His sharp tone forced her to listen. “Clearly you were not ready for so much attention. Kaito-sensei has told me of your unbecoming outburst. You remained angry and returned while the others were in class to do this terrible thing. I believe you meant to be caught, Miss Tamura. You meant to be sent home.”
“I protected her,” Chiyo said, her voice barely above a whisper. She felt stunned that they would say such things to her, that they would believe such things of her. “I promised the mayor. I kept her safe all the way from Tokyo.”
“Once the damage was done,” the headmaster continued, ignoring her protest, “you realized what it would mean to be sent home in shame. You hid the doll parts while classes were changing and sneaked back upstairs.”
“No!”
Again, Headmaster ignored her. “This doll is no longer fit for anything but the trash heap. You have your wish, Miss Tamura. We have sent word to Yamada Nori to remove you from our school.”
He might as well have added, where hill country girls like you do not belong. He had not wanted her here in the first place. What would happen now? Would Yamada Nori enroll her in still another distant school? In her mind, the imaginary scale of good conduct collapsed and with it, her dream of going home for Masako’s wedding. She could only say again, “I didn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t.”
“Return to your room,” Headmaster said in a voice that didn’t allow for argument. “You will leave tomorrow. I do not expect to see you again.”
Chiyo opened her mouth to protest. She closed it. She couldn’t hammer with words against a wall as stony as the one she saw in the headmaster’s face.
Someone knows the truth, she told herself to keep tears at bay. Someone must know. I have to find out who it is. I have to make them tell Headmaster what really happened.
She started for the door but couldn’t help looking back a last time at what was left of Emily Grace.
The headmaster had turned to his assistant. “Send for the janitor. Have this cleared away.”
“No!” Chiyo cried out. “Don’t throw her in the trash! Please!”
Headmaster’s voice held solid ice. “You are dismissed.”
“But . . .” The doll’s eyes were closed again. “She needs help. She can be fixed. I’m sure she can!”
“Out!”
The headmaster’s roar sent Chiyo stumbling from the office. Curious students at every side called out, “What happened? Is it the doll? Did you cut her?”
Chiyo ran past them and all the way to the silence of her sleeping mat. She flung herself onto the futon.
One thought ran again and again through her head. Someone knows the truth. Someone will tell. “But I’ll be far away by then,” she said aloud. “Even if they apologize, I’m never coming back!”
She didn’t know where she would go. Maybe Yamada Nori would take her to still another school, but her hope for Masako’s wedding was gone. “Masako will understand,” she whispered, as if Emily Grace could hear her.
Headmaster meant to throw Emily Grace in the trash! Her body isn’t broken. Her face isn’t smashed. Whoever hurt her didn’t ruin her.
“You can be fixed, Emily Grace,” Chiyo said to the distant doll. Fixing her was more important than proving who had hurt her. “Hirata Gouyou could fix you.” He would, too, if he could see her.
She sat up straight. Maybe he could see her.
Slowly, a plan took shape. Trash was collected while people were still sleeping, but she was a country girl. She was used to getting up before dawn. And there was something else. While up before sunrise doing chores for the school, she often heard the early train leaving the station on its way to Tokyo.
Did she dare make the trip alone? Headmaster had said her promise ended when she brought the doll safely to Tsuchiura. In her heart, the promise had not ended. She loved Emily Grace. She must do all she could to have the doll repaired. And when she came back with the doll looking new again, Headmaster would have to give her a good report. Wouldn’t he?
There was hope. Hope for Emily Grace. And maybe, if everything went right, hope for Masako’s wedding.
Chiyo pulled out her small purse with the coins from the Tokyo mayor, two gold coins she had never mentioned to anyone, along with a single sen. Was it enough to pay her fare? It would have to be.
She looked around her mat. What else should she take? Her sewing kit. She would need to repair the doll’s dress. She hesitated, then slipped out of her school uniform and put on the new kimono. She would not leave that behind.
She couldn’t tie the obi properly at her back but did the best she could. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. The other girls were coming. Quickly, she slipped onto her futon and pulled the blanket to her chin to hide the kimono.
Hana was first through the door, rushing to her. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Chiyo said. “They want to throw Emily Grace out like trash.”
“They haven’t yet,” Tomi said from her mat farther down.
“They’ve put the pieces on the carved stand outside Headmaster’s office,” Hana explained. “She’s serving as a lesson to us to control our tempers.”
With sarcasm, Tomi said, “A proper Japanese girl does not let emotion control her. That’s what Kaito-sensei told us.”
Shizuko unrolled her futon without looking at Chiyo. She usually offered at least a shy smile. Her silence was accusation.
“I didn’t do that to the doll,” Chiyo said. Shizuko pretended not to hear.
“And I don’t care what you think,” Chiyo added, to hide the hurt that Shizuko would suspect the worst of her. In the hotel, she had been as quick as Hoshi to think the doll was stolen.
“Of course you didn’t hurt Emily Grace,” Hana exclaimed. “You love her.”
Tomi added, “Everybody knows that!”
“Do they?” Shizuko asked softly, as she pulled her blanket to her chin.
“Don’t mind her,” Tomi said. “She’s become friends with Hoshi. I saw Hoshi share a sweet with her.”
“Never mind,” Chiyo said. “None of this matters. The school has called Yamada-san to remove me from Tsuchiura Girls’ School.”
“No!” Hana protested, while Tomi pressed one hand over her mouth.
Only to herself Chiyo added, But I won’t be here. I’m glad to know Emily Grace is on the stand. I won’t have to dig through the trash in my new kimono to find her. While everyone else is sleeping, Emily Grace and I will be on our way to Tokyo and Hirata Gouyou.
Near dawn, Chiyo slipped from her mat and smoothed her kimono. The others would wake soon to do their chores. For now, all she heard was their steady breathing and wind whispering through tree branches.
Moonlight made it easy to see Emily Grace lying in pieces on the carved stand, just as Hana had said. Chiyo swallowed a sob. “Don’t worry, Emily Grace,” she whispered. “I’m going to take care of you, the way I promised I would.”
Yamada Nori would come to the school today expecting to take her away. If he had to wait for her to come back from Tokyo, he might want nothing more to do with her.
She’s my responsibility, she told him silently. I have to save her.
Gently, she lifted the doll’s head and body onto a square of cloth. She added the arms and legs, then pulled the corners together and tied them.
She turned to Hirata Gouyou’s sketch. It belonged to her, not to the school. As she reached for the frame to take the picture out, she heard footsteps.
There was no time. With an anguished glance toward her picture, she clutched the bundle with Emily Grace. As silently as possible, keeping to shadows, she hurried from the school.
It was farther to the station than she remembered from the rickshaw ride. With nearly every step, she glanced back, afraid someone from the school was running after her.
Would anyone have noticed that the doll was missing? No. The students would think the janitor had thrown her away. The teachers and headmaster might think that, too. Maybe no one had even looked on the
carved stand. They wouldn’t want to remember poor cut-up Emily Grace.
“They won’t miss me, either,” she told the doll. “They’ll think I’m upstairs waiting for my ride.”
She listened for the train whistle, afraid she would miss it. At last she saw the station ahead. Rushing inside, she put her two precious ten-yen coins on the counter. “I need a ticket to Tokyo, please.”
The station agent glanced at the coins. “A ticket is twenty-five yen. That’s not enough.”
She looked into her purse as if expecting to find another gold coin, but all it held was the single sen. She would need a hundred sen to make even one more yen.
“That’s all I have!” She leaned over the counter, closer to the agent. “I have to go to Tokyo on the next train. It’s important!”
“Not enough,” he said again.
Far down the tracks, the train whistled. The sound cut through her. She pushed the coins toward the agent. “Where will this much take me?”
He became interested enough to be suspicious. “I thought you had to go to Tokyo.”
“I do! But I know somebody in . . .” She thought fast and remembered a town on the Tone River, the one where Emily Grace had waved to people celebrating a local festival. “. . . in Toride. A friend. She’ll take me the rest of the way. Do I have enough to go to Toride?”
The agent picked up the coins. The floorboards vibrated as the train roared into the station. How long would it wait? Chiyo shifted from one foot to the other while the agent slowly put the coins into a drawer.
She wanted to ask him to hurry but didn’t dare. He might decide that she shouldn’t have a ticket at all. How long had she been away from the school? Was somebody looking?
At last, the agent handed her a ticket marked Toride, Ibaraki Prefecture. She shoved it into her purse with her single remaining sen and ran to the platform.
The conductor was just swinging onto the train. “Wait!” Chiyo called, snatching out her ticket. “I’m coming with you!” Hugging the bundle with Emily Grace, she ran across the platform.
The conductor reached out to lift her into a passenger car. She walked toward an empty seat, jolting off balance as the train rolled ahead, but never letting go of Emily Grace. After all but falling into an empty pair of seats, she scooted to the window for a last view of Tsuchiura.
“Don’t worry, Emily Grace,” she said softly. “At Toride, farmers will be taking produce to the Tokyo markets. We’ll ride the rest of the way on a wagon.”
She thought of letting Emily Grace watch the passing houses and trees with her, but it might look strange to the few other passengers if she held an armless and legless doll to the window. They would remember her, if anyone asked. After a few minutes, she leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes.
It seemed only minutes before the conductor called her awake. “We’re coming into Toride, miss. You don’t want to pass your stop.”
It was nice of him to warn her, she told herself. She’d have been glad of it if she wanted to go to Toride. Or if she really knew someone there who would take her to Tokyo.
When she walked from the station, her heart sank. The sun had risen while she slept. Farmers going to Tokyo left before dawn to be at the markets by sunrise.
The road was empty now, except for an occasional automobile, and those all zipped past. Farther along, hope rose when she saw an approaching truck with caged chickens in the back. It passed on by as if the driver were used to seeing a girl in a kimono standing beside the road.
Another car passed her, then later, a carriage moving fast behind two horses, both heading toward Tokyo. Neither slowed. The sky looked heavy with the kind of rain that would fall steadily all day. A first drop spattered her new kimono. She rubbed it with her hand, trying to dry the silk.
“We might be in trouble, Emily Grace,” she said softly. Another drop spattered the kimono. Again she wiped it away, this time choking back a sob.
A car rumbled up the road behind her. As she looked around, a raindrop hit her face. She blinked, then blinked again, thinking she must be seeing things. Was the car really slowing? It was stopping!
A young woman with short hair swinging across her cheekbones leaned from a window. A pretty headband circled her forehead. “Hey, kiddo!” she called. “Need help?”
Where was the driver? Could a car drive itself? That wouldn’t be any stranger than for a woman, even a flapper, to be driving it.
Chiyo wanted to answer hai, she needed a ride, but she wasn’t at all sure she wanted one with a flapper behind the wheel.
The woman left the car and came around to sit on her heels in front of Chiyo. Okaasan would have been shocked by the fringed blue dress that barely covered her knees. “What’s happened, kiddo? Why are you out here alone in your pretty kimono? You’re coming all apart!”
She turned Chiyo around and with quick fingers tied the obi properly.
Chiyo looked over her shoulder. “Are you a flapper?”
The woman grinned. “You got it, kiddo. But what about you? Do your parents know you’re out here? It’s going to rain hard in a few minutes. You’d better run home.”
“I don’t live here.” Chiyo gulped as everything hit her at once. Words tumbled out as if that rock balanced above her village had come loose, shaking a rush of words from her.
“My school blamed me for something awful, but I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t,” she explained. “They were going to send me away, so I left. But I only had money enough to ride the train to Toride.”
The flapper sat back on her heels. “What kind of awful thing could they blame on a sweet girl like you?”
Chiyo opened the cloth a little to show the doll. “This is Emily Grace. She came all the way from America to my school. I promised to take care of her, but someone cut her into pieces. Headmaster was going to throw her in the trash! So I’m taking her to Tokyo.”
The flapper folded the cloth back a little more. When she saw the loose arms and legs and the cut pieces of rubber bands in the empty sockets, she drew in a soft breath. “Someone didn’t like this pretty doll.”
Chiyo’s eyes blurred. It’s the rain, she told herself fiercely, and wrapped the cloth over Emily Grace. “She didn’t hurt anybody and now she’s all in pieces! I have to get her to a doll maker I know.”
The flapper put one hand gently on Chiyo’s shoulder. “The school must be looking for you.”
“No. They just want city girls in their school. I’m from a village in the mountains. They didn’t want me in the first place. Now they want to forget me.”
The woman looked into her eyes. “You may be judging them a little harshly, but I can see why you’re upset. You’re sure this doll maker will repair her?”
“Hai!” There was no doubt in Chiyo’s mind. She drew a deep breath, going against all she had been taught, to ask a stranger for a ride. “Please, will you take me closer to Tokyo?”
The woman looked around, as if hoping one of Chiyo’s teachers would appear. “Someone must be looking for you.”
“No.” Chiyo knew that her face looked as sad as she felt inside. “Please take me as far as you’re going. I can walk the rest of the way. I’m used to walking.”
There were no pedestrians in sight. An occasional automobile went past without stopping. Decision settled in the woman’s face. “I’m a nurse at the hospital in Tokyo. I don’t think my doctors can fix your doll, but I can take you to the doll maker.”
Joy leaped through Chiyo. She scarcely noticed the raindrops. She couldn’t help asking, “A nurse? Aren’t nurses men? Like doctors?”
The woman’s smile made her eyes sparkle. “You’ll see more of us, kiddo. A few years ago, only thirteen thousand women worked as nurses in all of Japan. Now I’m one of more than fifty-seven thousand.”
Chiyo thought of the flappers in the restaurant who all worked in a business office. Okaasan was right. Japan was changing. “Do you have to be a flapper to be a nurse?”
Laughter burst from
the woman. “No, but if you are a nurse or in any job where you have made your own choice, you can choose to be a flapper . . . or to do anything else you like.”
Even to drive a car. Chiyo had never seen a woman handle any kind of machinery unless she counted the rice huller at home.
“Your nice kimono is getting wet,” the nurse warned. “You don’t want to stand out here in the rain.”
“No,” Chiyo agreed. It took courage to climb into the motorcar, but she had to get Emily Grace to the doll maker even more than she needed to get her kimono out of the rain. She sat on the edge of the front seat while the flapper turned a crank, just as the mayor’s driver had. When the motor caught, she hurried around to climb inside.
Chiyo clutched the seat so hard her knuckles turned white. This was not like riding behind the mayor’s uniformed driver. The car didn’t feel as solid, either. It rumbled noisily along, and she felt every bump under the tires.
“I’m Yaeko, by the way,” the woman told her. “What’s your name?”
“Tamura Chiyo.” It was hard to talk when she was holding her breath and staring out the windshield. She couldn’t help feeling as if they might run off the pavement if she looked away. But she was going to Tokyo!
The woman had introduced herself by her first name. What was Chiyo supposed to call her? It might be safer not to call her anything, but she couldn’t help asking, “Does it cost a lot to buy your own automobile?”
She heard amusement in Yaeko’s answer. “Yes. This one belongs to a doctor at my hospital. To tell you a secret, he’s sweet on me. He thought it was a lark to teach me to drive.”
Chiyo nodded. Adults lived in a world different from hers, especially adults in Tokyo. She knew that Otousan would never teach Okaasan to drive, or loan her his car, if he had one. Okaasan would never agree if he did offer.
“Does the ride scare you, Chiyo-chan?”
Chiyo sat a little straighter. “I rode in a car before. With the mayor of Tokyo.”
“Oh, yes? Traveling in high company, were you?” The sparkle was back in the nurse’s eyes. Then Yaeko looked at her for so long that Chiyo wanted to urge her to watch the road. “Say,” the nurse exclaimed, “you’re the girl from the poster! Your face is all over Tokyo. And this is the doll!”
Dolls of Hope Page 14
