Her father lifted his bowl. “All I want to say is that it was strange to find out my parents were Korean. I’ve been Japanese for forty-one years—my own parents’ colonizer.”
“What’s a colonizer?” Katy asked.
Her mother, still a mask of pleasantness, said, “My mother’s parents came from Germany. But so what? It’s wild to find out you were adopted, but it’s not as if you’ve suddenly become a different person. You’re no more Korean than I’m German.”
Katy’s eyes widened. “We’re Korean?”
“Like Jurōjin?” Luna asked.
“Jurōjin’s Chinese, stupid,” Katy said.
Her father shook his head. “You make it sound like nothing has changed. As though identity is a choice. It’s not a choice.”
“But what has changed? You’re claiming something that played no part in your life.”
Luna watched her parents, the rising pitch not yet touching their faces. She saw that Obāsan was watching them too.
Her father sighed. “We’re not separate from our histories, Say; I can’t separate myself from my roots. To sever that connection would be calamitous. Why can’t you understand that?”
Her mother, catching Obāsan’s eyes, shook her head apologetically. “Sometimes I think you forget what’s real in your life, what’s important in the here and now. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t understand. But you’re making a choice—you realize that, right?”
“And you’re not?”
They regarded each other, their faces neutral but joined by an invisible bridge, words Luna couldn’t hear passing between them. Their mother finally said, “You keep saying they deserve to know. Well, you’re right.” She turned to them. “Girls—”
“Don’t—”
“Your father’s not coming back with us tomorrow.”
Luna stared at her father, his face still with disbelief.
“Why?” Katy asked.
“Are you going to stay until The Fall?” Luna asked. Fall was a big deal in their house, marking and regulating their life, which revolved around the school calendar.
He rubbed his forehead. “Your grandfather is very sick. I’m going to stay for a while to help your obāsan.”
Her mother made a snorting sort of noise. “Oh, that’s rich. Don’t lie to them.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“Is it because you’re Korean now?” Luna asked.
Her father blinked. Then he brushed her cheek. “It’s just for a time, until I sort things out. Anyway, you’ll be so busy,” he said, reminding her that school would soon be starting, and she’d have swim practice and sleepovers and Oatmeal Cream Pies and Suzy-U’s—
“Suzy-Q’s,” Katy corrected.
“Suzy-Q’s,” he said.
Obāsan gripped the collar of her blouse and began coughing.
Their mother jumped up. “Are you okay?”
Obāsan pointed at the water glass.
“She’s crying,” Katy observed.
“She just swallowed the wrong way,” their mother said, gently thumping Obāsan’s back.
Their father rose to refill her glass. At the sink, with his head bent, he looked worn, his back like someone else’s old coat.
Luna clutched her ear. “Are you divorcing us?”
Her father turned. “Of course not,” he said, but his face flushed a shade of red she only saw when he drank with his colleagues. Katy knocked back her chair and burst out of the room. “Liar,” she screamed. Luna covered her ears as the front door slammed.
Obāsan, coughing, got up. Tucking her chair neatly under the table, she quietly followed Katy outside. Through the sliding glass doors, still pale with summer light, they watched her approach the curled shape on the bench in Ojīsan’s garden. Luna slipped out of her own chair to join them, and nobody stopped her.
Outside, the cicadas were loud, the air a filtered gray, almost dizzying. When Luna reached them, Obāsan nudged Katy and made room for her. Luna sat against her grandmother, her steady warmth radiant, like the walls of their house in Urbana at midday but softer. It was a pleasant evening, the breeze dispersing her grandmother’s patter, pollinating the air with her twinkling words. Above, the clouds pinked, then blued. Obāsan patted their knees. “Hotaru,” she said, pronouncing the word she knew they knew because she’d taught it to them. And it was true: a whole galaxy of fireflies were flashing in the grass.
* * *
—
IN THE morning, they drove to the airport in the cloying rental car. Usually, they arrived early to shop for snacks and last-minute gifts, but today they didn’t even eat at the restaurant overlooking the runway. They headed straight to check-in and pretended not to see their father extracting his passport from their bundle. At the security gate, he took out the camera: two solemn children and a grim mother. Katy gasped. “We forgot the mikans!”
Luna pictured the mikans, plump and soft to peel; they always got a pack, bunched in a net, at the kiosk. “Can we get them?”
Her father glanced at the clock. “Maybe they’ll have them at Duty Free?”
Her mother, checking the zippers on the bags, didn’t reply.
“I’m sure they’ll have them at Duty Free,” he said.
Luna, though, was sure they didn’t. “They only have them there.” She pointed at the glittery shops down the concourse.
“Listen.” He knelt. “You’ll miss your flight. You can forgo them this once.”
Luna stared past him. “I want them.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll make a deal. I’ll bring you a whole crate when I fly home.”
Luna studied her father, the glowing crate the size of a small mountain materializing between them. “Really?”
He nodded.
“Do you promise?”
Her father closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were shiny with pain, his lips twitching as he worked to control them. Then his face tightened, and Luna knew he was shaping his words, words like “love” and “miss” and “soon,” which he would say because they were true—Luna knew they were true but not the entire truth, only what he wished most to be true. So she waited for it, that moment she knew would come, the moment when his tongue hefted his words for the last time. And when it came, the telltale pinch of his lips, just before he did it—opened his mouth and lied to her—she turned her head, the good side, away from him. But Luna didn’t need to hear his words or his exact tone—apologetic and full of promise—she could simply feel it, his breath like a small devastation inside her ear. And because she didn’t want him to suspect, or see him cry again, when he moved back to look at her, she gave him a full smile, as if she’d been listening and believed what he said.