Crimson Footprints (43 page)

“
You were right,” Daichi
said suddenly. “This view is quite enjoyable.”

Deena’s cell phone rang. She
pulled it from her pocket and gave it a peek. It was her
grandmother. Ever since she’d delivered news of her engagement,
Emma had been ransacking her phone line.

“
And how are the Hammonds
taking this news?” Daichi asked, as if reading her
thoughts.

Deena shrugged. “About as
bad as expected.”

He laughed. “Worse even than
my initial reception of this love affair?”

“
Much worse.”

They continued in
silence.

“
It turns out that Cook was
right,” Daichi said suddenly.

Deena blinked. “Michael
Cook? About what?”

“
About my being shortlisted
for the Pritzker. Turns out he knows something after
all.”

Deena’s eyes
widened.

“
My God, Daichi, that’s
such an honor. When will you know if you’ve won?”

He shrugged. “Yesterday. I
got the call yesterday. The ceremony will be in May.”

“
What!” Deena shrieked and
embraced him before realizing she’d done so. She pulled back with a
blush and got to see something as rare as a Nobel Prize winner in
the flesh. Daichi embarrassed.

“
I’d like for you to
accompany me. The ceremony’s in Melbourne, Australia.”

“
Me? You want
me?”

“
Is that so impossible to
conceive?”

Deena shook her head. “I—I
don’t know. I thought you’d want someone—important.”

Daichi shrugged. “I’d say a
daughter’s pretty important.”

He flashed a grin for her,
the most generous she’d seen, one she couldn’t help but return
it.

But he had no idea the
effect his words had on her. She’d never entertained the notion of
having a father again, and what it would mean, what it could mean.
She never thought that she could be a daughter again. And yet she
would be.

Soon.

CHAPTER
SIXTY-SEVEN

Emma stood at the narrow
stove and waited for the hotcakes’ edges to brown. In a nearby
saucepan grits boiled and bacon sizzled. She glanced at the coffee
pot and watched it gurgle. In another moment, her biscuits would
need to come out of the oven.

Emma slipped the 5x7 from
the pocket of her housecoat and peered at it. With a single crooked
finger, she traced the outline of the man in the portrait. He was a
fine looking young man with the gleam of youth in his eyes, bright
like diamonds and just a trace of stubbornness. Emma held that
gaze, lost to her forever, before reluctantly tucking it away
again.

She’d come across that old
picture in Eddie’s keepsake box. Face down; it was hidden just
beneath a pair of cuff links given to him by his father, a Cuban
cigar from the day their son Dean was born, and a Purple Heart he’d
received from his tour of duty in Vietnam. Emma stood motionless,
with that picture in hand, her mind weighted with buried memories.
And when sleep failed to come for her that night, she stared at
that picture and tried to remember the day when she’d become so old
and hardhearted.

As Emma removed the hotcakes
from the griddle, she thought about the invitation Deena gave her
two weeks ago. She’d never laid hands on such fine paper. It was
sturdy, sophisticated, beautiful. And those letters! Why, they were
raised up on it as proud as anything she’d seen. And while she
couldn’t do much more than guess as to what that invitation said,
she couldn’t help but notice the similarities between it and her
granddaughter.

Emma surveyed the spread she
was preparing and glanced at her watch. Deena would be there at any
moment. She was on her way over to pick up a copy of her birth
certificate so that she could apply for her marriage license. Her
wedding day was just weeks away.

When Deena arrived, she
refused the breakfast Emma had gone to the trouble of preparing.
Juice from fresh squeezed oranges, flapjacks, bacon, eggs,
biscuits, grits—she would let them all go to waste. She wanted the
birth certificate and she wanted to leave.

“
Grandma you’d said that
you would have it out for me by the time I got here,” Deena said,
surveying the spread of food in disapproval. “I don’t have time to
waste this morning.”

Emma shook her head. “Chile,
a good breakfast ain’t time wasted. Now come on in here and make
yourself a plate. And afterwards, you can help me fine that paper
you need.”

Deena watched as her
grandmother turned from her, retrieved a plate from an overhead
cabinet and began to fill it with food. When it seemed that the
dish could hold no more Emma turned to her granddaughter, and
watched her reluctantly pull out a chair to sit.

The two ate in silence, with
only the occasional scrape of fork and knife against plate, and
Emma’s smacking to interrupt them. And when their plates were
empty, Emma reached into her pocket and dug out her old picture.
She kept her eyes on Deena as she placed it on the
table.

With a trembling hand, Deena
reached for the picture. A long and lean man with rich chocolate
skin, wide almond eyes and a good-natured grin, stared back at her.
Wrapped in his tight embrace was a smiling woman with a wide and
pouty mouth, cornflower blue eyes, and hair like stalks of wheat.
They were Deena’s parents.

Deena gripped the picture
until it shook, tears blinding the nearly forgotten faces. Her
father, Dean Hammond, and her mother, Gloria, eligible for parole
in the year 2032.

Emma watched as Deena’s
mouth became a hard line. Her jaw clenched, and her eyes grew cold.
Deena sat the picture back on the table.

Emma stared at the portrait
thoughtfully. “You think you ever could forgive her?”

“
What?” Deena said. It was
not the question she’d been expecting.

“
Your mother,” Emma tapped
a finger on the picture. “I asked you if you ever gone forgive her
for what she done.”

Deena shook her head “I
don’t know, Grandma. I’ve never thought about it.”

Emma nodded. Twenty-five
years had passed since she’d last heard her son’s voice, fifteen
since she’d placed him in that pine box. Time, she discovered,
marched on in cruel, unforgiving bursts.

“
Maybe,” Emma said as she
lifted the picture from the table. “You should thank about
forgiving her. It’s a hard, hard thing to want your child’s
forgiveness and find it beyond your reach.”

Deena met the old woman’s
wet eyes. “What?” she whispered.

Emma lowered her gaze. “For
a long time I looks at you and your brother and your sister and I
sees my boy. I sees what I loss and I hates you for it. I hates you
for making me see that every single day.”

Emma swallowed hard, her
voice harsh and broken. “I takes that hate out on you and I treats
you wrong. But it’s not cause I don’t love you, it’s cause I
can’t—I can’t stands to see him no more. I can’t stands to see my
son looking back at me and asking why I threw him away.”

She rubbed her face tiredly.
“Listen, Deena. Gone and marry that boy. I ain’t gone stand in your
way no more.”

Emma nodded towards the
picture of her son. “I reckon this the closest I’m gone get to a
second chance, anyway. I suspect I better take it.”

She stood, brushed away a
tear, and collected the dishes.

EPILOGUE

The little girl lifted her
menu, peered at the upside down script, and lowered it again.
“
Ojiichan
, do you
think they have French fries here?”

Her grandfather’s lips
curled into an indulgent smile. “If they don’t we’ll go somewhere
where they do.”

Deena lowered her menu with
a sigh. “Don’t tell her that.” When she turned to Tak, it was with
an accusatory glare. “I thought you said you were going to talk to
him about this. About spoiling her.”

“
I did. You see the good it
did.”

Deena turned back to Daichi.
“Well, I’ll tell you myself. Stop spoiling her or she’ll be
unbearable in a few years.” She shook her head. “And anyway there
are other people here besides her. I for one have been waiting for
weeks to come here.”

She looked up to see the
waiter place a sushi and sashimi spread before them.

“
Lord Jesus,” Grandma Emma
murmured.

Daichi smiled at the old
woman before turning to the tray, examining the spread with a
critical eye. “Looks good,” he said cheerfully.

Emma snorted. Tak and Deena
exchanged knowing, smothered smiles.

“
Now listen here, Emma.
You’ll honor our agreement. I held up my end of the bargain, and
now you’ll do the same,” Daichi warned.

Mia squealed. “When
ojiichan
ate chittlins
his face was red!”

Daichi laughed. “You see?
You owe me.”

Emma sighed. “But this
hardly seem equal.”

“
You’re right. I was forced
to eat pig entrails, whereas you have a fresh selection of the
highest quality in seafood.”

“
But you ain’t cooked none
of it!” Emma cried.

Daichi clapped his hands in
delight. “You’re a real treat, Emma, a real treat. But a deal is a
deal.” He leaned forward and with chopsticks began plucking the
various pieces he wanted her to eat, setting them on the empty
plate before her. “Let’s see…We’ll do a bit of sashimi here,
salmon
and
tuna.
Also some eel and cucumber—”

“
Come on dad, give her a
break,” Tak laughed.

“
What?” Deena cried. “When
we were dating you gave me eel
and
salmon roe!”

“
Good point, Deena,” Daichi
grinned. “Let’s add a bit of
gukanmaki
to this plate and you’re
ready to go. That of course, is sushi with three types of roe in
it.”

“
Now what the devil is
roe?” Emma asked, jabbing at one of the hand-rolled pieces of
sushi.

“
Oh my God, don’t tell her.
It’s better if you don’t her,” Deena warned.

Daichi offered wasabi and
soy sauce to Emma under the rapt attention of the table.

“
Lord, I guess it’s now or
never,” she murmured, raising the eel and cucumber to her
mouth.

“
Place it all in at once,”
Daichi advised, his eyes dancing. “It’s better that
way.”

With two fingers, Emma
jammed the sushi into her mouth. Mia shrieked.

“
Lord have mercy!” Emma
cried.

“
My God, I never thought
she’d do it,” Deena whispered, turning to Tak.

“
What are you kidding? My
dad would’ve rode her forever,” Tak murmured.

As Emma chewed, her eyes
watered.

“
Swallow it! You’ll only
prolong it this way,” Daichi laughed.

Emma spat in a napkin and
burst into a coughing laughing fit.

“
You don’t expect that one
to count do you? I swallowed a record nine portions of your
chitterlings! You’ll never get anywhere spewing pieces from your
mouth like that,” Daichi said.

“
I don’t know why he’s
doing this,” Tak said. “When he gets back from Japan she told me
that she’s gonna make him eat possum.”

“
What?” Deena laughed.
“Where in the hell is she gonna find possum?”

Tak shrugged. “She says she
knows a guy that goes back and forth to Mississippi all the time,
and that he’s going to bring her some. She claims she hasn’t had
any in forty years but she’s making some especially for
dad.”

Deena laughed. “This’ll go
on forever, you know, them trying to one up each other.”

Tak touched her hand. “I can
think of worse ways this could’ve turned out.” A tiny smile played
across his lips. Deena matched it before dropping her gaze to his
hand. Instinctively, it fell to the faint and jagged scar running
crosswise from his index finger to wrist. It was an ever-present
reminder of traits she tried to forget. Cowardice. Selfishness.
Deceit.

“
Chee-chee pah-pah
chee
—”

Deena looked up, roused from
a memory. “Baby, don’t sing at the table.”

Mia hesitated, mouth open
mid “
chee
.” Wide,
silver-plated saucers stared back at her mother.

Deena could see every part
of herself in her daughter Mia, sifted through and made better.
From the wild and silky jet black curls pinned diva-style in two
oversized pigtails to the dollop of cinnamon on oatmeal skin and
eyes like wide and polished sterling silver, heavy with the weight
of her value. She had the look of a girl who could do or be
anything, even at five.

She admired her
already.

Mia Tanaka, who ate soul
food and spoke
Nihongo
, who frequented festivals with her
ojiichan
and Sunday worship with her
great grandmother, had learned in five years of life something it
took Deena twenty-five to figure out. That even with all of these
seemingly contrary traits, she was just what she was intended to
be.