I tried to listen, but I had my eye on a mosquito that hovered my way. When it landed on my arm, I smacked it dead and sighed. Figured the one way Japan and Kansas were the same was mosquitoes from both places had the same taste in blood—mine. In fact, there was another one already headed toward me.
“You must be tired,” Obaasama said to me, interrupting my standoff with Mosquito #2.
I wasn’t, but I figured it was better to agree with her and nodded.
“Well then, let’s go inside.” Obaasama headed toward the dark, wooden-framed house at the edge of her garden.
I stuck close to my aunt, but then my uncle announced: “We’ll bring Waka’s luggage in from the car. We’ll be back in a minute, Mother.”
Even though Obaasama was my uncle’s own mother, he was still so formal, so polite with her. My mom’s words came back to me: “Just be yourself . . . but more polite.”
I wanted to follow them and help, not because I really thought I’d be any help, but because I didn’t want to be left alone with Obaasama! As we stepped up onto the porch, though, Obaasama signaled for me to come closer. She slid open the glass door with a rattle. “This sticks a little. When you close it, make sure to wiggle it around like this and you shouldn’t have a problem.” Once inside, Obaasama said, “I’ll prepare some tea.” She disappeared around the corner into the kitchen.
I stood and looked around. The inside of the house hadn’t changed much since I was last here. Same beige carpet, ivory sheepskin rug in front of a beige sofa that blocked off a solid wooden door leading to the apartments that Obaasama rented out on the other side of the house. There was a TV in the corner and a small, wooden dining table with a lace tablecloth that was covered in a sheet of clear plastic. To the left of the table was an altar set up in an alcove in the living room wall. Inside it was a foot-high statue of Maria-sama, the Virgin Mary. Although I had been here before, the house seemed older. The door was more rickety. Obaasama was older. My grandfather’s oil paintings—dark and somber except for the occasional bright orange-red accent—in their ornate gilt frames still hung on the wall. They seemed older too. My grandfather, my ojiisama, died when my mother was only ten years old. I spotted an old photo of him, and it was like a black-and-white male version of my mom looking right back at me.
For a moment, I missed the blue shag carpet back home and the square of sunlight that streamed into our living room in the afternoon. My cat, Neko, liked to loll about in that patch of light, and sometimes, so did I. No rays of sun shining inside here. Instead, this house was shaded and sad. This place was nothing like my cousins’ bright and modern house. Speaking of—what was taking my aunt and uncle so long?
While I willed them to come back as soon as possible, Obaasama called out, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
What in the world?
“Ko kee ko ko ko . . . Taro-chan, come here.” Oh! It was Taro, my grandmother’s mynah bird. I had forgotten about him. I went around the corner, following his chatter.
“Konnichiwa,” he said as he eyed me, fluffed his black wings, and snapped his yellow beak. His voice sounded exactly like my grandma’s.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” I responded, quietly. No need to draw Obaasama’s attention.
The screen door rattled. I rushed to the living room where my uncle hauled in my big blue suitcase. My aunt held a present wrapped in cute Hello Kitty wrapping paper and a golden organza bow.
My uncle called out toward the kitchen, “Mother! We have to get back before it gets too late. Let us know if you need anything.”
I gaped at him. They were leaving already? They’d barely been here ten minutes and half the time they were at the car!
My grandmother appeared with a pot of tea and a stack of cups. “Oh. All right.” She set the tea and the cups on top of the small dining table.
Aunt Noriko turned to me. “You’re such a smart girl, you’ll be just fine.”
I nodded, not knowing exactly how to reply. What I wanted to say was “Please, don’t go,” but even I knew that wasn’t the appropriate response.
My aunt handed me the present.
“It’s not much,” she said. “But hopefully it will be useful in school.”
“Well, Mother.” My uncle turned to my grandmother. “We’ll be in touch again soon.”
“We’ll see you at summer break,” my aunt said.
And with that, they were gone.
Even though they lived over an hour away and probably didn’t see her much, my uncle still hotfooted it out of there as if Obaasama had chased him away with a broom, and my aunt not far behind. But not me, I had nowhere to run.
I was alone with Obaasama, the biggest, scariest “little old lady” in all of Japan.
WAIT!! I wanted to shout. If five months was forever, two months—the time until Japan’s summer break—was close to half of forever. Please don’t leave me here all alone . . .
But no, I wasn’t alone, I was with my obaasama—a fate worse than being alone. If you had a choice between being alone or with an eighty-two-year-old lady who reminded you of a scary dragon, which would you choose?
“Aren’t you going to open that?” my grandmother asked about the present from my aunt. Oh! I was so busy panicking about being left that I had forgotten all about the gift. I pulled at the bow and peeled the one piece of tape used in wrapping it, careful not to tear the paper because that would have been wasteful, mottainai.
Handkerchiefs, cool! I wouldn’t have been excited about these back at home, but I knew I’d need them here. One had Snoopy on it. Huh. I thought Snoopy was just an American thing. In Japan, everyone carried a handkerchief to dry their hands since a lot of the public restrooms didn’t have paper towel dispensers or those push-button hand dryers. In the US, hardly anyone carried handkerchiefs, and the ones who did blew their noses into them! That would never happen in Japan, because then your hands would get boogers on them. So Japanese people always carried a packet of tissues with them too.
“Your aunt should have asked me before she bought those,” my grandmother sniffed. “I have lots I’ve never used.” I quietly set my new present in my lap where she couldn’t see them anymore.
My grandmother sat down at the small dining table and poured tea into the two teacups. They weren’t like teacups my friends’ moms used. They were rougher, almost unfinished. They didn’t have handles on them and their earth-colored glaze was uneven. Only once both were filled did she ask, “Would you like some tea?” Green tea was something my parents had all the time. Up until now, I assumed only adults drank tea, but I wasn’t about to say no.
I sat down across from her at the table, noticing for the first time the shiny black lacquer box in front of us, decorated with a delicate golden leaf pattern on it. I wanted to know what was inside but was afraid to ask.
My grandmother’s glasses prescription must have been pretty strong, because it was like she could see my thoughts. She opened the box. “Are you hungry?”
Under the lid were brightly colored sushi rolls, filled with a variety of mushrooms, cucumbers, slivers of raw fish, and pickled vegetables. “Hmm. This looks good,” Obaasama said. I scanned the offerings, trying to find something familiar. Our sushi at home was mainly kappa-maki—cucumber and rice wrapped in nori. I’d had sushi like the rough assemble-it-yourself sushi my aunt prepared. But I’d never had any rolls as carefully arranged and decorative as what was before me now.
My grandmother took a roll, dipped it in a small saucer of soy sauce, and popped it in her mouth. Click, click, click. My grandmother’s jaw clicked when she chewed. I used the chopsticks to pick up a roll, dip it in the soy sauce, and pop it in my mouth. It was too big. I chewed and chewed, trying to mash it into something I could swallow. I learned my lesson and tried to eat the next roll in two bites, but then it fell apart as I tried to keep pieces of it from littering the table.
“Oh dear,” my grandmother said. “You know you’re supposed to eat it in one bite.”
I would h
ave if I could have. Should I explain the roll was too big for my mouth? Or would that be like “talking back”? I didn’t want Obaasama to think my mom raised “that kind of kid.” Instead, I eyed a smaller roll with stuff in it I didn’t recognize. I was so curious I forgot to be shy. “What’s this pink stuff?”
“That?” My grandmother leaned over to look. “That’s sugar.”
Sugar? Sugar in sushi?
“Hasn’t your mother ever fed you sushi?”
“Sometimes.” I stared at the sushi with its splash of bright-pink crystals in the middle. “But she didn’t put sugar in it.”
Click, click, click. I wondered if Obaasama’s jaw-clicking was caused by years of trying to eat rolls of sushi that were too big for her mouth. But I didn’t dare say what was in my head. Instead, I said, “Maybe she wasn’t able to find any fancy pink sushi sugar in Kansas.”
I sampled a piece. Although it was easier to eat than the monster-sized roll I tried earlier, I still thought it would’ve tasted better without the gritty sugar addition.
“It’s delicious,” I lied.
“Good,” my grandmother replied. “You need to eat more, then. You’re rather skinny.”
If I left too much food on my plate at home, my mom always launched into her stories about how hungry she was as a little girl because of the War. My mom was only six when World War II officially ended, but memories of it still haunt her. Even when I left only a few grains of rice in my bowl, this would be enough for my mom to tell us how she and her siblings never left anything in their bowls. She told me how she used to cry and whine at night because of how her stomach ached with emptiness. She said they were so hungry they even ate grasshoppers for protein—sautéed and flavored with a little soy sauce. Just a hunch, but I bet memories of the War still haunted this house too.
So I ate as much as I could. Pink-sugar sushi and all. I left not a single grain of rice.
When I finished, I brought my plates to the kitchen, and Taro-chan shouted, “Whoa, Nelly!” from inside his cage. I wanted to laugh out loud but didn’t because my grandmother didn’t react at all. Maybe because Taro-chan’s antics were old news to her. But a lady who taught her mynah bird to say “Whoa, Nelly!” couldn’t be all bad, right?
Obaasama followed me into the kitchen and took my plates from me. After she set them in the sink, she looked me up and down. The kitchen was narrow, cramped, and cluttered, and felt even more so with the two of us in there. “How tall are you now?” she asked. I was four feet nine inches tall, but I didn’t know how to answer in centimeters.
“Well, your legs are long and straight. That’s good.”
No one had ever described my legs that way. At home, I was one of the shortest girls in my class so I’d always felt like my legs were short and stubby. And weren’t everyone’s legs straight?
As if she could hear my thoughts, Obaasama said, “Many Japanese girls, their legs are a little crooked, you know. I think it’s from too much seiza.” Seiza was a traditional way of sitting on the floor in Japan, with your legs together and tucked under you, like how my mom sat when she folded laundry. I could only do it for a few minutes before pins and needles set in and I had to stand up. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other as my grandmother continued to assess me.
“You know, looking at you, I don’t think you’ll even need a corset when you’re older.”
A what? I’m pretty sure my grandmother said “corset” since the Japanese word for “corset” is basically the same word as the English word for corset. It was written in katakana, the letters for words borrowed from other languages, and pronounced korusetto. But even if I understood the word, I didn’t understand where my grandmother was going with it.
Obaasama went on, “A lot of Japanese women, their butts are quite flat. You should be happy yours isn’t.”
Did my grandmother just tell me I had a nice butt? Forget what I said earlier about Obaasama not being all bad because she taught her mynah bird to say funny things. Butt comments canceled that—“Whoa, Nelly, Grandma!” I wanted to say.
“I’ve given birth to nine babies. Nine! You know how I got my figure back after each one? That’s right. A corset.” My grandmother straightened her back and stood proudly, willing me to look at her. In terms of old Japanese ladies’ figures, I had no idea how my grandmother’s compared. I mean, who cares? But I knew better than to say what was in my thought bubble.
Obaasama seemed to want some sort of response from me anyway.
“Wow,” I obliged.
Satisfied, my grandmother continued her “Ode to the Corset” as she walked me through the rest of the house, pointing out where to find things such as kitchen utensils, toilet paper, and soap. “Women these days don’t use them, but they should. You know your cousin Mina is quite pretty. She’s too skinny, though, and her butt is much flatter than yours. A corset could cinch in her waist and give the illusion of curves. For chubby women, a corset could help control them . . .”
She showed me the bathroom, which was like my cousins’ bathroom, a room-with-a-bath. But, unlike my cousins’ place, there was a wooden washboard outside the tub. “I don’t have a washing machine,” explained Obaasama. “So you can use that to wash your clothes every night.”
Wash my own clothes? I had never seen a washboard in real life before, and only heard about them in stories. Like Little House on the Prairie. Well, okay, maybe I could pretend I was a pioneer like Laura. Her life sounded like it was fun when I read her books. Hmm. How were my clothes cleaned during my previous trips? Had my mother done it all? Obaasama?
“And here’s the bedroom.”
While my mom told me I’d have to share a room with my grandmother, I hadn’t remembered how small it was.
I’d always had to share a bedroom with someone. First with my sister—our two beds on opposite sides of a room with yellow comforters covered in white polka dots. But when she was in high school, she got to have her own space in the basement. I thought maybe that meant I’d finally have my own room, but no, my parents bought a bunk bed and made me share a room with my little brother, which was so annoying.
“It’s hard for me to get up and down off the floor so that’s why I sleep in a bed. You’re young, though, so you can sleep on a futon,” Obaasama explained. She opened the sliding closet door where all the bedding was stored. “You’re responsible for getting the futon, sheets, and blankets out every night and putting them away every morning. All right?”
I slid my toes over the golden-straw tatami mats covering the bedroom floor while she told me what I needed to do. With the way the straw was woven together, tight and smooth, I could only slide my toes back and forth in one direction, not side-to-side.
“You can put your clothes here.” Obaasama pointed to three drawers along the wall.
“Okay,” I answered.
We paused and looked at each other for a moment. What now?
“Well, then.” Obaasama glanced toward my suitcase before she disappeared into the kitchen again.
I guess that meant I should unpack.
I opened the latches to my suitcase, I shook out my clothes, and then folded them again before I set them in the drawers. Green skirt, light blue T-shirt. Red skirt, my Olympics T-shirt with its five rings connected together. Underwear. Socks.
I took out the gifts for other people that my parents sent me with: Jell-O, Pop Tarts, Russell Stover chocolates, and Pepperidge Farm cookies. I set them on a counter in the kitchen. What time is it now? Only 6:15 p.m. I sighed.
The living room sliding door rattled. I peeked outside the lace curtains. Obaasama was out in the garden, watering some delicate purple flowers.
I got up and tiptoed from the bedroom. I don’t know why I tiptoed. There wasn’t anyone there to disturb, but it felt like something I should do.
I took a closer look at Ojiisama’s paintings. A girl in white in one. I wondered who she was. She had chubby cheeks like me, but her white veil made her look like an angel. N
ot like me at all! Maybe she’d look after me. I could sure use a guardian angel, I thought. There was another one with some stuff on a desk. I stopped in front of a third one with some English on it. “Railroad crossing,” I read. Black-and-white bars pointed to the sky. A railroad attendant sat on the other side looking over the tracks toward me. I gazed back at him. I wondered why Grandpa felt this would make a good painting.
The screen door rattled again, and I turned like I was caught doing something I shouldn’t, even though I wasn’t doing anything.
Obaasama stepped up into the living room, patting her brow with her handkerchief.
“It’s hot.”
“May I . . . may I walk around the yard?”
Obaasama glanced toward the clock on the wall. 6:27. “If you like.”
I told myself I would brave the mosquito-infested backyard for five bites. It didn’t take very long. 6:42.
When I came inside, Obaasama was holding a rosary as she knelt in front of her altar. She prayed, her lips moving, eyes closed. I learned about the rosary back in Sunday school, but my teacher said it was more for adults than kids. It’s like a necklace with a lot of beads that are used to keep track of how many prayers you’ve said. I peeked at what bead my grandma held. She had a long way to go until she was finished.
I watched Taro hop around his cage for five minutes.
I sat on the toilet for much longer than I needed and observed the dimpled frosted glass on the door.
I went back into the bedroom and rearranged my clothes in the drawers.
Only 7:00 p.m.? I had promised myself I would save my books for as long as possible, but I gave in, even though it was only my first day with Obaasama. I cracked open Son of the Black Stallion (I loved horses) and read.
Finally at eight o’clock, it was time for bed. I lifted the futon from the closet and set up the sheets as neatly as possible even though I hardly ever made my bed at home.
My grandmother came back in the bedroom once she finished her prayers, fed Taro, and put away the dishes. She began getting ready for bed too. First, she took out the pins holding her hair up. Then, she bent down at her waist and brushed her long locks out. It felt awkward to be in the room while she did this in silence, so I grabbed my pajamas and prepared to take my bath.
While I Was Away Page 5
