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CHAPTER FOUR
"Come on," Lucy says to me now. "Come out with us. You might have some fun, make some friends. I've made a few already."
Of course she has. My sister is not like me. She doesn't watch the water to study the nature of it. She doesn't dip her toes in gradually. Lucy just dives in. She looks at me now, her brows bent, asking me to dive in with her.
But I don't know how to do that."Have fun," I tell them.
"But you've been-"
"It's fine, guys," Auntie Sarah says, cutting off her son. She stands under the doorframe and smiles warmly. "You two go ahead. Lucia can hang out with me." She waves goodbye to Lucy and Adrian and motions for me to enter the house. "Come on, honey. You can help me with dinner."
The interior of the house is as extravagant as the exterior. A grand staircase curves against the wall, and behind it, there's an entryway that leads to the kitchen.
I place the DVD player on the white countertop, where there's a vase of sunflowers, and Auntie Sarah frowns.
"What's that about?" she asks.
"It stopped working, so I took it to get repaired."
"Well, we can always get another. That one is pretty old."
"That's okay. It's working now. He fixed it." The corners of my lips twitch as a smile forms.
"Who fixed it?" Auntie Sarah's eyes narrow, suspicious and curious.
"I don't know his name."
"Well, what does he look like? Do you remember?"
I remember the color of his eyes clearly, but what's most memorable is how they made me feel. Though I'd rather keep that information to myself. "I wasn't paying attention to how he looked."
"Hmm." Auntie Sarah lifts her chin and examines me from a high angle. "All right." A moment passes, and she turns away. Her black bone-straight hair, tied in a low ponytail, swings as she moves around the kitchen. After rinsing a bunch of green onions in the sink, she places them on a wooden chopping board. "Help me cut these?"
"Okay." I lather my hands with soap, rinse, then start chopping. "What are you making?"
"Just something quick and simple-shoyu ramen. It's going to be very spicy-just how your uncle likes it."
"That's how I like it too."
"I know," she laughs. "Is it a family thing. You folks love spicy food. Because of your uncle, my taste buds have adapted."
Auntie Sarah is Japanese American. She and my uncle have been married for eighteen years. I first met her when I was twelve. During one of my uncle's trips to Hawaii, he brought his whole family along. Adrian, who was also twelve at the time, was set on finding reliable internet access. Naomi, their oldest child, who currently goes to MIT, was set on sightseeing. Auntie Sarah, however, was quiet and reserved. Not because she was shy. She was just comfortable. She didn't act like a foreigner-demanding the conveniences she had in her country or constantly looking to be wowed by something new. She was just chill. Back then, liking her was as easy as it is now.
"Lucia, honey," she says, scooping a mixture of garlic and ginger from the food processor. "I think you would have to at some point."
"I left today. And I went to choir practice last week."
"I mean leave the house to socialize with people your age-not a bunch of middle-aged and elderly women in a church choir."
"But I like singing in the choir." For years, I was part of my church choir in Hawaii. When my family moved to Memphis, I joined the Holy Trinity choir because it's what my father would have wanted. He would have encouraged me to audition, saying something along the lines of not being stingy with your gift. Share it. I joined because of him, because it would have made him proud.
"I know you love singing," Auntie Sarah continues, "but I didn't think your one effort at socializing would be joining the church choir. I want you to make friends. Friends your own age. Hopefully when school starts next week, you'll make some."
I shrug. "Maybe."
"Honey, I just want you to get settled here. I want you to feel like you belong here. Like this is your home."
I've lived in Tennessee for a month, but I still don't know how to exchange one home for another, one state for another. I feel suspended, caught between two places, between the before when everything was normal and the after when everything changed.
I miss my dad. In a way that is almost intolerable. I've missed people before-my mother when she left for a month to stay with her sister who had a baby, my uncle when he returned to Tennessee after every visit with us, Lucy's sleepover at her friends. But whatever I felt then seems so shallow compared to what I feel now. I never knew missing someone could be excruciating.
"Lucia," Auntie Sarah says. "Do you understand what I'm saying, honey? I'm a little concerned."
"Don't be," I tell her while forcing a smile. "I'll make friends. I'll be fine."
That's what everyone wants to hear. And I wish it were true, but I can't ignore my grief. It's constantly present, lurking and slithering with a sickness that makes it obscure until it takes me by surprise.