micro exchange

I am sitting at the table at my aunt’s, having a meal with my mother, sister, aunt, uncle, two cousins. It is the last meal before I leave Japan, and my aunt has made something elaborate, but I don’t remember what because she is always making elaborate meals. I am giddy with excitement during the meal, I am leaving for America tomorrow! I am seeing daddy tomorrow! We all talk about the departure, about the long plane ride, about the layover in Seoul, about our new life in America. My cousin asks, “Will we talk on the phone once you’re there?” and my mother answers, “Of course! All the time.” But then I think of something. I tell the table, laughing, “What if you guys call but daddy picks up the phone? He doesn’t speak Japanese, so it’ll be so awkward!” and the whole room goes silent. The smiles are wiped off, eyes drop from me to the dishes. It’s a strange reaction, I wonder if I’ve said something wrong, but what could I have said wrong? From what I remember, daddy didn’t speak any Japanese. My aunt is the first to speak after the silence. She says, “That’s a good point. How’s the food?” and the subject is dropped, and nobody tells me what I’ve said wrong. It is such a small exchange, a micro exchange, an exchange I should have forgotten a long time ago, but I remember it so clearly. I remember how the room went silent, cold, like a morgue, and I felt like I was the only person there. I remember how nobody knew what to say, including my mother. Nobody bothered to tell me that it would have been impossible for my father to have picked up the phone because he was dead.

Rebecca Suzuki is a writer and literary translator from Nagoya, Japan and Queens, New York. She’s a recent graduate of the MFA program at CUNY Queens College and teaches writing there and at Montclair State University. You can find her other writing in Communion arts journal and forthcoming in The Bookends Review.