When You Were Here (11 page)

“I think she speaks great English. Much better than my Japanese, that’s for sure.”

“Speaking of, Mr. Danny. How long are you here? And are you going to learn some Japanese? Because I think it’s a sorry sin that all you know how to say is
sumimasen
.”

“I know a few more words.”

“Saying
arigato
doesn’t count.”

“Fine. It’s a sin,” I admit, deliberately choosing to keep the mood light, so she’ll like me, so she’ll keep talking, keep sharing, though it feels like playacting and it’s taking all my concentration to remember my lines, to volley like this, a foreign activity for me after so many months. But the last thing I need is for her—the keeper of information—to shut down as I have. So I opt to make fun of myself. “Especially since I’ve been here so many times. It’s totally embarrassing.”

“I’m almost, like, so embarrassed to be seen with you
right now,” she teases as she points to a side street for us to head down. We pass a
pachinko
parlor, where middle-aged guys in suits and young dudes in tight jeans feed coins into the Japanese slot machines.

“Anyway, I don’t know how long I’m staying, so…” My voice trails off, because the truth is what difference does the length of my trip have to do with whether or not I learn the language? I know enough to handle the most basic of transactions, but that’s all.

Kana shakes a finger at me and rattles off a torrent of Japanese words that make no sense. Then she laughs, her mouth wide open. I wish I knew what she said.

“I bet you wish you knew Japanese now,” she says, and pokes me a few times in the chest. I think she is half-imp, half-elf.

“And I think you might be a mind reader,” I say as we reach a candy-yellow door next to a window display with a pyramid full of springy cakes. Small chocolates in all shapes and sizes cascade down the sides.

But she’s more than a mind reader. She’s the girl who’s been privy to stories, maybe even to secrets. And even though I soon learn that sponge cake drenched in blueberry jam and soaked in chocolate sauce is officially awesome, what tastes even better is that Kana says yes when I ask her if she’ll take me to the Tatsuma Teahouse right now.

I try to ignore the nerves inside me as Kana guides me through streets I never knew existed. I try to swat away a nagging worry in the back of my mind. What if, after all this, after five thousand miles, after leaving California to search for what’s left of my family, I find no more than I came with? What if my mom wasn’t going for some Hail Mary Pass? What if there’s
nothing
at the teahouse, and all I learn is that my mom just liked to drink tea? End of story. Case closed.

Then I’ll be as empty-handed as when I left Takahashi’s.

I make myself focus on Kana and what she’s saying about Tokyo as she slides into the role of tour guide, chattering as we dart across a busy intersection, then down another side street. This one is quieter and filled with homes
rather than shops and arcades. It’s weird because I feel like I know Tokyo. I can get around town on any subway, making the right connections, getting off at the right stops, finding the restaurants, stores, museums, and all that stuff. But now I feel blind, like it’s my first time here. Because I realize I’ve never really explored the tiny, twisty roads and lanes that jut off the main drags and take you to places you’d never find with just an address, a number on a piece of paper. They say Tokyo is laid out this way because of the wars—that the Japanese built zigzag streets that crisscross haphazardly to make it tough for invaders to march straight through the city and seize it.

At the end of one street that’s more like a narrow stone path, we reach a wrought-iron fence. Kana opens the gate. I follow her, and she closes the gate behind us. We’re inside a small fenced-in garden. Kana guides me down a winding path, past trees and bushes. Behind the largest tree is a small teahouse, perched at the edge of a pond.

Kana declares, “Ta-da!” with a flourish of her arm. We’ve reached an ancient-looking door with traditional Japanese writing across the front. “This is Tatsuma Teahouse,” Kana whispers, reverence in her voice. “There’s a legend that the tea leaves are not ordinary tea leaves. That they have mystical powers.”

Mystical powers.
That must be it. That must be what my mom believed. That’s got to be the reason she came here. She
was
going for broke, just like I thought when I read Kana’s letter.

“Tell me everything,” I say.

Kana straightens herself, spreads her arms as if summoning an ancient spirit, and then begins.

“There’s a legend that one of the Japanese emperors a long time ago had a young and beautiful wife, who was suddenly taken ill. He loved her desperately and searched far and wide for the best doctors across the archipelago to treat her. He even sent his men to find doctors in China. That’s how much he loved her. For the emperor to turn to foreigners was a sign of how desperate he’d become. And they came. They came by ship to treat her. But with each successive doctor, she grew more ill. She couldn’t rise. She lay in bed all day, and fever started to take over her body and her brain. She was hallucinating, talking to people who didn’t exist. But the emperor loved her so, and when she muttered something about the tea leaves in the nearby fields, he went himself to search. And there, in the fields near his palace, fields that had grown only rice before, there was one single row of plants with tea leaves sprouting up from the land.”

Kana gestures softly, gently, with her hands, as if she’s drawing up a tea leaf from the ground. She continues in her hushed tone, and for a brief second I feel like I’m in temple and the rabbi is about to speak. “And he gathered them himself.” She demonstrates, as if she’s plucking leaf after leaf off a bush. “And he carried them back to the palace, not dropping a single leaf. Then he commanded the royal tea master to brew tea with these leaves. He asked for a
perfect pot of tea. The tea master complied, only boiling the water until the tiniest bubbles appeared, then pouring right away, then steeping for exactly the proper amount of time. The emperor brought the steaming teapot on a tray to his wife, and he poured the cup himself. She pushed it away at first, but he gently insisted, encouraging her to try it. He told her it was the tea she’d been asking for. She took a sip, then another, and then she looked at him, and said”—Kana pauses now, reaches out her hand and places it on my cheek, like she’s acting, like she’s playing the part of the young wife—“
my love
.”

Her hand is warm, and her touch feels good. She leaves her hand on my face for a few more seconds as she continues. “And every day she drank more, and every day she grew stronger. And then she was cured.”

Cured.
Such a gorgeous word, such a painful word. The word I prayed for, begged for, bargained for, hoped for. The only word in the English language that mattered.

Kana takes her hand off me. My face feels cold. I want her hand back. I want her to touch my cheek again.

“And they were together for many years. They had five healthy children and lived long and prosperous lives. And the wife gave thanks every day for the Tatsuma tea leaves that had grown in the fields when she most needed them.”

I want to laugh. I want to scoff. I want to blow this all off. But something about the way she is speaking warns me not to. And something about the way she tells the story makes me want to believe in the tea too. It wouldn’t kill me
to believe in something for once. It wouldn’t kill me to believe in the same sort of possibility that my mom believed in. After all, she was the happy one, not me, not the black hole of a son. Maybe my mom had it figured out. Maybe the potential of getting well was enough of an elixir to bring her joy.

“And now it is said that Tatsuma leaves can cure disease when all other treatments have failed. It is said Tatsuma leaves bring a calmness, a healing to the mind and the body, when nothing else works. And so Takahashi sent your mother here. And we accompanied her. Because legend has it that no foreigner can find the Tatsuma leaves on his or her own.”

Now I do laugh. I’ve had enough of the white-boy ribbing from my sister. “Give me a break.”

She shakes her head and places a finger on her lips. A bird flutters by overhead. A mosquito lands on my arm. I slap it away. The garden is quiet; the silence is eerie. “Danny, it is the legend. You do not question it. You must respect it.”

Okay. So this girl, despite the wild clothes, is traditional in her own way too.

I hold my hands up. “Fine, I respect it. Did my mom respect it? Did my mom, you know, believe in that story?”

Kana nods. “For a long time, yes. She believed in the possibility with all her heart.”

I wonder why she never told me, never shared these beliefs with me. I knew she was a fighter. And sure, I know
she wanted to live. But I was never privy to these deeper hopes.

“Can we go in now?”

“Yes,” she says, and pulls the heavy red door open.

It’s like walking into a shrine. There are no windows. The room is lit only by candlelight. Five low tables are arranged on the stone floor. Cushions in dark colors—crimsons and royal blues and forest greens—surround the tables instead of chairs. It is traditional Japanese seating. Each table has a tea set as a centerpiece—small cast-iron kettles flanked by cups without handles. Kana points to my shoes. I slip off my flip-flops and place them in a wooden cubby. Kana removes her massive shoes. A woman wearing a green kimono emerges from behind a wood door. Kana speaks to her in Japanese. The woman gestures to one of the tables, and we sit.

“Are we supposed to drink this Tatsuma? Even though we’re not sick?” I whisper.

Kana nods and then reaches for my hands, one hand in each of hers. She bows her head and whispers words I don’t know and don’t understand. I follow her lead, bowing my head too. She looks up and smiles a peaceful smile. She was frenetic, manic energy spilling out of her until we arrived here. Now she is calm. Maybe this place does have magical powers.

Soon the woman swoops in, scooping up the tea set in the center of the table and replacing it with a new set, a steaming teapot and two mugs. She raises the pot several
feet in the air and tilts the spout down. I watch as scalding liquid pours out. I hope she has good aim. I hope it’s as good as mine when I was in the zone on the pitcher’s mound. Actually, I hope it’s better.

She fills the cups. Then she looks at Kana, and more words rain down. The woman chatters for a minute, then another, Kana nodding and smiling the whole time. The only words I understand are the last ones that she says to me, “
Domo arigato
.”

“
Domo arigato
,” I repeat, wondering what I’m thanking her for.

“She says she was honored to take care of your mother,” Kana says.

“Take care of her?”

“Yes. She served her tea. Like I told you.”

“But how is that taking care of her?”

Kana shushes me and urges me to drink. I take a sip. It tastes like barley. Like hot barley. What’s so special about this
healing tea
?

I press. “How was she taking care of my mom if she died?” I am sick of beating around the bush. I want to know what all these legends, all this tea and happiness and healing cures, are supposed to mean. “In case you didn’t know, she died. Okay? There was no cure. The tea didn’t work. Turns out it’s not mystical after all. She’s gone. Done. Sayonara. The jig is up.” My voice is caustic, the words corrosive, but inside I just want so badly to know all the things my mom never told me.

“It’s not that simple, Danny,” Kana says in a soft voice. “Nothing ever is.”

I push back from the table. But it’s not too easy to make a swift exit when you’re sitting barefoot and cross-legged on a pillow. I fumble around, trying to scoot back more, but my legs feel stuck.

“Stay.”

I obey, because it’s easier than untangling myself from this table. But I don’t drink any more tea.

“So you are here. In Tokyo.”

“Obviously.”

She rolls her eyes pointedly, then pats the small handbag she carries. It looks like a stuffed panda with handles. “Danny, I carry a panda purse. Do you think sarcasm bothers me?” She holds out her arms wide and smiles big. “I am impervious.”

I nod, giving her a tip of the hat. “Fair enough. I’m sorry.”

“Now, would you like to see the pictures?”

“Yes.”

She reaches into the purse and places some photos on the table. My mom in her hot-pink wig holding up a cup of tea like she’s making a toast. “I loved her wigs. All of them,” Kana says wistfully, reminding me that I still have to decide what to do with those wigs—and all my mom’s other things.

“Was she at this same table? The same one we’re at?”

“She liked this table. She called it her lucky table.”

I take that in, the idea that I’m sitting at the same table where my mom sat a few months ago. All my scoffing, all my scorn, drains away.
Lucky.
I wish she’d been one of the lucky ones. “But the table wasn’t so lucky for her at all. The tea didn’t heal her.”

“Sometimes healing isn’t about our bodies,” Kana says.

The tea is still in front of me. I don’t like the way it tastes. I don’t like that it didn’t work how I wanted it to. But luck? I sure could use some of that. I take another drink. It’s not mystical tea. It doesn’t bring eyesight to the blind. But drinking it again makes me turn over a new possibility: that maybe what my mom was searching for wasn’t healing from the disease, but healing from the way it can hollow your heart.

“She even asked Mrs. Mori if we could take this picture because the teahouse doesn’t allow cameras. Mrs. Mori likes your mom, so she made an exception.” Kana nods at the back of the teahouse, and I gather that Mrs. Mori is the woman who poured the tea. “Your mom didn’t have her phone, so I used my camera and told her I’d give her a real copy, not just a digital one. But I forgot! I’m so sorry. I meant to send it to you.”

“To me?”

Kana nods. “Yes. The photo was for you. She said,
Danny can’t be here, so let’s show him the teahouse.
”