Jamie Goff

I've lived in the same apartment building in Tokyo for 11 years. I know zero names. That's normal here. We nod in the elevator. We do not speak. Then Mike moved in on the third floor. Ohio. Six-foot-four. Laughs like a truck starting up. Day 1: He knocked on every door with a plate of cookies. (In Japan, when you move in, you give your neighbors a small towel. Then you leave. Mike gave cookies. Then he stayed and talked.) Week 1: He knew everyone's name. Including the dog's. Then there was Mrs. Sato on the first floor. She's 84. Her husband passed away ten years ago. She lives alone. In 11 years, I had never heard her voice. Every Tuesday, Mike carried her groceries up the steps. She didn't speak English. He didn't speak Japanese. They talked anyway. Mostly about the photo of her husband by the door. Then one morning, her curtains stayed closed. Mike noticed. Nobody else did. I didn't. He knocked. No answer. He called the building manager. She had fallen the night before. She'd been on the floor all night. She's okay now. But the building isn't the same. People say good morning. The elevator has conversations. Last month, we had our first rooftop potluck. Nobody knew what a potluck was. Mike explained it twice. Mrs. Sato brought 40 rice balls. And then she laughed at something Mike said. That was the first time I ever heard her voice. Mike moved back to Ohio this week. On his last morning, the whole building came down to the lobby. Kids. Grandparents. The dog. Mrs. Sato handed him a box. Inside: one thousand paper cranes. In Japan, you fold a thousand cranes for someone you want to protect. Her hands shake. She had been folding them since the day he found her. Then she said the English sentence she had practiced every day for a week. "Please... come back." Mike was crying too hard to answer in English. So he answered in the Japanese he had been secretly practicing. "Kanarazu kaette kimasu." In Japanese, that doesn't mean "I'll visit." It's what you say when you're coming home.