The Language Inside

by Holly Thompson

                 fuzzy-headed

                 recovering

  then she picks up the empty glasses

  did she call? I ask again

  YiaYia puts down the glasses

  comes to sit on the chair arm

  leans close to me

  and whispers

  no, but I imagine she’s doing just fine

  so don’t stress about it

  I’m not stressing! I say

  where’s Toby?

  she rises and arranges a basket

  of patchwork coasters

  at a friend’s for dinner

  which doesn’t seem fair

  because right now

  post-migraine

  I just want someone

  from my lived-in-Japan family

  not YiaYia

  who seems to think migraines can be controlled

  just by flicking a brain switch

                 some thoughts on

                 some thoughts off

  who wants me to be active and involved

  who was the one to introduce me to

  the Newall Center where my Papou

  spent two years before he died

  who when she heard they needed

  a new volunteer poetry helper

  piped right up with

  my granddaughter writes poems!

  meaning those verse scribbles

  I’d write on her birthday cards

  she thinks everything will be fine

  if I just join groups

  she thinks everything will be fine

  if I just meet more Americans

  and she thinks everything

  will be fine in Japan

  that it’s better we’re not there now

  during the recovery

  and she thinks

  everything will be fine

  in our family

  but I think

  she has a strange idea

  of what’s fine

  I think she doesn’t know

  how much it hurt to leave

  how much it felt like

  abandoning Japan

  and I think she doesn’t know

  how strange it is to live

  without our father

  and I think she doesn’t

  know what my mother is feeling

  about having her breast lopped off

  and I think she doesn’t

  know what it’s like to be the daughter

  wondering do I carry those genes, too?

  my migraines started

  three days after our move

  my mother says I need

  a strict routine

  YiaYia sews me a lavender pillow

  and says to avoid chocolate

  my father emails me articles

  one of an exhibit of paintings

  by migraine sufferers that show

  the dark hole of blindness

  and the crescent

                 of zigzagging

                            triangles

                 just like mine

  Toby doesn’t say anything

  after my migraines

  just asks if I want a bath

  to feel like I’m home in Japan

  but Toby’s not here now

  so in the armchair I

  pull the scarf over my head

  and hide inside

  YiaYia sighs

  pats my arm

  picks up the glasses

  and goes into the kitchen

  I was at the international school

  where I’d transferred for grade 9

                 from Japanese school

  I was in English class

  when it started

                 a tremor

                                          that grew

  Mr. Hays had taught in Japan

  only two years so I shouted at him

  and at Ryan and Keizo

  who were playing tough

  “surfing” the quake

  get under the desks!

  this isn’t normal!

  the building rattled

  shelves, books, cupboards clattered

  stuff crashed and fell

  I thought the walls would give

  I thought the windows would shatter

  and I was glad

  I’d worn my boots

  they’d keep me warm

  if the school collapsed

  on and on

  the building

  bumped

  creaked

  swayed

  clanked

  while under the desks

  we clutched hands

  Sophia on one side of me

  Yohei on the other

  with the principal’s voice on the loudspeaker

  now it’s slowing, wait, here’s another tremble

  stay calm, stay calm, it will be over soon

  but it seemed like forever

  later as we waited

  in our classrooms

  aftershocks jolting

  power came on

  network was up

  but cell phones

  were down

  from a school computer

  I blast-emailed Mom, Dad, Toby, Madoka

  YiaYia, Gram, Gramps, cousins—

  big quake, I’m at school, everyone here okay

  not knowing who would see my message

  or when

  trains were stopped

  people were stuck

  I couldn’t get back to Kamakura

  and finally was dismissed

  to walk with Juulia to her house

  where I translated Japanese TV news

  for them while her mother followed

  Finnish and English news online

  and where we watched in disbelief

  as tsunami waves engulfed

  the Pacific coast of Tohoku

  I tried calling Madoka in Kamakura

  whose grandparents, cousins

  aunts and uncles

  all live up north in Miyagi

  near the sea

  I sat on Juulia’s sofa

  stone still

  holding my head

  hoping those relatives had all

                                          run

                                               fast

  near midnight I reached

  Mom and Toby in Kamakura

                 their power and heat finally on

                 Dad staying the night in Tokyo

  and right away I asked

  but Mom said no

  Madoka’s family

  hadn’t heard any news

  seeing those waves blast away

  seaside towns that looked like ours

  towns that could have been ours

  towns I’ve visited

  with Madoka . . .

  I hardly slept

  all night

  I rose

  when I finally heard

  someone else up at dawn

  and joined Juulia’s father

  in stunned silence

  in front of the TV

  midday on the day after

  Mom came by car to get me

  and back in Kamakura

  I went straight to Madoka’s house

  to help them try to make contact

  to help them wait for news
/>
  Dad got home that second night

  by train, bus, walking

  and on the third day we learned

  that Madoka’s grandparents

  survived

  her cousins were safe

  but later we learned

  the first floor of her grandparents’ house

  was ruined

  one cousin’s school

  was gone

  one uncle’s fishing boat

  was gone

  one uncle’s factory

  was gone

  one aunt’s sister

  was gone

  one uncle’s wife

  was gone

  and the list

  of gone

  went on

  and on

  in late April, Dad and I

  Madoka and her father

  packed a van full of supplies

  cleanup gear and two used bicycles

  and drove north to Miyagi

  at her grandparents’ house

  the waterline

  was above my head

  a car stood on its nose

  between the kitchen wall

  and a neighbor’s wall

  another had bashed down a shed

  and four were crumpled

  against a broken utility pole

  the garden was littered

  with splintered chairs, a drum

  shredded mats, plastic crates, clothes

  a urinal and dresser drawers

  trees crusted with mud

  were hung with trash

  tangled in string

  and weighted with dead fish

  Madoka’s Jiichan, her grandfather

  pried open the door to his house

  and we peered inside to furniture

  heaped, overturned

  reeking and stuck

  in oily salty sludge

  but at least they still had a house—

  a couple streets away

  the waterline hit two stories

  and beyond that

  all the way to the sea . . .

                 there was only rubble

  we dressed in rainsuits and boots

  helmets, masks and goggles

  and worked our way inside

  shoveling muck into bags

  lugging bags out

  Madoka and I were a team

  taking turns bag-holding

  muck-shoveling

  picking out rotting fish

  removing broken glass

  teams of men hauled out

  soaked tatami mats

  and ruined appliances

  we shoveled sludge from floors

  then from under floors

  from behind the toilet

  from inside kitchen cabinets

  we salvaged

                 dishes, pots and pans

                 jewelry, photos, unopened bottles of sake

  we discarded

                 furniture, futons, clothes, books, shoes, papers

                 phones, place mats, curtains, stuffed animals

  during lunch or breaks

  sometimes Madoka and I

  wandered the deserted neighborhood

  among growing mounds of debris

  we’d greet

  whoever we saw

  stop to talk

  offer help

  or just listen

  once we found two girls

  leaping onto and off

  bent and broken

  washed-up cars

  wearing

                 no gloves

                 no masks

                 no boots

  so Madoka and I led them away

  to a cleared patch of asphalt

  found some stones

  and started hopscotch

  first the long spiral snaking kind

  we learned in Japanese preschool

  then the kind like a double-crossed T

  I learned in Vermont

  at night

  in the tent we’d pitched

  in a little park on high ground

  I wrote by lantern light

  some of the words people said to us

  and some of the things

  I couldn’t believe

  we’d seen

  we worked dawn to dusk

  and on the fourth day

  Madoka’s grandmother

  came from the evacuation center

  to view the house

  and the changed neighborhood

  stoic, tough

  she’d come to join the cleanup

  but when she saw my yellow rainsuit

  greasy with sludge

  my gloves foul black

  she fell against my shoulder

  and wept

  even you, Emma-chan

  even you are here to help

  in June Mom and I returned for a week

  to help Madoka’s cousins

  and her grandparents’ neighbors

  still shoveling

  still cleaning

  still bagging

  and heaping debris

  and in August I went up with Madoka

  for what should have been two weeks

  of helping all around

  her grandparents’ town . . .

  and that’s where I was

  when I got the news

  about Mom

  about our move

  out of Japan

  I had to leave Miyagi

  return early to Kamakura

  help with packing, sorting, storing

  could only drop by

                 the international school

                 as classes were starting

  could only drop by

                 a volleyball practice

                 at my old Japanese school

  to say my good-byes

  one minute my head was full of tsunami cleanup

  with plans to visit Miyagi each school break

  one minute I was a member of student council

  with fund-raising plans for two adopted Tohoku schools

  one minute I was headed back to teachers who knew me

  a coach eyeing me for varsity volleyball

  and a Model UN conference in the Philippines

  one minute Toby was finishing summer homework

  for his second term at Japanese middle school

  after all-summer practice with his baseball club

  one minute we thought the earthquake

  was the only thing

  to turn our lives upside down this year

  but the next minute

  Mom’s mammogram

  changed everything

  the next minute

  she’d gone back to the U.S.

  for biopsies and MRIs

  the next minute

  she’d scheduled surgery

  for September in Boston

  the next minute

  I was saying good-bye to

  my school

  our Kamakura home

  our neighborhood

  our cat Shoga

  my new friends

  my old friends

  Madoka

  and nearly the next minute

  I was starting tenth grade

  in a country I’d lived in only as a baby

  in a state I’d never lived in

  in my father’s mother’s town

  without my father

  without any friends

  who speak Japanese

  or know anything about Japan

  except sushi, manga, anime

  tsun
ami and radiation

  and my mother

  getting poked and sliced

  and rearranged

  Dad’s now based

  at the firm’s New York branch

  joining us here in Massachusetts

  for appointments and procedures

  then rushing back to work in Manhattan

  while we remain in YiaYia’s town

  where we came to live

  in time for Mom’s first surgery

  which then revealed

  the whole breast had to go

  this week my mother went down to visit my father

  a getaway before the full mastectomy

  her trip is only five days

  but already it feels like weeks

  I miss her

  I miss Dad

  I miss Madoka

  I miss Japan

  my heart is torn in two—

  half here with Mom

  and all she’s going through

  half there in Japan

  with Madoka

  and her relatives

  all coping

  with so much gone

  Saturday afternoon in YiaYia’s kitchen

  Toby and I paint clay beads with tiny brushes

  YiaYia wants us to decorate a bead each for Mom