Her name is written with an L despite its being Japanese, perhaps because it would be pronounced incorrectly in Spanish if it were an R (a long, rolled R would ruin it). She always said she had a Japanese eye and a Colombian eye—one was pleated and the other wasn’t. She taught our class how to make paper cranes, and I always made the ugliest ones. She ate raw ramen as a snack. She had practically every existing Sanrio product. She gave me Japanese candy (which was an honor, considering the fact that she seldom gave anything to anybody. She appeared on TV, in Foto Japón commercials (Foto Japón is, ironically, a Colombian 1hr photo lab), and stood silently in a kimono beside her little sister (in a kimono too) while a guy announced the winners of raffles organized by this company. She had a tape with Japanese children’s songs, and we all listened to it in Music class. She went to Japan and ate onigiri, and I begged her to tell me what it was like: she simply told me it was a rice ball with some kind of peach inside and a leaf outside (translation to real life: a rice ball with plum sauce and seaweed outside). I spent years and years trying to figure out how the heck you could eat a peach inside a rice ball… until I finally ate onigiri in Chicago. Her mother told my mother she had to teach her how to smile, because she was becoming as silent and serious as her father. She didn’t like to tell us her father’s name because she thought we’d think it’s weird and laugh about it. I didn’t.
I saw her father a few times. The occasion I remember the most was during a friend’s birthday at a country club. He stood on the grass beside his wife (who was talking to my mother). He was bald, his arms were permanently crossed, and he scarcely said hello or goodbye… his expression was EXTREMELY dry and serious… However, for some reason I obviously can’t recall (I must’ve been about 9 years old then), I wanted to say something to him. I wanted to talk to him, being a real Japanese from the land of Noppo San!
… I didn’t say anything, though. I’m quite shy and it seems I’ve been so all my life.
She had become a legend in my mind. She left our school when I was in fourth grade, and her sister left soon after. I liked to think she left for Japan, perhaps forgot her Spanish, rode the train everyday, ate sushi like Colombians eat empanadas… I liked to think I’d be able to meet her under bizarre circumstances in Tokyo, if I ever went there. However, I saw her yesterday. Her pretty face hadn’t changed. I always thought she had a pretty face. She was only a few meters away from me, talking to a girl from my school. If that girl hadn’t been there, I would’ve stood up, approached her, asked her if she was Lumi Fujimoto, and told her all the things I thought about her: how she was quite influential in my present life, how I always remembered her and thought I should’ve tried to learn Japanese with her, how I never forgot that presentation we had for Spanish class—with toy elephants, hers was called Kaori and mine was Bartolomeo—,… how she was my connection with a culture I have always loved, one which I always end up bumping into.
I would’ve loved to tell her all those things I had stored for so long. However, seeing her again was a mortal wound to the legend that had built up in my mind. I observed her carefully and concluded she was still living here. What if I gave her my stupid corny speech and she just laughed at me and concluded I was in love with her or something??? (totally NOT the case!!!) Or what if she had become an average arrogant girl who’d look at me as if I were an Indian untouchable??? My usual fears kept me away from her.
Maybe my silence was better. I don’t really want to know what became of her. She doesn’t have to know I fell in love with a Japanese boy (and would she care if I told her? of course not!). She doesn’t have to know she was some kind of childhood hero to me. She doesn’t have to know I was scared of Japanese men because of her father (of course she doesn’t have to know!!! I wish I could’ve talked to him, though… but now I know they smile and joke and can be pretty much the best friends on Earth).
No, she doesn’t have to know.
She just needs to remain a kid forever in my mind, the little girl with the thousand paper cranes and raw ramen who liked to sing “Tú por mí” (a Spanish song about a friendship as bizarre and beautiful as hers).