Ink and Ashes

by Valynne E. Maetani

  We all nodded, trying to look properly chastised.

  On her way out, she bumped into Parker in the doorframe. I couldn’t tell if the nudge was on purpose, but she was mad enough that Avery didn’t take the opportunity to make a joke about it.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “Oh man, that was too close,” Forrest said, relaxing his broad shoulders.

  Avery rolled over and sat up straight. “You. Are. Such. A. Loser,” he said to me in a low gravelly voice. “That was nasty.”

  “No one said you had to eat it,” I said.

  “That’s how you get rid of evidence. Don’t you learn anything from watching all those detective movies?” He whipped his long hair behind him. “Most people would have just said thank you.”

  I ignored Avery and made Forrest get off the desk so I could work at my laptop comfortably. Once the computer came to life, I downloaded the letter and the pictures. “Let’s take a look at the pictures first.”

  Parker and Forrest positioned themselves, one on each side. Once they were in place, Avery finally lifted himself from the floor and joined them at my back.

  I pulled up the images in extra-large thumbnails on my desktop so everyone could see. I pointed to the first picture. “I think this was the first day of the funeral. The incense made me really sick, and I almost threw up.”

  “Oooh.” Avery shuddered. He pointed to a picture on the bottom row. “This one’s creepy. Someone actually took a picture of him in the coffin. Probably the first day of the service, before they cremated him.”

  My mind went to other memories of him before he died. I remembered the University of Hawaii sweatshirt he liked to wear and how his mouthwash smelled like black licorice.

  A new anguish settled inside me. I tried to shake it off and gestured to the picture in the bottom corner. “I can’t believe how young we look.”

  Three pictures in the second row had us surrounded by other Japanese people. “I have no idea who these people are,” I said.

  Forrest’s face twisted into a sour expression. “Hey, there’s one of your dad. Not your dead one. Your dad now.”

  “Maybe it just looks like him,” Parker said, squinting at the image.

  “It can’t be.” I opened the picture in a viewer so we could see it in more detail. “Mom just said we didn’t meet Dad until after the funeral, so there’s no way he could have been—” I stopped. It was my dad, standing next to the younger versions of us.

  “Why don’t I remember him being there?” I whispered.

  Had my mom lied, or had she just forgotten Dad was at the funeral? There were a lot of people there.

  “I don’t remember anyone either,” Parker said. “But maybe it’s because our father was a judge. A lot of people knew him, and I remember there were so many people at his funeral that not everyone fit in the temple.”

  “This one on the far right doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Avery and I are passing something to each other with our chopsticks.”

  “Mom always gets mad at us when we do that,” Avery said. He studied it closer. “Says it’s bad manners. Kinda looks like we’re passing a . . . a bone.”

  I pointed to the next picture. “And in this one, Dad’s putting a bone into the urn with chopsticks. Look who’s behind him.”

  Grandpa, Dad’s father. And Mom off to the side.

  Mom hadn’t forgotten. She had just lied to us downstairs.

  My parents might be unwilling to give me answers, but I knew someone who could. I took out my phone and dialed.

  “Who are you calling?” Parker asked.

  “Grandpa,” I said. “Since he’s a Buddhist priest, he should be able to tell us what’s going on in those pictures.”

  “Hey, it’s Claire,” I said when my grandfather answered. Technically he was my step-grandfather, but I loved him as much as I loved my stepdad. “How are you?”

  His voice sounded groggy. I had forgotten it was four hours earlier in Hawaii, so I apologized when I realized it. He told me he was happy to talk to me at any hour, and I assured him I was fine.

  “Parker and Avery are here with me, so I’m going to put you on speaker.” I placed the phone on the desk and motioned for them to gather closer.

  “Uh, I’m here too,” Forrest muttered.

  I gave him a look. “Forrest’s here too.”

  “Hi, Grandpa,” Forrest said with enthusiasm.

  “Hi, Forrest,” Grandpa said.

  “I was going through some family photos,” I said, “and I saw you next to Dad in one of the group pictures at my father’s funeral. But . . . how did you even know my father?”

  “Ahh, Henry.” Grandpa sighed. “I loved him like a son. But the answer to that question is a little complicated. You’ll have to ask your dad to explain everything to you.”

  Maybe Grandpa wouldn’t be giving me answers like I had thought.

  “If you loved him like a son,” I said, “why didn’t we know you before Dad married our mom?”

  Grandpa chuckled. “You did,” he said. “You just don’t remember. Parker, ho, he was so kolohe, always getting into trouble. But you don’t remember because I left to spend a few years at a monastery in Tibet right after Avery was born. All of you were just babies.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Grandpa, why are there pictures of us passing bones to each other with chopsticks?” Parker asked. “Mom always tells us it’s bad manners to do that.”

  “Mmmm. That I can tell you. It’s bad manners because the tradition is associated with death. You see, in Japan, bodies are usually cremated. And then the family picks the bones out of the ashes and passes them to one another with chopsticks to put them in the urn. We start with the feet bones and then work up to the head bones so that the dead can be upright.”

  “Only family do that?” Parker asked.

  “Or people considered family,” he said.

  Grandpa talked a little more about the funeral, and I made some mental notes, quiet rage simmering beneath the surface. I thanked him and promised I would call again soon. But before I ended the conversation, he cleared his throat. “Kids,” he said, “can I offer you some advice?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Before your father died, everything he did was for you. He loved all of you very much. And your dad now, he loves you as his own. Everything my son and your mother have done has been in your best interest.” He cleared his throat again. “Claire, you have always been my little elephant. You are courageous and strong, but sometimes you charge into things too quickly. All of you need to make sure you are prepared to hear the answers before you ask the questions.” Then he hung up.

  I didn’t know what my grandfather meant by that, but the lies my parents were telling were only getting bigger.

  “So what now?” Forrest asked.

  “Grandpa just called her an elephant,” Avery said.

  I swatted at him, but he dodged just in time.

  “I guess we know Mom was lying,” Parker said.

  I swiveled my chair around to face all of them. “I think we’ve got to try to translate this letter and see if it tells us anything,”

  “We could find someone who teaches Japanese, or there has to be someone around here who served a mission there,” Parker suggested.

  Avery punched Parker in the arm. “You’re so stupid,” he said. “If Mom and Dad weren’t willing to tell us that Dad knew our father, there might be other secrets in that letter. Did you not see how mad Mom was a few minutes ago when she realized we—I mean Claire—had taken it? Do we really want someone else to see our family’s dirty laundry?”

  “Why don’t we try to use one of those online translation sites?” I suggested. I turned around and opened my Internet browser. After typing in the address for the translating website I sometimes used for my German class, I realized how flawed my thinking was.

  “What are you waiting for?” Avery asked.

  “I have no idea how to type
Japanese characters with this keyboard,” I said.

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Do you need a special keyboard?” Forrest asked.

  I shrugged. I did a search for “Japanese keyboard” and there were multiple sites that sold them. But we needed a credit card to pay for it.

  “Use the prepaid card Grandpa sent you last Christmas,” Parker said.

  Parker and Avery had both spent theirs the next day on after-Christmas sales. I had saved my card for emergencies. This seemed to qualify, but I had to try other options first. I didn’t want to wait for a keyboard to be shipped.

  “I wonder if there’s software or something we can download,” I said and did another online search.

  “Free software,” Avery said.

  I amended my search.

  The computer screen filled with enough results that we were able to sort through and pick the one that seemed the easiest to use. Once we had downloaded the program, it automatically opened, and a table with Japanese characters appeared.

  I clicked on the table and moved it to the right side of the screen, then placed the image of the letter on the left so we could see both at the same time. “All we have to do now is look at the picture of the letter, find the character that matches in the table, and when we click on it, the program will type out the character. We can cut and paste that into the translation site, and then when we have all the words together, we can have it translate the sentence.”

  Avery grunted. “Yeah, I just realized I don’t care about this that much.”

  I turned around and found Forrest shaking his head. Avery had already irritated me enough today that I wanted to smack him. He started to leave, but Parker grabbed his arm.

  “Are you saying you don’t care our parents might be keeping other secrets from us,” Parker asked, “or are you saying you’re lazy?”

  “Aw, you know I hate multiple choice,” Avery said. “Okay, eeny meeny, miney . . . let’s go with option B.”

  Parker and Forrest both struggled to maintain a straight face. I think they normally wouldn’t have held back if I weren’t already annoyed.

  “Get out of my room,” I said to Avery.

  Avery skipped out of the room, arms swinging like a five-year-old. A few moments later, the sound of the Xbox booting up in the family room floated up through the vents.

  Parker let a laugh slip. He glanced at my rigid expression, cleared his throat, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

  He returned with a couple of folding chairs from the linen closet, which he set up on either side of me. They both sat down, then Forrest said, “Claire, why don’t you take the first character, Parker you take the second, and I’ll take the third. That way we can work as fast as possible.”

  I found mine and clicked on it, and then Forrest and Parker pointed to their characters on the table. We continued this way until we had formed a word and then a couple of sentences, but the process was slow and about as fun as cleaning toilets.

  In the middle of the third sentence, Parker stood up. “How about we continue this tomorrow?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. We had been working for two hours, but it felt like days had passed. The sun was high in the sky, and my stomach was starting to growl.

  I watched Parker leave and then turned to the screen again. The two sentences we’d completed told me nothing: Thank you for your answer. It seems old to communicate this way.

  Forrest rested his head on my desk with a blank expression.

  “You don’t have to do this anymore,” I said. “But I want to try to finish this sentence.”

  Forrest pushed his chair away from the desk and stood. “I’m going to get us something to eat.”

  I nodded and kept working even though a break would’ve been nice. But if I stopped and went downstairs, Avery would give me a hard time about being lazy. It wouldn’t matter that he had spent the last few hours playing video games.

  I matched and clicked and matched and clicked, and when I had the last of the words in the sentence, I raised my fists in triumph, then pasted the sentence into the translator. It hadn’t been translating everything perfectly, but there seemed to be enough correct here that I wanted to find out what the rest of the letter said.

  Forrest returned with a plate in each hand. He set one down next to me filled with a peanut butter sandwich and carrot sticks.

  “Look at this!” I pointed at the screen.

  He sat down and read.

  In my situation, they do not often suspect letters sent by post.

  “WHO’S THEY?” Forrest asked.

  “And why would anything sent from my father be ‘suspect’?” I said.

  Forrest tore off a corner of his sandwich and threw it in his mouth. He barely chewed before he swallowed. “Let’s finish the rest of the letter and see if it gives us more information.”

  “How about we each translate every other character?” I said. “You take the first one, and I’ll be looking for the one that comes next until we’ve matched all the characters in the word.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  We took turns pecking at the keyboard, the timing evolving into a steady rhythm. The sound of machine guns and horrifying deaths sailed up through the vents from time to time, reminding me there were better ways to spend a weekend. By early evening, Forrest and I were able to merge our sentences to complete the letter.

  Dear George,

  Thank you for your answer. It seems old to communicate this way. In my situation, they do not often suspect letters sent by post.

  Here is the information.

  15-8192-45

  15-8192-46

  15-8192-47

  81-80-50722259

  This is his telephone number if you need to contact him.

  Thank you for helping me. It is much importance to me. I always feared I would not be able to take care of this if at all times.

  —Henry

  “Maybe the translator got it wrong,” Forrest said. “Was anything else with the letter?”

  I shook my head. From what I could tell, the letter suggested my father trusted my dad. The translation could be wrong, but I couldn’t shake my mom’s reaction in the kitchen. There had to be a reason for her to hide this relationship from us. Did she have an affair with my dad? And if so, is that something I would I want to know?

  “What do you want to do?” Forrest asked.

  “Maybe my parents are hiding something, and maybe they aren’t,” I said, “Either way, I know the questions will fester until I know for sure.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Forrest said. “I already knew you weren’t going to let this go. What do you want to do?”

  I pressed my back against the chair. Theories tangled in my head, yet I couldn’t ask the very people who could give me answers. “I’m calling the phone number.”

  “But you don’t even know who that is,” Forrest said.

  “I can find out.” I turned back to my laptop, went to a reverse phone number lookup website, and entered the phone number. All it gave me was a location: Tokyo, Japan. I attempted several other sites, and all of them gave me the same information.

  “Maybe I don’t know who this person is, but it sounds like he was important to my father, so I figure they must have been good friends. And if they were good friends, he must know something about my father, right?”

  “Makes sense, but how do you know if he speaks English?”

  “He’s in Tokyo. Everyone in Tokyo speaks English.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Butterflies danced in my stomach. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  I picked up my phone and had just entered the number when Forrest said, “Wait.” I ended the call.

  He reached for his wallet in his back pocket and dug around until he found a white plastic card. “Use this. It’s an international calling card that I use to call Oma in Germany. Otherwise it’s going to be really expensive, and I think your parents
are going to notice the charge on the bill.”

  “And your mom won’t notice a charge to Japan?”

  “The card has a certain amount of money, so depending on where you call and how long you talk, it deducts different amounts. When the card runs out, Mom gets me a new one.”

  “Good thinking.” I took the plastic card from him and followed the directions on the back, dialing 011 first and then the rest of the number. “And thank you.”

  Each passing second propelled my pulse faster.

  After six rings, I had decided to hang up, when a man’s gruff voice answered. “Moshi, moshi.”

  THE MAN ANSWERED in Japanese. My lips went numb, words frozen in my throat. Even though I had been the one who had called, I hadn’t actually prepared myself to speak to anyone. Forrest rustled my sleeve.

  “Uh, hello,” I said. “You don’t know me, um, but my name’s Claire Takata.”

  Silence.

  “And uh, I don’t know if you speak any English, but if you do, I was just wondering if you might happen to know my father, Henry Sato.”

  Silence.

  “Can you tell me who I’m speaking to?”

  Silence.

  “Okay, I’m guessing you don’t understand what I’m saying. I’ll just hang up now, so, um . . . good-bye.” Another thought occurred to me. Something my grandfather had told me. “Wait! His Japanese name was Hideki. Maybe you knew him by that name. Hideki Kawakami.”

  Silence.

  “Or maybe not. Okay. Bye.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Not expecting a response, I panicked. “Yes you knew him, or yes you want me to hang up?”

  The line went dead.

  Forrest searched my face for answers. I set down my phone.

  “Nothing,” I said, but wondered if the silence of nothing might mean something. I brushed away the thought. “Apparently not everyone in Tokyo speaks English. Probably a wrong number anyway.”

  I plunged onto the bed, sorting through what my next step would be as I stared at the ceiling.

  The silence had almost made me forget anyone else was in the room when Forrest said, “Claire, let all of us help you.”

  I sighed and sat up. “No, I can do this. I just—”