Elsa is a Swedish aspiring civil rights attorney from Minnesota. She teaches conversational English in Tokyo in the 1980s. She spends her final night in Tokyo with her Japanese lover, Jun, an aspiring translator of American literature. The two have dinner at a tonkatsu restaurant and then head to a love hotel. They make love, and Elsa notices a Mongolian blue spot that looks like a bruise on Jun's lower back—a common mark on Asian babies.

Years later, while working as an immigration lawyer, Elsa stops someone from calling child protective services due to them thinking the blue spot is a sign of abuse. She has married twice and divorced twice (her ex-husbands are African-American and Chicano, respectively, and she has one son with each). She has also experienced a uterus hemorrhage that renders her incapable of conceiving. However, she is surprised when she conceives twins with a Japanese-American lover. She does not marry her lover, but she does lives with him. No one ever believes her kids are hers.