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Back This Time Will Be Different Save as PDF
Chapters (77)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part I
  6. 3
  7. The History of My Beef with Brynn Foer-Preston
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part I
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part I
  16. 10
  17. 11
  18. 12
  19. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part II
  20. 13
  21. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part II
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. 16
  25. 17
  26. 18
  27. 19
  28. The Complicated History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Imaginary Relationship with Her Nonexistent Dad
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part III
  33. 23
  34. 24
  35. 25
  36. A Brief, Backward History of the McAllister Family, as Paraphrased from the San Jose Mercury News
  37. 26
  38. 27
  39. 28
  40. A Quick and Eerily Relevant History of Asians in America
  41. 29
  42. 30
  43. 31
  44. 32
  45. 33
  46. 34
  47. 35
  48. 36
  49. A Brief History of Chisaki Joan Katsuyama’s Romantic Learning Opportunities, Part IV
  50. 37
  51. 38
  52. 39
  53. 40
  54. 41
  55. 42
  56. 43
  57. 44
  58. A Series of Screw-ups: The Chisaki Joan Katsuyama Story, Part II (Or Maybe It’s a Prequel)
  59. 45
  60. 46
  61. 47
  62. 48
  63. 49
  64. 50
  65. 51
  66. 52
  67. 53
  68. The History of the Katsuyama Family, Part III
  69. 54
  70. A Note from the Author
  71. Index of Flowers and their Meanings
  72. Acknowledgments
  73. About the Author
  74. Praise for This Time Will Be Different
  75. Books by Misa Sugiura
  76. Back Ad
  77. About the Publisher

Mom’s expression closes up, shuts me out. She takes a beat before she says tightly, “Nope. You’re right. No judgment at all, CJ. All my fault, no one else’s. Stupid, stupid Mom.” She closes her eyes again, rubs her temples. When she opens her eyes, her expression is softer, her eyes pleading. “But I hope I’ve made up for it since then. I got pregnant by mistake, but I had you on purpose. Okay? I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t.”

The dense, hot anger inside me dissipates and then coagulates into something new and unwieldy, and I realize with a shock that it’s grief. I’m surprised at how sad I am, both at the frayed messiness of this loose end that will drag behind me forever, and at the hard finality of the fact I’ve gone as far as I can go with this question. The answer is over, it’s done, it’s buried forever in the past. I will never know any more about my father than I do now.

I try to go back to being angry at her lack of judgment, and at her hypocrisy about my lack of judgment last year. I try being upset about the unfairness of her expecting so much of me my whole life when I am literally the living embodiment of her giant fuckup. But that backfires: is that how she sees me?

Mom stands and gestures for me to come over. So I do, and she wraps her arms around me. It’s an odd, unsettling feeling, standing here like a little girl, loving my mom and resenting her at the same time, wanting simultaneously to offer up my grief and to hoard the tangled roots of my anger.

I wish she knew who he was. I wish things hadn’t happened the way they happened. I wish I could be 100 percent angry with her for all the things—for getting drunk and pregnant with a guy she doesn’t even remember, for constantly nagging at me to be better at everything, for wanting to sell the thing that matters most to me to the family who betrayed us. I wish I could be 100 percent okay with everything and proud of her the way I used to be when I was little. I don’t know why it matters. All I know is that I hate this in-between feeling.

21

AFTER NEARLY TWO WEEKS OF SILENCE, WE finally got an email and a phone call from Geoffrey Acosta from the Merc. He’s dropping in today with a photographer to interview and take photos of us as we work. Geoffrey thinks this article will “galvanize the community” to take action, and Hannah is delirious with visions of a big community fund-raiser that will put our financial woes behind us.