by Lee Welles
She sighed. She knew what cancer was. A friend of her parents, and of Mr. Hernandez, had died from it. After the funeral, when the grownups sat around and talked about how sad it was, Miho and a black-eyed boy named Carlos had tiptoed into Mr. Hernandez’s office and gotten on the Internet. Miho had seen tumors, how they grew and reached out and grabbed on more and more until they grabbed vital things. She worried about Curly. Did he know? What did dolphins do when they got sick?
Suddenly, she realized—she knew who to ask! She ran into her room and dug into her backpack. In the small photo album was a picture her father had taken of Mr. Hernandez squeezed into a wetsuit and about to tip over the rail of his boat.
It was a funny picture, because his eyes were bugging out. Mr. Hernandez had laughed when he saw it and drew a cartoon bubble over his own head. In the bubble it said, “CALL ME!” and there it was—his phone number. Miho couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of this before! He would love to hear her story, and maybe he knew how to fix dolphin cancer! She could hardly dial the phone fast enough.
“Hola?” the familiar, gravelly voice said. Miho knew this was Spanish for “Hello?”
“Hola! This is Miho Rivolo!” She started laughing, happy to have reached him.
“Miho! I wondered when I would hear from you!” When she realized that this wonderful person from her old life, halfway around the world, had been waiting to hear from her, her laugh turned quickly into tears.
For a minute, she could do nothing but cry. But it felt good, like the last of the ink going down the drain. He had loved her parents. He loved her too. She understood this now and would never again let so much time go by before reaching out to him.
“Miho-Miha!” He used her “Japican” nickname. “What’s wrong? Where are you? Can I come get you?” His concern made her smile, and she sniffed the hot snot back up her nose and wiped a hand under each eye.
“No. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m in Japan with my uncle. Well, kinda not with my uncle right now. But, well… that’s not why I called. Mr. Hernandez, do dolphins get cancer?”
There was a long pause on the other end. Finally he said, “Miho, it is 5 o’clock in the morning here. Why are you asking me about dolphins and cancer?”
Miho thought about how to explain her strange new life in Japan. Should she tell him about Nagoya? Wave wishes? Sensei and Shodo? Gaia? How could she ever explain Gaia? She didn’t even quite understand Gaia herself!
“Well, I’m in Goza, it’s on the Pacific and there’s all these Pacific white-sided dolphins; you know, like the ones you study.”
“Yes?”
“Well, there’s this...” she thought about how to say this in a way a grownup might believe. “There’s this researcher who can talk to the dolphins and can see the cancer in them too.”
There was another long pause. “There is a researcher who can talk to wild dolphins? Or dolphins in a tank?”
“Oh, they’re wild! There’s a lot of them too. We were out and then there were like, hundreds of them… maybe thousands!”
“You were with this researcher?”
“Kinda, yeah! It was cool because they showed us where all the pearls were!”
“What?”
Miho knew she had said just a little too much and needed to get the conversation back on track. “Mr. Hernandez? Do dolphins get cancer? What do you do when they do?”
A third long pause filled the space between Goza and Baja. “Well, to answer your question, yes, dolphins get cancer. Actually, they get a lot of cancer. Because they have so much fat and are at the top of the food chain, chemicals that go in the water end up in dolphins and whales. A lot of chemicals. Miho, why…”
Miho cut him off mid-sentence. “How do you make them better?”
“What?”
“How do you help them?”
“Miho-Miha, if they are wild dolphins, you can’t help them. This is part of what I study, how many babies die before they are one year old, how many females can’t have babies at all. I still don’t understand…”
“You can’t do anything?” Miho interrupted again.
The sigh Mr. Hernandez heaved swept all the way across the Pacific Ocean and Miho could hear the sadness in it. “Well, until people stop using certain chemicals, we can’t. Miho, who is this researcher? Why do you say he can talk to dolphins?”
Miho was busy thinking about what he said and had to shake her head to answer his question. “Oh, uh, she is new…kinda young. I’m sure you haven’t heard of her. And it is like this, new ummm…technique. Yeah, a new technique!” Miho was proud she remembered such a great, grownup science word.
“A new technique?”
“Yeah and,” an idea leapt from her mind like water from a spring, “if you came here, she could show you, maybe even teach you!”
Could what Gaia had given her, be given to anyone else? The idea of Mr. Hernandez in Goza made her giddy. Her phone began to beep repeatedly and she realized that the battery was low.
“Hey, Mr. Hernandez, my cell phone is dying. Did you get my number with your caller ID?”
“Si. I have it. I will call you. I want to talk to this researcher. What was her name?”
“Uh…” her mind scrambled through all the names she knew, from all the places she’d been. “It’s uh, Pearl. Yeah! I forgot her last name.”
“Is she Japanese?”
“Sorta.”
Miho was trying to think of more, when the phone let out a final beep, and went dead. She plugged it in. She was sorry she hadn’t been able to see what Ojisan sent her and happy she hadn’t had to make up anything else to tell Mr. Hernandez.
She lay on her futon and worried. Ojisan was coming back tomorrow. She wasn’t sure if pearls would be enough to make him want to stay. Sensei was sick. Curly was even sicker, even if he didn’t look it. Why had she told Sensei she wanted understanding? Understanding could actually be really confusing.
31
Nice Speech
The first thing Miho did Friday morning was make sure the house was clean. She opened every shoji screen she could to let in the fresh morning air. And it was fresh. The wind was wild and brought the fresh and the cold from far out in the open ocean.
When she was done, she went to Sensei’s. Even if he couldn’t teach her, she could still learn. In her pocket was a piece of paper. On that paper was the hiragana for “Welcome Home.” She wanted to draw it for Ojisan.
Tomiko met her at the door. She didn’t even say, “Ohayo.” Instead she said, “Why are you here? I told you my father is sick!” She was making shooing motions, as if Miho were some stray cat that could be pushed back out.
Miho kept her head high and didn’t pause. “I am his student. I am here to practice.” And with that, she walked straight past the woman, out the far door, and through the garden.
Miho stepped out of her shoes, stepped over the threshold and bowed. The irises on either side of the sword were crinkled and brown. She wanted to get to work on her Shodo. But she knew keeping fresh flowers in the tokonoma space was important to Sensei. She replaced the old flowers with bright, new ones from the garden, then stepped back to look at the calligraphy hanging over the sword. She understood it now.
“From the heart, comes the truth.”
Miho prepared her ink and thought about that. She began to write out her welcome home message and thought about what true thing her heart said.
Her heart loved whales and dolphins as much as her parents ever did. Her heart wanted Ojisan to love her as much as her parents ever did. Her heart loved the ocean—so she tried to stay in Goza. Her heart loved Sensei—so she tried to understand. Her heart even loved Gaia, although she didn’t understand her yet. Her heart loved.
By the time she finished her sixth copy of “Welcome Home,” she had decided that that was what hearts were for—loving. It was what they did best, and love was the only thing that ever did any good.
Miho was surprised to find a bowl of miso at the doorstep
and decided she must love Tomiko too, just a little bit.
When her Shodo was dry and her tools clean, she headed back to Ojisan’s. She placed the calligraphy in the tokonoma, the nook in the entryway. She hadn’t realized until then, a properly adorned tokonoma had been missing in this house.
She fetched a vase and ran across the road to pluck two small daylilies. With the living flowers next to her Shodo, coming into the house really felt like coming home. Now she just had to wait for Ojisan. She sat on the veranda and watched the water. She also watched the clock on her phone and waited. She couldn’t wait to see Ojisan’s face when he came in and saw her Shodo!
As Miho walked to the ferry, she thought about how excited Ojisan would be. She could see the approaching ferry as she crested the hill. The ever-present cloud of clamorous vega and slaty-backed gulls circled the boat as it chugged through Ago-wan. Miho shaded her eyes, wondering if Ojisan would be standing at the rail, shading his, looking for her. She listened to the men yell back and forth between the deck and the pier as they secured the ferry. She hoped she would hear a yell of, “Miho-san!”
But she didn’t. Not only didn’t she hear her name called, she didn’t see Ojisan. She looked around the people milling past her and searched the deck, the dock, and even the surrounding shoreline of Ago-wan. No Oji. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t move, until the diesel churned to life and began to back the ferry out of its slip.
The setting sun made the top of the hill shine a golden red, and flickers of sun skipped around the hill and across Ago-wan, as if calling a goodbye to the ferry. Miho bit her lower lip and looked around, hoping no one saw her standing alone, looking lost. She turned and walked up the hill. As fast as she had gone earlier that day, she now felt lead-footed and slow.
In the house, the phone beeped. There were now three messages. The first one, the one she couldn’t read the night before because her phone went dead, said, “Interesting video. Explain.”
The second message was from that morning. It said, “Delayed. Can you take ferry and subway to Nagoya?” Miho felt a hot anger begin in her belly. What kind of grownup is he? I can’t go all that way all by myself! Then she remembered that she had flown all the way across the ocean by herself. So her anger cooled a bit and she moved to the next message.
“Be there Saturday morning. You OK?” Miho snapped the phone shut and cocked her arm back to throw it across the room. She couldn’t believe it! He should be there, in Goza! In his house, with his niece! He should be more like Mr. Hernandez and want to come rushing to be with her!
The thought of Mr. Hernandez stilled her arm. It would be stupid to break her phone. It was her link to the outside world. She flopped down at the low table and typed out a text message. -U should B in Goza. Promise B worth it!- Then she sent the message, to Baja, to the man who loved dolphins as much as she did.
She was feeling lower than whale poo. Even a hot shower didn’t make her feel much better. She ate a little and then fetched her portable CD player from her backpack. She tucked into her bed with the one friend who was always, always, always there when she needed her—the matted, gray Shinju. She closed her eyes and let the great, stretching, singing poetry of the humpback whales send her to sleep.
Somebody was shaking her foot. Her nose caught a whiff of cigarette and for a weird moment, she thought she was somehow back in Nagoya. “Oh, Ho! Miho!” Ojisan’s voice came through her sleepy fog, and then a giggle. She sat up.
“Ojisan?” The light from the main room made him nothing more than an uncle-shaped shadow in the doorway.
“Hai! I here!” He giggled again and went to the main room. Miho pulled herself from the futon and followed him, rubbing her eyes.
“I don’t…but...you weren’t at the ferry!” She yawned and then opened her eyes a little wider, hoping it would help her understand his answer.
“I at ferry.” He waggled a finger at her. “I come early ferry to see what my hafu niece do to find all this pearl.” He swayed a bit as he gestured to the bowls of pearls on the table. He leaned in close to her face. The hot, spicy smell of some kind of drink came off him like a wave and made Miho hold her breath. “So, how you find? You…steal? Hmmm?” He pulled his pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
Miho snatched them out of his hand! He jerked upright, surprised. She squeezed the pack in her fist and felt most of them crush. She glared at him, angry that he had lied to her, angry that he just accused her of stealing, mostly angry that he had called her his, ‘hafu niece.’ He still thought of her as half, gaijin, not just his niece.
She waved her pack-clutching fist under his nose. “Don’t you know these cause cancer?” she yelled, and then threw them to the floor. “Some people can’t help it when they get cancer and you do this on purpose. You…You’re the one stealing! You’re stealing yourself from me and from yourself too!”
Her heart was pounding and sweat sprung from her upper lip. “And those pearls…I FOUND them because I AM AMA!” She screamed the last part, then turned on her heel and marched to the entryway. She snatched up her Shodo from the tokonoma.
“Did you see this?” She waved the paper under his nose and watched his red eyes try to follow it back and forth. “In America we say, ‘Home is where the heart is.’ Maybe you don’t have a heart! Because in Nagoya, you don’t have a home!”
She thrust the paper against his chest and brushed past him. She grabbed the lip of each bowl on the table and flipped them up. The pearls flew! They arched in every direction, the light blinking off their iridescent skin, and pattered down on the tatami like raindrops. Miho spun about to face her uncle, still clutching the bowls.
Ojisan’s eyes were wide as he gazed around the room. He pulled the crumpled paper from his chest and read the words. He looked up at his niece, threw his head back, and began to laugh.
The sound jolted Miho. It was a deep, long laugh, like the one she had heard him share with his friend. He staggered over and slapped her on the back. “This good speech!” He laughed more and then knelt down and began to pick up the scattered pearls.
He kept chuckling and occasionally squeaked out, “You have no heart!” and “I am Ama!” as he picked up the pale, round spheres and dropped them on the table. “Oh yeah, nice speech! Although,” he picked up the crushed pack of cigarettes. “I wish you no do this!” He put them in his pocket and continued to pick up the pearls.
Miho didn’t say anything. Maybe she had already said everything. Even though she had thrown the pearls, she didn’t help pick them up. Something felt different. Like there was some kind of…understanding.
When Ojisan had returned the last pearl to the bowl, he went out to the veranda and searched through his crunched pack until he found a cigarette that was bent, but not broken. He lit it and inhaled deeply.
Miho padded out and sat next to him. She said, in her most polite Japanese, “I am sorry I yelled so loud. I am very sorry I threw the pearls. I wouldn’t do these things if I didn’t care.”
Ojisan didn’t look at her, but reached over and rubbed the top of her head a few times. He continued to smoke and look out over the water. “Goza is nice, isn’t it?”
“Hai.” She didn’t dare say more.
“Did you really find all those pearls yourself?”
“Hai.”
“Hmmmm. You really think I steal from myself?” He held the cigarette out in front of him as if he were really seeing it for the first time.
“Well, it costs money. What do you get for your money?”
“Good point.” He ground it out, then stood and chuckled again. “Nice speech.”
He didn’t say goodnight. He didn’t say he was sorry for his lying text message. He just went to his room. Miho was left staring at the bowls of pearls and feeling odd. He had laughed and that made her happy.
32
Deal
Miho woke to the smell of food. Ojisan had risen before her and had the table full of good things when she came out. “Sit,” he said
and folded his legs, lowering himself to the table.
Miho, still clutching Shinju, sat. Ojisan was already lifting his chopsticks and dipping into the bowls. “You tell me why you think we need to be in Goza. I want good speech, like last night.”
He chewed and raised his eyebrows in expectation. Miho pulled Shinju up under her chin and thought about it. “It’s nice here. The ocean breeze makes it cooler than Nagoya. The house is bigger here and you don’t smoke in it.”
She glanced up, worried he might get mad. But he was chewing thoughtfully. She continued. “It’s like you have friends here. I see you laugh with people. Sensei likes you. And, well, I like him. I’m learning a lot.” She paused, not sure if she should keep talking.
Ojisan motioned with his chopsticks, so she continued. “Uh, the fish is always fresh and I can find pearls and stuff, uh…” She had no idea how to make a money argument. She didn’t know what he did in Nagoya or what he could do in Goza.
“Ojisan, don’t you like it better here?”
He set his bowl down and laid his chopsticks across the top. He leaned back on his elbows. “Hai. This always my home. But, it just…hurt to be here.” He picked up his chopsticks and waved them at Miho. “You kinda fun here. Maybe for you, hurt more in Nagoya.”
Miho couldn’t believe her ears. It was as if a pinprick of light at the surface was widening. She swam toward it. “Ojisan, what do you do in Nagoya? I mean, can you work here too?”
Ojisan started to laugh and almost sprayed his mouthful of food out. He gulped it down and told her, “I make website, graphics, e-mails…you know what for?” She shook her head. He snickered, “Air spray.” He mimicked spraying a can through the air. “Air spray!” His snicker turned into an out-loud laugh. “Air spray that smell like ocean!” He waved his hand to the opened wall letting the blessings of the sea into their home. “Everyone wants house to smell like this one!” He laughed so hard he fell over sideways.
