we start to walk back but Uncle gets a call on his cell says a few words then ends the call looks at me and tells me he needs to talk with his cousin who runs the gas station so we go all the way there opposite side of the village and it’s so hot I’m wishing I had one of Baachan’s big ugly bonnets
Uncle and gas station man talk and talk as I sip cold tea and watch gas station man’s wife put gas in cars air in tires wash windshields make change between customers she sits with me tells me about her grown kids learning to drive
but on the way home Uncle remembers he forgot the cucumbers I have only eggplants and peppers and he insists we both return to the gas station and I’m thinking this is different Uncle never wastes an afternoon and never visits during work hours and normally doesn’t care about cucumbers or if he did would go back himself and send me ahead to help Baachan or Aunt with a chore
even after we get the cucumbers he remembers suddenly sheepishly we need to see another cousin by the bridge but by then I’m thinking this is way too different and I start to run
through the east side of the village over the bridge to the west side down the lane up the driveway through the house past Baachan and Aunt in the kitchen up to Yurie’s room where I let the eggplants and peppers drop
Uncle not far behind me is hollering through the house as I’m kneeling before the computer cursing it to boot up fast faster damn it! Baachan flies into the room tries to pull me away Uncle behind her Aunt, too but Uncle pulls Baachan off me and I look at Baachan see her eyes fill and I know something happened
please I say
B aachan kneels beside me then before the low table with the computer that she doesn’t know how to use as I open the browser and pull up my email and chat and see all the messages and the name again and again Lisa
Baachan holds me as I check each message first from Lisa to us all last night, Japan night her morning just an hour after I logged off thanks everyone you’ve been great but it’s time to go gotta make myself better only way I know how luv you Lisa
then message after message copied to every electron in the atom and beyond as they logged on then phoned and emailed anyone everyone desperate to get someone at the summer school to find her stop her save her
and messages hours later after they got the news from their mothers who’d heard from Abby’s mother who’d heard direct from Lisa’s godmother that she’d been found in her dorm room hanging from her bathrobe sash
Baachan says that a phone call before breakfast was my mother with the news and that my mother wanted me to hear the news from her not a computer but that she had to comfort Emi take Emi to meet with counselors that Gina’s father had assembled at the community center for girls, siblings, friends, parents anyone in town who needed help … so could they stall? my mother had thought they’d be home to call during our lunch break but they were delayed as more and more girls, boys parents and neighbors arrived so my mother had called my father who’d called here during shogi and told Baachan stall more!
now Aunt brings the phone upstairs and they dial my home in New York I hear my mother’s words I hear her voice and my dad comes on and I hear his words hear his voice all soft and Emi comes on and I hear her words and I hear her voice but I have none and Aunt takes the phone then gives it to Uncle who leaves the room
I start to shiver my whole body and Aunt sets out the futon and Baachan lays me down and Aunt covers me and Yurie comes home from work early and