Chapter Seventeen
Mika didn’t leave the house. For seventy-two hours, she subsisted on Thai takeout, Diet Coke, and a steady stream of Law & Order: SVU. Every time she blinked, she saw the gallery opening on the inside of her eyelids. Blink. Penny’s face when Hiromi thrust out a hand and said, “Who is this?” Blink. Thomas wrapping his arm around Penny as she tucked her chin into her chest—shrunken, sad, dejected. Blink. Penny tipping her head up to her father, tears sliding down her cheeks as she asked him, why—why did Mika lie? The images, the pain, never dulled.
She checked her phone and email every five or so minutes—no messages from Penny or Thomas. She tried to put the two out of her mind but found her thoughts drifting toward them if she wasn’t careful. She missed Penny’s smile, her whirlwind energy. And she missed Thomas too, his charming grumpy vibe, the way he loved Penny. A ship had arrived on the shore she shared with Penny and Thomas. It had come to retrieve Mika, take her back to exile, where she belonged.
Hana appeared in the doorway of the room, threading a gold hoop through her ear. She was going out with Josephine again. Third time this week. “More SVU?”
Mika shifted on the couch. She wore an old Grateful Dead shirt she’d stolen from Leif and a pair of loose sweatpants. Her phone was close by on the coffee table among the litter of takeout containers, soda cans, and bags of chips—last night, Mika hit rock bottom and snacked on the corn nuts stuffed in the back of the cupboard, a relic from the previous owner of the house. “Yep. Season eleven, the episode where Stabler and Benson suspect a sugar daddy of murder when a young woman’s body is found stuffed inside a suitcase.”
“Ah, a tale as old as time.” Hana dropped a compact into her purse. “You sure you don’t want to come with?”
“Pft,” Mika said. “I wouldn’t dream of crashing your date.”
“So, this is your plan for the evening, television and takeout?” Hana picked up a container from the coffee table and sniffed it.
Mika rolled to her back and eyed Hana. “Yes, and contemplating a bunch of stuff that makes me realize the banality of my own existence.”
Hana set the takeout container down. “Well, while you’re spiraling, do you think you could eat something with a vegetable in it?”
“Pad thai has vegetables,” Mika said with mild offense.
Hana snorted and opened the door. “I’m spending the night at Josephine’s. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Mika gave her two thumbs up. She listened as Hana’s car pulled away and curled onto her side. Her phone pinged with an incoming text, and her heart quickened. Hope was like that, a helium balloon tangled in branches, refusing to stay down. The last few times this happened, it had been Hiromi or Leif or Charlie or Hayato. She was an equal-opportunity decliner, swiping right on each. Still, she picked her phone up, poised at the edge of disappointment.
Penny.
Her name lit up the screen. I listened to your message, she had texted. When can we talk?
Mika bolted upright and shut the television off. Right now? she answered Penny. She stood and started pacing, phone in hand. Five agonizing minutes later, it rang. She answered right away. “Hi,” Mika said.
“Hi,” Penny said, not her usual bright self. She’d done that. Mika had dimmed Penny’s light. So much of Mika’s sense of worth hung on how her daughter felt, about life, about her. “So . . .”
“So, you got my voicemail.” Mika kept her voice even, airy. As if to say, Go on, punish me, hit me if you want, I can take it.
“Yeah. I listened to it as soon as we got home.” Three days ago? Penny had heard it three days ago? “It took a while for me to sort out everything I was feeling.”
A lump formed in Mika’s throat. “I understand.”
“I don’t understand,” Penny said sharply.
“Okay,” Mika said. She stood and walked to the kitchen, retrieved a glass from the cabinet, and filled it from the faucet. When was the last time she had water? Phone pressed between her shoulder and ear, she asked, “What don’t you understand?”
“Why you didn’t keep me?” Desperation sharpened the edges of her words.
Mika startled, not expecting that question. But she supposed they’d been working up to it. It had always been on the fringes of her and Penny’s relationship, a pair of hands pulling it apart. “I couldn’t,” she said, leaving the kitchen to sit down on the edge of the couch, thinking of how unequipped she’d been at the time. Mika remembered the Instagram posts she’d seen. All those women, new mothers with babies. The comments sections littered with seemingly positive reinforcement. You got this! You’re one tough mama! Dig deep! Encouraging each other to push themselves beyond their limits. The messaging was pervasive. A good mother wouldn’t abandon her children. Wouldn’t abandon her biological duty. If she did, there must be something wrong with her. Or with her offspring. Did Penny feel that way? That her DNA was messed up?
For one whole minute, Penny was silent. “Did you want me?”
“I did want you.” Mika inhaled. Exhaled. She’d wanted Penny despite Peter. Despite Hiromi. Despite her mother’s quiet discontent. “I wanted you. But I wanted things for you. Better things. I wanted you to have a big house, a family and parents and cousins and grandparents. I wanted you to go to a good school with new supplies and clothes. I wanted you to have everything I never had and would never be able to give you. That’s how much I wanted you.” For Mika placing Penny for adoption had been the ultimate act of love. Penny deserved better. Penny remained silent on the other end of the line, but Mika could hear her breathing, each exhale and inhale like a metronome. “I know this is all so messed up. I lied to you, and I will be forever sorry.” She forged on. “If you . . . If you can find a way to let me back into your life, I promise I won’t ever lie to you again.”
The stony silence carried on for another beat. “Was it because you were ashamed of me?” Penny asked finally.
Mika straightened. “No!” she blurted. How could Penny think that? “It’s the opposite. I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me.” Mika felt the tightening constraints of motherhood. To be strong enough. To be smart enough. To be enough. But she couldn’t relay that to Penny. How she felt something inside her was missing, derelict. “My life isn’t pretty. It’s a real shit show.” That garnered a soft laugh from Penny. Mika ran with it. “I mean, I keep a bag of chocolate chips open on the counter so I can reach in whenever I walk by and have a handful.”
Penny laughed again but sobered quickly and turned sad, wistful almost. “Was any of it real?”
Guilt and sorrow raced through Mika like a set of bloodhounds. It had all been real to Mika. The hugs. The warm feelings. The wanting. The love. That was all true. But she could see what she’d done. By lying, Mika had rendered their relationship meaningless, at least to Penny. “Honestly, I kind of mixed things up, blended the truth with fiction. Hana is my best friend, and she does love roller derby. But I don’t live on my own. I live with Hana because I can’t afford a place, and she’s a terrible hoarder, or at least, she was—she’s doing better, actually. Leif is my ex-boyfriend. He doesn’t have a degree in biochemistry but does have a love for it; he applied it toward growing marijuana. He owns a dispensary in Portland. He wears mostly hemp and believes in unbanking.”
“That actually makes a lot of sense now.” Penny’s voice warmed.
“When we dated, he used a crystal for deodorant.” Mika paused. “It didn’t work,” she said as if whispering a secret in Penny’s ear. Penny giggled. Mika flopped backward and played with the drawstring on her sweatpants. “What else do you want to know? I’ll answer any of your questions.”
Penny grew quiet. “There is something.” She hesitated. “I wanted to ask in Portland, but it never felt like the right time.”
“Shoot,” Mika said.
“My father . . . I mean, my biological father. Do you . . . know him? Like his name or anything.”
Now Mika grew quiet. She imagined telling Penny about Peter, the rape. Mika winced against that word. Rape. Such an ugly term. She had trouble using it in conjunction with what happened to her. Though her body remembered the violence, her mind refused to capitulate. Not me. It could not have happened to me. She wasn’t the only one who had trouble using the word. Media, news outlets, they preferred sexual assault. It seemed nicer, gentler somehow. A woman might recover from an assault, but she might never survive a rape. And deep down, Mika was haunted by her inactions that night. Her paltry no. The way she lay limp. The way she couldn’t be an agent in her own salvation. How could Mika explain it to Penny? She separated her daughter from the event. Did it help that when Penny was born, she looked nothing like Peter? She took after Mika’s side. Would she have reacted differently if Penny’s skin were lighter, her eyes rounder and green, her hair brown rather than black? No, Mika thought with absolute certainty. I would have loved her the same. She used to gaze down at her swollen belly and whisper to it, promising, He’ll never know you.
“Are you still there?” Penny prodded.
“Just thinking,” Mika said. “I’m . . .” She swallowed. Sometimes she looked Peter up online. He was an artist in New York now, with a family, and it was confusing to Mika how he might be tender with others when he’d ripped into her like a piece of rotten fruit. He hadn’t made it big yet, but he made a living at it, with the occasional freelance commission landscape. “There are things in my past that are difficult to talk about.” It occurred to Mika that Penny was a victim of Peter’s too. They both had burdens to carry. But it didn’t have to be Penny’s yet. Someday she’d consider telling Penny. But before that, she would fill Penny’s head with how good she was, how beautifully strong, how loved.
Penny would understand, even though that was where she came from, it wasn’t where she was going. “For right now, you know everything you need to. I know this isn’t fair to ask, but you’re going to have to trust me to tell you things when I’m ready and respect what I can’t talk about yet.” Mika felt it then. A subtle shift in their relationship from friendship . . . to what? She wasn’t sure. But it was more. A recognition that Penny was only sixteen and Mika was thirty-five. Nearly two decades of life experiences separated them. She wouldn’t lord it over Penny, but she would use it to protect her daughter at the very least.
She heard Penny take a steadying breath. “Okay,” she said finally. “I can accept that.”
Mika sighed with relief. “Someday, I hope you can forgive me,” she said. “I imagine you’re still angry, and that’s okay—”
“I am,” Penny cut in. “But . . . not so angry I never want to speak again. I still . . . I still have so many questions. I want to trust you, but I’m not sure I can.”
“Okay. You need time. I can accept that,” Mika said, echoing Penny’s words. “I hope you can forgive me for giving you up for adoption too.” Might as well go for broke.
“Oh,” Penny said. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to forgive. It’s like asking you to apologize for the sky being blue, or for me being Japanese, or born a woman. Some things just are. This is a part of me.”
Tears sprang in Mika’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
“Yeah,” Penny said. A beat passed. “I should probably get going. It’s late here.”
Mika sat up and swiped under her nose. “Sure. Of course. Do you think . . . Could we talk again soon sometime?”
“Want to give me a call next week?” Penny asked.
“Yes,” Mika answered, and she tried not to sound too eager, too desperate. They said goodbye. And after, Mika sat for a while, mentally sorting through their conversation, then her life. After Peter, after Penny, she didn’t think much of the future. Couldn’t imagine life anymore, all of the beautiful infinite possibilities. But now . . . now she went to the kitchen and retrieved the garbage can from under the sink. With a single swipe of her arm, she swept the contents off the coffee table, dumping it into the bin. She picked up the throw blanket she’d been hibernating under and folded it, placing it over the armrest of the couch. That done, she sat again and peered at her phone. At all the missed calls from Hiromi. Still not ready to speak to her mother, she hit call back on another person’s phone number.
Hayato answered on the third ring. “Hey, you.”
“Hey,” Mika said cheerily. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m good. How about you?” In the background, she could hear a television, the voice of a famous newscaster.
“I’m doing okay.” Mika smiled. “I was hoping I might be able to buy you a drink and talk to you about a job.”