by Misa Sugiura
While I’m in the shower, Mom calls Dad to tell him to come home. He must not have been far, because I’m still combing my hair when he arrives.
“Tadaima,” he calls.
“Okairi,” Mom answers. I’m not quite ready to welcome him home, but I drift around the living room until he sits down on the couch and motions me over.
I sit gingerly on the edge of the couch and twist my fingers. I don’t know if I want to have this conversation with him. Hearing the story from Mom was weird enough. But to have to look my father the adulterer—or is it tragic hero?—in the eye and hear it from him is something else. We sit in silence for a moment before he speaks.
“Sana, gomen-nā,” he says. “I was selfish, chasing my own happiness and allowing you to worry. Your mother told you about Yūko-san and me. . . .”
“Yeah.”
“You must be very upset?”
“Yeah. No. Mostly confused, I guess.”
Dad looks at his feet, which are tapping nervously. He nods a couple of times, still looking at his feet, and then looks up at me and says, “Sana, I will never leave you and Mom, even for Yūko-san. But if you want me to stop seeing Yūko-san, I will.”
Whoa. I did not see that one coming. Do I really want to be the one to break up Dad and the woman he loves? Even if that woman isn’t Mom? Mom seems to be okay with it. Is it still cheating if your wife is okay with it? I think of everything that Mom has decided to accept because she wants me to be happy and to love who I love. If she can do it, maybe I can, too. “It’s okay,” I hear myself saying, “I still have to think about it, but I think it’ll be okay.” I say those words again inside my head, hold them in my heart, and wait to see how they feel.
They feel okay.
Dad’s face breaks into a smile. He nods once, claps me on the knee, and nods again, his eyes shining with—tears? Wow. After lunch, Dad takes off again, presumably to celebrate with Yūko-san, and I feel a stab of regret about telling him it’s okay to keep seeing her. And he hasn’t mentioned my secret. I wonder if Mom even told him. But he’s not gone for very long. In fact, it hasn’t even been an hour when I hear his voice again, calling, “Tadaima!”
“Okairi.” This time, I can answer him. I watch him as he takes his shoes off, which he does with some difficulty because of the white paper bag he’s holding in his hand.
“Sana-chan,” he says. “Oidé.”
I go over to him, and he holds out the bag. “This is for you.”
I take it and unroll the top. Inside is a white Styrofoam cup full of chocolate ice cream.
No, wait. It looks denser, softer than ice cream.
“Chocolate frozen custard.”
“Sea dragons’ favorite food,” he says.
I look up. His mouth is curved in a cautious smile, his eyes a little anxious. “Do you remember?” he asks. I do. He rests his hands on my shoulders, looks me in the eye, and says gruffly, “You’re a good girl, Sana,” before tousling my hair and stepping back. Which is the closest he’ll probably ever get to hugging me and saying, “I love you, no matter what,” so I’ll take it.
POETRY JOURNAL, HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30
“Wild Geese”
by Mary Oliver
I love this poem for lots of reasons. First of all, the first line: “You do not have to be good.” We are who we are, and we shouldn’t have to suffer for it, or prove anything to anyone. We just have to “let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves” and share our pain with each other. Nature loves us and is beautiful no matter what, just like us.
Seeing wild geese flying is always exciting for me, because it’s like they’re on this big journey, and I feel like I’m part of their journey somehow. Oliver talks about how their “harsh and exciting” calls announce our place “in the family of things,” like they’re reminding us that in the big picture, on our journeys, we can all find a place where we can be accepted for who we are, no matter what.
38
THE WEATHER HAS FINALLY TURNED. WHEN I woke up this morning, it was raining. It’s just a long, steady downpour, but the news is calling it “the first winter storm.” I don’t know if that’s because the news likes to make a big deal out of nothing, or if people in California are just that clueless about weather.
It’s time for a new season in my life, too. I text Reggie, who texts Thom, who texts Caleb to check to see that he’s home alone. He is.
By the time I pull up in front of Caleb’s house, the rain is coming down in sheets. I park on the street, and as I get out of the car, I step right into a puddle. Excellent start. I sprint up the driveway to the front door and ring the doorbell. It’s probably a good thing that it’s raining so hard, because despite dreading a face-to-face with Caleb, I can’t wait for him to answer the—
There he is. “Hi,” I say, squinting through the rivulets of water streaming down my face.
“Hey.” He doesn’t budge.
“Um, can I come in?” He steps aside to let me in. I wonder if he’d have closed the door on me if the sun were shining. I stand dripping in the foyer. Caleb just stands next to me, watching.
“I need to talk to you. To, um, apologize.”
“Okay.”
“Is there somewhere we can sit down?”
Silently, Caleb leads the way into the kitchen, where, from the looks of it, he’s been eating a piece of toast. He sits down and looks at me like, So? I sit. I fidget. I wish this conversation was already over. “So . . . I’m gay.”
“Yeah, I got that news flash.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Ugh, why am I so bad at this? I start over. “Okay, so first of all, I’m really— I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what I did and how I acted and what I said. I should have been honest with you. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I shouldn’t have led you on. It was thoughtless and selfish.”
“And mean.”
Okay, fine. “And mean.”
“And fucked up.”
“And . . . fucked up.”
Caleb looks out the window at the rain, which is coming down so hard, it’s hard to see anything else.
I wait. I look at my hands. I twist my fingers. Finally I can’t take it any longer.
“Well, are you going to say something, or—”
“I felt like a total idiot.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I mean, I liked you, you know? And you just . . . used me. I mean, you kissed me. You kissed me. What the fuck was that about? Why did you do it?”
“I know. I—I don’t know, I guess I was afraid that Jamie was going to leave me. Like I was afraid my dad was going to leave me and my mom. And I didn’t want to be like her—like my mom, I mean. I thought my mom was just letting it happen to her and I thought I was going to be different, and do something. . . . It was just the wrong thing.”
“No shit.”
“I didn’t think it through, I guess. I just—I wanted to be with someone who really wanted to be with me.”
“Well, I did want to be with you.”
“I mean . . . maybe I wanted to be with you, too, for a moment, because I could tell that you wanted to be with me, and I did—I do—like you.”
“But not the way that I liked you.”
“No, I guess not.”
“And you wanted to be with Jamie more.”
“Well, I . . . yeah. And I should have told you right away. I should’ve worked it out with her instead of messing with you and then lying to you both. I was just so afraid she’d leave me. I panicked. And then I thought—I knew—you’d be mad at me. So I was afraid to tell you. I’m just a loser, I guess.”
“You can say that again.”
“I know.”
“No. Seriously. Say it again.”
But the corner of his mouth is twitching.
“I’m a loser.”
“And you’re sorry.”
“And I’m sorry. I’m a loser and I’m sorry.”
“You can s
ay that again.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, fine. Apology accepted.”
“Okay. So . . . we’re good?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. We’re good.”
“Good.” I try a smile. “I was worried you would hate me forever.”
“I thought about it.” He points his finger at me. “Don’t get complacent, though. I could change my mind.”
“Got it.” I just need to make sure he knows how great I think he is. “You’d be a fantastic boyfriend. Just not for me.”
He heaves an enormous sigh. “I know.”
“Because I’m—I mean—”
“I know. I get it. Thank you. But you don’t have to rub it in. Fuck.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. I was just trying to be honest.”
“It’s all right. Just . . . work on your timing.”
“Okay.”
“Want some toast?”
“Sure.”
Caleb gets up and drops two slices of bread into the toaster, and soon we’re munching on buttered toast in companionable silence, looking out at the rain together.
39
IT’S NICE NOT TO BE A BOULDER ANYMORE, not to have to sit still while the whole world whirls past in flashes of color and light, and the wind and tides rush in and out around me. Things with Caleb are still a little fragile, but now that we’re talking again, the dull gray ache inside has eased a bit. My smiles aren’t painted on. Laughing feels less like heaving bricks and more like tossing confetti.
Sometimes, anyway.
Other times, the fog condenses around me again. Because there’s still Jamie. Jamie, who I only see from afar, but who I can’t stop thinking about. Just like it was in the very beginning. Except then she didn’t know I existed, and now she hates me. I don’t know which is worse. Actually, I do. It was better when she didn’t know I existed, because at least then there was hope. And even though my heart hurts every time I see her, I go out of my way to be where I know she’ll be just so I can torture myself with a glimpse of her crossing the quad or walking down the breezeway.
I’ve written countless texts and emails, some in my head and some on my devices, but I haven’t had the guts to send anything. I have imaginary conversations with her multiple times a day. I walk past her classrooms, past her locker, past her table at lunch, just to be where she’s been. I haven’t looked at her long enough for her to catch me looking, so I have no idea if she knows I’m stalking her—I mean, that I’m not over her. She’s surrounded by a force field that I just can’t break through.
One afternoon, Mom gives me a book of poetry written by Japanese courtiers, way back in the year 1000. She says that nobles back then used to have poetry-writing contests to see who could best express a certain feeling, or describe a certain scene, and they would send poems called tanka to each other instead of letters—or even instead of talking. But they had to be short, just a few lines. Thirty-one syllables. The idea was to capture and communicate the essence of what you felt.
“Like text,” she says. “Or twittering.”
“Tweets.”
“Yes. But not so many every day. That’s not challenge. Only two or three. Or maybe only one in a week, if the other person was far away.”
“Instead of letters? But that leaves so much to misunderstand.”
“Japanese people can understand. Each person spent time to think about the best words so the reader can understand. The careless person throws the lots of words—talking is so easy to throw out the wrong words. Tanka makes you think. Now you know why the Japanese people don’t talk so much about the feelings.”
I imagine noblewomen writing tanka-letters to someone, just one or two a day, taking time over each one to get it just right. Kind of like the poetry notebook I had with Jamie.
That’s when I get my idea.
I spend a week trying to write a poem like the ones in my new book, but after a while I realize that loving poetry and being a good poet are two very different things. Everything I think of is cheesy, or it doesn’t say what I want it to say, or it’s too long and boring. You’d think, since it’s so short, that poetry would be easy. Not so much.
But I’m not giving up.
I go through my journal with a pack of post-it notes. I spend an entire weekend on poetry websites, chasing poets and poems down rabbit holes and through a maze of related poems, related poets, biographies, and analyses. Talk about a time suck—there’s a ton of cool stuff out there, but only a tiny bit of it says exactly what I want. By Sunday night, I have what I need. I hope.
I have to dig deep for the courage to do it, but on Sunday, I tell Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh that I’m still head over heels for Jamie and that I want to get back together with her.
“Duh,” says Elaine.
“Finally,” says Reggie.
“Why are you always so late with your own news?” asks Hanh.
“Whatever. So I need your help.” And I tell them my plan. I need one more person, so I ask Caleb, but he turns me down.
“You want me to help you win back the girl you left me for? Uh, too soon. Timing, remember? Work on it,” he says. But not unkindly.
So I text Janet and recruit her to help. I text Caleb later and tell him I’m sorry about my terrible timing. He texts back:
Shut up already. Know when to stop talking
. . .
Don’t worry
Still friends
I’ve chosen six poems to deliver to Jamie on Monday: one before school, one for each of the four block periods, and one for lunch. I know that a thousand years ago this process of sending poems to your beloved would have taken a week instead of a school day, but I’m too excited to drag it out that long.
I’ll start with “Missing you” by Izumi Shikibu, a court lady who was born in 976:
Missing you,
my soul escapes my body
and wanders, glowing
like the fireflies in the marsh.
I write it as neatly as I can on rice-paper stationery that I found in Japantown, and tuck it into an envelope.
“When You See Water” by Alice Walker is next, for how indefinable Jamie is, how unrestricted by categories, and how no one else could be anything like her.
After that, “Poem” by Lucy Ives. It’s about how you can tell yourself to stop loving someone who doesn’t love you back, but you still can’t help loving them.
Then “Elliptical” by Harryette Mullen. For all those things left unsaid, all those things I could have done, thought, and tried differently, all those questions about intentions and how things could have been.
“Scientists Find Universe Awash in Tiny Diamonds” by Mayne Ellis because of how precious Jamie is to me, and how valuable and unique and connected by beauty we all are.
Finally, “I Ask the Impossible” by Ana Castillo. Because that’s what I’m about to do.
40
I ARRIVE AT SCHOOL WELL BEFORE THE FIRST bell with the poems in my backpack. I go to Jamie’s locker and tape the “Missing you” to the door, to make sure she doesn’t overlook it if she’s in a hurry. Feeling like I’m committing a crime (“a crime of loooove,” I can hear Hanh croon), I steal away, heart racing. There’s nowhere I can hide to see if Jamie gets her poem, and I’m so full of nervous energy, I can’t even pull together enough focus to sustain a walk around the quad, so I pace back and forth in front of the trig classroom until class starts.
Elaine, Reggie, Hanh, and Janet arrive, and I distribute the poems among them. Five minutes before the bell, I send Hanh off with “When You See Water” to AP Spanish, Jamie’s first-period class. She returns just as the bell rings, and gives me a thumbs-up across the classroom. I’m pretty much useless for the entire period. The hands on the clock cannot move fast enough, and my body and brain feel like those wind-up teeth that chatter and clatter all over the table. I’m dying to talk to Hanh and find out what Jamie’s reaction was, and whether it seemed like she’d read the first poem that I left on her locker do
or.
Finally, the bell rings. I rush over to Hanh. “Well? Did she say anything? What was she like?”
Hanh shrugs. “She looked surprised, I guess.”
“Good surprised or bad surprised?”
“I dunno. Neutral? I mean, she didn’t smile or anything. But she didn’t look mad, either.”
“Did she read it?”
“Sorry. I didn’t stick around to see. I had to get back here, remember?”
Elaine has already rushed off to Jamie’s physics class with “Poem,” and my Spanish class is basically a repeat experience of trig: Elaine scoots in just before the bell rings and gives me a thumbs-up; I tap my feet and pencil for eighty minutes; I give her the third degree at the end of the period. Elaine’s answers are as unsatisfactory as Hanh’s.
Reggie takes “Elliptical” over to Jamie during lunch. “Christina wanted to know what the heck was going on,” she reports.
“Did Jamie say anything? Did she read it? What did she look like?”
“What—do you think I’m going to just hang around and watch? Like that wouldn’t be totally obnoxious?”
Janet leaves early from lunch to deliver “Scientists Find Universe Awash in Tiny Diamonds” to Jamie’s next class, but Janet’s not in my English class, so I don’t even get a thumbs-up. Anguish. Finally, the bell rings and English is over. Time for the last poem. The one I’m going to give to her in person, while I look her in the eye and say, “I’m sorry, Jamie. I screwed up. Please, can we talk?”
I’m about to head out the door to deliver “I Ask the Impossible” when Ms. Owen stops me. She wants to talk to me about my poetry journal. She loved my reaction to Adrienne Rich’s “Cartographies of Silence.” What a fabulous choice! What inspired me to choose it? She wants to thank me for my honesty, she can see why I would be drawn to the poem, it’s one of her favorites, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.