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.