Emma Karas was raised in Japan; it's the country she calls home. But when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, Emma's family moves to a town outside Lowell, Massachusetts, to stay with Emma's grandmother while her mom undergoes treatment.
Emma feels out of place in the United States.She begins to have migraines, and longs to be back in Japan. At her grandmother's urging, she volunteers in a long-term care center to help Zena, a patient with locked-in syndrome, write down her poems. There, Emma meets Samnang, another volunteer, who assists elderly Cambodian refugees. Weekly visits to the care center, Zena's poems, dance, and noodle soup bring Emma and Samnang closer, until Emma must make a painful choice: stay in Massachusetts, or return home early to Japan.
Release date:
May 29, 2013
Publisher:
Delacorte Press
Print pages:
528
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Chapter 1 Aura third time it happens I’m crossing the bridge over a brown-green race of water that slides through town on my way to a long-term care center to start volunteering pausing to get my courage up
peering over a rail by a Tow Zone No Stopping on Bridge sign glimpsing shadows below the river’s surface . . . but when I look up the sign is halved-- one side blank the other saying Zone pping idge
I glance back at the water that my grandma YiaYia says used to power this town’s mills which are now closed or reborn as outlet malls, doctors’ offices dance and art studios, clinics and care centers like the one I’m headed to to work with a woman who can’t move her legs her arms her head and can’t even talk but the water has a spot of darkness and my blindness grows to a black hole and I begin to panic
should I find this guy Sam the other volunteer from my high school who’ll introduce me to the recreational therapy director? should I return to the bus stop and try to get to YiaYia’s house? I haven’t lived here long I don’t have a cell phone yet I don’t know if there’s a bus to my grandmother’s neighborhood and I have just twenty minutes before my speech and thoughts shatter I go for Sam
I cross the bridge turn right then left walk up the paved pathway to the Newall Center for Long Term Care where standing by the entrance is a guy whose face looks half there who says I’m Sam Nang--you Emma? I turn my head pan his face with the half of my vision that remains-- Asian, I realize Japanese, I dare hope though I know that’s doubtful here in Massachusetts I tell him yeah, but I’m sick
when he gets that I mean it he says the lobby . . . and leads me inside to a waiting area where I drop onto a chair I feel in my bag pull pills from a plastic case and swallow two caplets with the last swig of water from my bottle along the edge of my blindness flickers a crescent of tiny triangles-- white edged by cuts of blue black yellow my stomach turns I close my eyes try to slow my breathing and feel the thud of Sam sitting down beside me
I squint my eyes open shade them with my hand against too-bright lights and tell him my head I can’t see I need to go home zigzags of light seem to bolt from his jaw I tell him YiaYia’s address and phone number I tell him to tell her migraine
he tries calling but there’s no answer now I’m breathing too fast and as the numbness starts creeping up my arm I can’t help crying okay, okay Sam says I’ll call Chris he’ll drive you home I unwrap the scarf from around my neck drape it over my head to hide in the dimness wishing my grandmother had a cell phone she actually used wishing my mother or father could come get me wishing we’d never left Japan
under the scarf I let myself cry missing my friends from Kamakura Madoka, Kako, Kenji, Shin from Yokohama Min, Grace, Yuta, Sophia whispering their names like a prayer to get me out of here a prayer to get me back there where I know people where I know my way around where I know what to expect where my body didn’t do this
Sam speaks softly into his phone stows it then goes off and has a conversation I can’t quite hear with a person I can’t quite see when he comes back he’s silent just the lobby noise surrounds us after a while I feel him rise return and press a tissue into my hand I wipe my eyes try to keep calm try to keep the light out just breathing through the weave of the scarf as we wait
finally Sam tugs my jacket takes my arm and leads me outside to a car parked near the entrance he speaks to the driver pain slams my head I can hear words catch words grandmother ride back leap sock close here but I can’t connect the words to make meaning I start to get in the car get out throw up in some bushes wipe my mouth with another tissue from Sam get in the car lie down on the backseat my head covered with my scarf and a towel the driver hands me then I close my eyes and let myself be driven off to who knows where by two guys-- one I’ve just met one I don’t know at all
when the car stops doors open close open close the crescent of triangles pulses pulses pulses my arm’s numb half my face, too my head bowling-ball heavy I hear talk outside the window hear the driver say sleep then it’s quiet and I do
Chapter 2 The Afterwards when I wake it’s dusk I lie not moving on the car seat turn onto my back and wait sit up wait testing my head my vision
the car has been pulled into YiaYia’s driveway her back porch light is on when I’m sure the worst is really over I get out walk gingerly to the house taking soft unjarring steps
from the porch I can see my grandmother, the man and Sam all seated in the living room around the coffee table with emptied glasses and a plate of rice cracker packets that my father brought for Toby and me his last visit from New York at the kitchen sink I rinse my mouth wash my face with paper towels then join them easing slowly into one of YiaYia’s armchairs I’m Emma I say resting my head solidly on the chairback nice to meet you and everyone laughs
the man, Chris Sam Nang’s uncle stands, says his wife gets migraines, too you taking anything for them? he asks and I tell him the name of the pills YiaYia’s doctor gave me for whenever the blindness hits same as Beth he says but I threw them up I say that you did he says and he and Sam smile talk to Beth sometime Chris says she’ll tell you ways to avoid attacks-- sleep patterns, exercise . . . it’s good you slept that’s best
soon they’re leaving but I can’t rise from where I’m curled in the armchair my head all aching and fuzzy and full of the afterwards but now that I’m not half blind I can see that Chris’s clothes are spattered with paint and stain and I can see that Sam is lean muscled and Asian but Chris is not
I’m curious but say nothing remembering those girls in the first meeting for Model UN how when I asked anyone here speak Japanese? one rolled her eyes and said Asian doesn’t mean Japanese, you know and when I tried to say of course not, I know that I’m from Japan, is all . . . another girl looked me up and down and said yeah, sure, white girl then a guy across the room whispered Japan--I thought she was glowing! and everyone laughed
YiaYia walks Chris and Sam to the door thanks them, returns, says well, never a dull moment! as she lays a fleece blanket over me I come home to drop the groceries off before going to the Newall Center to pick you up and I find those two lounging on the porch steps-- I thought they’d broken in! turns out they’d been sitting there over an hour they seem nice I say yes she says definitely your angels for today I think I saw the boy at the Newall Center once or twice when I was there for your Papou I ask have you heard from Mom and Dad? did Mom call?
YiaYia eyes me I try to read her face but I don’t know this grandmother well we usually stay in Vermont with Mom’s mother and father near our cousins up there when we come back summers not here with Dad’s mother YiaYia sizes up my state curled in the armchair fuzzy-headed recovering then she picks up the empty glasses did she call? I ask again YiaYia puts down the glasses comes to sit on the chair arm leans close to me and whispers no, but I imagine she’s doing just fine so don’t stress about it
I’m not stressing! I say where’s Toby? she rises and arranges a basket of patchwork coasters at a friend’s for dinner which doesn’t seem fair because right now post-migraine I just want someone from my lived-in-Japan family
not YiaYia who seems to think migraines can be controlled just by flicking a brain switch some thoughts on some thoughts off who wants me to be active and involved who was the one to introduce me to the Newall Center where my Papou spent two years before he died who when she heard they needed a new volunteer poetry helper piped right up with my granddaughter writes poems! meaning those verse scribbles I’d write on her birthday cards
she thinks everything will be fine if I just join groups she thinks everything will be fine if I just meet more Americans and she thinks everything will be fine in Japan that it’s better we’re not there now during the recovery and she thinks everything will be fine in our family but I think she has a strange idea of what’s fine
I think she doesn’t know how much it hurt to leave how much it felt like abandoning Japan and I think she doesn’t know how strange it is to live without our father and I think she doesn’t know what my mother is feeling about having her breast lopped off and I think she doesn’t know what it’s like to be the daughter wondering do I carry those genes, too? my migraines started three days after our move
my mother says I need a strict routine YiaYia sews me a lavender pillow and says to avoid chocolate my father emails me articles one of an exhibit of paintings by migraine sufferers that show the dark hole of blindness and the crescent of zigzagging triangles just like mine
Toby doesn’t say anything after my migraines just asks if I want a bath to feel like I’m home in Japan but Toby’s not here now so in the armchair I pull the scarf over my head and hide inside YiaYia sighs pats my arm picks up the glasses and goes into the kitchen
Chapter 3 Gone I was at the international school where I’d transferred for grade 9 from Japanese school I was in English class when it started a tremor that grew Mr. Hays had taught in Japan only two years so I shouted at him and at Ryan and Keizo who were playing tough “surfing” the quake get under the desks! this isn’t normal!
the building rattled shelves, books, cupboards clattered stuff crashed and fell I thought the walls would give I thought the windows would shatter and I was glad I’d worn my boots they’d keep me warm if the school collapsed on and on the building bumped creaked swayed clanked while under the desks we clutched hands Sophia on one side of me Yohei on the other with the principal’s voice on the loudspeaker now it’s slowing, wait, here’s another tremble stay calm, stay calm, it will be over soon but it seemed like forever later as we waited in our classrooms aftershocks jolting power came on network was up but cell phones were down from a school computer I blast-emailed Mom, Dad, Toby, Madoka YiaYia, Gram, Gramps, cousins-- big quake, I’m at school, everyone here okay not knowing who would see my message or when trains were stopped people were stuck I couldn’t get back to Kamakura and finally was dismissed to walk with Juulia to her house
where I translated Japanese TV news for them while her mother followed Finnish and English news online and where we watched in disbelief as tsunami waves engulfed the Pacific coast of Tohoku I tried calling Madoka in Kamakura whose grandparents, cousins aunts and uncles all live up north in Miyagi near the sea I sat on Juulia’s sofa stone still holding my head hoping those relatives had all run fast
near midnight I reached Mom and Toby in Kamakura their power and heat finally on Dad staying the night in Tokyo and right away I asked but Mom said no Madoka’s family hadn’t heard any news seeing those waves blast away seaside towns that looked like ours towns that could have been ours towns I’ve visited with Madoka . . . I hardly slept all night I rose when I finally heard someone else up at dawn and joined Juulia’s father in stunned silence in front of the TV
midday on the day after Mom came by car to get me and back in Kamakura I went straight to Madoka’s house to help them try to make contact to help them wait for news Dad got home that second night by train, bus, walking and on the third day we learned that Madoka’s grandparents survived her cousins were safe
but later we learned the first floor of her grandparents’ house was ruined one cousin’s school was gone one uncle’s fishing boat was gone one uncle’s factory was gone one aunt’s sister was gone one uncle’s wife was gone and the list of gone went on and on
Chapter 4 Cleanup in late April, Dad and I Madoka and her father packed a van full of supplies cleanup gear and two used bicycles and drove north to Miyagi at her grandparents’ house the waterline was above my head
a car stood on its nose between the kitchen wall and a neighbor’s wall another had bashed down a shed and four were crumpled against a broken utility pole the garden was littered with splintered chairs, a drum shredded mats, plastic crates, clothes a urinal and dresser drawers trees crusted with mud were hung with trash tangled in string and weighted with dead fish
Madoka’s Jiichan, her grandfather pried open the door to his house and we peered inside to furniture heaped, overturned reeking and stuck in oily salty sludge but at least they still had a house-- a couple streets away the waterline hit two stories and beyond that all the way to the sea . . . there was only rubble
we dressed in rainsuits and boots helmets, masks and goggles and worked our way inside shoveling muck into bags lugging bags out Madoka and I were a team taking turns bag-holding muck-shoveling picking out rotting fish removing broken glass teams of men hauled out soaked tatami mats and ruined appliances we shoveled sludge from floors then from under floors from behind the toilet from inside kitchen cabinets we salvaged dishes, pots and pans jewelry, photos, unopened bottles of sake
we discarded furniture, futons, clothes, books, shoes, papers phones, place mats, curtains, stuffed animals during lunch or breaks
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
