Chapter Four
A video call.
It didn’t hit Mika until a few minutes before she was supposed to dial Penny’s number that she would see her daughter live for the first time in sixteen years. Of course, she’d seen pictures enclosed in the letters from Caroline once a year. But they’d been static pieces. Moments frozen in time, trapped in thick amber. Mika couldn’t observe Penny’s facial tics. The way her hands moved when she was excited or sad or scared. Or hear the sound of her voice when she spoke, how the inflection changed. The most alive she’d ever seen Penny was as a baby.
She sat at the eat-in dining table in the kitchen. Hana had cleared out after helping Mika. Mika flicked on the camera and studied herself. Her sweater had a small hole in the sleeve. Hana had chosen it, picking through Mika’s clothes, searching for a piece that didn’t offend her. “This will have to do,” she’d said, pinching the navy cable-knit number between her fingers and handing it off to Mika.
Then she’d left Mika alone with the screen, her heart beating fast and her palms slick with sweat. One minute to go. They’d scheduled the call for four p.m., seven p.m. Penny’s time. Mika typed in her login information and dialed Penny’s number. It rang once. And there she was. There she was—Mika’s daughter. Mika wondered at her cheekbones, at her bullish nose, at her shiny hair. I made her. The feeling similar to when Mika gave birth and held Penny for the first time. A sense of awe and fascination. A piece of Mika’s soul recognizing itself.
Mika smiled at Penny as if she were an old friend. “Hi.”
“Wow!” Penny’s own smile was wide and open, every single tooth on display. Mika had smiled like that before. When she was sixteen. When you had the world at your fingertips. When you held the balance of time in your own two hands. It was a special feeling—having nothing to lose. “You look so young,” said Penny.
“Yeah, well, you know, Asian don’t raisin.”
Penny laughed. “It’s so weird, but all I can think right now is: ‘She has my face, she has my face!’”
Mika smiled brighter. They both grew quiet. It was near dark where Penny was. The last precious rays of sunlight filtered in through a window, obscuring her face when she moved the right way. Before, when Mika used to paint, she might have snapped a photo of it, sketched Penny in pencil, using the sharpest point on the upward curve of her happy mouth. Instead, Mika thought about the weather outside, the coming evening, the rain pattering on the windows, the strangeness of meeting Penny then and now. Both felt like the first time.
“I always wondered about you,” Penny admitted like a dirty secret. Penny was in her bedroom. Pink cherry blossom wallpaper behind her. When Mika had been pregnant, Caroline promised to integrate Penny’s Japanese heritage into their lives. A letter arrived describing a cherry blossom–themed nursery and a sushi-making class the couple had enrolled in. Mika was pretty sure most of what the Calvins learned about Japan was from a Wikipedia page.
“Here I am. Did your . . . Did Thomas and Caroline tell you anything about me?” Beyond the screen were two crumpled tissues Mika had just pressed under her armpits.
“Not much.” Penny sipped from a steaming mug. Coffee? No, tea. Mika wished she’d grabbed a glass of water. Near Penny also were a little bowl of pretzels and a notepad with a pen. Penny came better prepared. “You were super young. Nineteen. Just starting college and didn’t want a baby.”
Want? It wasn’t so much she didn’t want Penny. It was that she couldn’t have her. What she wanted was Penny to live and grow with a family better than hers. Better than me. She loved Penny and was ashamed she couldn’t take care of her. That she wasn’t enough for her. What do you know about raising a baby? The ghost of Hiromi’s words haunted her.
“Anyway,” Penny went on, setting the cup down. “They never tried to hide it from me. I mean, hello!” She pointed to her face. “It was kind of a given. Half-Japanese kid. White parents. I actually thought all kids were adopted for a while.” Penny snickered. “Like there was a place where parents went and picked out babies. But then my friend Sophie—I’ve known her since kindergarten—said she had this weird turned-out-toe thing she’d inherited from her father. I went home and asked what I had from my parents. They explained things like a sense of humor, kindness, etc.” Penny balled her hands into fists and bumped them against the table. Mika straightened. Had she been that self-aware at sixteen, at eighteen? She remembered being excited, vulnerable, alone. Unprepared. No, Penny had been raised differently. She was so . . . self-assured. “But I was like, no, physically, what part of me comes from you? Then they explained it all. We didn’t have the same blood type. Or hands. Or feet or anything. Someone else in the world possessed my DNA. Since then, I’ve always thought about it. About a part of myself that might exist elsewhere. I mean, who am I?”
Mika clutched her kneecaps. Who am I? Mika couldn’t answer it for her daughter. She couldn’t even answer it for herself. Another shortcoming.
“Whew.” Penny finished. “I feel like I’m doing all the talking. Sorry. I’m used to being the center of attention.” She pointed to her chest. “Only child, you know.”
“It’s fine,” Mika assured her. It was more than fine. Listening to Penny, seeing her, it felt as if Mika had been retrieved from the bottom of the coldest part of the ocean, and she could feel the sun again. “I like hearing about you.”
“Good.” Penny lightened. “I want to know all about you too.”
Mika thought on this. She folded her hair behind her ear. She saw the dishes stacked in the sink, the piles of boxes, the letter on the counter stating her cell phone payment was past due. “There’s not much to tell. I’m afraid I’m kind of boring, really.”
“You still live in Oregon?”
Mika nodded. “In Portland.” A place boasting more strip joints per capita than any other city. But it also had a donut shop that sold zombie eclairs and the largest continuously operated outdoor market in the United States. People came to buy hemp and jewelry and eat street food. One out of four cars had a bumper sticker that read: keep portland weird. “I live in the Alberta neighborhood.” A quintessentially Portland place. “There are some shops down the streets. Goat yoga studios owned by bearded hipsters who sell sustainable organic orangutan-safe coffee on the side, that kind of thing.”
“That’s so cool.” Penny smiled. “Your house looked super pretty.” Super. Penny used the word a lot, and it fit her. Into everything. Bigger than life. “Well, the garden, at least. That’s all I could see on Instagram.”
Through the window, Mika could see the backyard, the falling fence, the unmowed grass, the overturned lawn furniture, and the discarded beer bottles full of slugs. Then she realized Penny had said your house. As in Mika’s. She sought to correct her. “It’s not really—”
“I can’t wait to get my own place,” Penny cut in. “I’m going to apply all over the West Coast and East Coast. Nowhere in the Midwest. Don’t get me wrong, I love living in Dayton, in Ohio, I mean. But it’s so small, you know? Sophie and I are going to be roomies wherever we go.” At last, a similarity. At sixteen, Mika and Hana worked at a Taco Bell. They’d listen to hip-hop while dumping bags of meat into warmers, chattering about their futures, bonding over being Asian American—how many times they’d been asked, “Where are you from?” Someday I’m going to travel and paint, Mika would brag. She’d concocted so many plans. Riding motorcycles across South America. Drifting through the Venice canals on a gondola. Eating chocolate croissants in Paris. “What else?” Penny tapped her fingers. “What about your job? And, oh my god, was that your boyfriend in the picture?” Leif, she meant. Mika hadn’t seen him in two years. To say things ended badly was like saying Van Gogh was just a painter. “He’s cute. You travel too? Where’d you go to high school?” Penny stopped. Took a breath. Clearly gearing up for more.
Mika laughed. She put out a hand. Deflected. “Wait. Stop. I want to hear more about you.”
Penny’s brow furrowed. Mika had a picture of her making that very gesture. It was one of her favorites. Caroline had sent a snapshot of Penny holding an empty cone, a double scoop of ice cream melting on the pavement. She wore a little white dress with hand-stitched flowers, her hair caught in a summer breeze. “I run cross-country. I read a lot. But not anything, you know, super noteworthy or important. Though recently, my dad gave me a copy of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. I think he bought it on the title alone, and I thought it would be super grim. But I ended up kind of liking it. There was this whole antiestablishment theme.”
“I’ve never read it.”
“It’s good. You should pick it up. What was high school like for you? I’m so curious.”
Mika pulled at her ear. She’d been a misfit and lonely growing up. The void had been filled by Hana and painting. At night, she’d steal away, huddling under her comforter with a flashlight, pencil, and drawing pad. She’d started sketching her own hand, then the hands of others, exploring the warped veins in her mother’s fingers, the age spots on her father’s. Art was like air to Mika. Her ikigai. It carried her through the darkness toward the dawn. But Mika didn’t paint anymore. That was before. Why bring it up? “I went to a magnet school. It was for students who didn’t necessarily fit into regular academia.” Most kids napped during classes, and the teachers turned the other cheek. “I loved the Beat Generation when I was younger—Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady.” Penny took another note, mouthing the words Beat Generation. “My good friend, Hana, attended with me. She was there when you were born, as a matter of fact.”
“She was?” Penny lit up.
“She was.” Penny stayed silent. Mika hesitated to add more. What might she say? The nurses hated us because we kept ordering food. I still pee a little every time I laugh too hard. My breasts are like sock puppets. I grieve every day. She settled on, “She held you. After I did, I mean.”
Penny thought for a moment. “Do you think I could see a picture of her?”
“Sure. I don’t have one handy right now.” There was one in a frame on the mantle pushed behind some gourd vases. But they were dressed up as nuns for Halloween, a bong on the table between them. “But I’ll send you one.”
“Awesome.” Penny smiled at Mika.
Mika smiled back.
“Where do you work?” Penny asked finally.
“I’m kind of between things right now.” At Mika’s answer, Penny chewed her lip—her face caught in a fragile moment of hoping for more but expecting less. Mika imagined that expression shifting, morphing to one her mother sported all too often around Mika. Blatant disappointment. What made a perfect mother? A perfect woman? Whatever it was, Mika understood it was the opposite of herself. “I mean, I recently left my old job to branch out on my own.” She closed her eyes. She was thirty-five. A third of her life was over. She was supposed to have done something by now. What corner had she painted herself into? She opened her eyes. The lie tripped out, stumbling over her tongue. “I love art, and . . . and I’m looking into gallery space, hoping to find some artists to represent and start my own business. It’s in really early stages . . .”
Penny positively glowed. “That’s amazing.”
Mika blushed. Felt too embarrassed and unsure to fess up. Plus, she wanted Penny to keep looking at her in that way. As if she was good and kind and special. A tiny white lie never hurt anyone, anyway. “Well, I guess . . .”
They bounced questions off each other for a while. Made small talk. Penny was a medal-winning runner. The scholarship kind. Her friend Sophie ran track too and had six siblings. “Mormons, you know?” Penny said. Mika did not. But she smiled like she did. Before they knew it, an hour had passed. Their conversation dwindled.
“Can we talk again?” Penny asked.
“I’d like that,” Mika said, meaning it. In the beginning, her expectations had been low. She only wanted to know Penny was safe and loved. That she hadn’t ruined Penny’s life. But now, she couldn’t tamp down the desire to speak to Penny again. It was part of the human condition to want more.
“Keep in touch,” Penny said, putting her pointer finger up as Mika reached out to end the call.
Mika paused, not understanding the motion. “What?”
“It’s something my mom . . .” Penny looked down, her eyelashes creating half-moon shadows on her cheeks. Then she glanced up, watching Mika closely. “Something we used to do. We’d extend our pointer fingers and tap them together. It’s silly . . .”
“It’s not silly.” Mika swallowed. She pressed her finger to the screen. Penny did the same. “Keep in touch, Penny.”