Ito-kun, Suzuki-kun’s little henchman, piped up, “I think it’s the gaijin’s.” I hoped one of my guruupu members would shoot me a kind glance, or even a quick smile that let me know, “You’re not a gaijin to us! We like you!”
But they didn’t.
Maybe on my tanzaku, I could write, “I wish my classmates would stop calling me gaijin.”
But they’d still think it.
Mr. Adachi looked around, trying to decide who to discipline. Emi-chan’s friend? Or Ito-kun? He smacked the desk of Emi-chan’s friend. “Focus!”
I lowered my eyes to avoid her glare. I didn’t think she meant to call attention to the fact I still wasn’t reading. But after Mr. Adachi’s scolding, it was clear that she wasn’t happy with him or me.
Last week, the boys listened outside the classroom during one of my tutoring sessions. There was a phrase I was having trouble with: kasuri no monpe. It wasn’t a particularly special phrase or important to the story. I didn’t have problems reading the words themselves, but I couldn’t figure out where to place the accent. Mr. Adachi made me repeat it after him.
“Kasuri no monpe.”
I tried. “Kasuri no . . . monpe.”
When I heard snickering outside the classroom, I didn’t want to speak Japanese ever again. Mr. Adachi refused to give up even though I really wanted him to, at least for today.
“Try again. Kasuri no monpe.”
“Kasuri no monpe.” I didn’t hear what was wrong. The laughter outside the doorway grew louder. Maybe they were laughing at something else. Maybe they weren’t laughing at me.
“Kasu-RI no mon-PEH!” the boys shouted. Yamashita-san was out there too. Giggling. Mocking.
I didn’t sound like that! Or did I? I felt tears gather behind my eyes, but I willed them back. Anger burned across my cheeks to the tips of my ears, anger at them humiliating me, for making fun of how I talked. Anger at Yamashita-san who ran off when our eyes met, her ponytail bouncing and flipping behind her. Some friend she was turning out to be. My anger was like a fire, putting out my tears with a hiss before they could spill out.
Back and forth, the boys guffawed and shouted, “Kasu-RI no mon-PEH! Kasu-RI no mon-PEH!” It was amazing how much fun they had saying “loose-fitting pants made out of a traditional woven fabric.” They only stopped when Mr. Adachi slammed his textbook on his desk and stood up so fast that his chair made a loud SKREAK! The boys ran away before Mr. Adachi could get to them. Unfortunately.
I would have head-smacked them myself if I knew I could get away with it.
That afternoon back at Obaasama’s, I wallowed on the sofa. Instead of studying my kanji, I reread the copy of Ivanhoe I brought from Kansas.
The only problem was that Ivanhoe required a lot of concentration I didn’t have at the moment.
I sat up and looked around at my grandfather’s oil paintings. They were really beautiful—I wished I could paint as well as he did. Maybe I could write that on my tanzaku? I met the gaze of the girl in white, my “guardian angel,” and thought, Any ideas? She looked back at me, serene and silent. Then, I focused on the painting above the sofa, the one right next to the railroad crossing with the station attendant looking my way. I didn’t pay much attention to it before because it just looked like a bunch of random objects on a desk. Now I recognized it as a Japanese calligraphy set, a lot like the one I used at school. Brushes set in a cup off to the left, ink tablet, and ink stick. My mom mentioned my grandfather liked a bright, orangey red color—cadmium red, I think it was called—but it was so expensive he used only a little at a time. I spotted it in a lot of his paintings—pops of brightness in the art he created during war and sickness. Like in this painting too, a little bit to accent the dark box for the ink stick.
His paintings weren’t anything like the Japanese brush painting or calligraphy we worked on at school, each kanji over in a minute, on wispy sheets of rice paper.
“Oil paintings take a long time to dry,” my mother told me when she hung a painting of a watermelon and some vegetables in our home. “This took your ojiisama a long time. He was a perfectionist, so oils suited him. He could go in and change, touch up, improve, wait, and improve again before the paint dried.” This sounded like an awful, endless process to me. But practice makes perfect, right? Ugh. Practice was boring. “The thing about oils,” my mom also said, “is that they last forever.”
It was hard thinking about my mom. “Your grandfather bought me crayons during the War,” she told me once. “We didn’t have much money—no one did—but I begged for them. I wanted to be an artist like him.” Maybe for Tanabata, my mom wished for new crayons. She told me, “I was so excited when he bought them for me, but they were gritty and waxy. The first time I used them, they ripped the paper I tried to draw on. They didn’t color at all.”
Living here, in this old house with Obaasama’s old stories and surrounded by my grandfather’s old paintings, I finally understood why my mom never bought me that brand-new box of sixty-four Crayola crayons. My crayons at home weren’t broken like I thought they were. They colored, after all.
Just like my Japanese, my mom’s English wasn’t great. Sometimes when we went shopping, she’d ask a question to a salesclerk and the lady would answer back in a loud voice, almost shouting, “What? I can’t understand you. I’m sorry, I can’t understand you with that accent.” Sometimes my mom asked me to call restaurants to make a reservation or the doctor’s office to schedule my own appointments. Now, I felt bad about how much I complained, grumbling under my breath, “Why don’t you do it yourself?”
Kasu-RI no mon-PEH!
Saturday morning was our class’s turn to decorate the Tanabata bamboo. We brought out brightly colored paper chains and ornaments to hang on it. It reminded me of a Christmas tree, only the tree wasn’t heavy and triangular. The bamboo trunk was thin and separated into even segments. Its branches were delicate and the leaves waved in the breeze like long, thin, light-green banners. When we finished decorating, we sang a song that went like this:
Sasa no ha sara sara / Bamboo leaves rustle, rustle
Nokiba ni yureru / And sway close to the roof’s edge
O-hoshi sama kira kira / The stars twinkle, twinkle
Kin gin sunago / Gold and silver grains of sand.
Goshiki no tanzaku / On five-color paper strips
Watashi ga kaita / I wrote my wishes
O-hoshi sama kira kira / The stars are twinkling
Sora kara miteru / Watching from the sky.
I peeked at some of my classmates’ wishes that they had hung up. “I wish to win next week’s contest” read one. “I wish to —.” I couldn’t read the kanji on that one. I still didn’t know what to wish for on my tanzaku paper strip. A month ago, I would have written, “I want to go home!” but that didn’t feel right now. Even though “kasu-RI no mon-PEH” incidents made me want to go home more than anything, there were days like having Shakey’s Pizza with my cousins, walks home with Reiko, and listening to Obaasama’s stories that made me not mind Japan so much . . . sometimes.
When I was in kindergarten back in Kansas, our first homework assignment was to come up with a wish for the year. Did I want dozens of new friends? Did I want to be rich? Did I want more dinosaur coloring books? I had no idea. I asked my mother about it and without missing a beat, she answered, “Why don’t you wish to learn how to read?”
I remembered thinking, What a weird wish.
My mom sensed my doubt. “Trust me. It’s the best thing you could wish for.”
The next day in kindergarten, we gathered around a circle and we told each other our wishes. My friends wished for Barbies, friends, to win the lottery. When it was my turn, I followed my mother’s advice. “I wish I could become a good reader.”
The teacher paused. “A good reader?”
I nodded. “I want to learn how to read.”
When Mrs. Orrick’s face broke into a smile and crow’s feet crinkled her eyes, I knew my mom was right.
I smoothed out my blank tanzaku. I thought about being skipped in class, my tutoring sessions with Mr. Adachi, the miserable scores on my kanji quizzes, my classmates’ teasing. I knew what I needed to write. I stopped and started, made some mistakes, erased them, and started again. I wrote:
「日本語が上手によめますように。」
I wish to read well in Japanese.
On my way out at the end of school, I hung my tanzaku on the tree.
Fifteen
When the June rain ended, the heat descended on Tokyo in July. Not just heat, but the sticky, soupy humidity too.
After Tanabata, it became so hot outside that I didn’t mind staying inside for my tutoring sessions with Mr. Adachi. My Japanese improved, but soooo slowly! I still didn’t read aloud with the rest of the class. While my kanji quizzes were no longer in the 2/10 range, they still hovered in the 4–5/10 range. Technically, still failing . . . or more like flailing. Mr. Adachi was always patient with me, but once, when the rest of the class was out at recess, he lost his temper. Suzuki-kun and Ito-kun were hanging around like they always did during my tutoring sessions, and they swung a jump rope around like a lasso while I tried to read. That’s when Mr. Adachi stopped me.
“Damn it, you morons!” He stomped over to the boys, head-smacked both of them, grabbed their jump rope, and snipped it in half with his scissors.
“Hidoi! You ruined my jump rope!” shouted Ito-kun.
“That’ll teach you to act like stupid idiots.” Mr. Adachi walked calmly back to his desk. I was so rattled, I stammered and stuttered throughout the rest of our session until Mr. Adachi released me with a “That’s enough for today.”
When our class visited the library, I flipped through books I should have been able to read as a sixth grader but couldn’t. I desperately searched for ones with the phonetic furigana that would help me read all the kanji I never learned. I was pretty sure I could read some of the books in the third- and fourth-grade sections now, but I didn’t dare wander over there while my classmates were around. Instead, I did what I always did. I checked out a book I couldn’t read.
In July, I struggled in my nonacademic classes too. For art, we each received a large rock to chisel. I was on my third read of Son of the Black Stallion, so I decided to sculpt a horse. Tap, tap, tap we went with the hammer and chisel for the entire class period. I tried to form an eyeball tap, tap, tap, but it looked like a bump in the rock more than anything else. My attempts to chisel a horse resulted in changing a chunk of rock into a different-looking chunk of rock. The type of sculpture where I had to explain—“It’s a horse”—to anyone who saw it.
One particularly hot and tiring Saturday afternoon in mid-July, I came home from school to buckwheat soba noodles with dipping sauce that Obaasama had made. The soba noodles were gray and cold, and Obaasama served them with ice cubes on top to make them especially chilly. She had prepared grated ginger and minced scallions to add to the salty, chilled dipping broth, and sprinkled thin, papery nori seaweed strips on the noodles. I flavored the tsuyu dipping broth with the ginger and scallions and used my wooden chopsticks to dip some of the noodles in the broth.
“So,” Obaasama said, “how was your day? How’s school?”
It was so rare for Obaasama to start a conversation during meals that I nearly dropped my chopsticks. While I got over my surprise, I brought the noodles to my mouth and tried to eat them quietly because my friends’ parents in Kansas scolded them for making noise when they ate. Should I tell my Obaasama how I was dumb at school, but at least I was a jock? That I had friends, but I wasn’t sure they liked me that much? Should I tell her that even in my art class, I tried to chisel a horse but it looked more like a cow . . . patty? Should I . . .
“Why are you eating like that?” Obaasama interrupted my thoughts. I was stuck. Should I answer with my mouth full? Or make her wait as I finished chewing? I gulped the noodles down as quickly as possible.
“Like what?”
“Without making any noise. Don’t you know you’re supposed to slurp them?”
When my mom made these noodles for us at home, I did slurp them, but I assumed it was because we were family and we could be relaxed around each other like that. It never occurred to me that was how we ate our noodles because that’s how Japanese people eat noodles.
“If I ever took you to a soba-ya restaurant and you ate like that, the cook would be insulted. You’re eating it like you don’t like how it tastes. Don’t you like how it tastes?”
I nodded. “I like it.”
“Then sssssllllluuup!” Obaasama dipped her noodles and showed me how it was done.
Sllluuup! I slurped my noodles as loudly as I could.
“Better,” Obaasama said. She looked stern like usual but also like she was trying to hold something in. A smile? I didn’t think so. Obaasama wasn’t usually the smiling type, but for some reason I wanted to smile back at her. Until she added, “I can’t believe you don’t know how to eat Japanese noodles.” She shook her head.
We continued to eat in silence. Silent except for a sllluuup! from me.
Followed by a sslllluuuup! from Obaasama.
Ssslluuup!
Ssslluuup!
“So . . . school,” Obaasama said. “You never answered my question.”
Ssslluuup! The last of my noodles whipped me in the face before I sucked it in as quickly as I could. I hoped she didn’t see that. If she did, she didn’t let on, though she had that stern not-smile look again that made me suspect she did see it.
I swallowed before I answered, buying myself some time. “Chotto muzukashii ka na.” It’s a little difficult.
Obaasama normally didn’t ask me much about how my day was, or who I played with at recess, or what I studied at school. When she did, an answer like “It was fine,” or “It’s a little difficult,” was enough for her. But not today.
“Difficult? Like what? You mean like kanji?”
How did she know? “Yeah,” I admitted.
Obaasama didn’t respond right away, but sipped what was left of her dipping broth.
“Gochisousama deshita.” I thanked her for the meal and gathered my plates to leave the table.
“Did you know we lived in Manchuria for a while?”
I stopped. My mother had mentioned something like this, but I might not have listened very closely. I felt a little bad about this, so I decided to pay more attention this time.
“Where’s Manchuria?” I sat back down.
“Manchuria? Well, I guess it’s China now. But during the War, Japan controlled parts of China for a time.”
The tiny country of Japan controlled part of China? I never learned about that in school. American school, at least.
“Your ojiisama accepted a position as an art teacher there. He was a great artist, as you know. Not many people can make a living and support a family as an artist.”
I looked around Obaasama’s living room at my grandfather’s oil paintings. The one of the calligraphy set. The one with the railroad station attendant. And the one of the girl in white, forever smiling in her sweet, angelic way. I pointed at her. “So who is that anyway? That’s not my mom, is it?”
Obaasama continued with her story like she didn’t hear me. “Did you know some of your aunts and uncles were born in Manchuria?”
“Wait, so technically they’re Chinese?” I blurted out in surprise.
“Well, no. Since Japan occupied that part of China at the time, they’re still Japanese.”
I always assumed all my relatives were born in Japan, but now I learned that some were born in a country that was not the one of their family’s past. Just like me. Did they have problems getting used to life in China? Did they have to speak Chinese? And if they did, was it hard for them?
My grandmother got up from the table to clear the dishes before I could ask my questions.
“What’s this?” she called out from the kitchen.
It was then I remembered the Jell-
O.
I made some last night—lemon and cherry double-layer—and cut them into cubes right before dinner. I made sure to add an extra packet of Knox gelatin to each flavor so they were firm enough to eat by hand. Just like some Japanese people craved cold noodles when the weather was hot, I craved Jell-O.
“It’s pretty,” Obaasama told me as we sat down to sample it. We usually didn’t have dessert, so Obaasama put the Jell-O cubes in elegant, clear glasses to mark the special occasion. They jiggled and shimmered in the glass, like gold and ruby jewels. “Do you eat it with a spoon or a fork?”
“Neither,” I told her. “You just pick it up like this,” I grabbed a yellow-and-red cube from the glass, “and eat it!” I popped it into my mouth.
“With your hands?” asked Obaasama, incredulous.
“Yeah! That’s why I added the extra gelatin. It makes it firmer.”
“And just eat it?”
I didn’t get what was so hard to understand. “Or,” I added, “you can play with it first.” I squeezed mine a couple times before taking a bite.
I wanted more than anything for Obaasama to play with her Jell-O.
But Obaasama was aghast. “No, thank you. I will refrain.” She picked one up between her thumb and forefinger and took a small nibble. “Nice and fresh.”
I smiled. I was happy she liked my cooking, and that she shared a glimpse into our family’s past with me. It was just a peek, but it helped me feel better. I forgot all about school when I imagined Obaasama playing with her Jell-O. Like I knew she wanted to.
Sixteen
Finally. Finally! The summer vacation my parents denied me at the end of May was finally here! Japanese summer vacation started at the end of July and lasted for forty days. Forty days of freedom! Forty days without tutoring! Forty days of vegging out, man!
Sort of vegging out, I mean. Wishes on tanzaku were nice but if I really wanted to learn to read better, no way I could take a forty-day break. I’d have to study my butt off instead.
Two months ago, I couldn’t wait for this day, to get out of Obaasama’s old, silent house and go back to my cousins’ place. But on the first day of vacation, I felt a twinge of worry. Would my grandmother be all right? Sure, she would, I convinced myself. I gave her my warm socks for her cold feet, didn’t I? If you thought about it, this was a kind of summer vacation for my grandma too. A break from her twelve-year-old granddaughter who didn’t even know how to eat noodles properly. Right?
While I Was Away Page 12
