Full Cicada Moon
Page 5
They can see us through the kitchen window
and the bare trees.
Stacey and I hang our skates over our shoulders.
They glint in the thin sunlight
as we walk the snowy path to the pond
that’s ringed in dry timothy grass
and cattails poking out of the snow.
I brush off a stump
and we take turns lacing up our skates,
our bare fingers turning numb.
“Ready?” Stacey asks.
We tiptoe to the edge, where snow meets ice.
“Here goes,” I say,
push off on one skate,
slide both together,
and push off on the other.
Stacey catches up, wobbly,
and we circle the pond slowly
side by side, our arms held out to steady ourselves
and each other.
After one time around, I know how this ice feels,
how frozen ripples change the sound,
and how to swerve around pebbles and twigs.
“Look—I can skate backward!” I call,
and show Stacey how I wiggle
into the center of the pond
like that girl at the mall rink.
“Twirl, Mimi!” Stacey says, clapping her mittens.
I laugh and hold out my arms.
“Watch me,” I say,
and stop—
Because I’m not the girl with the cute skirt
and the ponytail that sticks out when she spins,
the perfect girl in the center
who everyone wants to be. I’ll never be her—
No—
I’m the girl with cooties, the foolish girl
who wants to be an astronaut,
who eats by herself in the cafeteria.
I’m the girl all alone at the center
of attention,
not because of what I can do
but because of what I am.
Rendezvous
I wanted Stacey to stay longer,
but she has to be home for supper.
“You can take me back to school, Mr. Oliver,” she says in the car.
“It’s no trouble to take you home,” Papa says,
and asks for her address.
“It’s hard to find . . . lots of twists and turns.
My mother is picking me up at school.
She’ll be coming from the dentist’s, anyway.”
I don’t know why Papa doesn’t insist on taking her home,
but he says no more.
When we get to school,
the sky and the snow are coral with dusk.
There are two cars in the parking lot,
but neither one belongs to Stacey’s mother.
“Thank you very much,” Stacey says, and opens her door.
“We’ll wait for your mom,” Papa says.
Stacey steps out. “No, don’t. She’ll be here soon.”
“But it’s getting dark.”
“I’m fine, Mr. Oliver,” she says, her voice a note higher,
her smile brittle.
Papa drums the steering wheel.
“I’ll drive over there and wait until she comes.
Would that be all right?”
Stacey’s face softens into a smile that looks like a cry.
“Yes. Thank you. I’m . . . sorr—”
Papa raises his hand, cutting her off. “It’s okay.
You’re welcome to visit us anytime, Stacey.”
She shuts the door and waits at the top of the steps.
Papa parks near the track and turns off the lights and engine,
and we wait. The sky grows fuchsia.
Stacey’s mother comes soon, and Stacey gets in.
Her mother turns around to look at our car,
and they drive away,
two black silhouettes against the purple sunset.
Snowfall
Falling snow
is the sky
touching the ground.
Last night
the sky drifted
down—
flake
by flake
by flake,
so pretty and graceful
and quiet—
then it bent low,
poured out,
and lay down in itself.
Snow Day
This morning I wake up startled—late
for school!—and run down to the kitchen,
where Mama and Papa are eating together.
They only do that on Saturday.
“I’ll be late!” I say, panicked that I’d broken
my perfect attendance.
“No school today,” Mama says. “Look outside.”
“Today’s a snow day,” Papa says.
We never had anything called a “snow day” in California.
Outside, the snow blankets our yard
in one even layer, all the way to the trees in the back.
Instead of falling quietly, now it races to the ground
hard and determined.
All the cars and tanks around Farmer Dell’s house
are soft white hills.
Papa pushes back from the table.
“Get dressed, Meems. We have to shovel the driveway.”
“But it’s still snowing,” I say.
“Listen to Papa,” Mama says,
setting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. “But first, eat.”
“Can we ask Mr. Dell for his snowblower?”
“I don’t think so,” Papa says.
Papa started shoveling at the house end of the driveway
and moved toward the middle.
Mama and I started at the street end
and moved toward Papa.
Shoveling snow is like cutting up a cake–
you drop the shovel straight down to slice,
then push it flat underneath,
then lift and serve the snow to the side.
And repeat and repeat
unless the wind is blowing,
when all your hard work
ends up in your face.
I’m shivering in my sweat,
Mama is sniffling,
and Papa is puffing.
Down the road, I hear Farmer Dell’s snowblower.
With it, we could clear our driveway in ten minutes.
Papa might not ask Mr. Dell,
but I will.
The Mouse Takes the Cheese
There are two hundred and sixteen steps
from our driveway to Farmer Dell’s house.
I slip through the last forty-three
because he hasn’t spread any sand or salt.
Maybe he doesn’t want company.
I knock on the outside door,
and step back down to the walk
and wait. I hear heavy footsteps inside,
and the door opens
just wide enough for Mr. Dell’s face to show.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“I’m Mimi Oliver.”
I shift to my other foot. “We’re neighbors.”
“What do you want?”
“Well . . . we’re shoveling, and there’s a lot of snow,
and it’s hard shoveling all that snow.”
“Why’d ya come here, then?”
Farmer Dell has exactly the growl I imagined,
his nose hooks over his mouth,
and his eyebrows are thick and bushy,
like moths nesting on his forehead.
“I was wondering if . . .”
“. . . we could borrow your snowblower.”
“I don’t give my things out to strangers. What do you think I am—
a charity?”
“N-no.”
“Is that all?” Farmer Dell asks, and starts to shut the door.
“Wait,” I say. “Is that boy here?”
“What boy?”
“The one who was playing with Pattress.”
And just then, Pattress pushes the door open
all the way with her nose.
When she sees me, she wags her tail and barks happily.
“Hi, Pattress! Do you want a snowball?” I ask.
Her ears stand up at snowball,
and she throws her head back, barking.
“So, is he home?” I ask.
“There’s no boy here.”
“Well, maybe when he comes home we can play with Pattress.”
Mr. Dell’s eyes narrow.
“You go home now,” he says, and shuts the door.
Pattress barks behind it
for her snowball.
I turn around and walk
two hundred and sixteen steps
back home. Mama and Papa
have finished the driveway,
so I shovel a path to the back door.
Consequences
Papa has never been so mad.
“I told you to leave him alone.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“I told you that some people don’t want to be friends.”
“It’s hard to shovel snow.”
“There will be a lot harder things in life,
so shoveling a few inches of snow is good training.”
“You mean a few feet.”
“Mimi,” he says, and takes my hands gently
to make me pay full attention.
“It is important that you understand.
We are new here. These people have lived in this town
many years. Their parents and grandparents
and great-great-grandparents were born here.
To them we are visitors—”
“You mean strangers?” I ask.
“To some people, we are. And you should know that
we might always be. But we still have to respect them
and their ways.”
“Then, let’s go back to California,” I say.
Papa drops my hands. “It’s not that easy, Mimi-chan.
Besides, life wasn’t perfect there, either.”
“At least we didn’t have to shovel snow.”
Papa nods and chuckles
but gets serious again. “What should you have done differently?”
When I was five or even ten
the answer would have been “Obey you and Mama.”
But something’s different now. That
is no longer the only solution.
Then Papa says, “If you can’t tell me,
then go to your room and think about it.”
But first, he hands me something from his briefcase.
“You want to take this with you?”
It’s a Life magazine from January.
On the cover is that picture of Earth
taken from the moon.
I snatch the treasure and hug it tight. “Where did you get this?”
“It comes to the department. Everyone else has read it.”
“You spoil her,” Mama says. “How will she learn consequences?”
Papa sighs and looks sheepishly at Mama. “Just this once, Emi—
It might help her find the answer.”
Tears on Glass
I try to blink away
Mr. Dell’s scowling face
and his angry words
because I don’t want to let him
make me cry.
Is it me that makes people here act so chilly?
Or is it my family?
We are American,
we speak English, we eat pizza
and pot roast,
and potatoes sometimes.
I feel like I have to be
twice as smart and funny at school,
and twice as nice and forgiving in my neighborhood
than everyone else
to be acceptable.
But everyone else can be
only half of that
to fit in.
Sad thoughts
just make you sadder if you let them.
I’m too sad now to stop them from taking me
with them.
I can’t blink fast enough,
and when I press my face against the cold pane,
my tears turn to crystals.
Life in 1968
Last year, I knew about the Apollo program.
And I knew about Dr. King
and Bobby Kennedy—each time,
Auntie Sachi kept the TV on
to hear the news
and cried.
When we could watch My Three Sons again,
we knew life was back to normal.
But I didn’t know about the two widows hugging each other.
One is Mrs. Kennedy, and the other is Mrs. King.
They both lost their husbands.
They both must have cried through boxes of tissues,
knowing they’d never see them again.
So, did they both wonder,
when Hogan’s Heroes came back on,
why their lives weren’t back to normal?
A New Outlook
When this photo of Earth was taken from the moon,
I was in Berkeley
in California
in the United States
in North America
on Earth—
that same shimmering blue and white ball
twirling in blackness
and swirling with storms
that’s in the picture.
But from space there are no borders
separating countries, states, people—only
land from water,
earth from sky,
dark from light.
Who I am and
who I become
depend on
what I look at,
what I listen to,
what I touch and smell and taste.
The Apollo 8 astronauts
watched Earth rise above the moon
and were changed.
Now I am seeing what they saw,
and it is changing me.
Spring
1969
Crocuses in the Snow
When Papa and I come home today,
Mama is standing by the side of the house,
hugging her coat around her and staring at the ground.
“Look,” she says, pointing at a purple flower
with petals cupped like hands piercing the snow.
“Is that a tulip?” I ask.
“It’s a crocus,” she says.
“Someone who used to live here planted a bulb.
And now the bulb is a flower.”
Did the people who planted the bulb when the ground was soft
hope to see the flower today?
Did they plant it before they knew they would leave this house?
Or did they plant the bulb just for us,
like wrapping a present
and never seeing it opened?
When the ground is a blanket of snow
and ponds turn to ice
and everyone mummies up in scarves,
it feels like everything has stopped moving,
stopped br
eathing,
stopped living.
But secret things are still happening
in the deep below.
And when the time is right
they make their way to the surface
and explode in a surprise of purple.
Kimono
Mama uses her mother-of-pearl-handle scissors
to unwrap a package from Auntie Sachi.
“Look, Mimi-chan!” she says,
and slides her fingernails pink as blossoms
under the seam of the brown paper wrapping,
winds the twine around her fingers,
and ties a loose knot for safekeeping.
Then she carefully peels back the paper
covering a box.
“What’s in it?” I ask impatiently.
“Wait,” Mama says, and lifts the lid.
Inside is tissue paper.
“Auntie sent us tissue paper?” I ask.
“Let’s see,” Mama says, and opens the layers.
Underneath lies a length of silk
blue as a robin’s egg
and a note.
Dear Emiko,
You never treat yourself,
so use this silk for a kimono
for spring.
“It’s so pretty,” I say, touching the fabric. “Isn’t it?”
Mama just makes her Mifune face,
then gently folds up the silk
and puts it back in the box.
Relocation
In history, David Hurley says his uncle was killed
at Pearl Harbor, and it was a good thing
we bombed those Japs.
“We only did it to end the war,” he says.
“We’re the good guys.”
“What do you say about that, people?” Miss O’Connell asks.
I want to say what I heard from Auntie Sachi
about when she was a little girl and had to move to Arizona.
I want to say maybe good guys
don’t always do good things.
But I’m afraid to here in class.
“Mimi? Your family is Japanese,” she says.
“Well . . .” I look around—
now I have to say something. “What about the relocation camps?”
“The what?” David asks.