Best Mistake

02 | holiday

it came like a postcard,
picture perfect, shiny family

On our first meeting, I am sure we are living in different worlds. The evidence is everywhere, a sickening contrast like splattered blood on white linoleum tiles, the veins thudding at exactly one-hundred-fifty times a minute, and when I look at them, there is a lack of recognition as if they haven't considered the kindness of pretend, and in this occasion where my tacit cordialness is of obligation rather than predisposition, I paint them an illustration, because it feels like the kindest thing anyone can do at that moment. But mostly I am hoping that they might one day feverishly attempt to pronounce the seamless friction between their fantasy and the person I actually am, and so I ignore a great deal of what might insult me, including the toast my father gives, and after the reception ends and I am back at the hotel, I don't immediately sleep because this is a vacation, so I call the kitchen and ask for a dinner set, a bottle of shochu on the side, and as I'm calling from the hotel room telephone, my handphone rings and I answer, because it's my father, opening another door to his dwellings, and the rule is that a vacation is only a vacation if it begins with his indulgence. During this exchange over the phone, a tendril of his daughter's voice peals through the air, wireless and sweet, and he says, Ema, that's enough, Ema. And between meetings two and three I am looking her up, but Ema Hinata's charm is only visible to the naked eye and my father, while committed to the materialization of family bond out of commiseration rather than genetics, refuses to acknowledge the significance of his presence in her most formative years, meaning I cannot see her through him, and I lie awake at night and ponder the thickness of sympathy, looking for absolutes and only finding transmutable results. By meeting four there is still no answer, which is getting frustrating, but I will readjust myself entirely to get the things I want so on all the way through our seventh meeting, I am doing what a snapping turtle does to lure its prey into striking range which is to have a tongue that mimics a worm, and she laughs and tells me softly, I am glad to have you here, because she is a little sentimental and finds my presence comforting, and because it is inevitable to carryover traits through kinship despite my father's belief, I smile at her and am startled when it comes out genuine.

———

For the duration of the stopover flight my father doesn't answer my texts, or my emails, or my calls, and I am maintaining my smile in a bastion of old-world luxury, leafing through a shiny pamphlet displaying ten prestigious universities that change lives. The reason I am not more vexed is because when it comes to this, I cannot help feeling that my whole childhood of kneeling prie-dieu is not just some cheap consolation of a hypothetical make-believe. I mean, each human has a narrative and a destiny; the sufferings I have endured so far are the necessary circumstances that will eventually lead me to where I am meant to be, and where I am meant to be is in the other end of a parent's unconditional love. This is not to say that I am not resentful of the other people that do not warrant the objectively better life they had been given, but I still find this an acceptable price of admission. I will rearrange myself, waiting for that particular and inevitable conclusion.

———

Technically, I am eligible for a free in-campus accommodation, but then I remember the peaceful tenor of the Asahina's residence. I remember the photo album in my father's home office. The photographs are candid and loose—a grainy photo of them asleep in the sand, a photo of them sharing lunchboxes, taken from behind. There is one photo that moved me; one taken from an absurd angle, their faces soft with exhaustion. The specks of dirt and the almost imperceptible laughter. I saved the photo to my phone so I can look at it again. I see people looking over my shoulder and smiling, and I start to believe this postcard family is mine. And then for another week my father ignores my attempt at communication, so twelve days after having landed in a foreign land with nowhere to go I find myself climbing the stairs of the family's pseudo-mansion because it is the only communal route I know where I might feign ignorance over this possible mistake. The door is unlocked and no one is home, but there is a sweet smell coming off the kitchen, so I walk around the expansive space and pick up these cold eggs on the counter and roll them around in my hands, and I open the oven door and see the rising white batter inside a round pan and find a small knife to poke holes on it with and then there is a voice, and I turn and standing in the doorway in bright pink mittens and a knee-length dress is my father's consoling wife.