Come On In Page 4

  So I walked up to the counter and ordered a grande Double Chocolate Chip Frappuccino. I said it slowly, so that the barista could understand me.

  I got a blank stare in return.

  “Grande,” I said. I held my hands in the air, one over the other, grande-height apart. “Dou-ble. Choco-late chip. Frap-pu-cci-no.” I pronounced everything carefully.

  “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.

  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 grandfathe
r’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.”

  Leticia searched for images of Salvation Mountain. The trippy, neon-colored monuments were straight from a hippie’s dream. So seventies and beautiful. I wanted to live there, to sleep besides the man-made folk art. I bet my dreams would become Technicolor too.

  It was Leticia who’d found Salvation Mountain. She’d heard that the owner had recently died and that the art installation would soon die too. “Who’s going to take care of it?” she’d asked, and I’d called her stupid for worrying about fake mountains so far away. Leticia swore her superpower was empathy. She claimed my superpower was being a total bitch and that was why we complemented each other.

  She stared at the phone. Her fingerprints smudged the screen.

  “We should go,” she said.

  “What if it’s closed or something?” We could waste a perfectly good tank of gas for nothing. She typed on her phone and searched the ’gram. So many wannabes posing in front of the gigantic art installation. They wore their Coachella uniforms—cutoff jeans, fake flowers in their hair, ankle boots covered in dust. A fact was a fact: we didn’t belong there. Not us dumb girls from El Monte with our ratty black T-shirts and our skinny jeans and our rolls of fat bulging out.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Why not? You want to do something. This is what we can do,” Leticia said. “We fill our water bottles and grab a couple snacks. We make sandwiches and head out right now. It will take about two and a half hours to get there.”

  The film was showing the part when Thelma and Louise are at a honky-tonk bar and people are line dancing. Cowboy boots pounded the floor in rhythm of the music. Leticia waited for me to respond.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said.

  “Yesss, bish. We going fishin’!” Leticia screamed at the top of her lungs, doing a poor imitation of Thelma. Or was it Louise?

  * * *

  The first time I met Leticia, she offered me half of her tamale. We were both seven years old. It had been my first day of school, and I hadn’t liked the school lunch so I’d refused to eat although my stomach growled loudly like a dog. Leticia didn’t ex
actly offer the tamale, she thrust it at me, firmly telling me to eat like a mother would a child.

  It didn’t take long before Leticia and I were inseparable. We formed a barrier that no one could penetrate. Secrets told under bed sheets converted into tents. Shared meals and jokes. Of course, there was the one and only time we’d gotten pissed off at each other. We were twelve back then. Leticia had started to hang out with the girls who wore lipstick already, and I got angry. Those girls wanted to grow up way too fast. Eventually Leticia abandoned them and we were back on track, battling our days together.

  Her parents worked in Vernon at the Farmer John factory, where they slaughter pigs. One time my parents and I drove past the factory, and it smelled like death. A truck had pulled up alongside of us and there they were, large pigs about to be driven to their annihilation. Their snouts poked out from the slits made for them to breathe. Leticia said the smell never left her parents’ clothes. It was encrusted in their hands no matter how many bottles of perfume or cologne she gifted them for Christmas.

  Every morning I tuned in to the news before heading to school to see how bad things were for Leticia and her parents. Green cards, citizenship interviews, documentations. Leticia was scared for her mom and dad, and I was nervous for Leticia. They’d left Guatemala so many years ago. They struggled to make a good life here in California like everybody else.

  Still, when the man in the White House used the words drug dealers, rapists, and animals, Leticia didn’t shrink. Her chest grew larger. We both stood tall and waited to see if anyone would repeat them words. One boy tried at school. He wasn’t even white, just another brown boy like us. Angel. We cursed Angel out, both of us using the same words the man in the White House used. Others in the classroom joined in, and that felt good. We felt safe.

  “If Angel thinks I’m an animal, I’ll rip him apart like one,” Leticia had said, and I’d believed her.