THE LITTLE GIRL lifted her menu, peered at the upside-down script, and lowered it again. “Ojiichan, do you think they have French fries here?”
Her grandfather’s lips curled into an indulgent smile. “If they don’t we’ll go somewhere where they do.”
Deena lowered her menu with a sigh. “Don’t tell her that.” When she turned to Tak, it was with an accusatory glare. “I thought you said you were going to talk to him about this. About spoiling her.”
“I did. You see the good it did.”
Deena turned back to Daichi. “Well, I’ll tell you myself. Stop spoiling her or she’ll be unbearable in a few years.” She shook her head. “And anyway, there are other people here besides her. I for one have been waiting for weeks to come here.”
She looked up to see the waiter place a sushi and sashimi spread before them.
“Lord Jesus,” Grandma Emma murmured.
Daichi smiled at the old woman before turning to the tray, examining the spread with a critical eye.
“Looks good,” he said cheerfully.
Emma snorted. Tak and Deena exchanged knowing, smothered smiles.
“Now listen here, Emma. You’ll honor our agreement. I held up my end of the bargain, and now you’ll do the same,” Daichi warned.
Mia squealed. “When ojiichan ate chittlins his face was red!”
Daichi laughed. “You see? You owe me.”
Emma sighed. “But this hardly seem equal to me.”
“You’re right. I was forced to eat pig entrails, whereas you have a fresh selection of the highest quality seafood.”
“But you ain’t cooked none of it!” Emma cried.
Daichi clapped his hands in delight. “You’re a real treat, Emma, a real treat. But a deal is a deal.” He leaned forward and with chopsticks began plucking the various pieces he wanted her to eat, setting them on the empty plate before her. “Let’s see…We’ll do a bit of sashimi here, salmon and tuna. Also, some eel and cucumber—”
“Come on Dad, give her a break,” Tak laughed.
“What?” Deena cried. “When we were dating you gave me eel and salmon roe!”
“Good point, Deena,” Daichi grinned. “Let’s add a bit of gukanmaki to this plate and you’re ready to go. That, of course, is sushi with three types of roe in it.”
“Now what the devil is roe?” Emma asked, jabbing at one of the hand-rolled pieces of sushi.
“Oh my God, don’t tell her. It’s better if you don’t tell her,” Deena warned.
Daichi offered wasabi and soy sauce to Emma as all eyes turned to her.
“Lord, I guess it’s now or never,” she murmured, raising the eel and cucumber to her mouth.
“Place it all in your mouth at once,” Daichi advised, his eyes dancing.
With two fingers, Emma jammed the sushi into her mouth. Mia shrieked.
“Lord have mercy!” Emma cried around the food.
“My God, I never thought she’d do it,” Deena whispered, turning to Tak.
“What, are you kidding? My dad would’ve rode her forever,” Tak murmured.
As Emma chewed, her eyes watered.
“Swallow it! You’ll only prolong it this way,” Daichi laughed.
Emma spat in a napkin before bursting into a coughing, laughing fit.
“You don’t expect that one to count, do you? I swallowed a record nine portions of your chitterlings! You’ll never get anywhere spewing pieces from your mouth like that,” Daichi said.
“I don’t know why he’s doing this,” Tak said. “When he gets back from Japan she told me that she’s going to make him eat possum.”
“What?” Deena laughed. “Where in the hell is she gonna find possum?”
Tak shrugged. “She says she knows a guy that goes back and forth to Mississippi all the time, and that he’s going to bring her some. She claims she hasn’t had any in forty years but she’s making some especially for Dad.”
Deena laughed. “This’ll go on forever, you know, them trying to one-up each other.”
Tak touched her hand. “I can think of worse ways this could’ve turned out.” A tiny smile played across his lips. Deena matched it before dropping her gaze to his hand. Instinctively, it fell to the faint and jagged scar running crosswise from his index finger to wrist. It was an ever-present reminder of what cowardice and selfishness had nearly cost.
“Chee-chee pah-pah chee—”
Deena looked up, roused from a memory. “Baby, don’t sing at the table.”
Mia hesitated, mouth open mid “chee”. Wide, silver-plated saucers stared back at her mother.
Deena could see every part of herself in Mia, sifted through and made better. From the wild and silky jet black curls pinned diva-style in two oversized pigtails to the dollop of cinnamon on oatmeal skin and eyes like wide and polished sterling silver, heavy with the weight of her value. She had the look of a girl who could do or be anything, even at five.
She admired her already.
Mia Tanaka, who ate soul food and spoke Nihongo, who frequented festivals with her ojiichan and Sunday worship with her great-grandmother, had learned in five years of life something it took Deena twenty-five to figure out. That even with all of these seemingly contrary traits, she was what she was intended to be.
Tucked away in Deena’s wallet was a family portrait from the year before. In it, she and Tak sat side by side, her in a simple cream sweater and slacks for Christmastime, him in a white button-up and blue jeans. His hair, of course, was tousled just right. Before and between them was Mia, black hair braided in zigzags before flowing free into two bountiful pigtails. Her ojiichan kept her in runway best, so on this day she wore her favorite Burberry romper accented by a Tahitian pearl long since lost to a sandbox.
Deena wasn’t sure why she’d sent the picture to her mother, or why she’d gone to the trouble of restoring the one of her parents and including it as well. Two portraits, palm-sized, in a single white mailer to Gloria Hammond, care of Broward Corrections. No letter inside, no explanation.
When she received a letter back, with that telltale prison stamp, less than a week had passed. Deena took it, and placed it with the others, unopened.
Not yet, she thought.
Not yet.