He looks down and shakes his head no. “But I don’t care.”
After Timothy leaves, I realize he didn’t ask me
all the usual questions.
Maybe he doesn’t care about them.
And that makes me smile.
Inheritance
While Mama is at the wives’ tea,
Papa and I are baking bread.
He uncovers the dough that’s been rising in the ceramic bowl
his dad—my grandpa—made long ago.
“And this bread is from your grandma’s starter,” Papa says.
It has lasted all these years,
longer than I am old.
“Tell me her stories,” I say,
even though I’ve heard them all before.
As Papa spreads flour on the counter and kneads the dough,
he tells me how she walked to the fields every morning in summer
to work the crops,
and ate lunch from a tin pail,
and visited with neighbors on their front porches when the day was done.
At school she shared a desk and a pencil
and wrote double between the lines to save paper.
He tells me how it feels to hold your breath
in an outhouse,
and I wonder if these are her stories
or his.
I hold my breath and pretend I’m there,
forgetting for a moment I’m in this warm kitchen
making bread with my dad.
Papa pinches off a handful of dough
and replaces it tightly in the jar.
This is our history, and I won’t forget it.
Then he writes my name in the flour:
Mimi for the cicada’s song;
Yoshiko for my obaasan;
Oliver for Papa.
“You have your mama’s eyes,” he says,
“and you have my stories.”
April Moon
Timothy raps on the back door.
His cheeks are flushed in patches,
and his brown eyes sparkle.
“If you want to see the telescope,
you gotta come right now.”
I pull him inside so he won’t freeze
while I put on my shoes and jacket.
The kitchen smells like warm bread,
and he sniffs. “Mmm,” he says,
and I tell him, “My dad’s baking today.”
“Your dad? That’s cool.
All set?”
We run to Mr. Dell’s garage, careful
not to slip in the muddy patches in our yards.
Timothy slides the heavy door shut behind us.
He leads me to the back of the garage,
past all Mr. Dell’s machines,
where the windows are as tall as the ceiling
and curved at the top.
Planted near the windows is the telescope
pointed toward the sky,
like a kid gazing at the stars
in wonder.
Timothy bends over and looks in the eyepiece,
turns a knob, turns it some more,
then waves me to him.
“Can I?” I ask, the words shaking in my throat.
“You can look through it,” he says,
“but do not touch it.”
I clasp my hands behind me,
just to show him I will not touch it,
and bend over the eyepiece
and look
at nothing
but blue sky.
“Be patient,” Timothy says.
So I look again and wait,
for something to come into view.
And it does—
at first I see an edge so bright I have to blink,
and curved like the peel of an onion—
the moon, so close.
It’s peering back at me
as it slides across the circle of lens,
a waxing crescent
dark,
silent,
enormous.
I see its pockmarks—
its craters and seas—
though it tries hard to hide them
in our shadow.
“I will touch you,” I whisper,
but Timothy says, “I said no touching.”
His words pull me back
to Earth.
Hope
All I saw when we came into this garage
was the telescope.
But now that the moon show is over,
I smell sawdust—
and turn around
to see a workbench
and power tools.
Could they be the other way to solve my problem?
“Does your uncle let you use those tools?” I ask Timothy.
“Yeah, but mostly to fix things.”
“Do you think I could I use them?” I ask,
and tell him about my science project.
He doesn’t say
girls aren’t allowed,
tools are dangerous,
you don’t have any training,
it’s impossible.
What he says is, “I’ll show you how.
But only when he goes out.”
There’s a dark, enormous silence
between us. Finally I ask,
“Why doesn’t your uncle like me? Why doesn’t he
like my family? It’s because
we’re not like him, right?”
Then I wish I hadn’t said that to Timothy,
my only friend besides Stacey,
in case he hadn’t noticed we look different
and now he will see
and change his mind about me.
But I should have known better. I can trust Timothy,
because he shakes his head and says,
“He doesn’t like anybody.
I don’t know why, but
most of all, he doesn’t like
himself.”
Secrets
I don’t want to keep secrets
from my parents, but since Mama hasn’t asked
where I go with Timothy every morning
and why,
I’m not keeping a secret,
not really.
Every morning of vacation,
Timothy has knocked at the back door
after his uncle has left.
We go to the garage, and he shows me
how to use the tools for the next step
of my moon box.
Then I do each next step.
He’s teaching me how to saw wood
and hammer and sand,
and reminds me, “Put on your goggles.”
It’s not cheating because I am doing all the work.
When we hear Mr. Dell’s truck chugging up the driveway,
we hide my project
behind a stack of tires in the garage,
and I sneak out the back door.
Each day when I go home,
Mama asks, “Did you have a nice time with Timothy?”
And I say yes, because it’s the truth.
But I still feel like I’m
keeping secrets.
Weirdos
Today in the garage,
Timothy asks, “Remember when your father was baking bread?”
I’m measuring a board and nod
instead of saying yes,
so I won’t have to start over.
Then I mark the length with a pencil and ask, “Why?”
“Well . . . do you think he would teach me?”
“You want to make bread?�
��
Timothy looks down
and brushes the board. “I want to learn to cook.
Do you think that’s . . . weird?”
“I like to hammer and saw. Do you think that’s weird?”
“No,” he says, looking at me. “It’s cool.”
“Well, I think my dad would like to teach you. And
that would make us even.”
“But I like showing you how to do this. I like
being around you. I mean,
I like you.”
I’m glad the pencil rolls off the board just now,
so I have another reason to look down.
Sea of Tranquility
It’s Thursday night, and Timothy and I
are more than halfway through April vacation
in different schools.
The moon box is almost done—
today we sanded it
then hid it, like always, behind the tires.
Tomorrow I’ll bring it home and paint it black.
Tonight, Papa is showing Timothy
how to make a basic loaf of bread.
It’s going to be round
because Papa says that’s easiest,
and this is Timothy’s first loaf.
While Timothy is learning how to bake,
I’m making a papier-mâché moon
by gluing newspaper strips to a ball
that Papa found in the cellar.
The hardest part will be shaping the craters and seas
so they’re accurate.
But that part will also be the most fun
because I like their names,
which sound like poetry:
Sea of Tranquility
Kepler Crater
Sea of Vapors
Grimaldi Crater
Ocean of Storms, and
Lake of Dreams
are my favorites.
When the moon dries
I’ll paint it white and different shades of gray
and hang it in the moon box.
My project will be like science meets art,
and it will win first prize.
Timothy slides the bread pan into the oven
and shuts the door.
His cheeks are flushed, like when he’s cold or embarrassed,
but tonight I think it’s how his happiness is showing.
“Thanks, Mr. Oliver,” he tells Papa.
“Can we make something else . . .
tomorrow? I have to go back to New York on Saturday.”
Papa smiles. “I’ll show you how to make an omelet.
It will come in handy when you go to college.”
“Okay, but that’s a long time away,” Timothy says,
and Papa says, “Not really.”
The bread will take an hour to bake. I hope
Timothy will want to stay until it’s done,
instead of going out and coming back.
When he sits at the table and asks
how my moon is coming along,
I feel my cheeks flush.
Sign of Spring
I call it fireworks exploding yellow.
Papa calls it forsythia.
Mama just says “Achoo!”
Water and Dirt
Timothy and I are at the workbench
in Mr. Dell’s garage.
A thread of spring weaves through the air.
Even though it’s still April,
I get a whiff of May in Vermont—
light, sweet, and happy.
“Wesley’s thinking of joining up,”
he says as we rub the moon box,
feeling for rough patches that need more sanding.
“He got a low draft number
and figures he’s better off enlisting.
Then he’ll be able to choose the branch.”
I guess “Marines?” and he nods.
“My dad was a Marine.
He met my mom when he was stationed in Tokyo.”
I can tell by the way Timothy concentrates on the box
that he doesn’t want to hear how my parents met.
He says, “I don’t want him to go to Vietnam.”
I feel sandwiched by wars
and don’t know what to say to Timothy, except,
“Are you coming back here this summer?”
“Probably. Hope so,” he says.
I hope so, too,
and tell him that.
“This looks good,” he says
about my moon box. “You did a good job.”
“Can you help me carry it back?” I ask.
He opens the garage door—
and Mr. Dell walks in, blocking our way out.
“What you got there, Tim,
and who’s that with you?” he asks.
I look at Timothy, who’s flushed
now with embarrassment
or fear. He’s not talking, so I answer.
“It’s my science project,
and Timothy showed me how to put it together.”
“He did,
did he?” Mr. Dell says.
“Yeah, Uncle Raymond.”
“Well, now, you didn’t happen to use my tools to put it together,
did you? Because wouldn’t that be cheating?”
“I don’t think so,” Timothy says.
“Oh, I think so. Especially when you’re not supposed to see this girl.
And now she’s in my garage.”
Mr. Dell looks at me with eyes colder than February.
I decide
I’m not as much afraid of him
as I don’t like him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dell,” I say,
so respectfully that Papa might be proud.
“I can carry it by myself, Timothy.”
“I think you should,” Mr. Dell says,
and steps away from the door.
I squeeze myself and the moon box through.
It’s too bad we haven’t painted it yet
because my tears are soaking into the lid
as I walk home through the mud.
I keep hearing Mr. Dell’s words
and stop to catch my breath
when I realize
Timothy won’t be coming over tonight
to make omelets.
One-Way
Why do all my friends here—
Stacey and Timothy—
come to my house
but never invite me to theirs?
Mama’s Visitor
Mama met someone named Dr. Haseda
at the wives’ tea.
(I wondered if she was the someone Papa talked about.)
This afternoon Dr. Haseda came to our house
and brought lemon cookies as an omiyage.
Mama set them out in a pretty dish
and made a pot of tea.
Dr. Haseda was born in Los Angeles
and went to college in New York,
where she met her husband.
She teaches Japanese at the college.
Today she brought her daughter, Kate,
who is one year old.
At first, Mama called her Baby Cake
and soon we were all calling her that—
even Baby Cake, who can already say ten words.
Even though Mama said she only needs Papa and me
and the turkeys,
I’m glad she has a new friend,
because maybe then she will start to feel at home.
After we walked them to their car
and waited until they drove away, out of sight,
I said, “It
was nice of her to visit you.”
Mama smoothed her hair and said, “Papa asked her.”
“Are you mad at him for that?” I asked, confused.
“No, Mimi-chan. That is love.”
Spatial Reasoning
“This is a mistake,”
says Mrs. Golden, my guidance counselor.
She slides her glasses onto her nose
without taking her eyes from the test results in her lap.
“This is your score on spatial reasoning.”
Her fingernail points to
95 out of 100.
A mistake?
“Girls never score high on this test.”
She takes off her glasses,
looks,
says nothing,
and waits for me to explain why
a girl
like me
would score as high as a boy
like, say, Andrew Dutton.
Does she think I cheated?
They showed you the pieces of something
taken apart
and you had to choose the way it would look
all put back together.
“I liked that test,
and it was easy.”
“Something went wrong,
and you’ll have to take it again.”
Mrs. Golden shakes her head
and puts her glasses back on,
and I know the subject is closed.
Looking Forward
“While you’re here,” says Mrs. Golden,
“let’s talk about your schedule for next year.
You’ll be in eighth grade,
your last year before high school.”
She pulls my schedule from the same manila folder
and puts it in my lap.
I skim the list while she reads:
English
Math (Not algebra)
US History—Civil War to Present
Art
Music
Physical Science—Intro
Home Economics
Gym
Clubs (optional)
“Do you have any questions?” she asks.
“Can I change my schedule?”
Her eyes narrow. “What do you want to change?”
Full Cicada Moon Page 7
