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With every word, a fist seemed to close itself around my heart. I didn’t want to talk about this. Fuck, I didn’t even want to be here. I was just a sixteen-year-old kid, for fuck’s sake. I should have been at the park kicking the shit out of a football. Maybe getting stoned in Jagger’s attic or trying to score with the girls at Croydon High. Literally anywhere but in this room, talking about this subject with these people who so clearly hated me.
My uncle’s face turned red, and he looked like he wanted to punch me, but he dutifully turned to his father and translated. Instead of mirroring his son’s rage, though, Kiyoshi, a slight man with hunched shoulders bent by years of work, appeared thoughtful and eventually nodded.
“Hai,” he agreed before making a fluid response I couldn’t for the life of me understand.
Ichiro looked like he wanted to argue, but he turned back to me. “My father says this is acceptable. We will take my sister’s remains with us tomorrow when we return.”
The fist around my heart tightened. “What? No.”
Ichiro’s eyes narrowed. “No?”
I shook my head. Why was it so hard to talk at moments like these? “I—no.” I cleared my throat. “I want to bring her.”
Immediately, my uncle shook his head. “We are her family, and we go home. You—who knows if you can—”
“No,” I interrupted, clearly shocking him with my rudeness. I knew enough to understand that in Japan, my insolence would have never been tolerated. Well, too bad, Oji. You’re just going to have to deal. “Mum wanted me to finish school, and I know she would want me to be the one to bring her home. I can come at the end of term, to have some time to save for the trip, but not before. That’s all.”
With another sharp scowl, my uncle translated my reply. Kiyoshi just looked at me for a long time while Ichiro muttered something to himself that I would have bet was the equivalent of “this sodding idiot.”
Unable to help myself, I rose to the challenge. “What’s that, Oji?”
“I say,” Ichiro snapped, “this food is wrong. We should have fish.”
I glanced at the table, with its picked-over menu I’d prepared that morning with Emmanuel. All Mum’s favorites, ones that had earned us a fair number of regular customers and reviews in the local papers over the years. They were her legacy, really. The only thing she left behind other than my sorry self. I wasn’t going to let this arsehole shame that.
“I made them in her honor,” I told him. “I know it’s not fish, but perhaps you’d like to try the inari? That’s the closest to sushi we’ve got.”
I picked up a tray of rice-filled tofu skins off the table and offered it to my relatives. I was a lousy waiter, but I could hold a damn tray. My uncle scowled at the platter and shook his head. My grandfather, however, removed one from the platter and took a small bite.
His features were transformed with surprise, and his dark eyes popped open. “Not inari.”
I closed my eyes with dread. “No, technically, it’s not. I’m sorry, Ojiisan. It was Mum’s favorite, though.”
I turned to replace the platter, not wanting to see the look of disapproval I knew would be there. This time, I couldn’t quite bear it.
I was maybe ten when I combined the traditional tofu skin with the risotto I made from Mum’s secret dashi, shitake, lion’s mane mushrooms, and the best black garlic in her kitchen. It was an expensive mistake that forced her to remove her black garlic miso soup from the menu for a week. But she was so happy with the new recipe that she served it instead. And once a week, I’d make it just for her so that, for once, she didn’t have to cook for anyone else and could be the guest.
I turned back to take my seat only to find my grandfather watching me while he finished the inari.
“Who make?” Indelicately, he polished off the final bit and reached around me for another.
I watched warily. Did he actually like them? “Uh, I make. I mean, I made them.”
Kiyoshi’s surprise deepened. “You make?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I thought—”
“Ichiro,” my grandfather interrupted, then rattled off something I roughly translated as “eat thisnow.” That I knew. I’d heard it enough from Mum growing up.
My uncle frowned and shook his head, not even sparing a glance at me. But Kiyoshi snatched the tray and jabbed the inari at him until Ichiro had to take one.
“Mmmph,” he grunted. But then he took another bite. And another.
Kiyoshi smiled, then broke into another string of exuberant Japanese. Begrudgingly, my uncle nodded back. And then, almost as if he didn’t want to, he popped the last bit of the inari into his mouth and swallowed.
I frowned at both of them, wondering what the hell had just happened. Kiyoshi caught my bewildered glances, and his worn face softened.
“I say,” he offered in stilted English. “Best inari I eat.”
