While I Was Away

by Waka T. Brown

  “My mom said Aunt Sakura was also really nice and never teased. She said she was . . . a saint.” The painting of her in a white dress and veil for her First Communion certainly made her look like one.

  “She was,” Obaasama agreed. “And talented too. The sketches in her journal were amazing. She was as talented as your ojiisama.”

  I listened as I cut the fabric for my purse using a pair of Obaasama’s old but sharp scissors, carefully following the edges of the pattern.

  “Everyone loved her. Except . . . well, siblings fight, you know.” Obaasama paused. “It was an accident, but . . .” Obaasama’s voice trailed off as she got lost in her thoughts.

  I stopped pinning the fabric for my purse together and felt a chill run through me.

  This wasn’t the story my mom told me. She mentioned Aunt Sakura and her older brother, another uncle who I hadn’t met before, fought sometimes, but that Aunt Sakura died from the mumps. Since it was during the War, no one had access to proper medical care—care that could have saved her from a common illness.

  “She wasn’t the same after the accident and died soon after.”

  My brother and I fought all the time. Was it like that? I wondered. But I didn’t feel like it was right to ask, to stir up these memories anymore.

  Same incident, two different stories. Which one to believe?

  I thought back to when I had the mumps a few years ago. I wasn’t vaccinated since there was egg in the mumps vaccine, and my mom worried how I’d react to it with my egg allergy. While my cheeks puffed up a bit when I was sick, my having the mumps didn’t seem to cause any alarm.

  But when I was six, I fell off the monkey bars during recess and hit my head. I was dizzy and had to go see the school nurse who gave me an orange-flavored taffy. I chewed it . . . but threw it right back up. The sickly-sweet orange mixed with the sour aftertaste in my mouth matched my mother’s look of fear when the school nurse described what happened. My mother took me to the hospital where, according to her, they would “measure my IQ.” Nurses attached wires to my head with a creamy white substance that reminded me of toothpaste. I waited in a dark room with the wires pasted all over my head while the doctors conducted their tests. This IQ test sure is different from other ones I’d taken, I thought. Even though the test left my hair chalky with the paste, I was happy when my mother seemed relieved. My brain was good, she told me. Still good.

  “Did the test show I’m smart?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she told me as she patted my head. “Very.”

  Given the way she reacted to my accident versus how she reacted when I got the mumps, I knew which story about Sakura to believe.

  “But your mom was right,” Obaasama continued her story, like the big revelation of her daughter’s death was just a small part of it. “Sakura did teach your mother her hiragana. She was very good at teaching. Very kind, very patient. Sakura liked school very much.”

  I felt bad about how much I didn’t like school and how much I dreaded going back even though I had been studying a lot.

  “And you know how you’d asked a while ago if that painting was your mother?”

  “The one of Aunt Sakura?”

  “Yes. In some ways, it is. Your grandfather painted that after Sakura had passed away. He used an old photograph, but needed a model for the last part, for details such as the eyes and her expression. So it was your mother who stood in for it.”

  Aunt Sakura. Painted by my grandfather. With my mother’s eyes. Three people who weren’t here with us, but actually were. Their stories, their relationships, their lives all tied together and echoing across time. I would never have understood if I hadn’t come here and heard Obaasama tell me herself.

  Somehow, my purse had come together during Obaasama’s stories. Even though the sewing machine was old, its stitches were neat and even. Attaching the zipper would be tricky, but if I stitched it on first by hand and then sewed over it, I thought it would come out all right. I had to coax the sewing machine needle through the thick moss-green handle. Even though the sewing machine was old and without frills, it handled the task like a champ.

  When I finished my purse, I showed it to Obaasama with some pride, but not too much. “I shouldn’t have clipped the corners here,” I pointed out the mistakes before she could. “I thought the fabric would bunch up too much, but now I think cutting out that extra fabric made the corners weaker. But I think it’s usable.”

  Obaasama held it up and peered inside. “It’s definitely usable.”

  Over the next few days, I made another purse with the leftover fabric, more quickly than the last one, and careful to avoid the mistakes I made the first time. I bought another length of purple canvas for the handle since Obaasama mentioned a number of times purple was her favorite color. As I measured and cut the fabric and sewed it all together, I pondered Obaasama’s story about losing her sweet daughter, the one who taught my mother and loved school.

  “Look.” I handed the second purse to her. “I made another one.”

  “That’s nice.” She examined the stitches. “What do you plan to do with two purses?”

  “This one’s yours.” I suddenly worried she didn’t need another purse. “It’s better than the first one I made, and I . . . I thought you could use it.”

  My grandmother fell silent as she looked over the purse. “I love purple, and . . . a woman can never have too many purses. Thank you.”

  When I dried the dishes and put them away that night, I noticed the horse sculpture I had given Obaasama on display in her cabinet, next to an antique plate she received for her wedding many years before.

  Maybe we Japanese didn’t hug each other a lot, but some actions say a lot more and last a lot longer.

  Twenty

  Even though we had homework and journal writing during vacation, and I’d made myself study extra on top of all that, I felt refreshed after the summer break and . . . not exactly happy to get back to school, but definitely determined. I can do this! I said to myself. I can do this.

  I slipped on my shoes on the outside step like I always did, and I reached in to grab my randoseru. It was just out of reach so I took a step into the entryway with my shoes still on.

  Of course, as luck would have it, Obaasama saw me. “What are you doing?” she yelled. I froze. This was the first time she’d raised her voice at me.

  “I was just . . . I couldn’t reach my—”

  “You never, ever wear shoes in a Japanese house. You understand that, right?”

  My mom raised us so we never wore shoes in the house. And I never did, but I don’t think she’d have yelled at me like Obaasama did.

  I nodded. “Gomen nasai,” I apologized as my grandmother got down on her knees with a wet rag and cleaned up after me like I was a small child. “I’ll do that, Obaasama.”

  Obaasama waved me off. “You need to get to school.”

  Reiko waved at me outside the gate.

  I bowed to my grandmother. “Ittemairimasu,” I said meekly.

  Maybe too meekly, because she didn’t hear me. She didn’t respond with her usual Please go and come back, anyway.

  I scuffled over to meet Reiko.

  “Waka-chan! I missed you. We heard you went to Tokyo Disneyland. You’re so lucky! Tell me all about it, okay?”

  Reiko’s excitement felt wrong even though I knew it wasn’t her. I looked back on Obaasama finally pushing herself to her feet again. It had been a nice summer after all, and I ruined it my very first day back to school. But seeing me watching her, Obaasama waved me off again, and I felt that meant “Hurry, don’t be late,” not “Get away from me.” Somehow that small action made me feel a little better. I turned back to Reiko.

  “I want to hear about your summer too!”

  I didn’t realize how much I missed my friend until I saw her again.

  Reiko and I laughed and chatted the entire way to school, but our walk was over before we even covered a fraction of what we wanted to talk about.


  “Meet you by the gate after school, okay?”

  “For sure!”

  Reiko and I went to our separate classrooms. In 6-5, students were loud as usual, but this time Midori-chan and her group waved me over, not Emi-chan and Fujita-san, like on my first day.

  “How was your break, Waka-chan?” Midori-chan asked.

  “It was good!” I responded. “Even though it rained at first.”

  The girls exchanged glances and then . . . smirks?

  “Wait, what did you just say?” asked Yamashita-san.

  “Even though it rained at first, I had a good break,” I repeated.

  Midori, Naomi, and Yamashita-san burst into a fit of giggles. I didn’t get what was so funny.

  “What did it rain?” asked Yamashita-san.

  Confused, I repeated, “ame . . .” I knew the word for “rain.” It was “ame”—I’ve known that word forever! At least, I thought I did.

  “It rained candy?” Midori asked. “I think you meant ‘ame.’”

  “Isn’t that what I said?” I felt my cheeks grow hot. Yamashita-san had stopped giggling and laughed right at me.

  “Look here, you,” Saito-san jumped in. “A-me is ‘rain,’ a-ME is ‘candy.’ Listen.”

  Saito-san repeated the two. “Got it?”

  “Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t “get it” at all.

  All my extra time studying this summer felt like it was washed away by A-me.

  At least there was PE today. And swimming at that! My school in Kansas didn’t have a pool, so this certainly was one way Japanese school was better than my American school. Since my mom never learned how to swim, she made sure to enroll me in swimming lessons starting when I was five years old. Annette and I swam in her pool almost every day of the summer, but in Japan, I had only been to the pool once. Aunt Kyoko took me and my cousins one Sunday afternoon after Mass, but the pool had been so crowded no one had much room to swim. We basically stood around and splashed, occasionally going underwater to retrieve a dropped pool toy. Because of the ocean currents Hina warned me about, I didn’t actually swim much at the beach with my cousins either.

  Unlike other times for PE, the boys and girls went to separate classrooms to change into our swimsuits (thank goodness!)—girls in 6-5, boys in 6-4. We headed to the pool deck after changing into our identical navy blue swimsuits and orange swim caps.

  There, a PE teacher checked how well we could swim. “Down and back, any way you can!”

  Since there were close to eighty students at the pool, we had to wait for our turn. More waiting—all I wanted to do was swim!

  Finally, it was my turn, and I dove in with a splash! Several of my classmates were only able to make it partway. Many of them could swim twenty-five meters, but only by swimming a very slow breast stroke. I swam freestyle to the end of the pool and back, thinking nothing of it. I guess all those swimming lessons and summer days playing Marco Polo back in Kansas paid off. Annette always kicked my butt when we swam so I never thought of myself as a strong swimmer.

  I popped my head up out of the pool to hear what the PE teacher thought.

  “Advanced,” he yelled, before turning his attention to the next set of swimmers.

  Then I saw my classmates’ expressions.

  “What?” I asked, not sure what I had done wrong now.

  “You just did fifty meters without stopping!” said one girl.

  “And freestyle. The only other girl who can do that is—”

  “Waa! Look at her go!”

  I turned my head to see what all the commotion was about. Emi-chan was effortlessly butterflying the fifty meters as easily as I had freestyled it.

  When Emi-chan popped her head out of the water, she smiled at me. “You’re a really good swimmer! Are you part of a club at home?”

  I shook my head.

  “Wow, that’s amazing! To swim as well as you do without being in a club—”

  Fujita-san explained. “Emi’s been part of a swim club outside of school for several years now.”

  I beamed. It was nice they still talked to me, even though I turned down their offer to be in their group. It was good to be a jock, even if I was still a dumb one.

  After I changed out of my swimsuit and back into my regular clothes, I went to the bathroom and then headed back into my classroom. But when I slid open the door . . .

  All the girls had turned into boys.

  Boys without their shirts on, boys bare-bottomed in the middle of pulling down their Speedo-like swim trunks. Boys being noisy, like they always were.

  All boys.

  The noise died down as we stared at each other. I didn’t understand how this could be—did all the girls and boys switch rooms while I was in the bathroom? Why would they do something like that? Was this a prank everyone was in on except for me?

  Or maybe I was dreaming. The smell of the chlorine from the pool was real, though. Unmistakably real. We definitely just went swimming—I hadn’t imagined that. Maybe the chlorine was messing with my eyes. I rubbed them and peered at the room again.

  Still all boys.

  While my mind could not quite grasp how immense, huge, and just plain bad my mistake was, the boys stared back, wondering, I was sure, why the dumb-jock-gaijin girl just stood there. Unmoving. Gawking.

  The room had become more silent than it had ever been.

  That is, until chaos erupted.

  “Iyada! Chikan! Chikan da!” Their shouts of “PERVERT!” snapped me out of my bewildered trance.

  Oh . . . NO. What have I done?

  I slid the door shut as quickly as I could. I stumbled backward and looked up. The doors for 6-4 and 6-5 were right next to each other.

  Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

  “Chikan! Dare datta no, ano chikan?” I could still hear the boys yelling, Pervert! Who was that peeper?

  I slid open the door to 6-5 and it was just as I left it, all the girls in the middle of changing out of their swimsuits. Rattled, I convinced myself this was no big deal. Even though it felt like an eternity, surely I only stared at the boys for a few seconds, not enough time for anyone to recognize me. And even if they did, it was an honest mistake and my classmates would understand.

  Not a chance.

  Word spread like wildfire throughout all the sixth-grade classes—6-1, 6-2, 6-3, and 6-4—not just the forty kids in 6-5. “Is that her? Is that the Peeper?” Kids whispered and nudged each other as I walked down the hall. “Chikan da!” they pointed and giggled at “the Pervert” every time they saw me.

  I hoped the teasing would blow over in a few days, surely after the weekend, but no. It got worse, more people knew, the description of the incident grew more elaborate, boys whispered it wasn’t a mistake, that I wanted to see them getting undressed. My tormentors knew not to tease me in front of Mr. Adachi and his head smacks, but only when there was no adult around to come to my defense.

  I half hoped being in a guruupu would shield me, that Midori, Naomi, Saito-san, Yamashita-san—my “friends”—would protect me.

  Nope.

  While the girls never participated, at least not in front of me, they also never stopped the teasing. They looked away or pretended not to hear. I remembered how Yamashita-san joined in the boys’ laughter during my tutoring session with Mr. Adachi. I thought being in a group meant that they’d stick with me through thick and thin. If I had picked Emi-chan’s group would they not have my back either?

  Before my Very Big Tremendously Bad Mistake with Horrible Consequences, I practiced my reading with Mr. Adachi during one of our tutoring sessions. When I finished, he smiled. “Dou, Waka-chan? Do you think you’re ready to read with the class?” I nodded, and instantly regretted it. I knew I shouldn’t take it back. That I couldn’t. I had to read.

  But the next language arts class was after seeing my boy classmates naked and I was a wreck. We were on Day Eight since the Mistake, which had become a school legend by that time. I waited as my turn to read came closer
and closer. As each student read, I counted the paragraphs in the text, trying to figure out exactly which one I would have to read.

  I scanned it . . . and saw two kanji in there I couldn’t read. I could read them before, but not this time. I blanked.

  “Now, Waka-chan!” Mr. Adachi sounded so hopeful when he announced my turn.

  My mouth went dry. I felt all their eyes on me and I couldn’t. I just . . . couldn’t.

  I kept my eyes down, waiting for the head SMACK that was sure to come—and that I deserved.

  After what seemed like forever, Mr. Adachi said quietly, “Well, maybe next time. Kurosawa, you’re next!”

  That afternoon, Mr. Adachi didn’t call me over for my recess tutoring session. I understood why. I’d wasted his time. I wasted my time. All that studying, studying during my summer break even. I was never going to get it. Ever.

  Desperate to divert attention away from my “Peeping Jane” mistake, I brought one of my English books to school, Son of the Black Stallion. Well over three hundred pages, it was larger than any of the books I saw my classmates reading. Plus, I thought, when they saw me reading in English, they would once again be amazed at what I could do and maybe they would stop thinking of me as the stupid pervert.

  When I opened the book during our first break, my plan seemed to work. My classmates gathered around. “Can you read that? Can you really read all that?” Yamashita-san stood nearby, but she didn’t ask me anything.

  I nodded.

  “Is it difficult?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  That morning, not a single classmate called me “the Pervert.”