It was a long shot, but trying never hurt anyone.

She was borrowing the land-line in an empty office. It took her a while to track down the correct department at NYU. Lost and Found was apparently a part of the Security Department and of course their extension was something along the lines of 5555. She could have put that extension in on accident hours ago and found the right people. Proper channels and bureaucratic bull always drove her crazy. She should have been used to it from dealing with the DoD since birth.

After talking with a nasal receptionist for a while and being put on hold numerous times, Maya was surprised to hear that her boxes had not been incinerated. In fact, they were going to donate a lot of things left by the sudden outflow of students sometime in the next week. Apparently they were bound by law to hold onto things for a certain amount of time – bless the red tape.

Maya set up an appointment to pick up her boxes later that day and hung up. A rush of emotions passed. She was happy – she could use her own underwear. She was afraid that there were some things in those boxes that she had wanted to forget, but now that she knew they still existed she couldn’t leave behind. She was angry that she had to be in this situation in the first place. She was rather hoping that she could cut all ties between her old life. She was having to start fresh and it may have been a good thing. Maybe she should just leave the boxes to be donated to more deserving people. She could pretend they never existed and go on living her currently shallow and pointless life.

She showed up 5 minutes early to the security office. An Indian man with dark skin and a nasal voice was called by the fake cops to greet her. He had no accent, though Maya thought his mannerisms still spoke of being born elsewhere. Frank, as he asked to be called in his nasally tone, led her to a locked storage facility. It was large, perhaps the size of a three car garage. Frank bid her good luck in finding her boxes – they were logged into storage so they should be in here. He asked that she stop by the desk to log what she was taking with her and then left to take a late lunch.

She was glad that no one was there as she climbed all around and along the stacks of boxes. She knocked a few over, exposing the lower boxes and spent a good amount of time rooting around for her packages. She should have marked them better. After what seemed like hours, she had worked up a good sweat and found only some of her boxes. She cleared the area around where she had found them, pulled up a box to sit on and broke them open. Most of her clothes had been in her suitcase which had been confiscated at the camps and she was sure that they were disposed of in one way or another. She rifled through the things that had at one point seemed so important. Books, games, cards and … she stopped rummaging and pulled out a small blue Tupperware box. She cracked the lid and looked at the treasures held within: pictures.

She promised herself that she wasn’t going to cry before she started flipping through them. She needed to take a purely mental decision about what about her old life that she was going to bring with her. Mom and Dad when they were young and in love. Mom and Ai making Christmas cookies. Me and Mom and Dad. Eri and Ai. My house. Class 4-C. Mom’s headstone. She stopped and pulled out the picture, examining it closely.

Gravesites in Japan were mostly crowded. Dad had wanted to take her back to the states, but he never could set his plan in motion. She was cremated and they had made a traditional Buddhist tablet for their family. Dad had tossed it aside and insisted on adding to a previous headstone outside of the air force base’s grounds. It was the only English headstone in the tightly packed cemetery, but it was what mom would have wanted: to be remebered along with Evan. The tall pillar of a headstone was long with two sections of writing. There was a bit of space above and quite a bit left below the writing. Fresh chrysanthemums adorned the grave site where the last of her ashes remained. The words were small but clear.

Evan Sabrina Swift
Gone too soon.
October 1993 – September 1996
From the earth she was born and to the earth she was reclaimed.

Meredith Harper Swift.
Beloved Wife and Mother.
July 1958 – January 2008.
We never know the worth of water until the well is dry.

[/b]

A lot of things had been set in motion in her household right before her mother’s death and Maya never did feel right about it all. She never ever spoke of her sister, but this was the only proof she had that Evan ever existed. She pocketed the picture. She also took the picture of her parents when they were young and in love. The rest she left in the box.

She dug with a burning passion until she found the inscribed ihai tablet. Traditionally they were only made for the patriarch of the family, but she had asked for one. She just needed something… real. She hadn’t been there when it happened and she had never seen the body, only the ashes as they were sprinkled into the ocean and over the grave. Maya worried that somewhere in the back of her mind she still expected her mother to show up some day- the tablet meant it was real. It also reminded her of the day her dad found out what she really was. In a way, it was a funeral rite for her old self as well. No more hiding. No more blending in.

Maya shifted things around in the boxes until she had an empty box to carry home. In it she packed what little undergarments she hadn’t taken on the flight, a favorite zip-up jacket, her girl items (like makeup, hair bands and cute hair clips), an umbrella, various necessities for schooling, a handkerchief, her old high school ID, some shoes, her off-brand mp3 player and a few select books. She wrapped the ihai in the only kimono she would never part with and lay it ontop of the heap. She re-packed the other boxes, re-taped them, and left them for donation. If her dad came snooping – he’d see that her things were donated. Hopefully he wouldn’t poke around too much and he would presume her dead. Maya touched the picture in her pocket. It was curious that there was space left on the headstone. Maya now wondered if it was reserved for her name.

She slipped the padlock off of the shed door and re-locked the room after her. She didn’t stop by the front desk. She didn’t want the fact that she had taken something to be on record if she could help it. She hauled the box to the bus stop and before she really thought about where she was going, she was back in the hallway outside of her room at the mansion.