Tomo

by Holly Thompson

  She was silent. I kept on buffing the surface of my violin, refusing to even turn around and look at her. Finally, she got up and padded away. I sulked all that weekend, refusing to come down for meals, saying I had to practice. I didn’t even bother to give Dad the usual peck on the cheek when he dropped me off at school on Monday.

  When he came to pick me up the following Friday, he greeted me by saying that he and Mom would both be there to see me perform at the concert. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, tousling my hair. “We’ve asked Aling Cora to look after Rigel for the evening.” Aling Cora was our neighbor, an old widow.

  I don’t remember ever having played so well as I did that Sunday evening, when my violin solo was met with thunderous applause. Perhaps, a part of me knew that, thereafter, music would be for me something tainted with guilt, like a curse. Because that night, my brother, wanting to go and watch me play, tried to climb out the window of the room where Aling Cora, unable to pacify him, had locked him up—he fell, broke both legs, and injured his spine, and after that he never regained the full use of his body. As if it weren’t enough that he had never had the full use of his mind.

  That night, as I stood outside the hospital’s operating room with my parents, the psychologist’s words rang in my ears. I knew then what I had to do. I would take myself someplace where I couldn’t usurp what belonged to my little brother—where I didn’t have to tower above him, soaking up all the air and sunshine and leaving him to wither in my shade.

  The following month, I applied to join an exchange program for my sophomore year. Anywhere would have been fine, and they matched me with a school in Japan. Before I left, I promised myself something else: that I wouldn’t play—not the piano, not the violin, not any instrument—except for myself. I knew it was my music that had warped me, making me willing to risk everything, even Rigel, to be praised and applauded.

  “Aren’t you bringing your violin?” Dad asked me as he picked up my luggage to take it to the car on our way to the airport. I didn’t know what to say, so I grabbed the hegalong, which was leaning against the wall, and said, “I’m bringing this—I want to learn a new instrument.”

  I thought I was giving up everything then: my brother, my parents, my music. . . . It hadn’t occurred to me that perhaps leaving was my way of finding them again so that we could start over.

  The cherry blossoms returned just before I was due to leave for Manila. So did Hiro. I came home on the last day of school to find him snoring on the couch. I stood there, staring at him as if he were an apparition. Until then, I hadn’t allowed myself to believe that he would bother to come back before I left. He had told me earlier that he only had a few days before the spring term started. I was still gaping down at him when his eyes fluttered open.

  “Hey.” A grin spread slowly across his jet-lagged face. He held out a hand and squeezed mine when I gave it to him.

  “You came back.”

  “We’ve got something left to do, haven’t we?” He stifled a yawn. “We’ll go back there tomorrow morning, and we’ll do it right this time.”

  I looked down at my palms. What about the curse on the lake, I thought, though I didn’t dare ask him. But he seemed to read my mind.

  “Don’t be afraid of the lake. We’ll break the spell.”

  “How?”

  “You remember who placed it?”

  “Benzaiten.”

  “The goddess of music.”

  I let his words sink in, then nodded, understanding.

  The sky was streaked with dawn as we hopped on our bicycles the next day, the hegalong slung across my back. We pedaled down the still-deserted roads to Inokashira Koen, leaving our bicycles on the otherwise empty lot, without even bothering to chain them. We headed toward the lake and crossed the bridge to the other side. We righted one of the upended boats and, taking an oar each, paddled to the deepest part of the lake. Gently, I swung the hegalong over my shoulder and cradled it in my arms.

  As he watched, my audience of one, I strummed a melody, and another, and another. In my mind, I was playing for Rigel in his wheelchair, and I decided, at that moment, that the first thing I would do when I got home would be to play for him what I had performed that fateful evening. I didn’t stop playing until the sun had burned the mist off the lake and my fingers were raw and red. Afterward, I felt strangely cleansed. Hiro took my hands in his and said in a whisper, “See? It’s broken.” I looked at him and I wondered which he meant. Deep inside, I hoped he didn’t just mean the baggage I brought with me from my past, but the spell on the lake. I wasn’t about to ask him.

  Hiro was right when he said that the curses that are hardest to break are those that we place on ourselves: guilt, anger, grief. . . . Yesterday morning at the lake, he helped me free myself from a self-inflicted curse at the risk of bringing another one down on our heads. Whether or not that, too, was broken, only time will be able to tell. In three days, I will leave Japan to return to my brother, my parents, and yes, my music. We will say good-bye, possibly forever. But I hope that we shall see each other again—that my playing has pleased Benzaiten. I guess only time will tell.

  Insiders and Outsiders

  Fleecy Clouds

  by Arie Nashiya

  translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter

  It was raining.

  I hate rainy days. Putting up umbrellas creates distance between her and me.

  I hate the way the umbrellas get in the way so I can’t see her profile, the way it’s harder to catch what she’s saying over the sound of the rain. And I hate it too when we’re walking side by side with our umbrellas up and somebody comes along from the opposite direction and there isn’t enough room on the sidewalk for all the umbrellas and our conversation gets interrupted, even for two or three seconds.

  Her umbrella was cherry-blossom pink.

  Was mine the green of new leaves? Softer than turquoise, brighter than chartreuse, an umbrella the fresh green of young cherry-tree leaves . . . Actually I think the one I was carrying that day might have been hyacinth blue, the same as now. Hyacinth blue has a kind of muddy tint like an overcast sky that strikes me as a more real, more genuine color than clear pale blue, which is why I tend to like it more. Maybe her new cherry-blossom pink umbrella made such a strong impression on me that in my mind my umbrella changed color to harmonize with hers.

  Her umbrella was definitely cherry-blossom pink. Not peach pink, not salmon pink, but the delicate pink of cherry-blossom petals. I remember I was happy because the color was so elegant and it suited her so well. When she had on something that suited her perfectly, I felt as excited as I did when I found a hat that looked perfect on me, as proud as if I’d looked in a magic mirror and glimpsed my own shining future.

  “Saki, you have such terrific taste!” I blurted, feeling as awkward as if I were bragging about myself.

  “What’s got into you?” She looked embarrassed, a little taken aback.

  From the time we were in nursery school together till we went to the same cram school to get ready for junior high entrance exams, and even now, in high school, it’s always been the same.

  “You like the rain, Saki, don’t you?”

  “It all depends. On a day like today with exams coming up, it makes me feel like, Oh well, might as well go straight home and hit the books, so it’s a good rain, know what I mean? Keeps me from wanting to go somewhere and goof off.”

  To me the rain was a disappointment. During the week before exams, as well as during exam week itself, club activities were called off. I’d been waiting and waiting for this chance to go home from school with her—and then it had to go and rain. The rain was irritating, with its bothersome umbrellas.

  In junior high Saki and I had been in the same club. In high school she picked something different, which meant we had after-school activities on different days, or finished up at different times, so we couldn’t go home together every day the way we used to. I was secretly glad when exam time rol
led around, since it meant I could be with her after school.

  “Well, I hate having my shoes and my schoolbag get all wet,” I said.

  “Nobody likes that.”

  “And lately when it rains, I sneeze. Must be the humidity . . .” Even as I said it, I let out a big sneeze like a comedian, and she laughed. Whenever I can tell she’s having fun, I feel satisfied, like I’d just finished eating a piece of sweet fruit.

  “Here comes the bus,” she said and got in line, taking out her pass and starting to fold up her umbrella.

  When we get on the bus I always let her go first, especially on rainy days. That’s because I hate it when the bus stops and I try to fold up my umbrella with perfect timing but end up getting my shoulders all wet. To keep that from happening to her, I hold my umbrella over her furtively while she climbs into the bus. I would get wet anyway, I’m such a klutz, so the extra drops that fall on me while I’m holding my umbrella over her don’t mean a thing.

  I hate how the floor of the bus gets all slick and wet on rainy days, and how you have to scrunch into a damp seat clutching your wet umbrella. But sitting next to her takes away the pain. Sitting next to her is as natural as custard cream in a cream puff, and even more reassuring than a bowling lane with bumpers in the gutters.

  From elementary school through junior high, whenever the class had to form pairs she and I would always pick each other as a matter of course, until everybody came to expect it. We never paired off with anybody else. In gym class and group activities we were always together.

  She and I were always best friends, special friends.

  Her favorite place to sit on the bus was a double seat toward the back, behind the exit door, on the side closer to the sidewalk. The best seat was the one in front of the protruding wheel well, but the odds of getting that were low. When it wasn’t available she would sit behind the wheel well, but on that day, that seat was taken, too.

  She got on before me and I found her squeezed into the narrow seat on top of the wheel well, her knees folded up by her chest. The seat across the aisle one row back was free, but she said no. “The view’s better here,” she explained, wiping the steamy window with her hand.

  I couldn’t see any real difference in the scenery whichever side we were on, but she always preferred the side closer to the sidewalk. In the morning the bus was so jammed that we got shoved every which way, so she never cared which side she was on, but on the way home she made sure to pick a window seat facing the sidewalk.

  When the bus started up, she and I talked about exams and what would be covered, what we were nervous about and what we thought we could pull off okay. After the first stop, I pulled out my electronic dictionary and started testing her on English vocabulary. She tossed off the answers, then interrupted: “Got any tissues?” I handed her a packet, and she pulled one out and used it to give the window a thorough wiping.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t see outside.”

  So what, I thought. The bus took the same familiar route every day. I craned my neck and looked out the window, but all I could see was an ordinary shopping street in the rain. My interest flagged, and I turned my attention back to the dictionary.

  After answering a few more questions, she said, “‘Fleecy clouds’ means cottony clouds, right?”

  “What’s ‘fleecy’ again?” I asked. “Doesn’t it mean woolly, like the coat of a sheep?”

  “That’s right. A sheep’s coat of wool. The funny thing is, English ‘fleecy clouds’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ‘sheep clouds’ in Japanese.”

  “Why not? Cottony clouds, woolly clouds—same difference.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I looked it up. They’re totally different.”

  She opened her notebook and explained, referring to what she had written down. “What we call ‘sheep clouds’ in Japanese are clouds that look like a flock of sheep in the sky. The technical term in English is ‘altocumulus clouds.’ But in English ‘fleecy clouds’ are puffy, cotton-like clouds—the kind known as ‘cumulus.’ So not only the shape but the altitude is different.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Literally, ‘fleecy clouds’ means ‘clouds like a sheep’s coat,’ and yet to our way of thinking, puffy clouds are cottony, not woolly. I mean intuitively, not the technical term.”

  “Complicated, man!”

  “You got that right!” She giggled.

  Whatever we talked about, it was always fun.

  “So this is what you’re saying?” I asked. “Between English speakers and Japanese speakers, how people describe puffy clouds depends on whether they’ve had more contact with wool or with cotton—is that it, professor?”

  “Yes, my star pupil.”

  “Why the sudden fascination with clouds?”

  “There’s a shop called Fleecy Clouds, you know. Right by the bus stop we passed a minute ago.”

  I drew a blank.

  “What kind of shop?”

  “I guess you’d call it a boutique, maybe? A little clothes store. One that’s actually kind of cool. You wouldn’t expect to find any interesting shops on this street, would you? It’s little, and all it’s got in the display window is one torso mannequin, but the clothes on display change a few times a week, so I always keep an eye out from the bus window.”

  “Yeah? What kind of clothes are they?” I’d never noticed any such shop.

  “Casual, but not our kind of casual. The kind I’d like to try wearing when I get a little older. The kind that if you wore them to an art museum or somewhere, you’d look like you stepped right out of a painting. Someday I’d love to dress that way, like a grown woman who stepped out of a painting.” She laughed, looking out the window in shy embarrassment.

  If she said so, I was sure it must be a shop of discriminating taste.

  But really now—a boutique?

  To me the word “casual” only meant the clothes I lounge around in on weekends, or denim jeans like the ones I used to wear to cram school. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine what kind of clothes she meant, what kind she wanted to wear when she grew up. Just knowing she had her sights set on a not-so-distant time when she’d be an adult gave me an indescribable feeling, as if she’d already left me behind.

  “Have you ever been in a boutique, Saki?” I asked.

  “If you count name-brand specialty shops in department stores, I’ve peeked in, but I’m always afraid they’ll think, What’s a high school kid doing here? They’re still kind of intimidating.”

  “But you do go in sometimes.”

  When I went to department stores, I passed right by the gorgeous salons. I only thought to myself, Wow, there are actually people in the world who go to a fancy place like this and pay ten or twenty times the normal price for their clothes. I never imagined a time when I myself might wear clothes like that, never felt like trying them on.

  My current interest in fashion was pretty much limited to wondering how I could make my school uniform cuter, the way everyone does. Which one I should put in my breast pocket to jazz things up—a hair clip or a ballpoint pen with a cartoon character on top? That kind of thing.

  “You’re amazing, Saki. Even after I’m all grown up, I don’t think I’d ever have the nerve to go in a boutique, especially a real shop like that, not just a corner in a department store. I’d have to talk to the saleslady, and there wouldn’t be many items to choose from, and the prices would be out of control, you know? I’d feel like once I entered enemy territory I couldn’t leave till I’d bought something. It’d be really hard to make myself go in.”

  “‘Enemy territory’? That’s a bit extreme.” She’d been looking out the window, and swung her head back to look at me. Her eyes were so pretty they made me jump. Even up close, her skin was fine-textured, without pores. “It won’t be long before we’re adults and clothes from Fleecy Clouds will look good on us. Won’t that be fun?”

  Probably, if she said so. W
hatever she chose was bound to be right.

  “But first we have to pass our exams,” I said.

  “Indeed we do.” She picked up my electronic dictionary, and this time she started quizzing me.

  Being with Saki all the time came naturally. We lived in the same neighborhood, in condominiums with almost exactly the same floor space and layout. Our parents were in the same business, our families were just the same size. She and I shared nursery school, elementary school, after-school lessons, and cram school. We applied to and were accepted at the same number of junior high schools, and when we both started attending the same girls’ combined junior and senior high, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

  We always liked the same things. Back in lower elementary we watched all the same shows on TV, and in upper elementary we liked the same comedians. When I sang with her, I could harmonize. We took piano lessons at the same place, and after I got sick of it in fourth grade and quit, she quit in fifth grade to concentrate on entrance exams for junior high. We both liked learning English conversation until third grade, when the teacher left—but then at the end of that year we started to go to cram school together, so we always saw each other after school.

  In junior high we joined the same volleyball club. When we moved on to senior high, we continued with volleyball, until she changed clubs with the excuse that she’d suffered an injury. I had to stick with volleyball.

  On school tests I’d usually outscore her by a dozen points or so, but overall it worked out to a difference of just two or three points in our grade averages, so she never minded. If she’d answered a question or two differently, the results could just as easily have been reversed, so I could never lord it over her like I was smarter or something.

  Our height and our hairstyles were pretty much the same, and all our lives people had been telling us we looked alike. We enjoyed acting like twins.