“Gu-rande,” the barista repeated, and held up a grande-sized cup. “Fu-rap-pu-chiino?”
I nodded, encouraged. “Double chocolate chip.”
Nothing.
“Double,” I said slowly. I held up two fingers and said, “Ni,” for good measure. Two isn’t the quite same as double, but it seemed close enough.
Before I could continue, the barista furrowed her brow and reached tentatively for a second cup.
“No, no,” I said. “Double. Dah-bu-ru.”
She shook her head apologetically.
I looked desperately at my mother.
“It’s not on the menu,” she said.
“So? It’s not on the menu at home, either.”
“That’s not the way it works here,” she explained.
“Well, it should be. That’s the way it works at home.”
My mother shrugged. “You are not at home.”
CHOPSTICKS, AGE 14
The day after the Starbucks incident, my mother’s best friend from high school had us over for dinner at her house.
“Can you use chopsticks?” she asked me.
HISTORY
Mrs. Mintz paired us up to do presentations on different countries and their cultural contributions. Naturally I got paired with Miho, and we did Japan. It was okay, actually, because Japan is pretty great: castles. Samurai. Ukiyo-e. Taiko. Anime. Manga. Yuzuru Hanyū.
Miho wore a fancy kimono. We showed clips of Sailor Moon, handed out manjū, and passed around her collection of manga. Miho wrote everyone’s names in katakana. People thought it was cool. I was proud of us both, and for once, I felt good about being Japanese. Miho smiled at me. I smiled back.
Then someone said, “My grandfather died in Pearl Harbor.”
People looked at me and Miho. Miho looked at me.
I wanted to say, That wasn’t me. That’s not my country.
I wanted to say, What about Hiroshima? My great-aunt died in Hiroshima.
But the thing is, I’m not Japanese.
In the bathroom, I heard Sasha, the alpha girl of my class, snicker and ask her friends if they’d seen the way all the nerds went apeshit over Sailor Moon.
The next day, Miho thought we were going to be friends, and she smiled at me again. This time I didn’t smile back.
CHOPSTICKS, AGE 12
I wore them in my hair once, after seeing a picture of a fashion show online. Sophie and Zayna thought it was cool. My mother thought it was disgusting. “Would you wear a fork in your hair?” she said.
WE
I am home from college, and my dad takes me for burgers and shakes at the diner. While we eat, he asks why I supported a Native American protest of an oil pipeline being built near their land. “First of all, it’s a threat to their supply of clean water. And second of all, it goes through land that’s sacred to them. After we basically wiped them out and forced them to live on reservations, the least we can do is respect their wishes about something that affects their lives now.”
“Why do you say ‘we’?” my father asks. “Our family was still farming rice in Japan when that happened. And you’re not even white.”
“Because...” I have to think about that one for a moment. “Because it was America that did it. And I’m American.”
“What do you say when you talk about Hiroshima, where Haruna-obasan died? Who is ‘we’ then?”
I don’t have a good answer to that question.
“Do you say ‘we’ when you’re talking about America today?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Even when the government does something you disagree with? Like weak gun control or anti-immigrant laws? Still ‘we’?”
“They.”
My dad shakes his head. “English is hard.”
I don’t think it’s just English that’s hard.
FEAR
Three months after she arrived, Miho went back to Japan to live with her aunt. My mother blamed me.
“You were mean to her,” she said.
“Mom. The girl was a freak. We had nothing in common. You expect me to give up all my friends to be friends with someone like that?”
“If people don’t want to be your friend because you are Miho’s friend, then they are not the real friend.”
“They are real friends. She just didn’t fit in.”
I knew in my heart that my mother was right. I knew that I was being a coward. I knew that the right thing to do, the kind thing to do, would have been to be Miho’s friend. But Miho and I being Japanese together would have doomed us both, and I was afraid of testing my friends, of not fitting in myself. My fear was greater than my compassion, and I sacrificed Miho to that fear.
Who can face that about themselves in eighth grade, when we are all made of fear? I couldn’t. So even though I felt guilty when Miho went away, mostly I felt relieved to be free of the reminder of how I feared the way others might see me.
HINT
This guy comes up to me at a frat party. We talk. He’s cute. He’s attentive. He says, “Eriko. Is that Japanese?”
I say, “Yes.”
He says, “I wondered if maybe you were Japanese.”
I say, “Why?”
He says, “You have a hint of an accent.”
I say, “No I don’t. Unless it’s a Minnesohhta accent.” I hit the O hard, the way only a true Minnesotan can.
He says, “No, it’s a Japanese accent.”
BON-ODORI
It was the summer of camp and Starbucks. We went into town for Obon, the festival of the dead, when we welcome our ancestors home. I wore a yukata and wooden geta that my grandmother had bought just for me. As we walked, the geta rang out against the concrete, karin-korin, karin-korin. The sun had set, and the streets were lit with lanterns and lined with vendors hawking toys, grilled meat, and sweets. Hundreds of people danced in a slow, happy procession around a central dais to the sound of the tankō-bushi song blaring from the loudspeakers. Up on the platform, men playing taiko and shamisen accompanied the singer.
My grandmother taught me the words and helped me learn the steps:
Hotte, hotte, mata hotte!
Katsuide, katsuide atomodori!
It was a dance about mining for coal under the moon; dancers mimed digging, then swinging a sackful of coal over their shoulder, putting it in a cart, and letting it go. I moved my hands left, then right, clapped them together, swept them wide. I took four steps forward, then two steps back, two forward, then one back again.