A memory of my father: we are on the train together—the subway that goes above ground, the subway that goes below ground, and we are on our way. On our way to so many places.

A memory of my father: the train stops at a station and my father stands up. I stand up with him, but he tells me to sit down. “Don’t get up,” he says. “I’m just going to check the map.” He holds onto the doorway and lurches outside; his body is out of the train car, getting as close to the map on the platform as possible. It looks like he is about to let go and jump out onto the platform, and I imagine the train doors closing with me in it and him outside of it, and I become afraid and rush to his side. “Hey, I told you to stay seated,” he tells me, chuckling. I hold firmly onto his hand and don’t let go.

A memory of my father: we are looking at the big mosquito figure at the Museum of Natural History. It’s enormous, especially considering the size of an actual mosquito. Its legs are long—long enough to send shivers down my spine. But I can’t stop looking. It’s more fascinating than the dinosaur bones. The weirdness. The creepiness. While the other children stare at the bones and bones of dinosaurs, I stare at the artificial figure of a mosquito. I wonder what my father thinks of this. He lets me look for as long as I want.

A memory of my father: we are in Japan. I am on the back of his bicycle while he pedals towards the みたらし団子[1] shop. I am scared when he goes fast down the hill, but he asks me, “Isn’t this fun?” and I nod, deeply. Only the rides remain as memories, no matter how hard I search, I do not remember actually eating団子 with him.

A memory of my father: I am screaming-crying in my parents’ room. My mother and father are both outside, either discussing how to calm me down, or ignoring me. I scream and shout that I want to leave, but my father sticks a slipper under the door so I cannot open it. “You just need to take a minute and calm down,” they must’ve said, cheek on the door, though I don’t remember. Being stuck in a room alone is supposed to soothe me, but what they don’t know is how anxious I feel when I am without them. Eventually, I pee on the floor.

A memory of my father: Bath time. He asks me to teach him Japanese. I teach him how to say あ　い　う　え　お[2]. He repeats the sounds after me. I teach him how to say りんご[3] and he tries to say it just like I do, but his tongue doesn’t move the way mine does, and I giggle. “What, am I saying it wrong??” he asks, exaggeratedly, and I tell him, “Yes, daddy. It’s り     ん    ご” but it’s no use. He can never get it right. I don’t care. I find it charming.

A memory of my father: He is slumped over. It’s an easy chair or something, a chair for one person, for one body, and he cannot sit in it without slouching over. He isn’t himself. He doesn’t smile at me or tell me to come sit on his lap. He looks distracted. He looks pale. He keeps saying he’s okay, but nobody believes him. Family members come and surround the single-person chair. An ambulance comes. He is taken away. The EMTs tell me, “Don’t worry, daddy’ll be good” but I am scared. I am scared of the ambulance, how loud and flashy it is.

A memory of my father: he stops his car next to us and looks a little bit annoyed as he looks at my mother through the window. My mother had decided to walk with me and my baby sister to Toys R’ Us, about a mile away from the house. My father must’ve told her not to, that it was too far and the neighborhood unsafe for an immigrant mother with two young daughters, but she had refused to listen. My mother was tired of waiting for him all of the time. Waiting for him to come home from work; waiting for him to get out of his long slumps. “Come on, get in the car,” he says, and we all climb into the car. He drives the rest of the way, for me to get my toy kitchen.

A memory of my father: he is reading me a book. A picture book that we borrowed from the library. There’s a black dog in it, and he uses different voices for different characters. I don’t know how we are sitting. Am I leaning on him? Am I sitting on his lap? Are his arms wrapped around me? I wish I can remember.

I wish I can remember so much more. Some of my memories are blended with photographs and video footage. I only remember his voice because of the videos. I only remember his favorite hat because of the photographs. I don’t remember his smell, I don’t remember the way his beard felt, I don’t remember how his eyes looked, I don’t remember the warmth emanating from his skin. Did he have freckles on his back? I can’t remember his teeth. What did the room feel like when he laughed? How did he put on his socks? Did he eat quickly or slowly? I shuffle through the memories so carefully preserved in my mind, but they are gone. Or they were never there. 

second brain

Since moving to America, I was plagued with a stomachache every day. This was a large part of the reason I didn’t want to go to school. Because I would spend the entire day with my stomach in knots. I was convinced that one day, I would burst and release everything inside of me, filling the classroom with vile green vomit, still vibrating organs, fresh warm blood, white bones. I ate as little as possible to avoid this nightmare—I convinced myself that the less my stomach had to work, the less likely it would trigger a burst. Eventually, I associated the feeling of hunger with comfort.

I complained about my stomachache to my mother sometimes, whenever she had a free moment. She took me to a doctor at a hospital once, but all he did was stick his finger in my asshole while all of his residents watched, and then told my mother that I should see a psychiatrist because I didn’t make eye contact with him when he was talking to me.

The stomachache started as soon as our plane’s wheels touched the tarmac of JFK, following three meals of plane food. I felt queasy after I got to my aunt’s house, and that queasiness lasted years. One time, when we were still at my aunt’s, she came home with a bottle of Pepto Bismol, and my mother made me take a shot of the pink, viscous sludge out of the plastic cup, but as soon as it entered my mouth I spat it out. It was too soon to start trusting American medication.

They say that a second brain lies in our gut. The brain is called “enteric nervous system” and it communicates back and forth with our actual brain. ENS triggers big emotional shifts, and people with digestive problems often have anxiety and/or depression.

My second brain, my gut brain was processing way faster than my actual brain. It knew what was coming before we even touched down in America. My second brain was sending me alarms, warnings, but my main brain was trying to learn a new language, trying to make friends, trying to fit in, trying to get used to the basement, trying to understand that I would never see my father again.

Get the fuck out of there. Go back. Resist, my second brain was telling me.

You have no choice but to stay. Push forward. Conform, my main brain was telling me.

new car

            I was in seventh grade when my mother finally purchased a car.

            We had been without a car for three years now, ever since immigrating to America. Despite living in a suburban area of Queens, where 99% of our neighbors had a car, we walked or took the bus everywhere. We’d go to the laundromat with a cart carrying bags bloated with dirty clothes from the week, we’d wait endlessly at a bus stop with bags of groceries by our feet for a bus on a Sunday schedule, and whenever I was invited to a friend’s house, I’d have to awkwardly ask them if their parents could pick me up and drop me off. On Halloween in sixth grade, I made plans to go trick-or-treating with a group of friends, and one of them said her dad could pick me up and drive us both to our friend’s house. I dressed up in my witch costume and waited for her to come by at six as promised, but she didn’t come. Thirty minutes passed and she was still not there, and another friend from the group called me to ask where I was. “I’m still at home!” “Oh. Well, we’re going to get started because it’s getting late. Call us when you get here!” I started crying after I hung up, and screamed at my mother when she asked me what was wrong. “It’s because we don’t even have a car! You’re supposed to drive me!”

            The friend did eventually come, and I climbed into her dad’s car with puffy, red eyes. We found our friends before their bags were too full of candy, and I ended up having a great time that night. But it felt so embarrassing to have to rely on someone else to give me a ride. It felt like we were incapable, even though I’m sure my friend’s father didn’t mind at all.

            So, it was a monumental for us when my mother finally purchased a car. We went to a Japanese used car dealership in Fort Lee, only a few minutes from Mitsuwa, the giant Japanese grocery store. The owner of the dealership picked us up from the parking lot of the supermarket. He was an ageing man with barely any hair on the top of his head, but he had kind eyes and his face melted like soft chocolate when he smiled. I always had an extra level of trust with Japanese people, especially after we moved abroad. Maybe because they looked like the family I grew up with, or maybe because most Japanese people are trustworthy. Whatever it was, my mother must have felt the same.

            The dealership was run by this man and his wife, who was warm and welcoming like an aunt. They had a small garage of an office, and they told us to take a seat and promptly served us hot green tea. My mother had already spoken to the man on the phone, and they’d decided that the three-year-old 2003 preowned Toyota Matrix was the best fit for us. The hatchback was good for transporting big things, but the car itself was not much bigger than a sedan, which felt unintimidating to drive for my mother, who’d never driven outside of Japan (except for the few driving lessons she received and the driver’s test which she had to take twice to pass).

            The car looked as good as new—its silver body was shining like a trophy and the soft seats didn’t have a single spec of lint. Even though it was preowned, its previous owner was an expat’s wife who hardly drove it. She’d only used it to shuttle her kids to and from school, and maybe on occasional trips to the local grocery store. Longer outings were done in her husband’s car.

            During the test drive, my mother looked radiant but nervous, her back pin straight and her hands clutching tightly onto the wheel. I wanted to tell her to relax, but I knew a comment like that from her own daughter would make her angry, so I sat back in my seat.

            When the paperwork was signed and the Matrix officially belonged to my mother, she took out the MapQuest directions we’d printed out at home from her purse and handed them to me. The pages laid out detailed directions from Mitsuwa to our place in Queens.

            My mother tensed up even more when we left the dealership and said goodbye to the couple, who’d come outside to wave. On the road, the car was smooth, but we were going very slowly because my mother felt afraid of stepping on the gas pedal too hard. In Japan, she’d only driven manuals, so she was nervous what the automatic was capable of. The first few times she braked, our bodies lurched forward and the seatbelt tightened on our chests.

            “Okay, you’re going to turn left to get on the George Washington Bridge.”

           “Which left?”

           “It says to turn left at Bruce Reynolds Boulevard.”

           “Where is that?”

           “I don’t know!”

           “How do you not know?? You’re in charge of navigating!”

           “How am I supposed to know?! I’ve never driven before!”

           When we eventually got to the George Washington Bridge, my mother stopped at the tollbooth, but she didn’t have enough cash to pay the toll. Fortunately, the woman at the booth was kind and let her go without punishment, but my mother was panicking again. “What if there are more tolls?! Where do I go next? I can’t navigate and drive. The traffic here is insane!”

           I don’t know how we managed to drive all the way to Queens without crashing. With my mother’s skittish driving; with the MapQuest directions printed over several pages; with my inexperienced navigation; with no money to pay the tolls; with a brand new car we were strangers to.

           Now, I am the one who mostly drives the ancient Matrix. Its silver shine replaced by a dulling gray, it makes noises like crickets in the engine and the window wipers don’t scrape off all of the rain. On the back windshields are a Boston University sticker and a Cornell University sticker, a source of embarrassment for me, but something that my mother is proud of. All of the tires are missing their rim.

           My mother still goes to the same Japanese dealership for repairs, though it has since relocated from Fort Lee to Leonia because they are gentrifying Fort Lee. The old man was told to make room for a new luxury apartment to be built on the plot.

           “I’m going to die with the car,” my mother proclaimed, after she came home from a trip to the dealership for a check-up on the car. “That’s crazy,” I told her.

           I think the car has maybe a few more good years left, but I will not let the car outlive my mother.

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[1] Mitarashi dango: skewered rice dumplings in a sweet soy glaze.

[2] a i u e o: phonetic alphabet in Japanese

[3] Ringo: apple

– Rebecca Suzuki