“Whatever you want.”
I raise my hand again, and he says, smiling, “You still have the floor.”
“What kind of writing can we do?”
He leans forward. “Whatever you want, as long as I can read it.
Experiment, try something new.”
“Like poetry?” someone asks.
“As long as I can read it.”
I know
exactly what I will write in my journal for Mr. Pease,
and by June, he’ll understand better
who I am.
Notions
“This spring, you’re going to make aprons,”
says Mrs. Olson in home ec.
“And next fall, you’ll wear them when you cook.”
“Why don’t we just buy an apron?” someone asks.
I had the same question,
because Mama has plenty of aprons that I can wear
and I’d rather make a skirt.
“Because you’re learning how to sew,” Mrs. Olson says,
passing out a paper with Notions printed at the top
and a picture of the apron—
a rectangle with a pocket and a long strip for the tie.
It looks simple and plain.
If Mama designed this apron, it would be a lot fancier.
“What are notions?” someone asks.
“They’re your thread and your needles and pins.
You can get everything in town.”
I have a notion that Mama and I
will go downtown this Saturday.
I have a notion that she’ll buy one fabric
with flowers for the bottom part
and another fabric with stripes
for the tie and pocket.
Then she will buy extra fabric for a ruffle
and rickrack for a trim.
And I have notion
that if I sew this apron very fast,
I’ll have time to make a skirt.
Science Class
The last class of my first day
is science.
My teacher, Mrs. Stanton, has curly hair
like mine, but hers is light-brown-turning-silver.
She wears a forest green skirt that flares,
a beige turtleneck,
and a cardigan buttoned at the top like a cape.
Her glasses are on a chain.
“It will be May before we know it,”
she says, leaning against her desk,
“and time for the Science Groove.”
She waits—for the kids to say something
or clap, but all they do is lean on their arms
or doodle, or yawn and stick out their legs.
They all know what she’s talking about. But I don’t.
I want to ask what the Groove part is all about.
My arm aches to rise. But,
since I already feel like Mama’s maneki-neko,
I wait
for someone else to ask.
“I’ll help you choose a project,” Mrs. Stanton says.
“You’ll write a report and do a presentation for ten minutes.
And, it must be entirely your own work.
No one can do it for you.”
Now my hand springs up.
Mrs. Stanton nods. “Wait till I finish,
then you might not have a question anymore.
Everyone will set up their projects in the gym
and the projects will be judged.
The best projects will win awards.
Did that answer your question, Miss Oliver?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Here they call it a Groove. In Berkeley
we called it a Fair. I won third prize at the Fair.
At the Groove, I will win first.
Little Lies
After school
Papa is waiting near the buses.
He stands like a giant sequoia,
wearing his tweed coat that Mama made
and his mustache and those glasses—
all he needs is a pipe.
He nods hello
to the kids
who crane their necks to stare
as they pass.
Some ask “Who’s that?” and
some glance at me,
guessing the connection.
“How was your first day?” Papa asks,
adjusting my scarf.
I know he wants me to like Hillsborough,
so I shrug and say, “Good.”
There was some good, like the Science Groove
and writing in a journal.
“Are we going home now?
Where’s the car?”
“I left it at the college,” he says. “We’ll walk there
so you can see the downtown.
Do you have everything—books
for homework, your lunch box?”
“Yes,” I say quickly,
telling the truth about the first part.
I have my books. But my obento
is still in my locker.
Downtown
We head down the street to town—
Papa striding and I with quick, short steps
so I don’t slip and crack my head open,
which is Mama’s biggest fear.
Everything is white and black and gray
and slush.
Except for the sky, which is . . . sky blue . . . and alive
with sunlight and snow rainbows.
We walk past a lawyer’s office, a barbershop,
the Hillsborough Savings Bank, and a drugstore,
where I see toys and a soda fountain
through the frosted window.
Somewhere, a shovel scrapes cement.
We pass—
A round woman
in a gray coat with big buttons that look like
mine
and a plaid scarf over her mouth.
She carries a grocery bag
and wipes her eyes with a tissue.
A boy in a blue parka with the hood string pulled so tight
his face is a thumb,
and mittens pinned to his cuffs.
A college girl in a long skirt made out of
jeans
and a short, red sweater.
Her hair bounces around her shoulders as
she walks.
Each one stares at us until we get close
and then they look away.
Papa says, “Hello,”
and gives a little nod.
Round woman nods back
and clutches her grocery bag.
Boy backs up to a signpost
and twists around it as we pass
to stare.
College girl just keeps on walking,
as if she doesn’t see us.
As if she didn’t hear
my gentle dad’s hello.
Farmer Dell
Our neighbor’s house,
where I saw Pattress and the boy,
is long and low, and snuggled into the snow.
There’s also a garage that’s twice as high as the house.
Old cars and trucks and propane tanks
lie around the yard like lazy farm animals.
A mailbox sits on a post at the end of the driveway,
with DELL stenciled in white letters. Whenever I see it,
I sing “The Farmer in the Dell” in my head.
The man who lives there doesn’t look like a farmer,
and I never see a wife or a cow, but I call him
Farmer Dell.
Farmer Dell always wears the same thing—
green work pants, a plaid wool jacket buttoned to his neck,
and work boots. If it’s really cold, he wears a red-checkered hat
with the flaps over his ears.
Pattress is always with him,
and sometimes when Papa and I drive to school,
she’s sitting at the garage door.
But I haven’t seen that boy again.
Sometimes Farmer Dell is driving a backhoe,
clearing snow in the yard. In the afternoon
another car or truck will be lying in the nest he made.
Sometimes he’s walking to his mailbox
or standing beside it.
And sometimes he’s pushing a snowblower
down his driveway.
The snow cascades into a perfect trim,
like piping on a birthday cake.
Every time we pass by our neighbor,
Papa waves to him.
But no matter what Farmer Dell is doing,
he never waves back.
Each time he doesn’t wave back,
my mouth goes dry.
This morning, I ask, “Why?”
Papa says, “Maybe he can’t see very well.
Or maybe he doesn’t like us.”
That is why my mouth goes dry.
“But he doesn’t even know us.”
Papa shifts his hands on the steering wheel. “You’re right, Meems—
he doesn’t . . . yet.”
And then the spit comes back into my mouth
because even if Mr. Dell doesn’t like us,
Papa said the words,
so they don’t scare me as much.
Outside the car, light and dark and gray all stream by,
and I think, Drip, drip, drip.
Others
In Berkeley we lived in a two-bedroom house
next to my second cousins, Shelley and Sharon,
and Auntie Sachiko (who’s really Mama’s cousin)
and Uncle Kiyoshi.
There was no fence between our backyards,
so it was like we all lived in the same house.
Auntie let us live there
while Papa finished his schoolwork,
as long as
he did repairs on their apartment building
and Mama told people he was Italian.
Shelley and Sharon have Japanese middle names
like me: Akiko and Tomiko.
Sometimes they speak Japanese to Auntie and Uncle
and to each other,
and sometimes they combine English and Japanese.
My cousins taught me the Japanese words
that Mama would never say.
Sometimes we pretended we were Southern belles
who could speak Japanese—
“Ohayo gozaimasu, y’all.”—
which made Mama and Auntie cry-laugh
out of breath.
Papa wants us to speak only English,
not because he doesn’t like Japan
but because he says people get scared
when they hear a different language.
My cousins were my best friends.
We had other friends
whose parents or grandparents came from Japan
or China, Korea or India, Ghana or Germany or Mexico.
We all understood our families’ languages
and ate the foods of their countries.
It was like we were all in the Other check box,
having in common
speaking English,
being American,
and feeling that we didn’t belong either in our parents’ worlds
or in this one.
But I am not Other;
I am
half my Japanese mother,
half my Black father,
and all me.
Winter
Quiet
sounds like winter in Vermont:
Snow taps the bare trees
Flames sing in the fireplace
Mama’s slippers scuff the floors
The teakettle applauds to a boil
Hot water pours into a cup
A sip—
And Papa’s “Quiet, please. I’m grading papers.”
Karen and Kim
The two girls carry their trays to my table,
pocketbooks swinging from their elbows,
and sit on either side of me.
I didn’t even need to invite them.
“We want to get to know you.
I’m Kim, I’m Karen,” they say.
“You lived in California?” Karen asks.
I nod. “Uh-huh, in Berkeley.”
“Did you go to wild parties there?”
“Did you surf?”
“How many movie stars did you
meet?”
“Did you go to Disneyland
every weekend?”
I laugh and sip some milk.
“No. No. No. No,” I say. “I didn’t live in Hollywood.
I lived up north, near my mom’s cousins.”
“Can I touch your hair?” Kim asks.
It’s a strange thing to ask, but I lean toward her.
She smooths the top of my head and runs her hand down my braid.
Then Karen takes a turn, and says, “It’s so curly.”
Mama likes my hair pulled back tight and neat,
but a few curls always escape.
“I wish my hair was curly like yours,” says Karen,
whose hair is straight and long and blond,
and I don’t believe her.
“What nationality are you?”
I try not to sigh. “My dad is Black and my mom is Japanese.”
“Japanese-Japanese, or was she born here?”
“Japan. Hiroshima.”
“Didn’t we bomb Hiroshima?”
“Yes.” And the radiation is ticking in Mama’s bones.
“Do you know any Japanese words?” Kim asks.
“Sukoshi dake,” I say,
and they look puzzled. “It means ‘Just a little.’
My dad doesn’t want us talking Japanese.”
“What does he do to you if you talk
Japanese?”
“What? Nothing.”
“I mean, I just thought . . .” Karen looks at
Kim.
My neck is prickling.
“Do you get a tan?”
I look at my arm. “Well, I get browner in the summer.”
“But not your palms, right? They still look like ours.”
Kim shows her hands to compare.
My lunch is done,
and so am I
with Karen and Kim.
Cooties
The first thing I notice about Stacey LaVoie
is her feet. We’re standing in the corridor outside the gym
and she’s wearing red tights—and not the textured kind.
Even I know that you stop wearing red tights after fifth grade.
But I like that Stacey wears them anyway,
and that her big white toe sticks out of a hole
like a marshmallow.
She tries to cover the toe with her other foot,
but I’ve already seen it.
The next thing I notice is that black eyeliner
circles her whole eye
and ends with a little wing,
and she has pierced ears (Mama would never let me),
and earrings that dangle
just short of disobeying the dress code.
Miss Bonne, our gym teacher, is weighing us.
We are lined up in our stock
ing feet
outside the locker room.
Miss Bonne holds a clipboard in her hand
and a pencil in her mouth
while she slides the weights up and down the scale,
nudging them, zeroing in on the target.
“Next!” she calls.
“Watch out for the cootie hole,” says the girl next to Stacey
as we move up another person-space in line.
“The wha-at?” Stacey asks,
sounding like my cousins talking Southern,
only Stacey sounds real.
The girl points to a little hole in the wall
near Stacey’s waist. “Don’t touch it, or you’ll get cooties.”
Stacey nods, making her dark hair bounce
like a girl in a Breck shampoo ad.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” she whispers
to me. “Do you?”
“I think they’re invisible bugs that you can catch.”
The thought of cooties running all over me
makes me shiver, even if they’re made up.
“Sounds kinda stupid,” she says,
and I agree.
“Next!”
We move up, and now I’m next to the cootie hole.
Cooties are stupid, but I move away from the wall anyway.
“I was new in September,” Stacey says.
“We came from Georgia. My daddy teaches at the college.”
“Mine, too,” I say, feeling happy
that we’re both new
and both professors’ daughters.
“It sure is different here, huh?” she says,
and shifts her weight to her other foot.
But she loses her balance
and falls onto me,
and I fall onto the next girl,
and on down the line.
“Stop pushing!” someone says,
shoving the girl who just knocked into her,
and the ripple swells up the line,
growing in strength and force
and intent.
When it comes back to me, I stop it
by falling into the wall,
against the cootie hole.
“Cooties!” the girl beside me says, and jumps away.
“I don’t want to catch them!”
Full Cicada Moon Page 3
