Chess Superhero 

Mako Yoshikawa  

In the summer of his eighth year, my stepfather, Jimmy, taught himself how to play tournament chess from a book. An achievement, to be sure, but one that dimmed besides the scores he’d racked up in his seventy-eight years. So I was taken aback when he phoned to say that with my mother’s health more stable, he wanted to take a nostalgia tour of the area surrounding Brandon, Vermont, the site of this self-education. But when he asked if my husband and I would accompany him there for a long weekend, I was all in. 

I needed Jimmy’s help. My father, Shoichi Yoshikawa, had died almost a year ago. He’d been bipolar, violent, and cruel, and for the past two decades—the entirety of my adulthood—we’d been essentially estranged. After his death, overcome with guilt and regret, I started combing through his life, hunting for the key to his rage and resentment. Was it disappointment in love? Frustration with work? Anger that he was bipolar, or rancor at the racism he faced as a Japanese man in America? The search had ended up consuming me. The classes I taught were now a shambles, my marriage neglected, but my father remained a riddle.