Chapter One Ren #2
Kai catches my drift, and his face sobers. He shifts and glances over his shoulder again, but this time I can tell he’s looking toward my apartment, farther up the street from his home.
“How is Emi doing? Is she all right?”
News of my sister Emi’s pregnancy got out a few days ago after someone saw her at the doctor, and it spread through our Japanese neighborhood like a virus.
You’d think it wouldn’t be such a big deal considering our community has much bigger problems looming: Curfew.
Travel restrictions. Arrests of men for following Japanese sumo matches, having fishing boats, or running gardening supply shops.
But I guess despite everything, people are always going to be judgy, nosy assholes, and the neighborhood’s response to Emi’s pregnancy proved it.
“She’s good.” I don’t tell him that I heard her crying last night through the thin walls of the bedroom she shares with Mama as I lay on the couch in the living room, which is where I sleep.
“Tell her to keep her chin up,” Kai says forcefully. I nod, unsure what to say. “Anyways. Baseball team. You. Pitching. Hollywood Hills on their knees, weeping. Think it over.”
“I will,” I say in mock seriousness. “I’ll let you know, Tiger. All right, I gotta go get cleaned up.”
Kai claps me on the shoulder and bounds off, heading toward school. I keep going the opposite way.
A few houses down, I pass Mr. Nomura. He sits on his porch and peels a mandarin orange.
He’s been wearing his uniform from the Great War ever since the first regulation came down on us as a protest or something.
Medals and bars march across his chest, making him look even more rigid than normal, which is saying a lot because the guy has the same stick up his ass as Kai’s parents. I duck by, but he’s already seen me.
“Han’nin!” he says under his breath. Criminal.
He’s been saying this since I was fourteen, but the word’s a blade against my skin.
Draws blood every time. He’s a member of the Japanese American Citizens League, or the JACL, and thinks my wrongdoings hold back our entire community.
I feel like he knows I’m planning on skipping school today and is adding it to the tally of my sins that he keeps in his head.
I keep striding along until I reach our apartment. Emi is sitting on the stoop with a book.
For a few moments, I watch. Rarely is Emi unguarded, but when there’s a book between her and the world, her eyes get a sharp, hungry look as they tear into the words.
When we were little, she used to read to me.
We’d sit in the closet, protected by broomsticks and mopheads, the shaky eye of a flashlight throwing a yellow circle on the pages.
She’d read. I’d lean against her. We’d stay that way till the sound of Mama’s wine bottle clinking against one of her pink water glasses was replaced by snoring.
Now it’s different. I work and go to school when I can. She doesn’t do either anymore. We don’t see each other much.
Sometimes I wish she’d read to me again.
I shove my hands in my pockets and amble toward her.
“Ren!” she exclaims as my shadow falls on her page. “How was work? You’re so sweaty.”
“Nice to see you, too. You feeling okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.” She rolls her eyes at me but closes the book and sets it aside. Her hands flutter like two doves, finally intertwining and settling on her stomach. “I’m merely having a baby, Ren. I’m not afflicted with the plague.”
I’m glad she seems to be in good spirits, especially with the neighbors gossiping about her pregnancy.
They couldn’t be more sanctimonious about it, especially because it proves them right.
Mama, Emi, and I are the damp threatening to settle in and ruin the community from the inside out.
Drunk mother. Unwed pregnant daughter. Criminal son.
If they could, our neighborhood would cut us out and flick us away like a speck of rot on a peach.
Once the baby is here, I’ll head off for Santa Fe. I’ve heard there are countless ranches right outside the city where the land is like our ocean here—just goes on forever under a red sun. I’ll get a job. Send money back and breathe air that isn’t tainted with memories.
“Wait…is something burning?” I glance past Emi into our apartment.
“Beware of Mama,” Emi says, picking up her book again. “She was at Fugetsu-Do and talked to Mr. Tanaka. Came home upset.”
Mama is often upset, so the question is more to what degree. I cross the threshold, tucking the fox under my collar. Mama hates the sight of it, especially after I told her how it nudges me. She knows it’s magic but spits the word like a curse.
Inside, wispy, throat-stinging smoke coming from our fireplace fills the air. It’s a stately feature with a design from the twenties, but it fails to distract from the plasticky soft sheet flooring, yellowed wallpaper, and peeling paint. My pillow and blanket are folded neatly on the sofa.
Mama kneels next to the fireplace. She’s wearing several costume jewelry rings and her old silk jacket, the summer one that’s embroidered with flowers and other fancy stuff. No one wears that sort of thing around here, but it never stops her.
Dusty photo albums with cardboard covers and letters in Japanese lie in piles, littering the carpet with our family history.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“We need to get rid of everything,” she says. “Should’ve done it right after the bombing but I…I wanted to wait.”
“Everything? What did Mr. Tanaka tell you?”
“His car windows were smashed by some men. We have to burn our stuff from Japan. It must be done.”
Methodically, she picks up a letter. Her thumb flicks across the wheel on her lighter. A tongue of fire bobs to life, and she holds the lighter to the letter. My face is hot, but it isn’t from the fire. It’s from the realization that our memories are going up in smoke.
The flame licks and eats, quickly fanning its way up the aged paper.
Before it reaches her fingers, Mama throws it into the fireplace.
Then she flips open the photo album. There’s only one wedding photo in it, with Papa’s face scratched out.
But even if it wasn’t, it’s clear the photo has always belonged to the bride.
In it, Mama wears a floral kimono. She stares directly at the camera, bold and pleased, like everything has gone just to plan.
It’s a version of her I’ve never experienced.
Swiftly, Mama tosses the photo onto the fire in the hearth.
My throat locks up. I’ve known the photo my whole life; its mocking question of what might have been is so painful I’ve thought of burning it myself.
But seeing it curl under the flames makes me want to snatch it back.
Because it’s ours, our pain to deal with as we want—not like this, out of fear of the government busting in and shaking us down like we’re part of a crime ring.
Mama remains kneeling, face empty. Hesitantly, I put my hand on her shoulder. For a moment we are as still as statues, and the fire is the only living thing in the room as it chews up our memories and spits out ash. Then she turns to me.
There’s no pain in her eyes—she will never show hurt. Her shoulder muscle lifts like a lever. The motion makes my hand drop away.
Her empty eyes latch on to the cord disappearing into my collar.
“We need to burn it.”
I put my hand over my shirt. Beneath my fingers, I feel the fox’s beat. It’s quicker than normal, which makes my own pulse kick up in response. “No one will see it. It’s fine.”
Her hand extends to me, palm open. Not asking. Demanding.
I don’t move.
Silence falls, broken only by the last crackles of the paper-swallowing flame.
Mama lunges. Her fingernails, painted their usual red, claw at my neck as she tries to break the cord.
I pull away. Mama is flailing inertia, so she stumbles, a frantic wave with no shore to crash against. I steady her, even though it lets her collect herself for another attack. Her hands fly for my neck again.
I retreat to the only place I can. The bathroom. She comes after me. I slip inside the narrow rectangle, slide the laminate accordion door shut, flip the lock. The door jangles in its frame as she strikes it from the other side.
I anchor my hands on the sink, shaking against the cold, slick porcelain.
Slowly, I twist the rusty faucet and splash water onto my face.
Water runs down my neck, joining the sweat from work.
I peer at my neck in the mirror, avoiding meeting my own eyes.
I hate seeing myself. Instead, I focus on the cuts from Mama’s nails.
Looks like a cat got me. Small slashes, blood welling just beneath them, pepper my skin.
If I wasn’t so dumb and stubborn, I would’ve handed over the fox. Burned it up with the photo and letters. I don’t need any trouble, not from Mama and sure as hell not from the government. Yet here I am, holding on to something from a man who ran all the way to another country to leave me behind.
But I know I won’t take it off. I’ll cling to it in hopes I understand it, someday, and understand myself, too, maybe.
Outside the bathroom, it’s silent. I think Mama has given up. Then her voice cuts through the door. The laminate is so thin that it sounds like she’s speaking right into my ear.
“If you know what’s best, you’ll burn it.” She’s breathless from our tussle, but her tone is chillingly calm. “They’re coming for us, Ren, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”