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  For Lilia

  michigan

  “Who are you and what are you doing with that electric toothbrush?”

  —Chaz Whittaker to Lisa Cook Gadget Girl, “Attack of the Zombie Ninjas”

  1

  My father has blue hands. Or at least that’s what Mom tells me—one of the few facts I’ve been able to wring out of her. See, he’s the eldest son of one of the last indigo producers in his village on the Japanese island of Shikoku. His family has been growing indigo for generations—centuries, even—since back in the time of the shoguns.

  “You were named after that plant,” Mom told me. “Ai means indigo. Ko means child.”

  Indigo is my destiny.

  The color blue begins with a seed planted in early spring. After the first green sprigs pop through the earth, the seedlings are transplanted to fields. The leaves are still green then. Later, in the hot, sticky days of summer, the plants are harvested and dried out. Then the leaves are tossed into a vat with wood ash, lye, and wheat bran and fermented.

  “It’s very stinky,” Mom told me, “but it produces the most beautiful hue—the color of a storm-bruised sky.”

  The first time she explained all this, she took a deep blue cloth from a drawer and unfurled it over my lap. “This is for you,” she said. “Your father dyed this.”

  I traced the blue circles with my fingers and brought the cloth to my nose. When I inhaled, I caught that earthy, vegetable scent. “I want to do this,” I said. I was young then, maybe six or seven years old. I imagined dunking all of my clothes into a vat of indigo and turning them blue.

  “Then your hands will look as if they were smeared with blueberries,” she said, laughing.

  My father’s hands were tinged from dipping cloth into the dye. No matter how many times he washed them, she said, they were always a little bit blue.

  “It takes a long time to master the art of dyeing,” she said. “And it’s very hard work to grow and harvest the indigo plants.”

  Mom told me about the dawn-to-dusk labor and the crouching in the fields. Being a farmer’s wife was hard work. She would hardly have had any time for her art. I wondered sometimes if that’s why she hadn’t married my father.

  There’s a small terra-cotta pot filled with dirt on my windowsill. I’m trying to grow indigo. Michigan is not the best place for it, however. Indigo plants like heat and humidity. They grow well in tropical climates or steamy greenhouses. Back in the antebellum era, it was a major crop in sultry, mosquito-infested South Carolina. Indigo also does well in India and, of course, in Shikoku. I’ve been trying to give my pot lots of sunlight, but this room is the coolest, temperature-wise, in the house.

  Maybe Mom didn’t want to slave away as a farm wife, but I figure if I can manage to grow an indigo plant in my bedroom in the chilly-in-spring state of Michigan, my father would be more than happy to take me on. The only problem is that my gardening skills suck. It could be that I have a black thumb. I’ve never tried to grow anything else, it’s true, and so I should have no reason to believe that I can get a plant to thrive, but I can’t bring myself to give up. I buy the seeds via the Internet. I’ve tried sprouting them outside in late spring and a couple of times in summer. This is my second attempt with a pot. One day I’ll get it right.

  I take a long look at the pot, but there is no hint of green, no long-awaited sprout. I rotate the pot anyway, and spritz the dirt with water.

  I sigh and move on to my other project. I reach under my mattress for my sketchbook and get to work on the next installment of Gadget Girl, my secretly self-published manga.

  Lisa Cook is a klutz, but her alter ego, Gadget Girl, is perfect in every way. Actually, she’s beyond perfect. After gulping down a shooting star, she was endowed with superhuman strength and extreme precision. What I mean by that is, she can thread a needle on the first try. She can put on mascara with one whisk of the wand, without having to wipe away stray black clumps. She can tie her shoes in seconds. In other words, she’s everything that I’m not.

  I have cerebral palsy, which messes up my motor skills. My right arm and hand are fully functional. I can write and draw, use chopsticks and other utensils skillfully, and even do up buttons. But my left hand? Forget about it. My fingers are stiff, and curl inward, and sometimes my arm develops a life of its own, thrashing anyone within reach. The CP affects my left leg, too. I can’t completely feel what’s going on down there. It’s as if my circulation has been cut off and my leg has gone to sleep. But I can get around okay, even though I limp.

  Gadget Girl, however, can put just the right spin on a Swiss Army knife, hurl it, and open a bottle of pop from fifty feet away. Or she can use an eggbeater to start up a maelstrom and blind an opponent with flying dust. She’s good with her hands. In every episode, she has to rescue a dude-in-distress. This guy is usually Chaz Whittaker, an all-around athlete who looks a lot like Chad Renquist, this guy in my class. Lisa/Gadget Girl is secretly in love with Chaz, but one kiss from a normal boy and she’ll be zapped of her superpowers forever, so she keeps her feelings to herself. Better to save the planet than to give in to love. Sacrifices must be made.

  She lives with her guardian, Hiro Tanaka, the only person who knows her true identity. Tanaka is a brilliant, reclusive botanist. He’s developing plants that can cure diseases even better than stem cells can. He’s super famous, but Gadget Girl is protecting his privacy.

  I’m working on volume two, number three. I’ve got the panels sketched out in blue pencil (which doesn’t show up when it’s photocopied), and now all I’ve got to do is finish inking and lettering with my black calligraphy pen. In this story, Gadget Girl goes to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a bit of rest and relaxation. In the previous issue, she welcomed a group of visiting aliens at a resort in the Southwest. She was in the process of making a soufflé for the guests when Chaz got into trouble. He was in the desert on a group tour. He got separated from his buddies when he went off to take a picture of a cactus. Suddenly, he was attacked by a band of marauding jackrabbits. Gadget Girl, who has a sixth sense when it comes to Chaz, rushed from the kitchen, whisk in hand, and whipped up a sandstorm to drive away the long-eared demons. Once again safely on the tour bus, Chaz sighed and said, “My heroine!”

  I’m just about finished when I hear my mother call out my name. “Come here!” she shouts. “I need your help.”

  2

  I’m standing in my mother’s studio, feet turned out, one hand on my hip, the other curled at my waist.

  “That’s perfect, Aiko,” Mom says. She tucks a strand of blonde hair back into her scrunchie, then takes up her chisel again. “Do you think you can hold that pose for about three more minutes?”

  “Yeah,” I say. But when she’s not looking, I move my right foot—my good foot—a few inches just to mess with her.

  I’m surrounded by sculptures and sketches and paintings of myself at every age. There’s me with long brown hair, me with short hair. Me, with my high forehead and full lips, everywhere I look. When I was little, I couldn’t flex my feet very well. I was always on my tippy toes, which inspired Mom to sculpt me as a ballerina. Aiko, En Pointe, the sculpture that got Mom a write-up in the New York Times, stands straight across from me. I imagine her, my three-year-old self in stone, winking. I wink back. I know you don’t want to stand here like this, kid. Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon.

  “Okay, great.” Mom smiles and brushes some dust off her jeans. “You can go now.”

  My stomach lets out a loud growl. We both glance at the clock on the wall. It’s already six.

  “What’s for dinner?” It’s her turn to cook.

  “Oh, honey,” she says.
“I guess we’ll just order a pizza.”

  I roll my eyes. Not again. We just had frozen pizza two nights ago. From what I’ve read and seen in movies, no self-respecting Japanese mother would ever make her kid order pizza. On the Internet, I’ve seen pictures of lunch boxes made by Japanese moms—rice balls shaped like Hello Kitty, wieners carved into crabs, carrots cut like flowers. My mother can barely manage the microwave. Could that be another reason why my father didn’t marry her?

  “I’ll make the call,” I say.

  “You do that. My wallet is on the kitchen counter. There should be enough money in there for a large.”

  I turn away.

  “I’m going to enter this one in the Tokyo International Art Concours,” Mom says, her voice pulling me back.

  My ears perk up. “Tokyo?”

  “It’s a big prize.” She rubs her fingers together. Money. Lots of it. “First prize would be like winning the jackpot.”

  One thing I’ve learned as the daughter of an artist is that “rich” and “famous” do not necessarily go hand in hand. Although Mom’s sculptures sell for thousands of dollars, not everyone has that kind of money to throw around. It’s been a while since she’s made a sale. A big prize could mean a better class of pizza. New clothes. Or, best of all, winning this prize might mean a trip to Japan.

  Even so, this is the first sculpture she’s done of me since I’ve started wearing a bra, and it seems different somehow. It’s not a nude or anything, but the thought of the judges, strangers, running their eyes and maybe their hands over those lumps on the chest kind of creeps me out.

  “Well,” I say, “Good luck with that.”

  I go back into the house and pick up the phone. We order pizza so often that I’ve memorized the number. The menu, too. I order a large pepperoni with extra cheese and open up Mom’s faux crocodile wallet to take out some dollar bills.

  I notice a photo tucked behind her credit card and pull it out. It’s a boy, about thirteen years old. His hair is shaved close to his head and he has glasses. He looks Japanese. There’s something familiar about him. Could it be a snapshot of my dad as a child? No, it can’t be. This print looks new. It must have been taken recently. I look on the back, but there’s no writing there. Hmm. Well, maybe it’s a photo of some kid she met on a school visit, someone she wanted to sketch.

  Mom’s studio door squeaks open, so I quickly put the photo back.

  We set the table with paper plates and plastic cups and sit down to wait for our dinner to arrive.

  Mom yanks off her scrunchie and shakes out her hair. “Guess who I got a call from today?”

  I shrug. “Grandma?”

  “Try again.”

  “Rolfe?” Rolfe, a foreign correspondent, is her ex-boyfriend. We haven’t heard from him in a while, not since she dumped him and started going out with Raoul, whom I have yet to meet.

  “Wrong.” She sighs. Obviously I’m not trying hard enough. “It was Mr. Hodge.”

  My eighth grade art teacher? Why would he be calling her? Am I not mixing my colors correctly?

  “He invited me to come for a school visit!”

  Oh. No. “You turned him down, right?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Maybe because it would embarrass me?” I say.

  Mom has a job teaching art at a community college in Grand Rapids. But she makes a big point of visiting schools to talk about her “mission.”

  “Other parents have been called in for Career Day, haven’t they? Besides, everything’s all set up for next Friday,” she says.

  Before I can say another word, the doorbell rings. It’s the pizza guy, but suddenly I’ve lost my appetite.

  3

  When dinner’s over and the paper plates have been wadded up and stuffed into the trash, Mom goes back to her studio and I go to my room.

  I love my bedroom. I’ve got this holiday-in-Japan thing going on with my decor. If I can’t live in the country, at least I can pretend. My bed is covered with a quilt made of recycled kimonos that I found at a flea market—squares of brocade with cranes and chrysanthemums. And I keep my bracelets and stuff in a lacquer bowl. On the wall I’ve got posters of my favorite manga characters, scenes from anime, and a photo of Young Mom on a Japanese side street, dressed up in a yukata and geta, those wooden sandals that go clunkety-clunk when you walk on concrete. My desk is a low table, the kind that Japanese writers kneel at as they scribble their famous works. Only I use mine mostly for homework and drawing, not for writing novels or poetry.

  I sit down at the table to call my best friend, Whitney.

  We’ve been tight ever since the day in fourth grade when we both showed up at school in the same Sailor Moon T-shirt. No one else in our class had any idea who she was. Japanese manga wasn’t exactly huge in our dinky Michigan town. But Whitney, she knew all about Sailor Moon, plus she had the entire collection of comics. During recess, Whitney played Venus Moon to my Sailor Moon, or sometimes the other way around, and everyone else thought we were weird. I guess they still think that, but they pretty much leave us alone. Whitney is maybe the only girl on earth who understands me.

  So her response to my big news is a little strange.

  “Your mom is cool,” she says. “Everyone will love her.”

  Where’s the sympathy in that?

  “If she comes into my classroom, I’m leaving,” I say. I picture myself dragging my leg along the empty hallway, or sitting on the lawn outside, all alone.

  “Oh, please. Your mom should share her art, and so should you.”

  Share my art, she means. Whitney is the biggest fan of Gadget Girl.

  “Speaking of which,” Whitney continues, “Nathan finished making copies of the latest issue. I’ll give them to you at school tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.”

  Whitney’s older brother, Nathan, works part-time at Kinko’s. I give him money from my allowance for printing and stapling, and he takes the stacks of comics to the indie book store, the music store, and the anarchist café downtown. He sets out a coffee can at each place for donations, and usually there are a few coins rattling around inside at the end of the week. Whitney and Nathan are the only people who know that I’m the artist.

  I don’t draw for fame. I don’t do it for the money, either. I’m in training now, until I can apprentice myself to one of my heroes. That’s another big reason why I want to go to Japan—all of my favorite manga artists are there, and I want to believe that at least one of them would be willing to take me in and help me improve. Or at least let me make tea and clean up ink stains while I look over her shoulder.

  4

  Just before the start of Wednesday’s English class, I meet up with Whitney in front of my locker. Today she’s wearing a short-sleeved white blouse with pleats and a black pencil skirt.

  “Wanna try?” she asks, striking a pose.

  “Hmm.” I take in the cross dangling from her neck. “Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan?”

  She rolls her eyes. I can never get it right.

  “Not quite, honey. Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking. The nun?”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  Whitney still wears manga T-shirts once in a while, but her look is mostly borrowed from movie stills these days. Today’s outfit is pretty tame, but when she’s obsessing on a period piece, say, Shakespeare in Love, she’ll come to school in more of a costume.

  Guessing game over, she hands me the latest edition of Gadget Girl. The photocopies are tucked into a manila envelope so that no one else can see.

  “Yay!” I peek inside. “Thanks a lot!”

  She reaches for the pages, but I shake my head. “Not here.”

  I motion to Madison Fox and her posse, grooming at the back of the room. They’ve whipped out their compacts and lip gloss. They’re not paying any attention to us, but still. I don’t want to risk exposure.

  Whitney sighs. “You should just go ahead and tell people,” she says. “You’ve got a fan base now. They
would support you.”

  “No,” I say. What if they just felt sorry for me? What if they saw Gadget Girl as an expression of my fantasies? Wouldn’t it make them pity me more? But I don’t say any of this to Whitney, even if she is my best friend. I pretend that it’s all about the mystique I’m creating, and letting my art speak for itself.

  “I don’t get my allowance till next week,” I say. “You think Nathan would print out the rest of the copies anyway? Put it on my tab?”

  Whitney shrugs. “I can float you a loan. My dad just sent a big check. Any new distribution points?”

  “The usual will be fine, I guess—bowling alley, arcade, anarchist coffee house.” Plus, I’ll send some copies out to my zinester friends. I’ve got some extra envelopes, so I’ll prepare them for mailing during study hall. Mom is taking me to the post office after school.

  When the last bell rings, I find Mom’s car in the queue in front of the building.

  “Hi there,” she says, as I crawl into the back seat.

  There’s a manila envelope on the passenger seat beside her. She sees me noticing it. “I’ve got something of my own to put in the mail,” she says. “This is my entry for the Tokyo International Art Concours.”

  Oh, right. Aiko, in Fourth Position. Of course, she’s not sending the sculpture itself—just photos for now.

  It would be cool if she won—it would be great! But I’m not getting my hopes up. I remember that she entered last year, too. And the year before that. She sends off entries to art competitions all over the world—Prague, Paris, Taiwan—but so far her successes have been purely domestic. Her last show was in North Carolina.

  Luckily, there’s not much of a line at the post office. I go up to the window first. Mom is right behind me, but she doesn’t ask me what’s in the envelopes, which is cool. Sometimes she actually seems to understand my need for privacy.

  I hand over some money to the postal clerk and watch her stamp the envelopes and put them on a pile.