“The second he looked at me and saw all the blood, his whole body went wobbly and he hit the deck like a sack of rice.” Popo laughs until there are tears in her eyes.
“Do you miss him?” I ask quietly.
She nods. “Every single day.”
I turn a few more pages, soaking in the photographs with faded colors and clothing from the 1970s. Grandpa Cillian’s hair is so unmistakably orange, and I can almost see the freckles Mom is always telling me about. And Popo is beautiful, lithe and graceful as ever.
She taps her finger against the book. “You can finish looking through it later. I don’t want to be greedy with your time when you have so much family in the other room. But I wanted you to have this—I wanted you to know where you came from.”
I look back at my grandma with confusion at first, and then resignation that I’m not as good at hiding my feelings as I sometimes wish I was.
“My history is your history,” Popo says. “Don’t ever forget that.”
“Thanks, Popo,” I say, and I lean over and give her a hug, breathing in her soft perfume and lemongrass soap.
When I pull away, something occurs to me for the first time in my life. “What made your parents name you Jane? I mean, it’s a great name—Jane Austen is my literary hero—but do you ever wish they had given you a name like theirs?” When people see my name on paper, I know they’ve already erased half of me in their heads. A girl named Harley Milano isn’t supposed to look like me.
But Harley Yoshi Milano—I feel like it’s proof that a quarter of me exists. Even if it’s not fair, sometimes names feel like a statement.
Would I have less of a right to my family’s cultures if I had a different middle name?
Would being called Harley Jane Milano somehow make me less Asian than Harley Yoshi Milano?
I want to believe it wouldn’t, but sometimes I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m at the mercy of racially judgmental purists who are forever finding reasons why I can’t be in any of their clubs.
“I was born in a time when people thought a name could make the difference between standing out or blending in. Back then, people wanted their children to have the best chance in a world that was not always eager to accept them. Names were lost, and so were languages.” There’s life dancing behind Popo’s eyes. “Names can change, Harley Yoshi, but your family—and where you come from—that can never be taken away from you.”
Popo gets up to join everyone in the living room, and before I put the photo album back in the bag, I trace the lines of Popo’s family name once more, and I hope that if I do it enough times, it will feel like my name too.
CHAPTER FIVE
The late-afternoon sun casts an apricot hue across the skyline, and the parking lot is still empty. I’m early for a change.
Billy is standing outside talking on his cell phone when I approach the back door of Teatro della Notte. When he notices me, he leans the phone against his shoulder and tilts his head toward the door.
“Just a heads-up—it’s tense in there today,” he offers.
I pause in front of the entrance. “What happened?”
Billy shakes his head and sighs like there’s too much to explain. He settles for a single word. A name. “Tarbottle.”
My stomach drops like I’ve lost my grip on the silk ropes fifty feet in the air. Billy lifts his phone back to his ear and says, “Yeah, yeah, I’m still here,” and I’m already halfway through the door.
Everyone is either hiding their awkward grins or nervously keeping their eyes to the floor. It’s clear the gossip has already made the rounds backstage, but Tatya isn’t in her dressing room. I wonder if she knows what she’ll be walking into tonight.
Whispers fill the hallway, and I catch a snippet of conversation coming from one of the other rooms.
“I can’t believe she’d leave us.”
“I hear Maison du Mystère pays well.”
“But where’s the loyalty? I don’t care how much they pay. I couldn’t do it.”
“I just can’t believe she didn’t tell us.”
“Do you think Kenji and Delilah know?”
When I pass by the doorway, I don’t have to look inside to know it’s Elise and Katy, the two halves of a contortionist sister act. And I don’t blame them for taking part in the gossip fodder—they don’t know the