How could a person forget their own mother?

Easily, it seemed, for Mob at least. Sho had been upset, before, because he had forgotten mom's face. He had been trying to draw a picture of her, she had no idea why he would do something that would so obviously get him in trouble, and he had gotten upset because he couldn't remember her face. Mob had to show him a picture. She wanted to describe it to him but she had to show him a picture.

Because she had forgotten their mom's face too.

She was the worst. How could a person just forget their own mother like that? Mom…she had known mom since the day she had been born. Even before that because she had grown in mom's stomach. She didn't think that two, or maybe three, years could have erased something as important as her mom's face from her mind? She remembered other things about mom. How she smelled like cinnamon, how she wore a lot of yellow, how she liked cats the most out of any animals in the whole world, and things like that. But she just hadn't been able to remember mom's face.

But she had pictures.

She couldn't fault Sho for not remembering their mom's face. She had forgotten it too. Sho at least had an excuse, he was a lot younger than her, and when you were little you forgot things easier. That was why she could remember when Sho had been two but Sho couldn't remember ever being two. She was the older sister and she was the one who was supposed to remember things better. Like what their mom looked like.

Or what their mom had been like.

Mob had been thinking, lately, about mom. About she had been. She remembered mom as having been tired a lot of the time. She spent most of her time in bed because she had been sick and tired. Sho didn't remember her like that. Sho said that she had only been sick for a little bit but she had mostly been fun. She was always taking them places and playing with them and all of that sort of stuff. Stuff that dad never did. Mom was like the opposite of dad, Sho remembered, and Mob sort of agreed. Maybe. She didn't know. She had always spent more time with dad when he had been around. That was how they had divided up their parents. She had dad and Sho had mom.

That was the way that it was.

But now things were different. She and Sho had to share dad. Sho actually spent more time with dad now than she did. He was still doing the part of his work that she could not be involved in. She wouldn't have liked to come around because she hated fighting and stuff like that. Even though she liked being with her family more than she disliked fighting. She missed her dad so much sometimes…and Sho when he was gone…even if she did have a friend now. She already didn't have a mom, she was not going to lose her brother and dad, too.

Even though she knew that those were crazy people thoughts.

It was crazy to think that she would wake up one morning and her dad and little brother would be gone and she would be all alone in a strange house in a strange country without anyone…dad wouldn't do that to her. Sho wouldn't let dad do that to her. She wasn't going to lose her dad or her little brother. She was sure of that. Dad had told her that she would be by his side for the rest of her life and Sho was her little brother so she had to take care of him. Therefore they would always be together. Even when she grew up she would always be with dad. Sho would grow up and go, though, and she wondered if she would still be able to remember him. She couldn't remember everything about mom. Stuff like her favorite color and her favorite drinking glass and her favorite time of the day…things like that. She wondered if she would forget these things about Sho when he grew up and left. She wondered if mom remembered those sorts of things about them. She wondered if mom ever thought about them. She wondered if mom ever stared up at the ceiling at night and thought about her and Sho.

Mob did that sometimes.

It was nighttime now. She was supposed to be asleep. Sho was asleep in the bed across from her. He was laying on his stomach and he was kicking a little bit. Maybe he was dreaming about running. She hoped that he was having good dreams. Sometimes he had bad dreams. Sometimes he cried in his sleep and Mob had to wake him up. When he cried in his sleep it hurt her. She never wanted him to ever be upset. Also sometimes he wet the bed while he cried in his sleep. That wasn't good either.

She hoped that this wasn't going to turn into one of those sleep crying, bed wetting, nights.

Mom would have known how to make it better. She would have come in and sprinkled the magic cinnamon around and kissed Sho on the head with the magic lipstick and then he wouldn't have had any more bad dreams. That was what she had done and Mob couldn't do that because she wasn't mom. Mom would have known what to do to get Sho to stop wetting the bed, too. The only ideas that Mob had were to keep Sho from drinking any liquids before bed and also sometimes waking him up to get him to pee before he ended up wetting the bed. Mob wished that mom would have taught her more about taking care of Sho.

How was she supposed to take care of Sho when nobody had ever taught her how?

Mob turned on her side and watched Sho sleep. He was nicer when he slept. He had been so upset lately. His wish hadn't come true. Mob wished that there was some way to make his wish come true, to make mom come back, even though it would have been a disaster if mom came back. Dad hated her now because she was a traitor. Also bad things happened to traitors. Minegishi said that their job was to deal with traitors and that they had to do things to traitors that weren't very nice. Things that Mob wasn't allowed to know about until she was ten. She wasn't ten yet, it hadn't even been Sho's birthday yet let alone hers, but she thought that even at nine she was old enough to know what happened to traitors. What dad would have done to mom if she had ever come back to them. Even though he should have been nice to her. She might have had a good reason for leaving….

Mob couldn't think of one.

Mom was happy. She had been sick for a long time but…but she had no reason to be unhappy. Dad never yelled at her or hit her or pulled her hair or pushed her down or anything like that. Dad had always been so nice to her. Dad had let her stay in Japan, he never made her come with, and even when he was back he still let her do whatever she wanted. She could make whatever she wanted for meals and watch whatever she wanted to on TV and leave the house whenever she wanted. If dad had been mean and bossy she could have understood why her mom would have wanted to leave, but he hadn't been, so she had no idea why mom had wanted to leave them…

Maybe mom just didn't like them anymore.

Maybe she had just stopped loving them. Maybe she didn't like how clueless Mob was. Maybe she wanted a better Daughter who was good at making friends and talking to people. Maybe she wanted a Daughter who could help her out with things more, like taking care of Sho and stuff, and that was why she left. Maybe she had a new Daughter. Maybe she had a new family. Maybe she had fallen in love with someone who wasn't dad and now she had a whole new family and she didn't need them anymore at all.

That was crazy.

Moms wouldn't have done that. She loved…she loved them. Mob…Mob had always thought that mom loved them…but maybe she had been wrong. Maybe mom had stopped loving her all together. Maybe…she didn't know. She just…she wanted her mom now even though her mom had gone and…and that was so sad…and…and she felt so alone. She rolled over and faced the wall. As she rolled over she heard something crunch. Oh. She had rolled over onto a paper crane. There were still a lot of them in the house. Minegishi said that as much as they appreciated the gesture they had no use for a thousand paper cranes and that Mob had to get the cranes out of their bedroom right that second.

They were everywhere.

Mob should have known that folding cranes couldn't make wishes come true. These were just cranes, just bits of paper, and were not magic. There was no such thing as magic. Well Mob was mostly sure that there was no such thing as magic. She had psychic powers which normal people would think were magic if they ever saw her using them but dad said that their powers came from science, not magic, and that magic wasn't real. Mob still should have known that paper cranes didn't grant wishes. Minegishi had forgiven her because she had done something nice for them and not because she had wished for them to forgive her. That wasn't magic, well the magic of friendship, not real magic. Not that magic was real. Not that wishes were real. Things didn't happen just because you wished for them. Your friends didn't forgive you because you wished for it, no, they forgave you because you folded a thousand paper cranes to show them how upset you were.

Maybe if they showed mom that they had folded a thousand paper cranes, actually more, then she would see how much they wanted her back.

Mob did want her mom back. She wanted to be with mom and to…not even do to anything specific. Just to be with her. Even though that would have been a bad idea. Even though dad didn't like mom anymore and he would have been mean to her if she came back…or just done to her what he did to all the traitors….Mob still wanted her mom back. Maybe she was selfish to want mom to come back. Mom didn't want to be there with them and maybe it was selfish to…to want to make her come back. Was it selfish to want to make someone come back to you when they wanted to get away?

She didn't know.

All she knew was that she wanted mom and she felt alone. That was a normal feeling for her. Wanting her mom and feeling alone, both, were always there just hanging out waiting to make themselves noticed. Sometimes she forgot about them like when she was happy or playing but the feelings would always come back. Like now. The feelings were back and she…she had no way of making them go away. Everyone was asleep. She wanted….she wanted to be near someone. She wanted to be near someone but it was the middle of the night. Sho was asleep and she would have been mean if she just woke him up to play. Dad was asleep and he didn't like it when she woke him up by crawling into bed with him. She certainly couldn't wake Minegishi either. They were always very grumpy in the mornings and Mob did not want to know what they were like when they got woken up in the middle of the night.

Mob was all alone.

She heard the crunch of paper. She hadn't moved. That was Sho. He was still kicking in his sleep. Mob knew that she had to get rid of all the paper cranes, dad said that he was tired of walking on them, but Mob didn't want to just recycle them. She and Sho had worked all day on those paper cranes. They had folded with their hands and their powers for hours and hours. She didn't want to just get rid of all the work they did. Also there was a part of her, an irrational part, that felt sort of like if she got rid of the cranes then Sho's wish wouldn't come true.

Even though she knew full well that wishes did not come true.

She wondered if Sho was kicking because he was feeling lonely too. Whenever she had too many feelings her powers acted without her telling them what to do. Whenever Sho had big feelings he kicked and screamed and said the meanest things…and did the meanest things…but she still loved him and he still loved her. She wondered if he felt lonely sleeping there all alone in his bed. Maybe people weren't meant to sleep alone. At the zoo the monkeys would all sleep huddled together in the fake tress. People were kind of like monkeys, she saw that in a documentary, so maybe people weren't meant to sleep alone. Moms and dads shared beds, that was why their beds were big enough for two people. She saw on shows sometimes that whole families slept in the same room on futons on the floor. So maybe it was weird to sleep in her own bed all the time.

Maybe that was why she was so lonely.

She got up out of her bed. She didn't want to be alone. She felt cold as she pulled her blanket off. It was getting to be colder out. It was fall where they were. They sometimes stayed in places where it was hot year round but not that often. Dad didn't like warm places and they went where dad took them. Mob wished that warm weather would come but it would only come sooner. Mom liked warm weather. She would have been happy in the summer. Had mom had a good summer? Had she had fun? Had she gone to the pool and the park and all of the other places she liked to go to in the summer time? Mob didn't know. Was mom awake now in her own room, wherever she had ended up, wondering if her and Sho were ok? If they'd had a good summer?

Mob didn't know.

She did know, however, that she had to get the cranes up off the floor. She used her powers to pick them all up and put them in a corner of the room. She didn't want to recycle them but she also didn't want to wake Sho up by walking across the floor and making noise. He was smaller than she was and he needed all the sleep he could get. Also he could be very mean when he didn't get enough sleep. Well he could be very mean at the best of times but he could be even meaner when he didn't get enough sleep.

Mob would be careful not to wake him up.

She crossed the bedroom floor quickly. This room was bigger than the last one they'd shared. Mob didn't like that. She didn't want to be far away from her little brother…even though sometimes she slept next to dad. She still didn't like distance between her and Sho. When they had been little they had done everything together. They went to the same school and they slept in the same room and they always played together and they ate together and took baths together and all of that stuff. If someone had told Mob back when she had been little that she would have separated from Sho…or that Sho would have separated from her…she would not have believed it. If someone had told her that her mom would run away from home she would not have believed it. If someone had told her that she would get to go with dad on his trips, and that the trips would be never ending, then she would not have believed them.

It was amazing how much life could change.

It was amazing how much she could change. She was bigger now than she had ever been in her life. She could barely fit next to Sho. When they had been little even if Sho had been sleeping in the middle of the bed like he was doing now she could have still had some room to lay down. Now it was hard. Now she had to scoot next to him slowly so she wasn't hanging off the side of the bed. Her feet touched his. She pulled the blanket down over the both of them. His feet felt like blocks of ice. Mom would have done a much better job of keeping them warm. She was good at things like that, their mom, and Mob wished that she could have taught Mob how to be good at things like that too.

But she wasn't there.

Now it was just her and Sho. They had each other, they only had each other, and that was…that was alright. Him and her together forever and stuff. The alone feeling was still there but it was a little better. Sho was there with her. It helped. She liked being next to him while he was asleep. Even if he did kick she knew that those kicks were not on purpose. Sho was so much nicer to her when he was asleep…but it was ok that he was mean to her. She was not mom. She would love him no matter what and she would stay with him no matter what. When you loved someone you did not leave them for any reason. That was how she could tell that dad loved them. He could have left them at any time. He could have just left them all alone in Japan or he could just go to work and never come back but he didn't. He always came back and that was how she knew that he loved them.

She wondered if he still loved mom.

She wondered if he still remembered mom's face.

He probably didn't.