When You Were Here

that one of the Japanese emperors a long time ago had a young and beautiful wife, who was suddenly taken ill. He loved her desperately and searched far and wide for the best doctors across the archipelago to treat her. He even sent his men to find doctors in China. That’s how much he loved her. For the emperor to turn to foreigners was a sign of how desperate he’d become. And they came. They came by ship to treat her. But with each successive doctor, she grew more ill. She couldn’t rise. She lay in bed all day, and fever started to take over her body and her brain. She was hallucinating, talking to people who didn’t exist. But the emperor loved her so, and when she muttered something about the tea leaves in the nearby fields, he went himself to search. And there, in the fields near his palace, fields that had grown only rice before, there was one single row of plants with tea leaves sprouting up from the land.”
    Kana gestures softly, gently, with her hands, as if she’s drawing up a tea leaf from the ground. She continues in her hushed tone, and for a brief second I feel like I’m in temple and the rabbi is about to speak. “And he gathered them himself.” She demonstrates, as if she’s plucking leaf after leaf off a bush. “And he carried them back to the palace, not dropping a single leaf. Then he commanded the royal tea master to brew tea with these leaves. He asked for aperfect pot of tea. The tea master complied, only boiling the water until the tiniest bubbles appeared, then pouring right away, then steeping for exactly the proper amount of time. The emperor brought the steaming teapot on a tray to his wife, and he poured the cup himself. She pushed it away at first, but he gently insisted, encouraging her to try it. He told her it was the tea she’d been asking for. She took a sip, then another, and then she looked at him, and said”—Kana pauses now, reaches out her hand and places it on my cheek, like she’s acting, like she’s playing the part of the young wife—“ my love .”
    Her hand is warm, and her touch feels good. She leaves her hand on my face for a few more seconds as she continues. “And every day she drank more, and every day she grew stronger. And then she was cured.”
    Cured. Such a gorgeous word, such a painful word. The word I prayed for, begged for, bargained for, hoped for. The only word in the English language that mattered.
    Kana takes her hand off me. My face feels cold. I want her hand back. I want her to touch my cheek again.
    “And they were together for many years. They had five healthy children and lived long and prosperous lives. And the wife gave thanks every day for the Tatsuma tea leaves that had grown in the fields when she most needed them.”
    I want to laugh. I want to scoff. I want to blow this all off. But something about the way she is speaking warns me not to. And something about the way she tells the story makes me want to believe in the tea too. It wouldn’t kill meto believe in something for once. It wouldn’t kill me to believe in the same sort of possibility that my mom believed in. After all, she was the happy one, not me, not the black hole of a son. Maybe my mom had it figured out. Maybe the potential of getting well was enough of an elixir to bring her joy.
    “And now it is said that Tatsuma leaves can cure disease when all other treatments have failed. It is said Tatsuma leaves bring a calmness, a healing to the mind and the body, when nothing else works. And so Takahashi sent your mother here. And we accompanied her. Because legend has it that no foreigner can find the Tatsuma leaves on his or her own.”
    Now I do laugh. I’ve had enough of the white-boy ribbing from my sister. “Give me a break.”
    She shakes her head and places a finger on her lips. A bird flutters by overhead. A mosquito lands on my arm. I slap it away. The garden is quiet; the silence is eerie. “Danny, it is the legend. You do not question it. You must respect it.”
    Okay. So this girl, despite the wild clothes, is traditional in her own way too.
    I hold my hands up. “Fine, I respect it. Did my mom respect it? Did my mom, you know, believe in that story?”
    Kana nods. “For a long time, yes. She believed in the possibility with all her heart.”
    I wonder why she never told me, never shared these beliefs with me. I knew she was a fighter. And sure, I knowshe wanted to live. But I was never privy to these deeper hopes.
    “Can we go in