I wish it were the same way for me.
Shoma’s over by the pagoda, cool in his sunglasses, quietly taking a work call on his cell.
I feel bad that he’s here, having to watch me. But my calls to our dad are still ending up in that void of no response, which is centralized right over where he is, a cloud of non-Dad. Which means my family tree questions are in that same void, too, still needing answers.
(I’d asked Shoma some over breakfast, but he hadn’t known much, either. “Sorry, Kaede. I guess I have a really bad memory, or he just never told me.”)
A trio of miko crosses the garden behind him. Their skirts are fat billows of crimson, their white kimono tops as bright as fresh snow. Others work at the souvenir stand; one sweeps at pavement.
I’m not supposed to believe in things that aren’t based on cold hard fact. The world’s all about computers and technology now. Gods and goddesses and fortunes don’t have logic at their core, but instead tradition and spirits and superstition.
Once when we were little, me and Jory had snuck into the neighborhood church to steal a bunch of cookies. It was a First Baptist one, the name always odd from my lips as I’d said it, unsure of its meaning. It’d been orientation for the brand-new Sunday school kids, which neither of us were in the least.
But that was the closest I’ve ever come to going to church, and cookies weren’t enough to make me a believer. If you’re not praying for the future, you’re praying for the past. And the past can never be changed. Time never runs backward. Both are fact.
I knew that, even back then. I know it now.
Still, I find myself suddenly praying.
Because it’s also a fact that people are more than fifty percent water. And water on earth never entirely disappears—it just hangs out in the air before coming back again as rain and rivers and lakes. If we can zap dead hearts back to life with electricity, or thaw flash-frozen people and have them be okay, why can’t people just re-form when parts of them are still around, waiting to be picked up? Why couldn’t my mom be the one to be collected and given back to me?
I know how childish my thoughts are. Babyish. Embarrassing. Which doesn’t change where I am, how I’m speaking to an unseen goddess, searching for answers.
I go up to the payment slot and slip in my hundred-yen coin. I pick up the metal tin sitting on the counter, turn it upside down, and shake it until a wooden stick emerges from the hole on the top.
The number 112 is written along it.
My hands are sweaty as I carry it over to the wall of numbered boxes and find the matching one. I pull on the handle of box 112 and slide it open. Inside is a neat pile of small papers—omikuji—and I take the top one.
My fortune is written there in kanji, columns of black slashes and curves. For a second I don’t know where to look first, all of a sudden no longer able to read Japanese.
Then, at the top, swimming into sharp focus:
Sue-kyou.
Bad luck to come.
A little kid runs by, laughing, an omikuji clutched in his hand. In my head the laughter turns into the sound of Jory’s skull crashing against glass. The thud of the collision rolls up my arm again. I see spots of blood on the ice. My stomach swoops and dives.
I roll up the omikuji into a clumsy, messy strip and head over to one of the nearby trees. I find room on one of its branches and tie the fortune to it. All the trees have lots of other fortunes already tied to them, maybe even hundreds, all wanting to be forgotten. Take away this bad luck, Kannon. Show me your mercy.
Panic is a sharp lump in my throat. Maybe the goddess will skip right over me, I think frantically. Maybe she’ll give me another chance before punishing me again. Mom’s gone, and Jory’s eye is broken, and I’ll probably fail school—what else can possibly happen?
Then Shoma’s back, the blue streaks in his hair nearly turquoise in the sun. His ripped jeans are gray today. His shirt is faded just so. Against the backdrop of the old-fashioned temple, his coolness doesn’t fit. Anything he could be worried about has no meaning here.
He flicks at one of the branches covered with twists of discarded fortunes. Bad luck wobbles dangerously, threatening to become untied and land at my feet.
“So you got a bad one, huh?” My brother makes a sound of sympathy and then glances around, yawning again. I can tell he’s ready to leave.
“Will tying it away really work?” I whisper. I wonder what happens to cursed omikuji that do fall to the ground. If a breeze comes by and blows them so far they can never be stopped. Does it mean bad luck without end, growing fatter over time like tumbleweeds that just keep going? To make someone forever sorry and still have it never be enough?
Suddenly Shoma shoves a five-yen coin into my hand. I stare hard at it, at the little hole that’s like a doorway in its center, my excuse to hide my face from his. My eyes are hot, and the edges of the world are all watery.
“Hey, let’s go inside and do the whole tourist thing and pray. Might as well, seeing as we’re already here, right?” Then he turns and heads toward the main hall without waiting for me. Like he can tell how close I am to crying and how I don’t want him seeing me.
I let a few seconds pass before I follow. I’m careful to not stand too close to him as I flip my coin onto the platform and begin praying to a goddess who’s just cursed me. So he can’t ask what I’m wishing for.
I would have to lie.
Not about all parts of it. I wish for Jory to get better, to pass Grade 7, for my dad to hurry back to Tokyo so I can finally ask what had been missing from me that he’d left.
But I can’t tell Shoma I’m wishing for him to stop being nice.
Because no matter how much I might have cried leaving my brother the first time, at least I don’t remember it.
But this time, I will. I’ll remember everything about it. Which means if Shoma ends up being just like Dad after all, him being a jerk and someone I’d be better off not liking would be for the best.
It would save everyone a lot of trouble in the long run.
19
Dear Nothing’s Carved In Stone,
Why did you choose your band name?
That’s the first thing I’d ask you guys, if I ever got the chance. Or get my brother to ask you, if he ever gets to interview you for one of his magazines. Because hearing someone else say it, maybe it’ll convince me I still need to believe in that saying, if only so there’s always hope.
How even if good things have to fade, then mistakes have to fade along with them, too.
How we might pay a price but then get something back.
How it’s life.
I keep trying to imagine everything working out, all the bad stuff going away:
I stop missing my mom so much.
Jory sees again.
I learn how to forgive my dad for not being around.
I get to start junior high with my friends.
But, yeah, the truth is, even if all that happens, it still doesn’t mean Shoma isn’t going to forget about me as soon as my plane takes off. Other drivers will keep getting distracted from the road and more red lights will be run, so other people will still get killed. Dad takes being forgiven as encouragement to keep doing what he does, and we never see him again. Jory no longer wants to be friends. All the kids will keep on whispering about me.
So you guys see why I’m torn about that saying, right? How your name can mean great things but also sad things, and how not being sure is really hard?
His name is Shoma Hirano, by the way. My brother, I mean. He writes regularly for magazines here, magazines you guys have been in. The big-deal ones like Japan on Record, and Discography, and Ririkku.
If you don’t know him yet, chances are good that you will one day. Not just because you’re both in the music business, but also because he’s awesome at what he does. He isn’t going to be doing anything else, anywhere else, anytime soon. It’s like his heart is so full of Japan, that his love for writing and for the music h
ere is so great it’s all part of his DNA, part of that well he calls home. And now he can’t ever leave Japan without being badly damaged in some way, without becoming someone else. He doesn’t doubt where he belongs. He knows it like he knows his own name.
Home.
I’m still figuring out what that means to me, now that Vancouver doesn’t fit and neither does Japan.
It used to be so easy. Home was Mom and our house. It was Gemma and Jory and the local Mac’s with their dozen slushie flavors. It was the wet West Coast and Hawaiian pizza and bike rides on rainy roads.
So what does it mean when I hear a train jingle on the Yamanote Line and recognize it instantly? Or when the smell of incense washes over me, and I know I’ve been to that temple before? Or when Shoma says something really casual and offhand about being my brother, as though our family isn’t as messed up as I know it to be?
What does it mean when the place you were born in feels both strange and not strange?
When it’s almost eight thousand kilometers across the ocean yet still swims around in your heart, somehow close?
Mr. Zaher and Ms. Nanda and even Shoma think that writing in this journal will help me find answers, the right definition. How it’s through words that I’ll figure out which places and people and even things and feelings will make up home for me.
Right now, I’m backstage at a live house in Tokyo, waiting for Shoma to finish working. He’s interviewing a band and then watching them play so he can write about the show. I can feel the music through my feet, in the walls of the venue.
As I’m waiting, I’m listening to yours.
This morning, after Shoma noticed me looking at your CDs, he imported a bunch of them onto my phone so I could listen.
At first, I hadn’t wanted to listen to what he listens to. Because it seemed like him wanting me to listen was his way of trying, that he hoped I would try back. And him trying can only mean bad things for me, once I leave.
But of family, and for years, only Mom has ever given me presents.
So now I do kind of want to try.
I don’t know how much. It’s like a dare, and I’m still scared. But I’m here listening anyway. And maybe being stupid again, since I’m thinking of brothers, and family, and about how things can change.
(This would make Mr. Zaher happy, I know. Because it means I can be something other than sad. And it would make Mom happy, too, that I’m no longer running so fast from Shoma.)
I’m making my way through your albums, all the way from Parallel Lives to Strangers in Heaven (Shoma says your next one’s called Maze, but it won’t be out until next month), and trying to decide why you and Shoma remind me of each other.
It’s your words, I think. The way all of you guys write and why you do—Shoma with his interviews, you and your songs.
My brother brings me into his space so I’m right there with him, so I want to stay and listen to people I don’t know. You guys write lyrics, and I can feel them get stuck in my chest, like they’re talking to me, right there by my heart. Both of you, with music and writing in your DNA—if you tried to shake it out, you’d feel wrong inside, as though something was set adrift when it was always supposed to stay.
Jory’s like that with hockey. He’s got it inside him, just that same way.
And what I did to him—I was the one who shook it loose.
I’d fix it, if I could. With wishes, through handfuls of five-yen coins left at a temple, dropped at the feet of a lucky cat.
But until that happens, it’s one more reason why I’m scared to go back.
Why I don’t deserve to ever know what home means.
20
I get to explore Tokyo on my own the next day.
Shoma has to be in Yokohama. He’s doing a special feature for a local magazine, interviewing musicians from the area as they drop by Analog’s office. He’s going to be busy until nearly dinner.
I’m tempted to go along with him. Japan’s largest Chinatown is in Yokohama, and I want to see how it compares to the one in Vancouver. I wonder if seeing it would make me homesick. If I’d walk around just comparing everything, from the food to the souvenirs to how loud the vendors can yell about bargains. I want to ask Shoma to come with me, so I can point out those differences. It might help him picture what Vancouver’s like, where I’ve spent the last nine years, the parts of me still a stranger to him.
But Shoma can’t skip out early from work. And though I’ve decided to try the same as he’s trying, maybe it’s good we can’t do this. After all, seeing Chinatown together sure isn’t going to help me face going back, since keeping us more strangers than brothers is what I need most.
And I don’t know if I want to be homesick.
And maybe comparing stuff right now like I’m deciding if one place is better than the other isn’t such a great idea.
Also. There’s someplace else in Tokyo I need to see even more than Chinatown in Yokohama.
“It’s just Akihabara,” I lie to Shoma as I slip on my sneakers and adjust my backpack, concentrating extra hard on getting the straps just right so my expression gives away nothing.
“What are you looking for in Akiba again?” Shoma’s on his third iced coffee, and it’s nearly ten in the morning, but he still looks sleepy. His blue hair is wild and pointing in all directions, telling everyone it’s too early to be up.
“Souvenirs for friends.” It’s partially true. If I were actually going to Akihabara, I could, most likely, find something for them.
“You sure you don’t want to come to Yokohama with me? I can’t check out Chinatown, but it doesn’t mean you can’t go on your own.”
My brother’s worry makes me feel worse. I open the front door. “Chinatown can wait. And I only have to take the Sobu Line from here to get to Akiba—I won’t even have to transfer.”
“Hold up.” He disappears into his bedroom and returns with his wallet. He pulls out a credit card. “Just in case. I know you have a cash card from your grandpa, but it’s an international one and sometimes they don’t work, depending on the ATM. So take this for now. And I’m texting you the address for Analog, too. Another just in case.”
I take the credit card from him with hands that shake on the inside. I taste something sour in the back of my throat. It goes by the name of Guilt. “I’ll try not to use it.”
“It’s okay if you do. For things you think you really need. Like, food’s good.”
“Just no ten-course kaiseki meals.”
Shoma grins. “Smart thinking.”
I drop three five-yen coins—all that I have—at the feet of the lucky cat as I leave through the back door, trying to feel okay about lying. It isn’t really that I don’t want Shoma to know what I’m doing, but more that I just want to be alone for this.
It takes me just minutes to get to Shinjuku Station. The streets are already more than halfway to being familiar. I can guess where to turn before I even get there and almost always be right. I know which buildings to cut between to shave off seconds. Soon I’ll be the same as Shoma, knowing shortcuts like I’ve always known them, dealing with the Tokyo heat as though it’s nothing.
Instead of getting on a train on the Sobu line that would take me straight to Akiba, I get on a train on the Yamanote.
It’s only four stops to Ikebukuro, so the ride’s short. The station’s not supposed to be as busy as Shinjuku, but I wouldn’t have guessed. Low roofs, winding tunnels, rivers of people. I’m still thinking of beehives, buzzing and humming and alive. There are the regular station shops inside—cafés, bakeries, konbinis. A smallish bookstore, still large enough that I bet some of Dad’s books are on a shelf inside, if I want to go look. But I don’t, so I keep walking, and everything around me keeps moving, too.
It reminds me how it’s easy to get lost in Tokyo. Not only where you are, but who you are. You can just walk into one of those human streams and follow along and stop thinking for a while, like a robot with no feelings. The thought unnerves me, make
s me wish that I’d told Shoma after all. So if I disappear, there’s still a chance of being found.
I buy a drink from a vending machine, take the Sunshine City exit, and start heading toward our old apartment.
I’d copied down the address when my grandpa had gone through my mom’s things, trying to find my dad’s cell number. The kanji had been faded but still readable. A place that once fit the four of us, where we’d lived together as a family.
The neighborhood changes as I follow the map on my cell. It’s typical of most big cities, I think, this transformation from retail shops and restaurants and businesses to homes and driveways and parks.
But Ikebukuro still feels rougher to me, less slick than Tokyo—its name translates into pond and sack and makes you think of swamp-like things. The yakuza are headquartered here, I remember Gemma telling me with wide eyes when she’d been googling Japan. Jory had suggested in a hushed voice that if I ever went back to visit, he hoped I wouldn’t go on my own.
I’ll have to tell them it’s safe. How the roughness makes the place somehow feel more real than Tokyo, even. Like a crown stripped of its jewels and shine and glitz, made only more impressive for being bare, and vulnerable.
I peer up at the apartment building when I finally get there. It’s just one of many on the block. Made of gray walls and half a dozen floors. There is laundry hanging over nearly every window. Satellite dishes peek out, silver faces turned to the sky. Bikes are tangled messes of steel poking out from between railings like rings on fingers. Across the street are a Family Mart and a coin Laundromat and vending machines selling smokes and ice cream and tea.
I read a story in the local paper once about a cat that fell asleep in a delivery truck. The truck ended up driving it all the way to the other side of town, far from the only neighborhood the cat had ever known. It returned a week later, safe and sound. Somehow it knew its way home, even though everything on the way back would have been different, would have been new and probably scary.
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