While I Was Away

by Waka T. Brown

  What happened next was a blur. I turned around and headed toward the station. My father said a hasty, final goodbye and grabbed my luggage before he followed me. I didn’t look back, not once, because a sob had ripped from my throat as the seams that held my Japanese and American heart together ripped apart too. I knew Obaasama well enough that she was like me, and I was like her—we hated to let people see us cry.

  I knew I couldn’t summon any anger to burn these tears up and make them stop falling. Like a flooding river breaking through a dam, they flowed down my face, and I choked and wept more than I ever had my entire life. Head down, I wept as we passed by the railroad crossing of my grandfather’s painting, as we climbed the stairs to the station, as people pushed past us to catch the next train.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought. I’m sorry I’m leaving you alone. I thought of how lonely I often felt these past five months and wept, realizing this was the loneliness Obaasama felt so often during her hard life . . . and would feel again now that I was gone. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean for you to love me. I didn’t think I would love you, but I do, and I’m so sorry.

  I wept throughout the long train ride, spilling more tears than I thought my body could have held inside. Tears I held back for five months, tears I kept inside for as long as I could through the teasing, the loneliness, the hard lessons learned. Maybe I also wept because part of me had an inkling about what might happen while I was away.

  That I would be away for eleven years.

  That this was the last time I’d visit Japan as a child.

  That Reiko and I would write letters, just like we promised, but the letters would stop after four years, with distance and time finally overcoming our friendship.

  That Obaasama’s house with its fruit trees and koi pond would be torn down after her death and turned into a parking lot, and later apartments—another part of old Japan giving away to the new.

  That six years from now, Obaasama would die of cancer.

  That I would never see Obaasama again.

  Twenty-Eight

  Hours of crying resulted in hours of deep and dreamless sleep on my flight home.

  As my father drove from the airport, I rested my head on the cold glass of the car window as we sped along the endless stretch of highway leading home. In the rapidly approaching darkness, trees zipped by, their gray, leafless branches silhouetted against the empty plains and farmland. They stretched for what seemed like forever until they met the wide Kansas sky, twinkling with the first stars of the inky black night.

  I thought about Obaasama without crying, my well of tears finally empty. My grandfather’s painting of the railroad crossing made sense now.

  “People looking this way, waiting to cross. People looking back at them, waiting to cross. Connected by a common thread, a desire to cross to the other side.”

  If I looked hard enough, I felt I could see past the Kansas plains, the mountain ranges, the ocean I just crossed—to Obaasama who was looking my way too.

  I looked forward, toward my home, my family.

  I remembered my mother’s words: “I’ve always thought Waka is what Obaasama would have been like if she hadn’t had such a hard life.” My eyes fluttered at the memory. Her first laugh that lifted the shadows from her house rang through my head. My lids closed when also remembering her demons that shut me out. What could her life have been like? I asked myself. And what will I make of my own? I wondered as I let sorrow, gratitude, and exhaustion wash over me as sleep swept me away again.

  No matter what, we—my grandmother, my mother, my family, my friends, and me—were connected by a common thread and we always would be.

  I awoke when the car pulled to a stop in our driveway. Lights were on at my house to welcome me home. When I stepped out of the car, I could see my breath. I shivered as I made my way to the front door as my father took my luggage out from the trunk of the car. The door was unlocked so I pushed it open and stepped into the warm glow of this place I had missed so much. The fan above the kitchen stove whirred as the smells of my mother’s cooking hit me—tomato soup with noodles! My favorite! Everything was the same—same carpet, same dining table, even the same laundry—that darn laundry that set the ball rolling for these past five months—folded and stacked in the same corner my mother had always put it. Everything was the same . . . but somehow different. I was different.

  “Hey, welcome back!” My older brother greeted me first. “Want to see our new computer?”

  “Waka!” my mother exclaimed as she saw me. She rushed over and hugged me. As she peppered my head with kisses, I thought to myself, I understand. I finally understand. But “Tadaima” was all I said. I’m home. It was all I could squeak out between hugs, and now my little brother jumping up and down around me.

  “Wakky’s home!” he shouted. “Yay! Wakky’s home.”

  “That’s right,” I said, patting him on the head. “I’m home.”

  “Waka, okinasai!” My mother urged me to wake up.

  With a whoosh, I felt myself being pulled from the dreams I was already forgetting.

  Where am I? My body was confused. It felt like night, but the light streamed in and hit my eyes like day. There was no train in the distance, no doves cooing, no radio English lessons to wake me up. I opened my eyes to my mom’s eyes, level with mine.

  I was in my bunk bed. My bunk bed. It was so good to be home.

  “Waka, gakkou ni ikitaindeshou?” she asked. Don’t you want to go to school?

  School! That’s right, I did, I did want to go to school and see Annette and Kris, and to get my locker and . . . I jumped off the top bunk, landed with a THUD. I dashed past my suitcase, past my red skirt with navy-blue accents and the bright-green skirt my mom had sewn for my Japan adventure. I pulled on a pair of jeans and my favorite long-sleeved shirt. It was soft like velvet, with bright stripes running across it. I had left it behind when I went to Japan. I was almost out my bedroom door when I remembered my necklace from Disneyland! I opened the tiny white box and clasped the silver chain behind my neck. I made sure the glass grapes hung exactly where I wanted them to and sighed. I had waited a long time to wear these!

  When I entered my first class, I smiled as my classmates—classmates I didn’t realize I had missed so much—smiled back at me. Annette’s and Kris’s smiles were the biggest, but April, Jenny B., and Terri smiled too.

  “Waka, are you back?”

  “Welcome back, Waka!”

  “Yay, we were wondering where you were!”

  There was a boy I didn’t recognize, but he fit the description of Andy Jones, the new boy Annette had written about. He didn’t smile at me and I didn’t smile at him. Instead, he sized me up with a wary glance. I understood—it’s what happens with new kids.

  It’s too bad we didn’t have a recess anymore so I could tell my friends everything, but we had lockers we hung out by before the bell to start class rang. We talked during lunch, and even though it wasn’t the breaded pork cutlet, rice with peas, miso soup, and creamy yogurt I often had for Japanese school lunch, my American middle school lunch of sloppy joes, waffle fries, scoop of crispy lettuce with ranch dressing, and chocolate cake made my stomach growl anyway. I wanted to tell my friends all about Japan, but . . . there were more pressing matters to discuss.

  “Andy Jones! He’s cuute, right?” Annette plopped down next to me at our cafeteria table.

  I laughed. “I don’t know, he’s—”

  Kris rolled her eyes. “As you can see, Annette fell in luuuuv while you were away.”

  “Did not!” Annette punched Kris in her arm. “Hey, I wanna hear about Japan!”

  “Yeah! That’s a pretty necklace, Waka. Did you get it there?” Kris asked.

  “This?” I played with the glass beads. “Yeah! I got it in Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland. I went there with my cousins, and . . .” I glanced up at the clock. We only had fifteen more minutes to eat, and I
worried once I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop. Maybe someday I’d tell them everything that happened while I was away . . . but not today.

  “Why don’t you guys catch me up first?” I bit into my sloppy joe.

  Back at home, I immediately wrote a letter to Obaasama. I wanted to see how she was and to let her know I was okay.

  おばあ様、元気？私は元気です。カンザス州は今４０度ぐらいです。

  Obaasama, genki? Watashi wa genki desu. Kansas-shuu wa ima 40 do gurai desu.

  My letter basically consisted of “How are you? I’m fine. It’s 40 degrees in Kansas.” It felt so flat that I stopped writing. Plus, it was 40 degrees here, but that was in Fahrenheit, not the Celsius Obaasama was used to. What was 40°F in Celsius? I have to convert it before I can finish the letter, I told myself. Otherwise, Obaasama wouldn’t understand.

  The fact is, I couldn’t put into writing what I wanted to say to Obaasama. Whenever I tried, I could feel the old wounds opening, the overwhelming sadness at leaving her that I didn’t want to feel again. I couldn’t go back there, at least not yet. So I didn’t send it. I never received a letter from Obaasama either. I didn’t wonder why, though. I understood.

  Instead, I wrote to Reiko.

  れい子ちゃん, 元気？私は元気ですよ！

  Reiko-chan, genki? Watashi wa genki desu yo!

  “Hi, Reiko, how are you? I’m doing well . . .” and then a little of “How’s school? Who do you play with these days? How’s Tomoko?” After I told her about seventh grade and what it was like to have a locker and no recesses, and how I was almost caught up on all the material I missed while I was away in Japan, I asked “. . . and have you seen my grandmother around? How is she?” And like the good friend she always was, Reiko let me know Obaasama was fine. “I saw her the other day sweeping up the gingko leaves right outside her house. I stopped to say hello. She’s doing really well, don’t worry.” And then she included a quick sketch of my grandmother with her bamboo broom.

  It’s funny. I never specifically told Reiko I worried about Obaasama, but she knew. Friends just got things like that.

  After talking with my grandmother on the phone, my mother would relay messages from Obaasama to me. “Obaasama asked how you were doing. I told her you were on the track team and she said that sounded like you.”

  “Did you tell her that I ran the hurdles? We were just starting to learn how to before I left Japan.”

  “I’ll let her know next time we talk.”

  Obaasama and I continued like this, communicating through Reiko or my mother . . . for the rest of her life.

  Since my return, my mom and I only spoke Japanese to each other. One spring afternoon, my mom said to me:

  「和歌、ちょっと洗濯たたんでよ。」

  “Waka, chotto sentaku tatande yo.”

  I sat down next to her and helped her fold the laundry. We talked about school and she told me about funny things my little brother did in the afternoon before I came home. Then, I remembered something interesting I found in a magazine at school, one that I used to make a collage for an English assignment.

  “Did you know there are ajisai in America too?” I missed seeing the spheres of blooms that lined almost every path I walked in Japan. So I was totally surprised when I came across them again in an old copy of Better Homes and Gardens!

  “Really? I’ve never seen any in Kansas.”

  “Yeah! They’re called ‘hydrangeas’ over here.”

  “Hy-dran-geas?” My mom repeated the word slowly as she folded my little brother’s shirt. “Hmm . . . Did you know they change color based on the soil they grow in?”

  I remembered the hydrangea’s pink and blue blooms, and how sometimes they were pink and blue, and sometimes purple, too, even when they grew on the same plant. “Really? Their colors change depending on where they’re planted?”

  “Sou yo. So if the soil is a little different in one area, the blossoms will be one color, and then if the soil is a little different in another area, that blossom might be another color. Some people don’t like them. They say they’re . . . ‘fickle’ flowers or maybe ‘restless’ is the right word. What do you think? Did you like . . . ‘hydrangea’?”

  I blinked and was back in Japan again, walking to school with Reiko the day the ajisai first caught my eye. At first, they did strike me as weird, but then I marveled at how they could be so many colors at once. Now, with my mom’s explanation, I knew. A question suddenly popped into my head. Am I like the ajisai? I thought about how I was in Japan, how I was in Kansas, and how I had absorbed a lot of both. Some people don’t like them, my mom had said. I remembered how I bounced back and forth between groups. Fickle. Well, that description certainly applied to me, but . . . even so, I realized how lucky I was to have been sent away. How strange that I had fought the idea just one short year ago! Yes, I was so lonely at times and I struggled more than I ever had to before. But being away also meant that I went someplace. I met so many people—both nice and not-so-nice, and people like Obaasama who could be both nice and not-so-nice at the same time. By being away, I traveled to realms in my mind and my heart and soul that I didn’t know were even there.

  There are people who never have the opportunity to go away at all. Or even if they do, they resist like I did and let the chance slip by. I realized now that being away allowed me to take on more colors—like the ajisai—than if I had never been.

  “Ajisai daisuki,” I responded to my mom. I like hydrangeas very much.

  Author’s Note

  While it’s sometimes difficult for me to remember where I’ve placed my glasses, many of the memories that make up While I Was Away remain as clear as if the events happened yesterday. Many buried memories resurfaced when examining old journals and letters I had kept from that time. That being said, I acknowledge personal memory can be a slippery thing, especially when so many years have passed. I’d like to assure my readers, however, that I’ve written about my experiences to the best of my abilities and as faithfully as possible.

  It’s also important to keep in mind how times change. What might be shocking to us now wasn’t shocking in 1984, and what was shocking in 1984 wasn’t back when my parents were children. Sure, my mother was appalled when I learned to sumo wrestle during a PE class in the 1980s. Female sumo wrestling was practically unheard of then. Now, on the other hand, there are a growing number of women wrestlers! When I was growing up in Kansas, I remember my elementary school principal had a paddle hanging in his office with holes in it so there was less wind resistance when paddling a student. Likewise, in Japan, students were unfazed when Mr. Adachi delivered his head smacks. I don’t want readers to come away with the impression that this is still the case in either the US or Japan—as mentioned earlier, please keep in mind that times change, and the events I wrote about in While I Was Away depict how life was in the 1980s, not currently.

  Also, a quick note on the Japanese language used in this book. Japanese is actually a relatively simple language to pronounce. Here are the basic sounds:

  a = ah (like in “ah”)

  i = ee (like in “see”)

  u = oo (like in “soon”)

  e = eh (like in “pet”)

  o = oh (like in “road”)

  So Mr. Adachi’s name would be pronounced “Ah-dah-chee.”

  The Japanese consonants are much like the ones in English. All the g sounds are hard, though, like the g in “garden.” The Japanese r sound is also a little different from the English r—it’s almost like a mix between an r, l, and d. You can search the internet for audio examples, if you like.

  Finally, you might notice that sometimes there are vowel sounds together, like in obaasama. When you see this, you just lengthen the “ah” sound. If you think of it in terms of beats, obaasama would have five beats: O-ba-a-sa-ma.

  Make sure you mind the long vowel sound because if you don’t, you’re saying a different word entirely! For instance, obasama me
ans “aunt,” and only has four beats: O-ba-sa-ma.

  Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I hope you enjoyed it and that it connected with you in some way.

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve been holding on to the story told in While I Was Away for a very long time. When combing through old letters and journals, I came upon my childhood diary. My entry for July 11, 1985, ended with, “I think I’ll write a book.”

  Thanks to the help and encouragement of many, many people, my “I think I’ll write a book” has become “I wrote a book.”

  While I Was Away would not have been possible without my editor Alyssa Miele and the HarperCollins team. Alyssa’s enthusiasm for the project, coupled with her expertise and excellent guidance, made the process of bringing this book to life a joyous one. As a debut author, I thank you for your kindness and constructive advice in helping me put forth the best version of this story possible.

  I am extremely grateful to my incredible agent Penny Moore. How lucky am I to have you in my corner championing my writing! Thanks to your hard work, persistence, and commitment to diversity in publishing, many children are feeling seen and heard for the first time. You’re truly the best.

  I would also like to thank Erin Files for her valuable input on my work, as well as Aevitas Creative Management (ACM). I feel very fortunate to have the support of an agency as awesome as ACM.

  Many thanks to Tracy Subisak, whose cover art has blown me away. I am amazed at how beautifully you captured the spirit of this story.

  I first began putting the words down to While I Was Away in a Literary Arts “Memoir Boot Camp” class in Portland, Oregon. I extend my gratitude to my teacher Natalie Serber, as well as all my classmates for reading my pages, offering feedback, and for encouraging me not to give up on the story.

  To my Pitch Wars mentor, Rebecca Petruck, I am forever indebted to you for your time in the revision trenches with me. Your belief in my story and my ability to write it well meant the world to me.