Secret Codes & Oppressive Histories

1

Ann Arbor looks airbrushed by a lush and bountiful acrylic mist, at least until the train passes the outskirts and the sun slowly eats away at the lingering murk. He doesn’t miss A2 yet because he can’t imagine being anyplace else. He looks through the window at wobbly houses near the tracks where rusty pick-up trucks, overturned recycling bins, and hand-me-down bikes have sunk into soggy grass lawns. He loves the lullaby of the quiet train, the way the sun drills large holes through a pageant of clouds, he loves the endless parishes of trees, which remind him of the outskirts of Tokyo, the idea of Tokyo somehow even larger than the city itself (just like Ann Arbor), he loves the basic idea of nature, the open space, the clean lyricism of the sky. It’s easy to love something you don’t have to commit to. Besides, three days is hardly a vacation. Barely enough time to exhale really. But his daughter asked him to visit her in Chicago for the first time in fifteen years, and he jumped on the first available Amtrak with a reserved coach ticket in his yellow hands that were wrinkled by four divorces and discolored by thirty years of smoking. He’s been waiting for the slightest peep, the slightest spark of communication from her since the day Shizuko changed her address and phone number without warning. She didn’t even give him the simplest sentence conjunction. It was only after his fourth wife passed away of breast cancer and a gingered liver that she invited him to her cottage. And really, that was the first time he really wanted to go see her again.

2

When you were a little girl riding with your otCosan, you always preferred the backseat. Up front, you were a forced guide: you helped with directions, unfolding each layer and imaginary story from the state map, you reconnoitered crucial information and counted exits, you negotiated radio stations and numbers for the heating fan, when you were cold you lobbied for 4, but 4 was wasteful, dad said, sliding the heat to 3. His fists were always smoking, clenching the steering wheel as a cigarette burned between his knuckles like he was an infernal scion. The front seat was mythological like a Genji tale, the place where your dad’s fists blanched and smoked like brimstone, but it was also merciless, pruned of shadow and devoid of vertigo. Sitting shotgun was a lot of work without any power for such a young girl obsessed with romance manga, Atom bomb survivors, and number theory.

3

Fifteen years is a long time, long enough to re-invent your hapa daughter or pretend she died in The Sunni Triangle, fighting in an illegal war she knew you hated after she’d enlisted. Long enough to bury the old photo albums in the attic and drag them back out again when you’re between wives and hardpacks. Now, he’s afraid she will look older than he does. Gin, children, PTSD, and canned food will do that to you. The truth is, he couldn’t stand Shizuko’s militia husband and his weird survivalism: teaching the kids to hunt, fish and fire rifles before they knew how to spell their own names, forcing them to use candles instead of electricity, the radio instead of the TV, dressing the boys in camouflage and combat boots, homeschooling them in bear traps, wilderness survival, field leadership, Christianity, shoe polish, and trench warfare. What the hell kind of education was that? He felt personally responsible for every mistake Shizuko made in her life, but he still wanted her in his life, at least tangentially. Her dreary husband, however, didn’t approve of her blunt father, the Karate Sensei and the Iraq War critic. She made a choice, and goddammit, it was the wrong one.

4

In the backseat, you had no rights, no responsibilities, no pathologies as a mixedrace Japanese girl. You didn’t even exist, except as a voice, disjointed from your body, your words floating abstractly towards the...