Punching Through Glass

By Miko Yoshida

We were mortal enemies. I have this vivid memory of stomping outside one day, outraged by her audacity. I don’t remember what for, but I swore to the Old Testament God himself that I would never ever play Monopoly with that incorrigible heathen I had to call my sister. What it was about her that I hated and couldn’t stand, is beyond me now. Every part of our day would be a battle. Simple board games lasted a few rolls of the die before pieces went flying and “I hate you!” or “I’m going to tell Dad!”. We hurtled these at each other like flaming projectiles from trebuchets in the middle ages. When our mom drove us to school, if my sister encroached even by just a millimeter into my sectioned seat in that blue Volkswagen Quantum, a turf war would ensue and we’d be kicking and screaming. Whatever we call ‘play’ these days was really for us, verbal and physical combat.
When I was 11 and she was 9, our parents split. While on our annual summer visit, I discovered the fax machine at my grandparents’ in Vancouver spitting out my Californian school transcripts. I was nonplussed and then consumed by fear. I fervently demanded an explanation as to why I was being enrolled into a new school, much less in Canada. I had heated international phone calls with my dad while my grandmother eavesdropped and reported back to my mother. She was trying to blunt the impact, especially to my two sisters, by telling us we were just simply trying an extended vacation into the school year. It ended with me on a plane back to LA a week later. My sisters who were close to my mother, remained in Vancouver. I thought back then that I loved my mom the most though, because I was the oldest, and thus, by my logic, most capable of love, and therefore the most betrayed.
I settled into a life now with just my father, and we lived like two wounded animals rebuilding their individual dens after a brush with death. I focused on school as my ultimate path to physical and financial freedom, and immersed myself in online chatting in the advent of internet technology. I did my best to not inconvenience my dad for homework help or rides to friends, perhaps through deference but also because I wanted to minimize my interaction with him. My sister and I understandably fought less due to the distance. Though when we were back together as we visited across international borders, we took sibling rivalry to an extreme at times, still claiming as our own, the very air we breathed in each other’s presence. But it all changed when she moved back.
Her precocity drove her to pave her own path to higher education (and thus independence) and she made the decision to finish high school in the US in hopes of entering an American university. As a child, who was taken from her birth place, she elected on her own to uproot herself once more and reestablished life in LA. She stepped into a depression laden home with two males, still reeling in the aftershock of divorce for five years. She was a calming force and had a maternal and nurturing energy for both my dad and I. We rarely fought, focusing more on figuring out how to live with each other as essentially parentless teenagers, absorbed in our personal angst and insecurities.
For extra money, or really, for money, since extra implies we had some, we each had our own side hustle. I would tutor some of my friends, which usually just ended up in us goofing off and going to the local burrito shop, admiring the ‘badassness’ of bullet holes in the window and the antiquated payphone in the store that sold massive $4 burritos. My sister had more respectable jobs, one of which was babysitting two small boys next door. One day, out of boredom, I decided to pull a prank on her, and went over there, an hour into her shift.
The neighbors’ door’s bottom half was solid wood, supporting the double paned glass on top, starting at waist level. I rapped on the glass, trying to mimic the manner in which a police officer would convey urgency and authority. But before she could come to the door, I quickly absconded out of view and waited. I heard her come up to the door, saying “Hello?” and waiting for a response. Nothing. She left the door, probably thinking someone had the wrong house. I go and knock again, louder this time, and hide once more around the corner. This time she calls out louder, and after no response, cracks the door open to see maybe if someone had left something. Nothing.
At this point I decide to elevate my game and sneak back to my house. As predicted my sister calls saying she thinks someone was knocking on the neighbors’ door multiple times. She’s not sure what is going on but that she’s uneasy and she wants me to come over and check. I tell her that I’ll try but that I’m tied up with homework. As soon as she hangs up, I sprint back once more to the neighbors’ doorstep. This time though, I know I’ve got her spooked, so after knocking louder than the last two times, I duck and squat below the line of sight of the glass on the door. I hear a “Hello?” from inside the house and an apprehensive shuffle towards the door. As soon as I know she’s there, I pop up like a jack in the box and scream as loud as possible.
Hysterical strength is a phenomenon where humans display super human abilities in times of crisis. We’ve heard about the grandma that lifted a car to save her grandson, or the Canadian lady who wrestled a polar bear to save her children. In this case, my sister’s right-hand tore through two panes of glass as if it were tissue paper, and struck me with a punch like a right cross from Joe Frazier. The difference being that my sister was a scared 90-pound girl, not a heavyweight world champ.
Despite having no health insurance, I was taken to the optometrist since I told my dad that there was glass in my eye, and that it was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. Turns out a scratched cornea is worse. It feels like there is a log in there, and the only thing you can do is to numb the pain with what the doctor told me was essentially liquid cocaine eyedrops. The doctor also said that it will heal naturally regardless of the medication, so we left the office without it. Maybe it was because we didn’t have insurance, or maybe it was because my dad wanted to teach me a lesson.
Whether it was that incident, or our natural acknowledgement of the triviality of fighting when we had our lives to figure out, my sister and I never quibbled again. She became my guardian and keeper, and my confidant. She even tried to follow me to the Naval Academy, and upon her acceptance and my subsequent vehement opposition, she elected to go to Cal where she would go another direction and become a peace and conflicts studies major. During my three deployments, she kept my affairs at home in order, and sent me regular care packages, the one that always sustained me with the important things: wet wipes, clean underwear, durable socks, American Spirits cigarettes, 550 chord, and updates on her life. She even flew to LA and drove down to San Diego after my girlfriend and I broke up, mid-deployment, to get my car back.
I told this story at her wedding, winging it, so to speak, and it got lots of laughs and applause. It was my own perceived pain of losing my sister that brought this story to mind, not to entertain, but to perhaps mark yet another stage in my life. I recanted this tale because I didn’t know what else to say. She was starting her own family and I felt like I was losing mine.

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Miko Yoshida is a Japanese-American Los Angeles native and an older brother to six siblings. He deployed three times to Afghanistan as a Marine officer and has worked in consulting and financial services in New York.