My mother said the Ambien would help me sleep on the plane and that it did. But now, in the Shanghai airport, I was just beginning a 5-hour layover feeling acutely stoned, with the vague but gnawing sense that something was awry.

Ambien is a sedative-hypnotic and those don’t do me any good. Some friends in college used to take Ambien recreationally and have sex-crazed parties that I would hear about in the morning because I was too scared to partake. Then, one brave night, I took an Ambien and backed my Corolla out of the narrowest three-car lot you’ve ever seen. On one side was an ominous dumpster where my buddies threw away their trash twice a year, and on the other was one of my rich friend’s Jaguars. I needed to reverse carefully, crank my wheel swiftly to the right into a shallow garage, avoiding the dumpster and the luxury sedan within an inch of my life, then pull forward down a steep driveway surrounded by ten-foot hedges and blindly drive into the street without killing anyone. Against the odds, I pulled it off that night. The drug left me feeling embodied and without fear. I’d never manoeuvred a vehicle better. A professional valet would’ve felt sexual arousal, I was sure of it. My foot and the brake pedal were so in sync that my right leg felt like an extension of my car. In many ways, it was.

My car had been gifted to me on the day of the Prom. I wasn’t sure why my parents did it that way. It wasn’t a fancy car or one I was particularly proud to drive. But they were proud to give it to me so I was happy to receive it. As a native-born Angeleno, a car is not only my culture, it is my birthright. A car meant freedom, and at Berkeley, it meant I could ferry around my friends, from party to party, in all manner of inebriation. I was adventurous – the Ambien driving was proof of it – and now, here I found myself again high on Ambien, journeying to Asia for the very first time. I was going back to Japan, the land of my maternal grandmother, Chisato, a woman I barely knew. I would travel to Tokyo first, then Kyoto and Osaka after. I would not visit the seaside town of Kamakura, my grandmother’s hometown because she was long gone. She’d been dead since I was 5, but even if I had known her, she was a mystery. She famously celebrated two birthdays. Even her children never knew her real last name. Her father was so

incensed by her marrying my black grandfather that he erased her from the family record. Any mention of her was scrubbed from all government documentation. The process was thorough and extreme, and it left our family with a giant hole, one that my grandmother, while alive, never chose to fill.

But I had imagined her plenty. She had visited me in a dream. Or was it another drug-induced moment between awake and sleep where all things feel fuzzy and possible? I wasn’t sure.

Every stop along this Japan journey felt like anything was possible. I had never set off on such a trip, and to travel solo made it even crazier. There were big emotional stakes that I was tackling without my mom, the tether to my Japanese side, though she was hardly a Japanese speaker, she at least looked Japanese. I look Puerto Rican or Lebanese, but Ancestry had proved it to me in black and white. Despite my nebulous ethnic features, the truth was, I was 25% Japanese – I belonged here.

But Japan was complicated in myriad, deeply personal ways. My grandmother had faced such racism after the war that she refused to teach her five children Japanese in hopes that this would stave off name-calling. (It didn’t.) My mother and her siblings were beautiful freaks, ostracised and, for long stretches, abandoned by my grandfather who was active duty until the 1970s, leaving the child rearing to his fresh-off-the-enemy-sidelines wife. But Japanese is a language that digs in with its hard consonants and bouncy melodies. My mom’s dozen or so Japanese phrases were more than I had up my sleeve, and right now I missed them badly.

The drugs had made me introspective and as I washed my hands under the fluorescent lights of the airport bathroom, I set my phone down and thought to myself, “I’ll grab it in a second,” and went to dry my hands under the fan. I was thinking about being in the liminal space of the bathroom, in China, this layover as metaphor, before I returned to my ancestral homeland, without any human lifelines to depend on and grabbed my bag, not before smoothing my hair in the mirror then exiting. Minutes later, I was further down the airport, chatting with a tall white woman with honey-coloured hair. She had the kind of tangled hair that could be brushed out easily but hadn’t. The woman was telling me about Mongolia where her husband worked. I had the haunting feeling that things were amiss. The blond Mongolian traveller looked suspicious suddenly. I cast my eyes askance, studying her body and large backpack that poked over the top of her head. “Wait a second,” I said, patting my jacket pockets then frantically searching the compartments of my purse. “No, no, no,” I panicked, looking back in the direction of the bathroom, realising, “My phone!”

“What is it? Did you forget something?” She asked.

You know damn well I’m missing something, I thought, sceptical that the woman hadn’t been the one to take my phone. “I lost my phone!” I scolded her.

The problem was, we had inched towards the customs counter and now three ominous Chinese passport officials eyed us. Behind us, a large crowd had formed. I glanced again towards the bathroom. “My phone,” I whispered. The blond woman was still talking about Mongolia, and then said, “They won’t let you get out of the customs line.”

It was a little too convenient for her. Her blue eyes looked a little too blue, a little too trustworthy. Why had she started blabbing to me in the first place?

I considered my options.

My phone was gone. The customs officials looked mean. I was stoned but even on drugs I could talk my way out of things. I told myself that – most likely – the woman hadn’t stolen my phone and that I would tell the person at the customs counter that I needed to turn back. He would understand. Drugs had a way of making me paranoid but I was 28 now and able to corral the drug-paranoia when need be. I wouldn’t tell him that. Just then, the customs man beckoned me over, unsmiling, pulling his fingers in a movement that looked flirtatious and awkward. “I have to go back and get my phone.” I said breathlessly.

“Where are you travelling to?”

“Tokyo. My phone. I left it in the bathroom.” It was then that I realised that I should’ve gotten out of line. I would look 100x more suspicious turning back now. There were many people behind me and I looked past their heads, futilely, towards the yellow women’s sign in the distance. The man’s expression looked unsympathetic and cruel. Each second meant my phone was more and more likely stolen, on a train to Istanbul. What was I going to do? I had many more hours before arriving in Tokyo and once I got to the airport there I was supposed to take a bus to a hotel in the centre of town over an hour away, and even then it wasn’t smooth sailing. A friend of my Republican aunt’s was going to pick me up and I’d never seen the woman before – not even a photo. My Tokyo connections were flimsy and this would all get back to my judgmental family in Colorado.

“Tokyo?” The man studied me. I was sweating, aware that I looked suspicious. I needed to think quickly. The effects of the drugs were lingering but on their way out. The blond woman stood to my right, smiling with a pudgy customs lady. We locked eyes and I felt suspicious of her again.

“Yes, Tokyo.” I was getting frustrated with him now. “I have to turn around, my phone is in the bathroom. I forgot it.”

“Your phone is gone.” He stamped my passport. He placed it in my hand and shooed me away. A bespectacled gentleman took my place and spoke Chinese with the man. I walked through the gates, down the escalator and towards my connecting gate. The airport stretched longer and longer as I looked around, searching for a help desk. I wandered downstairs past arrivals, then down again past baggage claim. Each area I stumbled upon pulled me further away from the bathroom, and away from the other Americans. After twenty minutes of asking for help from a variety of airport workers, I arrived in a grey corner of a forgotten corridor in the airport. A luggage worker sat at a help desk and told me he was not the man to talk to. He directed me down the hall. I strained my eyes for the office he motioned to. The corridor extended half a mile away. The only people around were holding newspapers and looked dishevelled. A draft sent shivers down my spine. Skittering sounds echoed down the hallway and the ceiling drooped lower. I looked around and noticed that errant wildlife had filtered in. Around my ankles, pockets of small grey pigeons pecked at invisible specks on the ground. I was not only aware of how alone I was, but scared too. In the distance I saw a sign.

“Can you help me? I lost my phone.” I asked the man sitting behind the counter staring blankly into my face.

“I lost my phone.” I explained again. He blinked at me waiting for more information or for information that he could or would help me sort out. “Please. I need my phone. I have to go back into the bathroom upstairs.”

“You would have to exit and re-enter the airport,” he replied in perfect English. “But your phone is on the black market now.” He turned his eyes away from me and looked to the hallway.

I understood my next move was foolish but it was my only chance of getting my phone back and calling Donna, the lady who was going to find me at the Four Seasons, or wherever I was supposed to go after the bus into Roppongi, or was it Shibuya? I was sweating more now because I’d walked two miles into the rectum of the airport, lugging an overstuffed carry-on bag that dug into my shoulder. I exited his office, walked back towards the other useless luggage office, upstairs, upstairs again, down the hallway towards my original gate, out of the exit, re-entered the airport and went through customs all over again. I looked in the bathroom and searched the cubicles and trash cans but my phone was nowhere to be found. I asked a janitor and she shook her head. I looked under the stalls one last time. I saw myself in the mirror and my eyes looked red and frightened. I exited the bathroom and went through customs for a third time and let the phone go. It was gone. I had no more options left and headed towards my connecting flight. It was on China Southern, an airline I was unfamiliar with. But on the way to the gate, I found a lounge that I could rest in for $30. That seemed fair to me. It was 5 o’clock somewhere and I could get some rest if I drank a little bit, just something to take the edge off. I anticipated a decent spread of sandwiches and wine, light fare that wouldn’t be over the top or ostentatious, but appropriate for the price tag. I entered the lounge and was immediately disappointed by the offerings. A cheap frozen yoghurt dispenser that offered vanilla, chocolate, and swirl was the star of the show. Children and adults lined up single-file with two bowls each. Next to them, I found a station of cold, boxed cereal and small pods of flavoured yoghurts laid around a vat of cold Jello and large bowls of uncovered chocolate pudding. I ate a yoghurt and put two more in my bag. I searched for alcohol and was happy to find a bucket of chilled, green bottles of Chinese beer. I drank two of them and found a payphone. I couldn’t dial the woman in Tokyo without buying a calling card so I left the lounge and bought a cheap international one. I left a manic voicemail on her cell and paid $8 for slow internet, then fired off an urgent email from my big burgundy brick of a laptop. It was 2014 and I still hoisted around my old Dell laptop from college that weighed about 15 pounds and took three hours to charge.

The good news was, I’d extinguished all my search options and earned a sit down. No one would fault me for lack of trying. I had earnestly attempted to remedy the situation and now there was nothing more to do but await the inevitable. I would be sold into sex slavery by the Yakuza.

It was to my surprise that I landed safely in Tokyo. With some cosmic linguistic download of my ancestors’ ancient tongue, I navigated the airport and happened upon my baggage carousel. Quickly I acquired my bag and smiled at the friendly faces around me. An old man who looked like my play-cousin’s ojiichan spoke to his young granddaughter. The man’s eyes sparkled as he whispered silly things to the girl. A feeling of safety comforted me and I dragged my bag outside where the buses lined up. I asked a bus driver where I should go to get to the Four Seasons and he directed me to another bus line where I had the option of express or regular. I chose the faster one and shelled out a few extra bucks. Perhaps, I could get to the hotel before our meeting and use their phone. That seemed to me to be a solid plan and boarded the express bus, choosing a seat by the window. No one sat next to me and I marvelled at Tokyo as cars zoomed past. My eyes unblurred: the Ambien and the beer finally rinsed from my system. The streets glimmered like a Diet Coke can. Tidy grids of buildings and expressways slid around each other stylishly. People pushed past on bikes, scooters, in crowds, on foot. The hushed conversations around me prickled latent parts of my brain that remembered snippets of things Japanese people had said around me since I was a little girl. My parents are Buddhist so old-school Japanese members would come to me and pinch my cheeks, then tap my mother’s hand and say warm phrases to her that now resonated sweetly. These sounds scratched an itch in my brain that connected to my belly. My skin warmed. The nervous cloak of sweat and shame fell from my shoulders as       

I unslicked my palms and dabbed my cheeks with dry hands.

When I arrived at the hotel, the neighbourhood was even fancier than what I’d already seen. I hadn’t anticipated the Four Seasons being this nice. The one in Beverly Hills still looks like a hotel but this place looked like a Monte Carlo casino. Thick slabs of marble tile complemented the huge golden chandeliers. The doormen, all dressed up like chess pieces, made me feel like a little kid at FAO Schwarz. I slid my suitcase behind me and beelined for a man with a Little Richard moustache.

“Do you have a phone I can use please?”

Without taking his eyes from his computer, he motioned to the hallway where an ivory phone rested on the wall. I hurried towards it, keeping an eye on my bags. “Hi Donna,” I said into the receiver. “It’s me again. I’m at the hotel now. I’m not sure if you got my other messages, ‘cause I lost my phone in Shanghai. I’m fine. I don’t know what you look like I just realised but I’m here. So I’ll just wait until you get here. See you then.” Some time later, a white woman in her 60s came screeching around the corner in a large SUV. “Monica! Get in, get in. I can’t park, they’ll charge me an arm and a leg. Is that your bag?” She was already outside the car, hoisting it into the backseat. “Get in!” She repeated herself, hopping back behind the steering wheel. “I’m Donna.” She was off before I buckled my seatbelt. “Got your messages, poor thing. You sounded so sad. Were you crying? Everything’s alright now. Michael will loan you a phone. Not loan. Sorry, give you a phone. He works with phones, so he has a ton of old ones.” Cars whizzed past me on the right and it took me a moment to realise Donna was driving on the correct side of the street. After no time at all, Donna waszipping down a trendy avenue past a large Louis Vuitton store, then took a left and then a right, another left and then straight onto a small residential street loaded up with big horizontally-striped beige apartment buildings. She parked in a lot and unclicked her seatbelt. “Let’s get you unpacked so you can take a big long nap.”

Upstairs I found that Donna and her husband were filthy, stinking rich. Their apartment was in fact the entire floor of their building. They’d bought both units on the 5th floor and knocked a wall out so they could double the square footage. “Everything in Japan is so teeny-weeny. We’re more comfortable this way.” She showed me my bathroom with a heated floor, my large bedroom full of collectible dolls, then showed me how to work the laundry machine. She handed me a map of the city and told me that Michael would be home in a few hours and he’d take us out to get ramen. I nodded and returned to my quarters then fell asleep. She knocked on the door when it was time to go and Michael handed me his old flip phone with a decal tiger sticker on the front. “A welcome gift to a weary traveller,” he said. He had squinty eyes and a nice face. The phone didn’t have wifi so no email or maps, or apps, or anything really. It was the only way I could call my mom and that was enough. What else did I need it for? The hardest part was behind me. I was in Japan safely, in the country of her mother, with my new rich parents, unsure of what tomorrow held. Being close to wealth, in Japan, felt like a gift to the legacy of my grandmother, a woman who’s been outcast and forgotten by her own family. I would let these people spoil me, it’s what she would’ve wanted. What’s more, I hadn’t been sold to the Yakuza. I remembered the yoghurts in my purse and vowed to eat them in my room after dinner.

About Monica Davis

Monica Davis tried making it as an actor for many years (she is from Los Angeles). You might recognize her as "Bikini Clubber #1" from Dexter. Monica has also written and performed standup comedy, plays, one-woman shows, and sketches. Currently, Monica is writing a novel called the Mulatto Spy Agency that is The Da Vinci Code for people who listen to Cardi B.

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