I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the performance — not just the music, but the experience of sharing it with a roomful of strangers. I had expected any pleasure I might take in it to be mostly vicarious, but it turned out to be much more than that. Occasionally, I would be struck by something discordant — an image or a sensation of what I had done in the last few days. But I was able to push those intrusions away. If I could continue to be mindful of the moment and not of my memories, I thought, I’d be all right. That was one life. This was another. They were separate, and I would keep them so.
When the show was over, the applause finally done, and the patrons beginning to file out the door, Kyoko introduced us to the band as promised. Hino gripped Sayaka’s hand in both of his and bowed simultaneously. It was a nice gesture, a combination of the western and the eastern, with a lot of warmth in it. Kyoko brought over one of Hino’s albums and he signed it for Sayaka. She couldn’t stop smiling, and I was glad to see her shedding some of the detached cool that had so characterized her when we’d first met.
Sayaka needed the bathroom before we left, and it went fine. If she felt any embarrassment about having to be helped in and out, she didn’t show it. I followed suit when she was done, and paid the bill at the door.
“Well?” I said. “You ready?”
She nodded, and we got her up the stairs pretty much the same way we’d gotten her down. With pretty much the same embarrassing impediment on my part. The bartender followed us up with the wheelchair. I helped Sayaka get seated, we said goodnight, and headed back to the van.
“Was it okay?” I asked, pushing her along through Kabukichō’s neon-lit alleys, maneuvering around revelers, Sayaka’s head swiveling as she took in the sights and the noise and the crowds. I knew I was being paranoid, but still I was careful to keep my head down, just on the remote chance I might be recognized.
She glanced back at me. “It was amazing. Thank you.”
That made me really happy. Without thinking, I said, “Hey, do you feel like taking a walk? I mean—”
She laughed. “I know what you mean. Where?”
“I don’t know. Ueno Park, maybe? It’s right next to Uguisudani, so…”
There was a pause, then she said, “No, let’s do something different. I want to see something new.”
That was encouraging. I thought for a moment. “Do you know Kitazawa-gawa?”
“The hanami place?”
“Yeah, in Setagaya. It’s crowded when the blossoms are blooming, but otherwise it’s just a nice place for a stroll.” I realized as I said it that “stroll” wasn’t the right word. But she’d already told me she understood what I meant.
She smiled. “Well? What are we waiting for?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We drove the short distance southwest, parked, and got out. Setagaya was an upscale suburban part of Tokyo, outside the Yamanote, where people with money might move if they wanted a little less urban density and a little more green. It was quiet most of the time, and at night could be remarkably serene. And Kitazawa-gawa, a kind of nature walk to the extent such a thing could be said to exist in Tokyo, was particularly charming in the evening, with a little creek burbling along beside it, lots of grass and trees, and evocative shadows cast by tall iron streetlights. I pushed Sayaka along, enjoying her company, liking that she trusted me enough to take her somewhere new. I was beginning to appreciate how difficult it must have been for her to get around. The world was nowhere near as handicapped-accessible then as it’s since become, and every grassy or other soft surface, every narrow space, every curb represented an obstacle. And that’s with someone there to help. Alone, just a few short stairs would have been for her what a twenty-foot wall would be to me.
“It’s another universe out here,” she said, looking around us and up at the trees.
“I know. Tokyo’s like the blind men and the elephant. Every part you touch fools you into thinking you know the whole thing. But I don’t think anyone can really know Tokyo. It’s too big, and too…I don’t know. Mysterious.”
She glanced back at me. “You really like it, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer right away. The wheels of her chair crunched softly along the pavement. Somewhere, a dog barked. Other than that, the city was silent and still.
“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship, I guess.”
“Why? Because you’re half?”
Haafu is a neutral Japanese word for people of mixed parentage, words borrowed from abroad carrying less emotional content.
“Yeah, you know. I never really felt accepted here. I loved it, but it didn’t love me. I guess it’s kind of pathetic that I’m back. Like showing up on the doorstep of a girl who kicked me out. But…shit, it’s a long story.”
“You have someplace to go?”
Apparently, I did not. I told her a little about my childhood in Tokyo. The taunts, the bullies, my father’s conflicted shame. “It’s not a great place to grow up if you’re not really Japanese,” I said. “I mean, if you’re a hundred percent something else, they don’t care. They might even admire you. But if you’re half…if you look Japanese but you’re really not…they hate that.”
She laughed. “You think I don’t know?”
“You mean the wheelchair? Do you get discriminated against? I’m sorry, I admit I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Not the wheelchair. Being Korean.”
I stopped pushing and looked at her from the side. “You’re Korean?”
“Second-generation zainichi. And it’s just like you said. Japanese hate us because they can’t tell us apart. I mean, all prejudice is crazy, but it’s even crazier when you have to hire a private detective to track down a person’s lineage so you can know whether to discriminate against him!”
We both laughed. I said, “So you’re Korean. I didn’t realize.”
“Yeah. Sayaka Kimura. My parents chose Sayaka because they didn’t want people to know, but Kimura’s kind of a giveaway.”
Kimura was a typical zainichi surname, though not exclusively so, an easy variant on the native Kim.
“Well, I wouldn’t have known.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No. I like it. It’s nice to know another outsider. Is that part of why you want to go to America?”
“I just want to get out of here. I told you, it’s not really love-hate for me. It’s just hate. I want to go someplace that’s not so big, that’s not growing so fast, that’s not so overwhelming and impersonal. Someplace where they don’t care where you’re from, or where your parents are from.”
I didn’t know that America was really that. It hadn’t been for me. But maybe it would be for her. I started pushing again. “What will you do there?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. College, to start with, if I can save enough money.”
So she hadn’t been to college. I wondered if that embarrassed her, if it was why she hadn’t answered at the hotel when I first asked.
“And after that?”
She shrugged. “Whatever I want. I want to get a good job. And be free, really free. I feel like I’ve been living such a stultified life here. I need to take more risks. And I don’t know why, but I’m afraid to take them here.”
“You think America will make you braver?”
She looked back at me, maybe trying to see if I was teasing her. I wasn’t.
“You think that’s silly?”
I thought about Cambodia. “No. Most people think bravery comes entirely from within, but it doesn’t. It depends on a lot of things. Maybe one of them is just…where you live. Your culture, your surroundings.”