Queen of Love

Chapter 23

“Tadaima,” Aya announced as she entered her childhood home. “Ma? You here?”

Here came Rika, darting out of the kitchen with her cooking apron dangling from her hand. She had not forgotten the great and mysterious Singaporean woman was coming with her daughter, after all. My mother would rather be dead than be caught meeting someone new while wearing an apron, of all things. No, Rika would cook an early dinner in her pink Marc Jacob sweater if it meant making a good first impression.

“Okaeri nasai,” Rika announced, standing at the top of the genkan entryway. She had, as always, lined up the guests’ house slippers in order by size. As a master shoe saleswoman, Rika’s party trick of correctly guessing a stranger’s shoe size went into silent play as she presented Genevieve with a pair of size seven slippers. “Genevieve?”

Oof. She’s been practicing. That was almost perfect, and Rika was not an English speaker by any stretch of the imagination. “Hai. Allow me to introduce my girlfriend, Genevieve Liu.”

That exchange had been in Japanese, but Genevieve quickly picked up on what was happening. She bowed her head in respect to Rika and said, with carefully enunciated syllables, “Hajimemashite, Genevieve desu.”

Rika looked at her daughter as if to ask, ”Is this a trick?”

“She doesn’t speak fluent Japanese,” Aya fired in rapid Japanese to her mother, hoping Genevieve wouldn’t quite understand they were talking about her. “Remember? I told you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Rika said in English, one of the few phrases she knew. “Come into my house.” That one, too.

She turned her back on them and returned to the kitchen. “Is Mari here yet?” Aya called after her mother. She already knew the answer, though. If Mari were there, she’d be all over Genevieve by now.

“Your father is in the living room!” Rika shouted back. “Go introduce yourselves to him! Oh, and get him to change the channel! I’m so tired of baseball reruns!”

“Did you get that?” Aya asked her girlfriend, who had slipped on the house slippers. Aya grabbed her old, worn pair that had been around for at least twenty years.

“Enough.” To her credit, Genevieve remained relaxed as she waited for Aya. “Where’s the living room? I want to meet your father.”

She really is catching on. It had taken Aya several years to feel confident speaking English. How long until Genevieve was already fluent in Japanese?

Her father was much more approachable, immediately getting up from the sitting table in the living room to embrace his daughter and shake Genevieve’s hand. He spoke even less English than his wife and relied on Aya to translate the conversation between them. Genny’s met her match here. In true generational fashion, Aya’s father’s speaking abilities had devolved into ojiisan-go, that near-incomprehensible dialect that only old Japanese men understood. Aya was decent at deciphering what her retired father was saying, thanks to plenty of drunken izakaya parties with her coworkers. When Takatani gets inebriated, he sounds exactly the same. If Aya valued her job, she’d figured out what these old men were saying when they looked at a pretty woman and declared, “She’s lovely enough to be my favorite daughter!”

Genevieve was flattered by the unexpected compliment. Rika, who entered the room with hors d’oeuvres at that moment, knitted her brows and folded her eyes into deep slits.

The mood was saved by Mari’s late arrival. Aya was not disappointed when her sister barreled into the living room and picked Genevieve out of the world’s most obvious lineup. Her accent was so thick when she laid some middle-school English and Mandarin on the woman now sitting at the table, but Genevieve spoke English slowly enough for Mari to understand. Once Mari realized that Genevieve’s Japanese progress was decent enough, she dropped all foreign language pretense and babbled on in her native language, as if anyone but Aya could understand.

“Aya tells us you’re from Singapore, Genevieve,” Rika said, with her daughter translating. “Is that true? Are you Chinese?”

Great! We’re going straight there. Aya was loathed to translate that, but the words had been simple enough for Genevieve to understand without her girlfriend’s help. “I am from Singapore, yes,” Genevieve said in simple Japanese. “My parents were born in Singapore, too, but my ancestors are Chinese-Malay.”

“Where are they from before that?”

Genevieve needed that translated. To be fair, that’s a weird question. “Chengdu,” Genevieve politely said. “A very long time ago.”

“Ma,” Aya said. “She’s from Singapore. What else do you need to know?”

“It’s interesting.” Rika acted as if it were a common question to ask a new guest. “You know how it is here. We all come from Japan. Exotic women are so interesting.”

“Why don’t you tell her your family is from Ibaraki!” Aya called after her. “Dad’s are from freakin’ Oita!”

Her father chuckled. “Good hot springs in Oita. We should go soon.”

“Aya.” Genevieve put her hand on Aya’s arm. Across from them, Mari almost exploded in excitement. “It’s okay. I’m used to these questions. It’s the same in Singapore. If you’re of Chinese descent, everyone wants to know where in China your great-great ancestors came from.”

Aya let it go, for Genevieve, but she knew her mother was being passive-aggressive. If you were American, she wouldn’t ask where in Europe your ancestors came from.

As dinner was prepared for serving, Mari planted her elbows on the table and sighed in Genevieve’s direction. “You are so pretty.”

“Tha… thank you. Mari, right?”

“Yes! Wow, you remembered? Oh, my God, tell me all about Singapore. I wanna go someday! Do you think it’s kid-friendly? Would my kids get deported within minutes? Tell me!”