1.

On a cool January morning, you sit at the oak dining table with your morning green tea warming your palms through a white ceramic cup. The rising steam carries the scent of an earthy genmaicha.

You turn your head to look at the backyard through the screen door, where you can see your grandmother, whom you call Obāchan, working in her garden while wearing her straw hat. 

She makes her way to the door, slides open the screen door, and steps inside. She takes her hat off and wipes her brow with a handkerchief that she pulls out from her pocket. 

She looks at you and sighs. Go to 2.
You only imagined that this had happened. Go to 11.
What she does next is no different from all other days before. Go to 17. 

2.

「 Momma told me to go back to Japan 」she says in Japanese. 

Out of shock, all you can say is “What?” with your jaw unhinged and thoughts so chaotic and jumbled that they become white noise. She nods once.

You have been living under the same roof for twenty-three years, raised by Obāchan while your parents worked. And after graduating from college, you moved back into your childhood home to pursue a master’s degree at a nearby university. Being back at home, everything is how it always has been—living in the same place with the same furniture and the same people. 

You can even predict how the evening light would hit the kitchen through the west-facing windows. But this? You never would have dreamed of predicting this—throughout the years, you had asked your mom whether she thought Obāchan considers here, California, or Japan more “home.” Her response was always “here.” 

She sits down at the table with you. Go to 3.

She retreats upstairs. Go to 4.

3.

She explains that your mother, her daughter, thought it would be best for her to return to Japan—to be close to her sisters once more, to better communicate with doctors as she ages, and to just be in the country she had lived in for the first fifty-six years of her life before she came to take care of you. 

「 But I told her I don’t want to go back 」she says.「 I just wanted to let you know. 」

She gets up and pours herself a cup of green tea at the kitchen island behind you. You exhale, trying to coax your heart back into your chest and the tears back into their ducts. You’ll still have her here.  

That was a weird moment, but you go about the rest of the day like normal. Go to 5.

4.

You know that by Obāchan not saying any more on the subject, and by retreating upstairs, she has accepted the fate her daughter has written for her. 

Later that week, your mom takes you for a drive to the beach. 

She tells you that as Obāchan gets older, she thinks it would be better to grow older where Obāchan can speak Japanese. She could even spend time with her sisters! And as your mom starts to focus more on her business, she also wouldn’t have time to take Obāchan to her doctor’s appointments and interpret for her.

You are drunk off your own sadness and anger, and any future you’d previously envisioned is becoming blurry with uncertainty and unpredictability. 

You try to negotiate, with little luck. Minds have been made up—you have no power in your childhood home. In the end, all you can do is watch it unfold. 

To say goodbye, go to 7.

5.

Obāchan remains in your childhood home, almost like a fixture. She is a part of the house itself, the way that Mickey Mouse is to Disneyland. And then you are reminded of a photo in a physical album your family has, of a young Obāchan sporting Mickey ears made of balloons making peace signs with each of her hands. She is smiling with her teeth, which she rarely does. 

A few months later, however, you move in with your boyfriend to a city thirty minutes away. But you still visit Obāchan often. When you visit her, you cook together, watch Japanese shows on Netflix with English subtitles, read books together on the couch, and you even begin to invite her on outings to botanic gardens on the weekends, because it’ll help her get her exercise in, and you know she loves flowers. 

Everything is how you have always imagined it would be. Maybe even better. 

Until it isn’t. Go to 6.

6.

It’s March, in the year 2020. 

The United States government advises canceling or postponing large gatherings until further notice. You cancel a trip to Spain and Portugal that you have been planning with your dad’s side of the family since the summer of the previous year. (You do not get a full refund.)

You begin to wear masks and see others wearing them in public. But this is not new to you—you grew up visiting Japan, regularly seeing commuting salarypeople in their work uniforms with masks covering their mouths. You see it as a form of care and mindfulness for the community and for your loved ones.  

You begin to stay inside as much as possible. And when you absolutely must go out, you pray with your obsessively-sanitized and overly-dry hands, even if you’re not religious, that you won’t get sick. 

You think of Obāchan and message her.「 Be careful. 」 

To continue the nightmare, go to 9.

7.

You come home from taking a final exam. You eat a dinner prepared by Obāchan, and sit on the couch in the living room with her in silence. Waiting, not even looking at one another. An elephant comes and sinks into the couch next to you. 

 After what seems like hours, your parents descend the stairs. They say that it’s time to go, and you and Obāchan slowly get up from the couch and hug. The elephant disappears. 

This whole time—months since you found out—you’ve told yourself that you wouldn’t cry because you felt fine enough. But all the tears that have been collecting in the well of your body for those three months just burst from your body, and you feel like you’ll never stop. Years into the future, you will still sometimes cry, just because you miss her.  

Obāchan’s voice cracks as she tries to comfort you, and maybe even herself.「Don’t cry, don’t cry」she says as she pats your back. 

You have maybe only seen Obāchan cry two or three times before in all the years you spent together. 

To continue life without her, go to 8.

8.

With Obāchan back in Japan, you send each other messages on Facebook. Sometimes she doesn’t respond, but you can see that she’s seen them, and all you hope is that she knows you haven’t forgotten about her. 

You even start to write her letters in Japanese, and getting responses in the mail is almost as sweet as the black sesame pudding she used to make for you growing up. Your Japanese slowly improves, because now you have to use it—the only way now to show care and love from an ocean away. 

You also ease into your new life with your boyfriend, with whom you now live. You find joy in so many places, like in the corner of a smile after a dumb (or actually brilliant) joke, in a booth at a new restaurant, and under your new puppy’s floppy ears. 

But on days when, for no reason, you feel a little more sad and vulnerable, you find yourself weeping as quietly as you can to make sure you don’t wake your boyfriend. 

To disrupt your life, go to 6.

9.

Online, you see the number of deaths—over 7,000, confirmed and probable. 

Online, you see articles about people who are against wearing a mask. 

Online, you see the number of deaths rise—100,000.

Online, you see COVID-19 taking on new names: Wuhan Virus, the China Virus, the Asian virus. 

Online, you see the number of deaths continuing to rise—300,000. 

Online, you see articles about Asians and those of Asian descent being assaulted.

Online, you see more articles about Asians being assaulted, but you especially take note of the ones where Asian elderly are being assaulted—because you’re thinking of her.  

Online, you see the number of deaths rise—over 800,000 by the end of 2021 in the United States, and over 5 million worldwide.

While all this is happening, you start the first year of your PhD program, online. You become a teaching assistant for the Asian American Studies department, where, through Zoom, you teach your students-in-boxes about lotus blossoms and dragon ladies, Orientalism and yellow peril, the perpetual foreigner and the model minority myth. In your discussions, you address events in the United States, like the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, and the lecturer for whom you TA asks you to pose this question to your students: What does it mean to be Asian American? 

While thinking about this question for yourself, you think about your upbringing, who you are, your family, and your ancestors.  

If Obāchan chose to stay in the U.S., go to 10.

If she’s in Japan, go to 12.

10.

One day, you get a call from your mom.

You just finished teaching, so you pick up. Go to 13.

You’re teaching a class right now, so you let it go to voicemail. Go to 14.

11. 

Before you were born, your parents decided that they could afford to have your mom stay home and take care of you. 

Your grandmother flew in from Japan to meet you and help out your mom for just ninety days—the length of time she can stay in the U.S. as a visitor. She returned to Japan after ninety days, none of which you remember and all of which you know about through photos and stories. 

You grew up being cared for by your mom. You mostly spoke English at home because your father didn’t know Japanese, and your mom was comfortably bilingual, enough that she usually only spoke Japanese to you when she wanted to scold you in public or didn’t want strangers around you to understand what she said. 

Your mom enrolled you in Japanese school. But with classes only once a week, you didn’t learn it well because you didn’t even use it often at home. On top of that, you didn’t take it that seriously, because another day of school per week means less time to sleep in, or have fun doing whatever. 

But your mom has taken the family to Japan every few years, and you loved all of it except the twelve-hour flights. Your mom wants you to know where she grew up, and she wants you to know Obāchan—a woman you should love and do, but you don’t really know her. She’s nice and spoils you with crisp yen and the cute crafts she sews by hand, she has a kind smile, she speaks Japanese, and you don’t. You don’t really know her. 

She is a familiar stranger. 

So why is she on your mind? 

Because it’s 2020. Go to 6.

12.

You think about Obāchan all the way in Japan, the transnational nature of your relationship and family, and how she shaped you. And when you think about Obāchan, you feel a sense of relief, because she is safe from the type of events that are happening in the United States. She rarely leaves home, and when she does, you know she would mask. You also know, or at least hope, that almost everyone around her would do the same too, because it is not odd or new to them. You trust them to be safe with and around her. 

You are still upset about the circumstances of Obāchan’s return to Japan. You could have spent more time with her, cooking in the kitchen, learning how to sew and garden from her, and practicing your Japanese a little more fearlessly. She could’ve gone to your wedding party. 

But as time goes on and as new events out of your control unfold, other possibilities begin to flash through your mind: you wonder if she might have passed away from COVID—even worse if she were infected by you—or if she would have been assaulted in public just for the way others perceived her, while on a walk or at the grocery store. She would only have a green card, never giving up her Japanese citizenship—and with her limited English, would she be safe from ICE? 

After almost ten years, you are still far from each other, on opposite sides of the ocean. You have grown into your adult life, pursuing a career and hobbies, while Obāchan’s Alzheimer’s grows more severe. You still wonder if or how you could’ve been more present in her life, that maybe you should have visited her in Japan more after she returned. 

You also wonder if Obāchan’s return wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—but only after all these years, all these events, all this distance, all this time. You feel conflicted and wonder what Obāchan herself thinks, what she would’ve wanted to happen (because after all, this is just your version of events), and how she perceives the choices made in the past almost-decade. But you can’t ask her, because you’re almost certain she won’t remember most of it. 

All you can do is ruminate.

END. You’ll never truly know and will always be left wondering. Return to 1 for other realities. 

13.

“Hello?” 

“I went to the grocery store the other day…” your mom says.

She sounds hesitant. Go to 15.

She sounds distracted. Go to 16.

14.

You listen to the voicemail after you finish up class, close out the Zoom.

“Obāchan is in the hospital,” your mom cries into the phone, gasps of air between every word. You can hear other cars and a honk in the background. Your mom sniffles and your heartbeat quickens. 

“She, she, went on an evening walk and someone just attacked her,” she cries, “just punched her to the ground.” 

At this point, your mom is sobbing, and you had to guess what she said toward the end of her sentence. She tells you which hospital she’s driving to in the voicemail, and you and your husband race to the car, you to the passenger’s seat. After fifteen minutes of driving, some of it chanting come on hurry up at red lights, you get a text from your mom that says she can’t see Obāchan with the COVID visitor restrictions.  

Your husband pulls into the parking lot of a random plaza as you cry, unable to breathe. 

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” you sob. Only your husband hears you, but you hope that your mom will also pick up on it with her mom-powers, and that Obāchan somehow knows you’re thinking of her, that she’s all you’re thinking of. 

“Hopefully she’ll be okay,” he says quietly, unsure what to do besides squeeze your hand and caress your head, which is on his shoulder.  

“But what if she’s not?” you cry through labored breaths. 

She’s not. 

And she becomes part of a statistic, just one in the rising number of hate crimes where elderly Asian Americans are targeted. In all of what you see online—the articles circulating and GoFundMes to support care for other victims—you see your grandmother in them, them in your grandmother, who are loved ones, but also victims, just for how they were racialized.  

END.You are angry because this shouldn’t be happening to such a vulnerable group at all, that you should have been there to protect her. And it crosses your mind, how this wouldn’t have happened, had Obāchan returned to Japan. But how could you, anyone, have predicted this? You try to think of ways to change the past. Return to 1.

15.

“…and I felt a tickle in my throat last night.” 

That tickle terrifies you, and sends you into a spiral: You think about your mom, who might have COVID, and you think about Obāchan, who lives with her. You think about the death counter that you see every time you’re on the Internet. 

“Isolate yourself from Obāchan,” you say.

After a few days, and dozens of texts from your mom about her symptoms that are all too familiar because of all your doom-scrolling, your mom confirms she has COVID. You curse to yourself, curse the people around them, curse the world and how something like this wasn’t supposed to have happened. But your mom hasn’t mentioned Obāchan having symptoms—there’s still a glimmer of hope. 

Another few days go by, and Obāchan has COVID too. 

You chat via Facebook messages to stay updated on her health. On some days, she reports feeling okay, other days she reports feeling worse.  

Then, Obāchan stops responding.  

You learn from your mom, now slowly recovering, that Obāchan went to the ICU, then ended up on a ventilator. You cannot visit her due to the hospital’s visitor limitations. You cry yourself to sleep, tight-chested, praying and praying and praying to a deity, any deity who will listen—God, Buddha, the collective force of your ancestral spirits—even though you are not, and were not in any way raised religious. 

The next week is a waiting game, your mom, the point of contact, waiting to hear from the doctors, and you waiting to hear from your mom—a literal game of telephone. Every text or call from her plunges your heart into your stomach, wondering if this is it. She tells you some days there is no call, no news, which makes it seem like Obāchan is getting better, or at least, nothing grave enough has happened to warrant a message. Hope. But the constant waiting with worry sandwiched in between makes you restless. 

A day comes when you get a call from your mom. 

“Say what you need to say,” the nurses told her, “she may be able to hear you.” 

She says she heard the nurses crying in the background as she spoke to Obāchan.  

You imagine Obāchan confined within the little rectangle on your mom’s screen, hooked up to a tube for the ventilator. 

You hear from your mom the next day that her heart stopped beating.

END.Devastated and filled with guilt that you should’ve just been there for her, with her; you wonder if there’s anything you could have possibly done, despite the fear of getting infected yourself. You try to think of ways to change the past, as if thinking about the possibilities will change the course of events. Return to 1.

16.

“…and I picked up some hand sanitizer for you guys. It was one of the last ones. Do you want it?” 

“Yeah, we’ll take it,” you say, a little put off by the nonchalant topic that, under other circumstances, would have been completely normal. “Is everything OK? How are you and Obāchan doing?” 

You hear a dog toy squeak in the background on the phone. 

“We’re fine. I mask when I leave the house, and Obāchan just stays at home all day,” she says. 

You sigh in relief. Though you know it’s probably not great for her mental health for her to be inside all day, at least she has her garden in the backyard to spend time in and work on. You hope she’s not going on too many walks in the neighborhood—though you think it could be safe, you’re still anxious. 

As you count the days, you’re grateful and a little astonished that Obāchan never contracts COVID. She gets her vaccine at Albertson’s when they became available. 

Eventually, you also get vaccinated and feel your anxiety ease slightly. COVID cases slowly begin to decrease, and you contemplate when you can, or should, visit her. You’re still wary about the possibility of having COVID, being asymptomatic and making her sick, and that worries you to death. 

But you take a test, you’re cleared, and you visit her for the first time in what feels like the longest time you’d ever spent away from her. 

When you see each other, you embrace.

END. Even with one of the best-case scenarios, your anxiety makes you think of everything that could’ve gone wrong. Return to 1.

17.

Obāchan pours herself a cup of green tea and sits down next to you. You both sit at that oak table, surrounded by the cool air, in a comfortable silence. You and Obāchan have been living under the same roof for twenty-three years—she raised you while both of your parents worked.

You moved back into your childhood home to pursue a master’s degree at a nearby university. And when you eventually move in with your boyfriend to a city thirty minutes away, you still visit often. 

As you live your life, you start to learn how to cook new dishes, get into bird photography, and visit botanic gardens. You invite Obāchan to do those things with you and your boyfriend, who eventually becomes your husband. 

On weekend afternoons, you visit her and bring her a slice of the hummingbird cake that she really loves. You sit on the couch and watch Netflix together—a Japanese show with English subtitles so you can both understand. Sometimes during the week, you’ll drive over to have dinner, which she prepares for you. 

And you don’t know what COVID-19 is, because it doesn’t exist in this version of the story. 

In the end, you don’t wonder how things would have been different, and you live happily ever after. 

END. But this version is fantastic—a fairytale—and takes place in a universe too distant from your own. You can’t exist here, so return to 1.