by Kyoko Mori
“I didn’t mean to go on so much about this,” Toru apologizes. “I hope you don’t think I’m being sappy or pathetic.”
“Not at all,” I assure him. “You can tell me anything, anytime. I would never think you were sappy or pathetic. You know that.” A little more emphasis goes into my voice than I intended, and I have a tight feeling in my throat. All the same I mean every word I say. Every word.
* * *
Our drive back to Toru’s bar takes us through the neighborhood of the church.
“You should let me off at the Katos’ church,” I suggest. “I’m going to tell them the truth. I have to say I’m not coming to church anymore. I think I’ll do it now.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, you won’t.” My voice sounds determined, almost annoyed. I imagine Toru standing behind me as I stutter my explanations to Pastor and Mrs. Kato. They will think that I am a big coward who can’t tell the truth by herself. “I’m going alone,” I insist.
Toru shakes his head and laughs. “I’m not going up to their house with you. You don’t need my help, I know that. I just want to wait in the car, outside.”
“You don’t have to do that, either.”
“But I want to.”
He drives into the church parking lot, turns off the headlights, and cuts the engine. I still want to tell him I’ll be all right without him, but as I look out the windshield, I see something that takes up all of my attention. Two people are sitting on the bench by the sandbox, directly in front of the car, about twenty yards away. It’s the bench where mothers often sit while their children are playing. The two people sitting there now, though, are Kiyoshi and Keiko. They are both staring at us, their necks held stiff and self-righteous.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Toru and get out.
The rectory is across the yard, to the left. Instead of veering that way, I walk straight ahead to the bench.
“So who’s the boy?” Keiko asks. She doesn’t use the giggly voice in which she talked about boys when we were friends. “Who’s the friend you go driving around with in the dark?” she demands, sounding icy.
Now that I am standing before them, Kiyoshi looks down and stares at his own shoes, the same brown oxfords he’s worn for years with his church clothes. Keiko is dressed in a different way from two or three weeks ago. Instead of a thin dress or tight skirt, she is wearing a long, pleated black skirt, a starched white blouse, and a gray cashmere sweater.
“That’s Toru Uchida,” I tell her. “Kiyoshi knows him, too. We all grew up together.”
I expect Kiyoshi to look up and nod, however begrudgingly, to acknowledge that this is so. But instead, he turns sideways and seems to be examining the slide a few feet away.
“I don’t think it’s ladylike or wise to be driving around with an older boy like that, do you?” Keiko asks.
“Oh, come on,” I say, disgusted. “We were just talking. No different from the two of you sitting here.”
Keiko sucks in a short breath and spits out, “How dare you?” She screws up her face, making the same sour face my grandmother often makes. “We were sitting here after our Bible study class, talking about the Holy Spirit. I bet you weren’t doing that. You want to tell us what you talked about?”
What we talked about is Toru’s secret. “I can’t tell you,” I announce.
That’s the moment Kiyoshi turns his head and looks at me. Suspicion and disappointment are written all over his hard-set face.
“It’s not what you think,” I say, my cheeks turning hot.
“And what is that?” Keiko taunts in the same sticky-sweet voice she used as a child when we fought. “What do you think we suspect?”
As Keiko stares at me and Kiyoshi turns away, I begin to worry about Toru. He is directly behind me; I can almost feel his eyes on my back. He must guess that Keiko is taunting me and that Kiyoshi is snubbing me, trying to hurt me with his silence as if I were too lowly for words. What’s to stop Toru from coming out of the car and yelling at them? When we were kids, I could beat either Kiyoshi or Takashi in a fair fight, one against one, but sometimes the two of them would gang up on me and pull my hair or kick sand in my face. Toru always came running to my rescue, shaking his fists and shouting to scare them. That was all right then. But I don’t want him doing anything like that now.
“This discussion is stupid,” I spit out at Keiko and Kiyoshi. Without waiting, I swing around and run to the rectory.
* * *
Running up the steps and pushing open the door, which is never locked, I stand panting in the Katos’ kitchen, where the pastor and Mrs. Kato are drinking tea. He smiles and nods as if he hadn’t noticed my absence from church or Bible study. Maybe he hasn’t, or he has forgotten about it already. But I can tell that Mrs. Kato has been worrying about me.
“Megumi.” She calls my name, getting up from the table and walking toward me in her gray wool dress. She puts her arms around my shoulders. “Are you all right? You look terrible.”
Standing there, trying to catch my breath, I suddenly want to hug her, cling to her even. She will hold me and comfort me. Assuming that I am upset about my mother, she won’t ask me any questions, and I won’t ever have to tell her that I don’t believe in God. Next Sunday I can come back to church and go on pretending as before. It would be so easy.
But I can’t do that. I have already made up my mind and have told Dr. Mizutani and Toru. I should have told the truth a long time ago. So I step back, lightly shaking off her arms.
“I can’t come to church anymore,” I announce, trying to sound calm. “I don’t believe in God.”
Pastor Kato puts down the teacup and stares at me with his mouth open. That doesn’t bother me so much. What gets to me is the expression on Mrs. Kato’s face: Her kind, broad face crumples up with worry and hurt. Then she takes a deep breath. After that, her face is full of sadness and pity—she has the look all our mothers had when we were kids and one of us had been hurt while playing. She reaches out toward me just as she did back then, as if to say, “There, let me look at that cut. Let me make it better.” Without thinking, I raise my hand and put it in front of my face, in the small space between her and me, warding off her kindness. Immediately the hurt look comes back into her face, and her eyes widen. I can’t bear to see that. Taking two steps backward and then spinning around, I run down the steps without even closing the door.
Sprinting down across the churchyard, I tumble into Toru’s car and start bawling. Toru leans forward and holds me while I sob onto the shoulder of his white shirt. He keeps patting my back and telling me that everything is all right, though we both know that nothing is all right. Finally, when I stop crying, he rummages in the glove compartment and pulls out a flat box of tissues. The box looks beat up, its colors faded as though it was very old. As he sits holding out a piece of pink tissue, the thought comes to me that I am not the first girl to cry in his car. I know that Yoshimi Sonoda has cried sitting in this very seat, maybe the first time he told her that he planned to leave Tokyo. He must have shrugged and smiled and tried to console her, just as he is trying to console me. This thought makes me want to cry again, but I don’t. In a way, it’s also ridiculous. Everything is. I look up out the windshield, wondering what Kiyoshi and Keiko would make of the scene—but they are gone.
“It was very hard,” I say to Toru, trying to keep my voice even. I have to take big, deep breaths between words to swallow the small hiccups and sobs that keep wanting to come back. “But I told the truth,” I manage to say.
Nodding, he lays his hand over mine. Even after he starts the car and we leave the church, he drives one-handed, holding my hand in his.
“We’re going to drive around for a while before I take you home,” he says. “I won’t let you go home until you are less upset.”
I don’t protest or ask him if he will be late getting back to work. We drive around for a long time in silence, watching the old neighborhoods and parks zip past us in the da
rk. The white streetlamps fly backward, as if we were not moving but everything was peeling back behind us. I don’t ask Toru if he really has the time, if his boss will be upset. I don’t ask because we know the same truth. For us, home is no place to be when we are upset. We have no one to go home to.
Chapter 8
BY THE FOUNTAIN
A few steps outside the chapel, my friends Noriko and Mieko are cackling about something they saw on TV last night. They are still talking loudly and laughing as we go down the hallway, through the door to the quadrangle. When our Bible study teacher, Miss Yamabe, comes running after us, the two girls clam up, looking sheepish.
Our teachers often ask Noriko to be quiet, because she bursts out laughing at the wrong time and can’t stop, or else she whispers too loudly during class. Noriko is the tallest girl in our class and also the thinnest—not big-boned thin like me but bean-pole thin, with sharp elbows and knees. She would stick out in a crowd even if she were a shy, quiet girl instead of the troublemaker she is. Noriko is strong-willed and opinionated enough to tell our teachers that they are unfair or wrong. Last year she stalked out of our math class because the teacher said that all the math and science geniuses in history, except maybe for Madame Curie, had been men. If we attended a public school, Noriko would spend most of her time standing in the back of the classroom or staying after school to write letters of apology. Our teachers just sigh, shake their heads, and ask her to be patient or quiet—they know she is a good student; she always gets the highest math score in our class. Still, it’s a little embarrassing to be with her sometimes. I brace myself and wait for Miss Yamabe to scold her and Mieko.
Instead, Miss Yamabe puts her hand on my shoulder and nods for Noriko and Mieko to keep going. All around us, girls are hurrying to their classes. Miss Yamabe and I walk a few steps and stop in front of the fountain in the center of the quadrangle. It isn’t much of a fountain. The water bubbles up slowly instead of shooting out in a big spray. The sprinkles scarcely disturb the surface of the small round pond where white lily pads float, a few tiny goldfish swimming among their roots.
“I wanted to talk to you about the service at Pentecost,” Miss Yamabe says. “Some of the twelfth-grade girls want to lead the Pentecost service. Maybe you would like to participate, too.”
When I say nothing, she goes on. “Two of the girls want to play the piano and sing. Another one said she would read from the Bible. I thought maybe you could give a short talk about what Pentecost means to you. That way, the whole service can be led by students, instead of Pastor Miki or me giving the talk.”
“I can’t,” I say. It’s been almost two weeks since I stopped going to church, but I haven’t told anyone at school. None of my friends are believers anyway; we all attend the morning chapel because it is mandatory. For most everyone, it’s a half-hour to stare at their fingernails and show off their good voices when we sing the hymns.
“You don’t have to worry about being younger than the other girls,” Miss Yamabe says. “You are an excellent writer. I’d like you to give the talk.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She is shorter than most of us, and plump. The brown suit she is wearing makes her look like an overstuffed koala bear. Her shoes could be a child’s—beat-up brown penny loafers at least a size smaller than mine. I have always gotten mad at my friends for making fun of her behind her back, implying that she is religious because she is an old maid with no one else to love, nothing else to believe in. All the same, I myself have never liked talking to her; I hate the way she trains her beady eyes on me and sighs, standing a little too close. I want to take a few steps backward to get away from those eyes. With my back to the fountain, I can’t, unless I want to fall into the water.
I look around, hoping to find help. But by now the quadrangle is deserted. All the students and teachers have gone to their classes. The bell will ring in a few minutes.
“Think about it,” Miss Yamabe says, patting my shoulder. “Come see me during lunch break, and we’ll talk some more.”
I nod and then bolt away.
* * *
Inside our first-hour classroom, Noriko has saved me a seat by the wall, next to the birds in their pet carriers. Having left their nest two days ago, the sparrows are hopping around inside the carrier, perching on the twigs and branches I have rigged up. One of them is pecking at the seeds scattered on the bottom of the cage, though he is just picking them up and dropping them, not really eating. All three peep and hop toward me as soon as I open the door and hold out the syringe. They open up their mouths and gobble up the food, fluttering their wings the whole time. They are fully feathered now; their backs are brown and their bellies are streaked white and brown.
Nobody pays much attention while I feed them. Two weeks ago, when I first brought them to school, a few girls wanted to see them up close, but many thought they were scrawny and ugly. “Oh, I don’t want to see them. They give me the creeps,” one said. She ran away shrieking when I took the grosbeak out of his nest to feed him. “Don’t let me see that thing,” she screamed. She is one of the many girls at school who cower at the slightest things—a spider crawling on the floor, a gust rattling the windowpane, even the loud noise a soda can makes as it drops from the chute inside the soda machine. These jumpy girls are not my friends. I like the girls who are proud of being bright and funny, even if they are sometimes too loud, like Noriko.
Mr. Okada, our Japanese Literature teacher, comes in while I am feeding the grosbeak. He nods to me and starts the class while I pry open the bird’s beak and cram the syringe inside. Unlike the sparrows, the grosbeak spends his day slumped inside the nest, sleeping with his head down. He, too, has grown bigger and is now covered with gray feathers, but he does not stand up in the nest or preen his feathers the way the sparrows did before they hopped out. He has never peeped or clamored for food. All I have ever heard from him is a dry, scratchy whistle. Sometimes I feel as though I am simply torturing him, that I should let him die if that’s what he wants. Still, I keep stuffing food inside him and cleaning him up, putting him gently back inside the nest to rest.
Mr. Okada is talking about Sei Sho Nagon, the twelfth-century essayist we have been reading for the last two weeks. He asks one of the girls in the front row to read aloud from today’s essay, in which Sei Sho Nagon goes on about good manners and bad manners, about how wide the window of the palace should be opened to capture the best view of the snow-covered mountains; she makes lists of things that are in good taste and those that are in bad taste. Noriko passes me a note. It is a caricature of Mr. Okada. She has made his plaid tie look bigger and drawn arrows over it. “Bad taste,” she has written on the bottom. I almost start laughing, because Noriko is right—Sei Sho Nagon would surely have included his tie on the list of things that are in bad taste. I wonder why our male teachers can never dress right: Mr. Okada’s ties and socks are always wrong for his outfits; our math teacher, Mr. Shimoda, wears his gray winter coat in June because he has never thought to buy a raincoat for summer; and Mr. Sugimoto, the biology teacher, often wears his rugby shirt inside out, with the tag sticking out and the seams showing. Noriko has a big collection of caricatures, showing the teachers’ various mismatched outfits. It’s too bad, I think on the verge of laughter, that Noriko can’t ride in a time machine and travel back to the twelfth century to meet Sei Sho Nagon—the two of them could have written an encyclopedia of bad taste. But my laughter evaporates when I think about how I will have to visit Miss Yamabe during lunch, to tell her that I have lost my faith.
* * *
On the wall of Miss Yamabe’s office behind her desk there is a large black-and-white photograph taken in 1944. It shows fifteen young girls in white dresses, and two teachers, both women, in dark suits—all of them seated in a semicircle around the fountain in the quadrangle. They were the middle school and high school girls who met for morning services even after the government had banned Christian Girls’ Academy from holding them. Back then Christianity wa
s considered American and therefore unpatriotic; at public schools, they held shinto ceremonies every morning before classes, worshipping the Emperor. Anyone who belonged to a church was suspected of being a spy.
In spite of the ban, the fifteen girls at Christian Academy met every morning in the chapel with the president and the Bible study teacher, Miss Fujimoto. They gathered, read from the Bible, sang hymns, and prayed for peace. Miss Fujimoto—who still goes to the Katos’ church—was thrown into jail for two weeks and released after her family had paid a fine. She went right back to meeting with the girls and praying for peace. When she retired in 1960, she left the photograph on her office wall, passing it on to Miss Yamabe.
But I knew this photograph long before I came to school here. Mrs. Kato, Mrs. Uchida, and my mother all had smaller copies of it in their albums. Ever since I was six or seven, I have been able to point them out in the photograph, each looking unmistakably like herself, though younger. My mother is seated at the very center, her long hair framing her perfectly oval face, her large eyes staring right at the viewer as if to say, “Come and arrest us all; we are ready.” She is the prettiest girl in the picture, except maybe for Mrs. Uchida, who is second from the right—a willowy girl with a pageboy haircut, a thin chiseled face, narrow but long eyes. Mrs. Kato, who is seated next to my mother, has her hair in thick, long braids. Her face is sensible and determined-looking, her square jaw set hard. Anyone can tell that she was the leader, destined to marry a minister and to carry on her faith. The girls are about the age I am now. I wonder what we would look like—Noriko, Mieko, and me—in white dresses seated by the fountain. In twenty years, would someone know that Noriko was the quick-tempered, funny girl and a math whiz, Mieko was a reliable and kind person, and me—what would they say about me, a girl who fed baby birds in her class, a girl who lost her faith? What would show on my face?
Miss Yamabe motions for me to sit down. I take a chair across the big desk from her so that I am facing the photograph and Miss Yamabe has her back to it. She knows that one of the women is my mother, who no longer lives with my father and me.
