I pick up an issue of Japan on Record that has a special feature on up-and-coming bands from Osaka. It’s ten whole pages of my brother’s writing (Text by Shoma Hirano), complete with glossy photos of the bands to make everything look even more slick (Photos by On the Fly).

  One of the bands is called Pine the Apple.

  My brother got to do the interview with the guitarist.

  This is the part I read more than once, half guessing at the hardest of the kanji:

  SHOMA: Osaka is like Tokyo’s younger, rougher brother when it comes to music. Where do you think Pine the Apple’s sound fits in?

  JUN: We don’t even want to fit in. We want to stand out, wherever we are.
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  SHOMA: Do you choose to write your songs in the Tsugaru dialect to stand out? Or because it’s where you’re from and your songs can sound like home?

  JUN: Both, actually! Everyone carries their roots with them, what makes someone who they are. As a band, our identity is in our songs.

  SHOMA: Are you hoping fans will hear that in your music? What home means for you guys?

  JUN: We write so they can find their own meaning of home in there. Their own identity.

  I read other interviews and articles, steadily working my way through a pile of magazines. I like Shoma’s writing, because somehow he makes even a stranger interesting. Kotodama.

  But it also seems close to what my dad must feel for photography. Which does almost make me want to stop reading.

  I wonder if Shoma walked into the airport yesterday as a brother or as a reporter, seeing as we didn’t know each other. Maybe I was like one of his last-minute assignments, the kind where he has to go in cold. Maybe he was nervous to meet me, his little brother, when he’s probably nothing but excited to meet huge rock bands and famous musicians.

  I wonder if talking to me so far has been easier or harder than any of them.

  I pull out another stack of magazines when some binders—they had been leaning against them from behind—topple over onto the shelf.

  It takes me a few seconds to realize the binders are actually photo albums, the pages made up of thin plastic pockets. The edges of the pockets are gold with age, from years of being untouched by anything but sunlight and dust.

  The photos inside are of us. Our family. When all four of us were still together, living in our old apartment in Ikebukuro, back when I was a baby.

  Mom and Dad could be college students, they look so young. They smile a lot, since they have no clue what is coming. And Shoma is a grinning teen. No blue hair or tattoos or earrings, and his face is rounder—closer to mine now than his—but it’s him. He wears a school uniform in a lot of the photos, an uptight blue blazer and ironed trousers, and I find myself snickering at how proper he looks.

  And then there’s me, going from chubby infant to three-year-old kid. Most of the time I’m in photos with my mom, or with Shoma, or by myself. The ones with my father become fewer and fewer as I go from the oldest album to the newest. Photos of my dad, by the final pages, are few and far between—in his place is his growing restlessness, blooming like one of the weeds in the garden my mother was always fighting.

  Part of me thinks I’m stupid to believe any of this can actually work out for the best. That somehow home will find a way to make sense again. Repeating Grade 7 would be tough, but I’d get through it eventually. I could just keep on living with my questions, always wondering why we hadn’t been enough. How I was being greedy, maybe.

  Mom always insisted we try not to hold Dad’s nature against him. You can’t anchor down the wind, Kaede. Not everything is meant to grow roots, even those with someplace they promised to be. And sometimes that wind feels just as bad about it, not being able to help but go.

  I put the photo albums and music magazines back on the shelf. And I’m hungry again, even though it’s only just past seven. It’s been a few hours since my middle-of-the-night meal at the konbini.

  I head to the kitchen and discover my brother doesn’t cook.

  There are no pots or pans, only a couple of chipped ceramic plates and some coffee mugs. The cutlery drawer is full of disposable chopsticks, all with sleeves or plastic wrap labeled with dozens of different restaurants. The fridge holds nothing but a half-empty package of kimchi, a still-sealed container of hamburg steak, and a single bottle of Kewpie mayo.

  I wander over to the shelf full of CDs in the front room. It’s tall enough that Shoma has used earthquake braces to hold it to the ceiling. The names of these bands are strange to me, too. The HIATUS. STRAIGHTENER. Nothing’s Carved In Stone.

  My fingers hesitate over this last band, their CDs in a long, neat row.

  I know the saying behind their name, hear it all the time back home.

  Why would a Japanese band choose it to represent what they stand for? Did they choose it because they know some sayings really are universal? Because they want to make it big the same way, be everywhere with their music? Or is it just because they actually believe what it means?

  I want to believe in that saying, but I also don’t. It’s a truth that is painful to accept.

  Because if all things can be erased, it means both the good and the bad. If bad things can be left behind like they never happened and don’t have to be forever, then the same goes for good things, too.

  Sure, Jory might get better one day, my mistake fixed.

  Mr. Ames will fade away for me, another mistake gone.

  But home, family, friends—you can love them with everything you have, all those parts of your life that are supposed to be good, and it still doesn’t mean you can make them stay.

  All this time, on the other side of the world—maybe it’s not too weird to imagine Shoma wondering these same things.

  “Hey, you’re up.” My brother’s stumbling from his bedroom, rubbing his eyes, dressed in yesterday’s clothes. His grin is bleary and still more than half-asleep. I’d been right about him not being a morning person. “I’m starving. Let’s go get breakfast.”

  18

  It’s as hot today as it was yesterday, and sweat drips down my neck as I stand there, staring at the temple’s wall of fate. All those different drawers, with no way to tell what each held.

  For a hundred yen, I can take my chances. Just drop in a single coin in exchange for a fortune that can either be awesome, terrible, or anything in between.

  Tell me what I deserve, Goddess Kannon.

  Shoma had told me the legend. How Sensoji Temple is Tokyo’s oldest. How hundreds and hundreds of years ago, two brothers had fished a small golden statue from the Sumida River. Everyone believed it to be a symbol of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy.

  She’s still inside this temple somewhere, hidden from eyes to keep her safe. But her worshippers keep visiting, constant unending waves of them. To pray for mercy.

  Or for answers.

  Over soufflé pancakes at Irusu that morning, I’d confessed to Shoma that my Summer Celebration Project was leaving me confused.

  Why couldn’t I have picked any theme but home?

  Which was when he suggested we go to the temple.

  Because Shoma had his own ideas of what the word meant.

  “If you ask me,” he’d said as we made our way toward the temple from the train station, “home isn’t really an apartment, or house, or where your family lives. It can be, but I think it’s more a collection of things like that. Like a well you fill up over time. Bits and pieces collected from all around you, the places you like best. Things you know down to their bones, people you can always find because you know they’ll be there—those count, too. And all that stuff, taken together and piled up inside that well, is basically home.”

  I’d pictured a giant dark well, a box of tough questions floating around in it. I’d tried to guess where our dad was at that very moment. Likely on a cold, isolated mountain somewhere in Hokkaido, not a single soul around. Just the way he liked it.

  I’d squinted up at the sun, blinking through the sweat that was already in my eyes. Overhead was the hugest red lantern I’d ever seen, which marked the entrance to Sensoji. According to my visitors’ brochure—Shoma had grabbed one for me as we passed the info booth (For your project, he’d said)—the lantern is twelve meters tall and nearly as wide. I’d never seen anything like it, and, considering there were dozens of people lining up to take pictures with it, I wasn’t the only one.

  “So Shinjuku is home for you?” I’d asked Shoma.

  “Sure.” He grins. “My favorite restaurants are here. I like how I get morning sun in my room. I know all the best routes to and from the station.”

  But Dad lives in Tokyo, too. In Nakano, just a few stations away. Doesn’t he count as o
ne more reason, being so close to you?

  “And you, Kaede, are like that well. Needing parts to dump inside, to start filling it up. It’s been so long since you lived here that it’s almost like you never—” Shoma stopped, catching himself. Then he simply finished with “So now we’re here.”

  I’d let it slide. I’d only said the obvious. “This is a temple.”

  “Temples can be a part of someone’s home.”

  I frowned. “The way a favorite restaurant can be?”

  He’d kind of laughed at that, and nodded. “Kind of, sure. This is a favorite temple for lots of people.”

  “But you meant something different, didn’t you?”

  “Nah, not really. But I think if you come here, you never really forget it. Wherever you go afterward, however many sites later, I bet you’ll still be carrying a part of this place with you. And that’s memory, and memory—well, there should always be room for memories in that well, too, don’t you think?”

  I’d nodded, still half caught on what he’d almost said, before he realized it might sound cruel when he doesn’t mean it to be. How it’s been so long since I’ve lived here, I might as well not have. I might as well not even be Japanese, I’m so new to everything. How I’m really, deep down, a foreigner.

  The word is like a sore I keep poking at with my tongue, so it keeps hurting.

  My blood’s as Japanese as his, but to Shoma, it’s not enough.

  I’ve heard all the words for Asians born overseas and then raised there—banana, Twinkie, golden Oreo, nugget potato. Me and Gemma know all of them.

  But even though I grew up in Canada, I was born here. And I look the part. So unless you hear me saying something odd or notice me doing something that doesn’t fit, you’d never know I don’t belong. You’d never know that sometimes I feel the same way in Canada, too. How just before coming here, that feeling of sticking out was for more reasons than ever.

  I watch people line up for their fortunes at the wall of fate, to test their luck. They all seem so relaxed. As though nothing really serious hangs in the balance.