Ink and Ashes
Authors: Valynne E. Maetani
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Valynne E. Maetani
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
TU BOOKS,
an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS Inc.,
95 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
leeandlow.com
Book design by Sammy Yuen
Cover calligraphy (INK) and chapter numerals by Brian Ray
Japanese translation by Masaji Watabe
First Edition
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress
To Ashley, for her birthday
People go to hell for what I’m about to do.
The old man glares at me, his face so close I can see the wrinkles on his forehead stretch wide when he speaks.
“Do you know who I am?” he yells.
I choke on his stale, smoke-filled breath. A thick Japanese accent stains his words. “Do you know who you are?”
Claire Takata. Daughter of loving parents. Devoted sister. Loyal friend.
He strikes me with the back of his hand, the force almost tipping the chair I’m tied to. The sting sends a burning shiver down the side of my face.
“Answer me!” he demands.
I am the heiress to a legacy I wish I’d never discovered.
The cold night prickles my skin. I twist my hands, trying to escape, but the rope cuts into my wrists. I swallow hard and try again.
All the terror he’s put me through makes anger storm inside. I want to hurt this man as much as he has hurt me. If I were free, I could kill this man right now.
Without guilt.
I STARED AT
my pink walls, wishing away the smell of death. Jasmine incense, used at every funeral I had ever attended, hovered in the air. I imagined the wispy smoke snaking its way through the narrow spaces around my closed door, the tendrils prying at tucked-away memories.
A breeze drifted through my open window, bristling the hair on my neck. My chest wrenched tighter.
It was time.
The morning sun hadn’t found its way into the hallway yet, so I flipped on some lights and wandered into my older brother’s room. Parker faced a wall crowded with overlapping soccer posters. He stuck the final pin into another picture, covering the last glimpse of light blue paint. “Hey, Claire,” he said without looking at me.
“Ready?” I said.
“I was just thinking,” Parker said, “I’m not going to be here next year.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I waited for him to crack a joke, but he didn’t.
Parker turned his stocky body. “No. I mean, I won’t be home to do the ceremony with you guys.”
Every day since school had started, he’d made sure we all knew he couldn’t wait to go to college. And I couldn’t wait to get rid of him. But somehow the sadness in his voice made the hollow space grow larger.
Parker paused for an expectant moment, then said, “Do you remember the time he took us fishing at Pokai Bay, and I caught five fish?” He removed his black-rimmed glasses and cleaned the lenses with the hem of his shirt.
I’d forgotten about that, but now I could picture the rainbow of color dancing off the water and the way my body rocked in rhythmic waves long after we had gotten off the boat. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if a memory was really mine or if it was something I thought I remembered because someone else had talked about it.
“That was a good day.” I tried to summon happy experiences to push away the bad memories flooding my head, but I couldn’t break the good ones free. I clenched my fists and kicked at an ink stain on the gray carpet. “Mom’s probably waiting for us.”
“Let’s get Avery,” Parker said.
He lumbered past me, and I followed him down the hallway. Pictures of all three of us kids at different ages and events lined the walls. The oak floorboards creaked beneath our feet, and we found our younger brother stretched on his bed, his shaggy black hair strewn across the pillow. His walls were papered with posters of skateboarders and snowboarders, but unlike Parker’s random clusters, Avery’s wall hangings were hung with precision.
Before Parker even opened his mouth, Avery announced, “I’m not doing it this year. It’s a dumb tradition and doesn’t mean anything anyway.”
“He was our father,” Parker said. His plump cheeks flushed pink.
My jaw started to tighten. “Show some respect.”
Avery shivered a surrendering sigh and rose, as if getting out of bed took all the energy he could muster.
When we got to the butsudan in the corner of the living room, Mom was already at the lacquered shrine, her hands in prayer position, palms together, held at chest level. Parker gave her hip a gentle bump and put an arm around her, eclipsing her slight frame.
After squeezing Mom’s shoulder, Parker took a few steps forward and began the ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of our father’s death. The familiar smoky smell overpowered me, forcing my mind to awaken with unwanted memories: the suddenness of my father’s passing just before my seventh birthday. The invasion of people I’d never met. The weeks it took before Mom could get out of bed.
Willing myself to follow Parker’s example, I moved toward the altar, placed my hands together, and bowed. I pinched some ground incense, dropped it in the burner, and bowed again. Once back in place, I bowed a final time, the twinge of my father’s absence weighing on me.
Avery repeated the ritual so quickly that he almost dropped his prayer beads. After his final bow, he mumbled, “Until next year, Henry,” and slouched away.
I shook my head. Did he really just call our father by his first name?
Mom closed her eyes.
“You’d think he’d at least act like he cared a little more,” Parker said.
I caught Avery’s hurt expression as he started up the stairs.
“Sometimes,” Mom said, “it’s the memories we should have had that are most painful.” She chased after Avery, but I heard his door slam before she could reach him. I didn’t remember much about my father, but Avery, even though he was only a year younger than I was, probably remembered even less.
Parker meditated a few more moments before he left. I lingered behind, brushing my toes in an arc along the patterns of the Oriental rug. Mom came back downstairs and announced she was going grocery shopping. The garage door rumbled open, and then closed.
I sat at the grand piano in the far corner. Because I had quit lessons a couple of years ago, the selection of pieces I could play from memory had become more limited, but I still had some favorites. I settled on a nocturne by Chopin and let my mind wander along the soft and lilting phrases. By the time I finished, my head felt less crowded.
In the distance, the sound of thunder strummed. Dad was up—his light was on in his study across from the living room—but he never joined this ceremony. I guess he wanted to give us some space. I walked across the cold wood floor of the hallway and made my way to my room. At the top of the stairs, I glanced at a picture of five-year-old me, in the time before we moved here, dressed in a lavender Hawaiian floral-print muumuu with an orchid lei around my neck. I barely remembered that life—the life with our father.
Whether it was a picture of us with my father or stepdad, Mom never displayed pictures of our whole family. Not on this wall, not in this house, not even in old baby albums. She had mentioned she didn’t want to be living with a ghost in her marriage to my stepdad, but since she didn’t have pictures of him either, I figured it was fair for both of my fathers.
While I loved the comfort of my room, the pink color of everything was overwhelming. Pink was my mom’s version of a girl’s room, not mine. When we first moved here, I refused to decorate the walls until they were a different color, but had never convinced her to budge. As I got old enough to paint it myself, I still hated pink but no longer cared enough to do anything about it.
I dug behind some shoes in my closet to get to a box where I kept some of my father’s things. The cardboard was marked with smudges, and the lid was starting to come apart at one corner.
Inside the box was a worn old notebook bound in burgundy leather. My father had journaled in it, recording inspirational quotes and making notes.
Technically, it shouldn’t have been in my possession. When we moved to Utah, Mom had had movers box up some of my father’s old things because she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She figured she could sort through everything when she was ready. But before she had the chance, I went through the boxes myself. She never noticed the journal—and a few other things—was missing, and I never mentioned I had it.
I sucked in a deep breath, the smell of old paper and leather filling my lungs. The entries about us kids were the ones I loved the most. I flipped to one in which he had written about the time he took me to see hula performances at the Merrie Monarch Festival. I didn’t remember that festival, but I’m pretty sure I was his favorite child.
When I turned to a page toward the end to read another entry, I sliced my finger on a cardstock edge that had come unglued from the back cover. I dropped the journal.
A bead of blood formed on the tip of my pointer finger. I couldn’t believe how much those tiny things could sting. I grabbed a tissue from my desk and pressed it against the cut.
Blood hadn’t gotten on the notebook, and I hadn’t smeared anything, but there was a piece of paper sticking out from a pocket between the unglued cardstock and the back cover. I slid my finger into the tight opening and pulled it out. It was an envelope, addressed to George Takata, my stepdad, but it wasn’t sealed and had never been postmarked, so it must not have been sent. Inside was a letter.
I set the letter down. The taste of blood splashed across my tongue, and I realized I had bitten my bottom lip.
My fathers knew each other?