We bought hanabi to take home with us, and crouched on the street in front of the house and watched the tiny balls of orange fire spark and snap at the ends of the rice straws that we held in our hands. My grandmother served us glasses of barley tea and sent us inside to bathe and go to bed.
I could feel the tradition in my bones. When I close my eyes, can feel it still.
WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?
I am from golden acres of wheat and cornfields, from towering mountain ranges and suburban subdivisions, from long, snaking rivers and ten thousand lakes. I am from political arguments with my dad at the diner. I am from long afternoons with my friends at the beach. This is my country. This is my birthright. This, despite what anyone says or thinks, despite my own doubts and fears and worries, is where I’m from.
I am from bright green squares of rice fields, from towns and cities chockablock with buildings, from glittering bays and busy harbors. I am from my grandfather’s favorite soba shop, the one that’s been there for a hundred years. I am from trips to the public bath with my mother. Japan is the land of my ancestors. This is where Miho was from. This is where my parents are from. This, despite what anyone says or thinks, despite all I’ve done to push myself away, is also where I’m from.
“Where are you really from?”
I know what people mean when they ask that question, and I can’t—I won’t—answer it the way they want, because “Japan” is not the truth. But “Minneapolis” is not the truth, either. All I can do is to ask back, “Where are you really from?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Misa Sugiura is the author of It’s Not Like It’s a Secret, winner of the 2018 APALA Literature Award for Young Adult Literature, and This Time Will Be Different, a 2019 Junior Library Guild selection and YALSA Best Books nominee. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times. Misa lives in California under a giant oak tree with her husband, two sons, two cats, and a gray-banded king snake named Pumpkin.
SALVATION AND THE SEA
Lilliam Rivera
It was Leticia’s idea. She got caught up watching the nineties movie Thelma & Louise on Netflix, over and over again. She especially replayed the part when Brad Pitt wasn’t Brad Pitt but just a shirtless, fine, no-name cowboy who smashed Thelma. Leticia laughed whenever he spoke a line in the movie, giggling like she knew he wasn’t that smart. Not me. I thought the movie was boring, dated, stuck in this strange space where the actresses tried to be all badass. It didn’t feel real. Thelma and Louise shot up a guy, robbed a store, and put a cop in the trunk of his own patrol car, and all the while a detective tried his best to get them to surrender. They didn’t get shot once. If you are white, even in a movie, you can get away with a lot.
Leticia didn’t care. The minute the last scene of the two woman holding hands appeared on the screen, Leticia would start the film again.
“This film is so nineties,” I said. “And so dumb.”
“The nineties are back. Don’t you know, stupid?” She grabbed my bottle of Coke and took a large sip from it.
Leticia wore a bandana around her neck. She rolled up her T-shirt to look more like Susan Sarandon, not that it worked. Leticia’s thick, long black hair had absolutely no curl. She even thought of dying her hair red to go full-on Louise, but her mother would straight-up kill her, so she didn’t. And wouldn’t that make me Thelma, the ditzy best friend? I’m not ditzy. It’s the other way around. Leticia is Thelma for sure, and I’m the one ready to kick a man in the balls.
Besides, Leticia’s body was all curves like mine. Sometimes, when we stood side by side, randos would ask if we were related, as if all hermanas are family because we have the same hair color. As if we couldn’t be more than just hermanas, maybe lovers or even frenemies, or whatever we wanted to be.
Randos and their labels.
“Is this it?” I asked.
Leticia kept staring at the movie, so I asked again.
“Is this it?”
It was Saturday, another Saturday, and I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t spend another day staring at this film that I could now recite lines from like the obsessive fan Leticia was becoming.
“We’ve got to do something,” I said. “Go somewhere. Come on, Leti. Let’s go to the swap meet.”
There wasn’t much to do at the swap meet. It wasn’t as if we had much money between us. I had twenty dollars I’d stolen from my older brother’s wallet when he wasn’t looking. Leticia probably had less than that. But the luchadores practiced there on Saturdays, and our friend Pablo always snuck us in to watch. He’d been trying to get with me since we were in ninth grade and I let him make out with me in the back of his cousin’s car. Pablo tried to play off like he didn’t think about that night, but I could tell by the way his eyes twinkled when he saw me that he’d never forgotten having my tongue in his mouth.
I wasn’t interested in Pablo or any of the luchadores. I just liked the attention. Leticia didn’t mind it either, especially when they bought snacks or shared their edibles with us. At least the swap meet beat anything we were doing right now.
“I don’t want to go to the swap meet,” Leticia said. She adjusted her bandana and fished for her eyeliner to finish the bottom rim of her large eyes. “Let’s do something different. Let’s go somewhere new.”
New? There’s nothing new to do when you’re broke. I prayed she didn’t say go for a hike or some BS thing like seeing nature. Nature is not meant for girls like us. We’re wild enough. I grabbed her eyeliner and practiced drawing a wingtip. The wing became longer and longer until I looked like an ’80s punk rocker. Leticia rolled her eyes, not approving my look.
“Guess what?” she said, but I knew she wouldn’t let me guess. I waited for her to spill it. “I got a gas card.”
I smiled. With a gas card we could fill the tank of my crap car. A full tank meant freedom. Freedom to get the hell out of our dumb city and ignore the lustful luchadores and the disapproving abuelas and the infinite boredom. A full tank meant we had options. I didn’t even want to ask how she’d gotten the card. Maybe from one of the luchadores last week, when we met them at the drive-in. Maybe it was her ama being kind, for once. It didn’t matter. My car would soon have gas, and we could actually break out of this hell.
I pulled out my phone and popped up the Notes app to the list I’d been keeping of places to visit. Salvation Mountain was number one, right above Las Vegas and riding the Ferris wheel at Pacific Park in Santa Monica. Las Vegas was out of the question, because we needed more than twenty dollars to spend there. Santa Monica we could visit anytime, really, if we just planned it.
“Salvation Mountain,” Leticia said with conviction. “We can take pictures and post them and make everyone jealous for not being us.”