When she asks where we buy groceries, I give her a few names, but she looks skeptical at all of them.
Will they have natto, she asks.
I say the H Mart just might.
You know what natto is, asks Mitsuko, frowning.
Soybeans, I say, right? Mike uses it.
And for the first time in our acquaintance, Mitsuko looks confused.
Here in Houston, she says. The city where you could hardly find daikon a few years ago?
Yeah, I say.
And you eat natto, she says.
I do, I say.
I don’t believe you.
Because you don’t think I could like it?
How the hell would I know what you like, says Mitsuko.
* * *
That night, I hear the television from the bedroom. Mitsuko’s scrolling through movies. She settles on War of the Worlds, and I listen as Tom Cruise chases after his son. The kid’s gone to join the resistance or some shit, although the viewer knows he’s a goner. But Tom doesn’t see that. He goes after the kid anyway.
* * *
So I’m dozing off when my phone dings. I’m thinking it’s Ximena, but it’s actually Mike.
He’s sent a picture of his face in front of what looks like a train station. He’s not quite smiling. The background is clogged with bodies.
And he’s texted: HOW ARE THINGS?
I type: How the fuck do you expect.
A few minutes later, Mike sends another selfie. There’s the backdrop of a neighborhood. It looks quiet, bookended by telephone poles.
If you adjust the brightness and squint hard enough, you can see up his nose.
looks cool, I say.
IT IS
found him yet?
YEAH
and?
HE’S DOING FINE
HE’S NOT REALLY DOING FINE
IDREK
Mike sends another photo of some trees. And then one of some other train station. There are plenty of things we should be talking about, but here we are, talking around exactly all of them.
So I text: where can you get natto here
Y?
Your mom says she wants to make some.
And Mike’s response is immediate, possibly the fastest he’s ever replied to me: WHAT THE FUCK?
6.
The next morning, for the very first time, Mike’s mother knocks on my door. She’s fully dressed, while I lean on the doorway in a tank top and boxers.
Take your time, she says.
Jesus Christ, she says.
* * *
We leave five minutes later. Our Black neighbors wave from their porch. There’s a question on the grandfather’s face, and I wonder if he’ll ask it.
But Mitsuko doesn’t look away. If anything, she walks slower. Staring him down.
* * *
Mike’s car is filthy with clothes: our hoodies and socks and a loose pair of shoes. The whole thing smells like him, and I know his mother smells it, too. When I toss a pair of shorts behind us, she grunts, and there’s a jock strap in the back seat, and I pray to no god in particular that Mitsuko doesn’t catch it.
We’ve pulled out of the neighborhood, and into town, when she says, You’re sure they’ll have what I need?
They should, I say. You and Mike make the same things.
Maybe similar, says Mitsuko. Not same.
We drive through the mix of locals beginning their day. Whole swathes of Houston look like chunks of other countries. There are potholes beside gourmet bakeries beside taquerías beside noodle bars, copied and pasted onto a graying landscape.
At a stoplight, these two smiling guys walk a toddler across the street, holding the little girl’s hands on either side. One of the men is white. The other one’s brown. They look like something straight out of OutSmart. I glance at Mitsuko, and her face doesn’t tell me much.
So, she says, you’re Black.
You noticed, I say.
Just barely, says Mitsuko. And how did you find my son?
Accidentally, I say.
Let me guess, it was Grindr.
It wasn’t.
You found my son on the internet.
No.
We met at a get-together, I say. An acquaintance introduced us.
Sure, says Mitsuko.
Once the couple crosses the road, their daughter looks up at them, beaming. She is the happiest that a child has ever been, ever. If Mike had seen them, he’d feign some sort of choking, or he’d honk his horn, or he’d grow sober, not saying much at all.
* * *
• • •
On Sunday mornings Mike drove us from market to market, all over the Northside. He juggled onions and guanabana and garlic and pineapples. He’d haggle with vendors in his shitty Spanish, and those evenings he’d cook three versions of the same fucking meal. I’d take a bite of one, and then a bite of the second. Then Mike would motion me toward the third. I usually went with the second.
Mike said this was practice for him. It was how he’d get better. I told him that not everyone did this, and he said there was a reason for that.
I didn’t grow up with their palates, he said. They can assume a lot of shit that I can’t.
So you force it on me, I said. Down my throat.
You’ll miss it when it’s gone, said Mike.
* * *
• • •
Our local H Mart is, inconceivably, closed for the day, and the next grocery store I bring Mitsuko to instead is objectively filthy—but there’s natto. There’s also a metal detector by the entrance. The doorway is flanked by a fried chicken vendor in scrubs. Older women and their children finger carrots on our left, and a little girl wandering the aisles wears a branch of parsley like a crown.
I drift around looking for a shopping cart. I find one with three wheels. We end up filling the whole thing, and also the basket, and also the crooks of Mitsuko’s elbows.
At the register, I feel for my wallet, and I wait for Mitsuko to stop me. But she doesn’t. So I pull out my card slowly, and that’s when Mitsuko plucks a bill from her bag, shaking her head.
The girl behind the register laughs, tugging at a braid.