Dolls of Hope

by Shirley Parenteau

  Hoshi made a strangling sound. Chiyo enjoyed hearing it. “So you didn’t need to worry,” she told her astonished teacher, feeling a little spiteful.

  “I . . . I am very glad to hear that,” Oki-sensei said.

  “I’m relieved to hear it.” Hoshi’s sarcasm showed she was not one bit sorry for having accused Chiyo of theft.

  Tomi and Shizuko looked at each other before Tomi said, “We’re proud of you, Chiyo. And the doll is coming to Tsuchiura! How wonderful!”

  Hana gently touched Chiyo’s hand. “I’m sorry I believed Hoshi, even for a moment.”

  “It’s all right,” Chiyo said. “I probably would have believed her, too.” But she didn’t think she would have believed Hoshi if the girl had accused Hana, not even for a moment.

  She couldn’t stay disappointed for long. Everyone wanted to hear about her meeting with the mayor, although Hoshi pretended to be bored. The rest of the girls gathered around to admire Emily Grace, her blue eyes, her golden curls. “It’s real hair,” Chiyo said. “Just feel it!”

  “So soft,” Shizuko marveled. “I wanted to touch one of the dolls when we saw them at the ceremony, but I didn’t dare.”

  “Does she talk?” Tomi asked. “I’ve heard they do.”

  “Yes.” Chiyo hesitated, then handed Emily Grace to the girl. “Lean her back and raise her up again.”

  “Mama,” Emily Grace said obediently.

  Chiyo explained, “That is her word for okaasan.”

  The girls all exclaimed, “Ohh.” Each wanted a turn holding the doll to make her talk. Chiyo watched, feeling proud but uneasy at letting Emily Grace out of her hands.

  Hoshi handed the doll on to Kimiko. “I remember how much I enjoyed dolls when I was five years old.”

  “So now you are too old for dolls?” Chiyo asked.

  Hoshi said, “I prefer books.” Her tone said that anyone who preferred dolls was still a baby.

  “Then you will not care to accompany us tomorrow.”

  Hoshi’s perfect eyebrows lifted. “Accompany you where?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested. It’s about dolls.” Chiyo bent to straighten Emily Grace’s collar, but she couldn’t hold back her excitement. “We’ve all been invited to visit the doll maker who is working on a doll to send to America. She’s called Miss Tokyo, to represent this city.”

  Kimiko clapped her hands, then paused. “You said ‘all’ of us. Do you mean . . . who do you mean?”

  Watanabe-sensei beamed. “Miss Tamura has a generous heart. When the mayor asked who she would like to take with her, she asked that everyone be invited.”

  Chiyo looked from one to the other, pleased to see excitement in all their faces. Even Hoshi set aside the book she had just opened. “Imagine,” Chiyo said. “The dolls are ninety centimeters tall, the size of a small child. Emily Grace and her friends are not even half that.”

  Hana bounced up and down, then stopped. “Aren’t we going home tomorrow?”

  Watanabe-sensei answered. “The tickets have been changed again.”

  Again! Throughout the afternoon and evening, Chiyo felt as if she were living inside a magic bubble where nothing was like her real world.

  In her own space beyond the fusuma screen at last, Chiyo settled the doll between her futon and Hana’s. Tomorrow, she would meet a master doll maker. Anticipation made her shiver, but gradually sleep overcame her as she lay with one hand curved protectively over Emily Grace.

  Chiyo woke early the next morning, too excited to sleep. She smoothed Emily Grace’s hair before combing her own.

  “Come downstairs for breakfast, girls,” Oki-sensei called. “Chiyo, leave the doll here. You don’t want to spill something on her.”

  I’m not that clumsy, Chiyo told herself. But she made sure Emily Grace was comfortable on a couch cushion before hurrying after the others.

  She had expected General Miyamoto to join them for dinner the night before. He hadn’t come by even though Hoshi kept glancing at the doorway. When he came into the breakfast house soon after they were all seated, Chiyo looked for Hoshi and was surprised not to see her.

  The girl rushed in moments later, bowed to her father, and found a seat at the table.

  General Miyamoto was a nice-looking man, Chiyo thought after a modest glance. But his expression concealed whatever he might be thinking or feeling.

  He stood beside an empty chair at the head of the table to greet them. “Breakfast this morning is my treat. I hope you will enjoy the omelets.”

  “What is an omelet?” Chiyo whispered to Hana. Hana didn’t know, either. When they were served Western-style eggs, whipped, cooked quickly in butter — butter!— and folded over, they glanced from their plates to each other. Eggs were rarely eaten in Chiyo’s family, since they sold what they could. And they never had anything cooked in butter.

  While Hana poked curiously at her omelet, General Miyamoto looked down the table to Chiyo. “Miss Tamura, I have been hearing interesting things about you.”

  “Her picture is everywhere,” Hoshi said, sounding as if she were proud of her classmate. Chiyo noticed that she was not the only one to look at Hoshi in surprise.

  “Hai,” Watanabe-sensei agreed. “Miss Tamura’s picture has captured the heart of Japan.”

  The severe lines in General Miyamoto’s face relaxed slightly. “Not often does a girl come from a mountain village and earn such wide approval.”

  Hoshi’s mouth turned down, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Chiyo had noticed that while the general had nodded in return to her bow, he paid little attention to his daughter.

  Hana exclaimed, “Chiyo met the mayor.”

  Both teachers looked sharply at Hana for speaking without invitation as the general asked, “Did you enjoy that meeting, Miss Tamura?”

  “Hai. I rode in his car. It’s very big and black and . . . rumbly.” Was that a word? She felt heat in her face and wondered if her ears had turned red with embarrassment.

  “And now,” Hana said, still too excited to wait her turn to speak, “we are all to meet a doll maker who is making a huge doll to send to America.”

  Oki-sensei turned a forbidding look on Hana, who was forgetting her manners.

  Hana murmured, “Sumimasen.”

  The general’s eyes showed amusement. “Miss Nakata is the daughter of a politician,” he reminded Sensei. “Words come easily.” He turned to Chiyo. “Are you looking forward to the visit?”

  “Hai.” She added impulsively, “Would you like to come with us, Miyamoto-san? Our teachers are going.” At once, she realized that she shouldn’t have asked. The others might not like having the general with them.

  “Arigatogozaimasu, Miss Tamura,” he answered. “As much as I would enjoy accompanying the group, I’m afraid an appointment elsewhere makes it impossible.”

  “Dolls?” Hoshi asked, looking at her father with disbelief breaking her usual composure. “You would visit dolls, Otousama?”

  “Our Japanese dolls carry our history,” he said with a glance around the table. “They tell the story of our people, from the little cylindrical kokeshi dolls the farmers’ daughters enjoy to the larger ambassador dolls you will be meeting today.”

  As Chiyo thought of Momo, left behind at school to prevent charcoal from smearing her uniform, Hana said, “I have a kokeshi doll. I wonder why they are not made with arms or legs.”

  Oki-sensei gave her a You have not been asked to speak look but answered anyway. “Cylindrical dolls with ball heads are less expensive to make.”

  “There is beauty in simplicity,” General Miyamoto said. “Each hand-painted face on a kokeshi is individual in its way, though the dolls may be very similar.”

  Chiyo glanced at Hoshi and saw a storm in her eyes, although she kept her expression calm. She was not thinking of Momo. Her anger said she did not like sharing her father’s attention.

  After a rickshaw tour of several shrines and lunch in a noodle house, they climbed into rickshaws again to ride
to the doll maker’s home studio in the heart of the city. As they traveled, Oki-sensei pointed out the drifting fragrance of newly blooming peach trees. “A good sign,” Sensei said firmly. “Peach blossoms indicate serenity and gentle manners, traits very proper for young ladies.”

  “Breathe deeply,” Chiyo whispered to Hana. “Then you will become proper.”

  Hana giggled. “That’s all it takes? Breathing? I can do that!” She made such a show of inhaling deeply, she began to cough.

  Chiyo teased, “You’re as allergic to serenity as the flappers we saw that first day.”

  Hana put a hand over her mouth to cover a smile, but amusement sparkled from her bright eyes. They both knew what Sensei thought of flappers.

  The rickshaws clattered across a bridge Chiyo recognized. They were near the railroad station. She couldn’t help mentally following the rails back to Tsuchiura and the road home.

  In the mountains, it would be colder than here where the land was so much lower, but Otousan would be preparing to plant his field. Longing ached through her. She should be there, helping.

  Hana laughed suddenly at two dogs playing in the street, and the moment of sadness slipped away. Chiyo laughed with her for the excitement ahead, for the perfumed air carrying serenity, and for two dogs chasing each other.

  Old houses lined one side of the street now. Grandparents, Chiyo thought, settled comfortably while watching the high stone walls of modern buildings grow like ambitious children across the way.

  The rickshaw bearers came to a stop before an older house that looked dark and mysterious. Aged wood creaked with a rising wind that signaled coming rain. The roof of the doll maker’s house sloped down on each side of shuttered windows.

  While the teachers spoke with the rickshaw bearers, Chiyo and the others stepped onto a flat gray stone stretching to the front door. Eagerness had pushed Chiyo ahead, but now she stopped, suddenly shy.

  “Ring the bell,” Hana urged from just behind her.

  He may be as severe a man as General Miyamoto, Chiyo told herself, edging back. “You ring it.”

  Hoshi nudged her forward. “Ring the bell, girl-who-met-the-mayor.”

  Chiyo stumbled and flung one hand out for balance. Her fingers hit the bell.

  “Your manners!” Oki-sensei protested just as the door slid open. A woman looked out at them, her brows coming together in a frown.

  Watanabe-sensei stepped past the others. “Here are Tamura Chiyo and her friends from Tsuchiura Girls’ School. The mayor arranged for them to meet with Hirata-san.”

  The woman made no move to let them pass. “I am Mrs. Sasaki, his housekeeper. You understand he is a busy man.”

  Hana whispered to Chiyo, “Step forward. Let her know you will not apologize or leave.”

  Chiyo shook her head, wishing she were anywhere else.

  Sensei spoke in a firm tone he might use with a reluctant student. “These girls have come a long way.”

  The woman’s frown deepened. “Hirata-san is very busy, but he is kind and has set aside his important work to spare a few minutes.” Stepping back into a polished entry hall, she waited, radiating displeasure over the interruption of their visit while the girls quickly removed their shoes and set them to one side.

  After snapping open an elegant fusuma screen, Mrs. Sasaki motioned the group to follow.

  “She is proud of him,” Chiyo whispered to Hana, “but she worries about him, too.”

  Hana whispered back, “She is his oni.”

  Chiyo giggled, agreeing. “Hai, his gatekeeper demon.”

  They hurried in their stockings after the woman, hushed by her disapproval. Chiyo glanced at painted fusuma screens as mysterious as lids to treasure boxes. Did the rooms beyond hold beautiful dolls in elaborate kimonos?

  A second doorway opened into a workshop. Parts of dolls crowded shelves and tabletops and hung from hooks. One table held a clutter of small jars surrounded by colorful spatters of paint. Brushes of different sizes crowded other jars.

  A man much younger than Otousan rose from a stool. Wood chips, chisels, and unfinished doll heads waited on a workbench beside him. Nothing like the severe artist Chiyo had expected, he looked as dashing as a samurai, with thick dark hair and dark eyes. Instead of a warrior’s protective gear, he wore a paint-spattered apron over a soft tunic and trousers. “Come in, come in,” he greeted them, smiling. “You are welcome, all of you!”

  As they returned his bow, he asked the teachers, “Now, which is the girl from the picture I see posted everywhere?” His glance reached Chiyo and his smile deepened. “Ah, yes. I am honored to welcome you, Miss Tamura.” He bowed again, especially for her.

  Feeling clumsy over being singled out, Chiyo returned the bow. She was keenly aware of the other girls watching, especially Hoshi.

  “You have all seen the dolls from America?” he asked. “You are fortunate. I have not yet had that pleasure.”

  Hana spoke despite a warning gesture from Oki-sensei. “Chiyo has one of them. We all held her. She says ‘Mama.’”

  “She is not mine, Hirata-san,” Chiyo said, quick to explain. “The mayor arranged for Emily Grace to go to our school. I am to keep her safe.”

  “Emily Grace is the doll photographed with you? So she is to go to your school.” He nodded approval. “Our mayor has made a wise decision.”

  When he took them around the workshop, explaining his various tools and their uses, Chiyo looked curiously at a bin filled with rough oyster shells. The doll maker was quick to notice her interest. He seemed often to be studying her.

  “You are wondering what oysters have to do with doll making, Miss Tamura? There is magic here. When the oyster shell has been ground into powder with other materials and properly colored, it becomes gofun, a coating I will paint in many layers over the doll’s face, hands, and feet.”

  He picked up a smaller finished doll and pointed out the pale coloring of her face. “Here you see the oyster shell has become the doll’s natural-looking skin.”

  To Chiyo, the doll could not have looked more delicate if the entire head were made of china. Imagine rough oyster shells becoming the smooth skin of a doll!

  The doll maker turned to the high table where he had been working when they came in. An electric lantern cast a bright glow over a block of wood shaped vaguely like the head of a young child. “As you see, I have only blocked out the head. I have been looking for the right expression to carve into the doll to become Miss Tokyo.”

  They were all disappointed to learn that the doll was not yet finished, but the doll maker let them hold her hands, already carved of light wood.

  “They even have dimples over their knuckles,” Hana marveled.

  Shizuko held up a doll hand. “Look! Perfect little fingernails!”

  “When they are finished and covered in flesh-tinted gofun,” the doll maker told them, “the hands will look so real you will think the fingers might curl around your own.”

  “What will she wear, Hirata-san?” asked Kimiko.

  The doll maker removed a length of rose-colored silk from a cabinet. When he unfolded the material, they saw a kimono that might fit a small child. “The imperial dressmaker selected the fabric,” he explained. “Do you see the hand-painted lotus blossoms? Designs chosen for each of the doll’s kimonos must be suited for her smaller size.”

  He reached into the cabinet again for a brocade obi, along with a rope-like obi-jime to tie around the obi and hold the large bow in place at the back.

  When they had admired those, the doll maker invited each of them to choose a kokeshi doll from a bin. Even Hoshi looked with interest at the little cylindrical figures with their ball-shaped heads. Although Hoshi’s smile was as rare as her father’s, one appeared briefly.

  Chiyo wondered if she had already forgotten Momo and the gardener’s fire.

  “Many accessories will travel with Miss Tokyo,” the doll maker told them. “She is to have a large round box to hold her tea sets and a long one filled
with other items she will need.”

  He turned to the girls, his eyes lighting up. “Perhaps you can help me. Suppose Miss Tokyo was your little sister. Besides tea sets, small tables, and lanterns, what would you send along for her comfort?”

  “Dolls,” Hana said at once.

  Chiyo agreed. “She should have a small doll of her own to keep her company. She can talk of home and the doll will understand, even when she’s sad.”

  “Especially when she’s sad,” Hana said.

  “Two dolls,” Kimiko suggested. “She should take a boy and a girl doll to show to the American children.”

  “Worthy ideas.” The doll maker opened a tall cabinet with several finished smaller dolls on the shelves. “I will be pleased to have you decide which two dolls should travel to America with Miss Tokyo.”

  To Chiyo, accustomed to small kokeshi dolls, those in the cabinet were like living children, with gentle faces and serene expressions. “Their hair looks real,” she said.

  The doll maker chuckled. “Their wigs are made of human hair. Miss Tokyo will have natural hair as well.”

  Calm brown glass eyes with painted lower lashes and brush-stroked eyebrows on the nearest doll made Chiyo feel as if the doll gazed back at her with a soft smile curving her lips. “She is perfect,” she murmured, and felt a twinge of guilt, as if her comment betrayed Emily Grace.

  “Arigatogozaimasu, Miss Tamura. As with any doll artist, I try to understand the heart of each doll I create. This helps me paint her expression in a way that will bring her to life for her young owner.”

  He said to the two teachers, “As I mentioned before, I have been searching for the look that will be right for Miss Tokyo. I have found it.” He turned to Chiyo. “Miss Tamura, will you honor me by posing for several sketches? I will use them later as guides to help me complete the doll.”