Reflecting In Silence

A drive interrupted in Japan

Characters once reserved for those special Pokemon cards only found at the tailor my sister and I would get our school uniforms at were now memorialized on the road signs as they whipped past the window. My face was pressed into it, lost in my own memories of years past I noticed almost nothing of the conversation taking place around me. It didn’t help that it was in Portuguese. In this car with three sisters, from Brazil, heading towards the sight of America’s greatest act of aggression, Hiroshima, I realized this was a spot only I could have found myself in. 

As my distracted thoughts continue the conversation around me quickly changed. I look up from the signs and trees and see the ominous red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. 

“Is that for us?” I ask. 

“I think so.” One sister said. 

“Did we do something wrong?” I question. 

She speaks some Portuguese to her sister driving, an exchange occurs but I never get a response. The police zip past and signal for us to follow close behind. They pull off to a gravel parking lot which conveniently materializes over the hill on the left side of the road and we mimic their actions. I watch as two officers step out of the cruiser, adjust their hats finalizing the authority of a uniform the men are clearly proud to be wearing as they approach the car, one to each side. With both front windows rolled down and inquisitive eyes scanning the foreign passengers, only a few words of Japanese are exchanged between the driver and the officer.

The sister driving gets out. 

The three of them walk in silence over to the back of the cruiser whereas one officer gets into the front seat, license in hand he proceeds to check some records on the computer, the sister sits in the back as the second officer talks about whatever infraction must have occurred. 

Somehow I don’t have the same worry I would if these same actions of the driver being placed in the police car had occurred back in the states. 

The two remaining sisters begin to frantically talk amongst themselves but nothing is ever translated without request. I sit back in my seat after watching this all occur and return to my thoughts. I notice the overcast sky is void of all movement, except for an isolated plane that crosses over the police car. I snap a photo. I found this to be oddly peaceful. An isolated mountain road. Conversations taking place around me, a chattering I can’t understand making the noise sound more like a radio station turned down to low as opposed to an interaction taking place in front of me. All I can think about is how much the rolling mountains of this stretch of Japan remind me of Vermont. Short rolling hills, speckled with trees no taller than the average home. With that thought I asked myself why I was always comparing to what is familiar, why can’t something just be what it is. I rationalize to myself that this is my first time out of the country truly on my own, so it’s no wonder I navigate back to the familiar. A breed in reactionary protection of my psyche to try and make sense of sensory input so foreign it would be overwhelming to try and process it on its own. 

There’s movement. 

The sister who was seconds before sitting in the back of the police cruiser was now closing the door to the driver’s seat in our car. Without any words, foreign or not, the police bow and return back to their car where they proceed to drive off. With a turn signal and pause, they are gone. For a brief moment, everything is still, there is silence in the car and the sisters who moments ago were eagerly talking back and forth trying to figure out what was going on were content in their communal silence. It was as if there was an unspoken understanding of the mood the sister driving was in. The kind of understanding that you only achieve with someone you’ve grown up with.

Another language I could not speak. 

I think about asking whats happened, but the slip of paper gripped tightly between the sisters’ hands tells me it was simply a speeding ticket. She pulls the car into drive and the only noise I could hear was the loose gravel kicking up under the car as we followed the officers’ tracks out of the pull-off. Matching their turn signal even though no other cars were in view, we pulled out back onto our drive to Hiroshima. 

I return my head to its position against the window and continue to watch the signs which I still cannot read fly past, taking comfort in their familiar silence.