Falling into the Dragon's Mouth

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Falling into the Dragon's Mouth Page 3

by Holly Thompson

bending my wrists

  rolling over the mats

  forward and back

  and falling, dropping

  flipping, being flipped

  the slip, slip

  of feet on the tatami

  with Yamada-sensei’s voice

  guiding us through moves

  to evade strikes

  to turn opponents

  and get into safe places

  but Shunta and Gō breathe

  salty lunch smells on me

  and start to scribble

  right on my sketch

  I know better than to act

  as if I care

  then I get an idea

  and say

  why yes, a dirty sandal

  probably just trash

  in a stiff, adult voice

  yet this object

  gives the painting

  balance and perspective

  foreground and background

  imitating, more or less

  the words of our art teacher

  and it works—

  they snort-laugh

  and back away

  just enough for me to stand

  roll my sketch

  have a look at

  and pretend interest in

  whatever the others drew

  Shunta’s mass of licking flames

  Naho’s eyeball with reflected flames

  Gō’s scratches he calls smoke

  Mika’s manga that she hides

  when she sees me looking

  my head hurts

  from Gō’s smack

  and I hate

  Mika’s glare

  but I did it

  I turned the opponent’s energy

  I controlled the opponent’s center

  Chapter 9

  SATOMI HAS LONG HAIR

  Satomi has long hair

  that hangs past her waist

  and flips over her chair back

  and slips through her fingers

  as she thinks on an answer

  her seat lies behind Shunta’s

  facing away from me

  so that my view past Shunta

  just over his left shoulder

  is Satomi’s hair

  I stare

  and stare

  at this long hair

  that falls down her back

  that is sometimes in braids

  but more often in a ponytail

  that she does and redoes

  flicking that hair

  up off her neck

  and lifting it

  to feed it

  and pull it

  through an elastic

  then her fingers continue

  running through strands

  playing the strands

  below the elastic band

  as she thinks

  on a math problem

  but if I stare too long

  at Satomi’s hair

  and Shunta sees my attention

  drifting from an equation

  he

  POUNDS

  his fist

  on my desk

  to make me jump

  this Monday

  instead of pounding

  Shunta follows my stare

  to Satomi’s hair

  and before I can

  catch my center

  he

  smacks

  my face

  so that my lip splits

  and bleeds

  onto my math paper

  and Mika stands

  grossed out

  and Naho stares

  and Yuki yells at me

  to get a tissue

  and Gō just waits

  to see what Shunta

  will do next

  it’s Yōhei

  who taps me from behind

  to hand me a tissue

  and finally

  Ōshima-sensei gets up

  from his desk

  and strolls over

  to see what the noise

  is all about

  I have an ice pack on my mouth

  when Mom and Cora pick me up

  for English group, and my lip

  is so swollen I can hardly talk

  what happened?! Mom asks

  I fell I say

  and Mom says flatly you fell

  and Cora says flatly onto your lip

  and Mom says

  but not your nose

  and Mom and Cora trade looks

  and Cora says right

  I stare out the window

  angry at myself

  vowing never again to be

  caught

  off-center

  at English group

  they see my lip right away

  and the moms and Ami’s dad

  are all poor thing!

  but I act like it’s nothing

  we’re doing consumers and producers

  and preparing for a marketplace

  with the olders as producers

  deciding prices of goods like

  handkerchiefs

  pencils

  cell phone straps

  erasers

  toothbrushes

  and stickers

  for the youngers

  I have to keep icing my lip

  and finally Ami looks up

  from a price tag and whispers

  who hit you?

  and when I don’t answer

  Will asks some jerk?

  and I nod, knowing

  they know what it’s like

  why? Trina asks

  did something happen?

  no, nothing happened

  just a jerk being a jerk I say

  without adding that I was

  staring at Satomi’s hair

  in the marketplace

  the youngers do the shopping

  but they’re not so good with money

  and don’t quite get our sales promotions

  Best price guarantee! Today ONLY!

  20% off last week’s price!

  Buy one get the second half price!

  Buy two pencils and win a free eraser!

  Buy three pencils and get the fourth one free!

  Best handkerchiefs for folding into rockets!

  Stickers—even your dog will be impressed!

  Toothbrushes! Arashi band’s brand!

  except Cora and Evan

  who take the longest to decide

  calculating on scrap paper

  and purchasing the most goods

  at least it diverts my attention

  completely

  from my lip

  from han six

  Chapter 10

  ONE-SANDAL MAN

  the next day

  I’m sitting at the kitchen table

  with Yūsuke, my tutor

  a college student

  from the university

  where my dad teaches

  Yūsuke who lived in New York

  so he can explain things

  to me in English

  when I’m lost in Japanese

  which is

  like

  all the time

  we’re going over readings

  for kanji

  such as ken—権—right, authority

  which has five different readings

  and 242 compounds

  too many of which

  Yūsuke seems to find

  endlessly fascinating

  and most of which

  I do not

  but thankfully

  only eight of which

  I have to memorize

  for a test at school

  this week

  when the phone rings

  I can tell Mom’s talking with

  someone she doesn’t know well

  with her voice high-pitched and polite

  stumbling over formal Japanese

  but then

  she brings the phone over to me
/>
  excuse me

  she says to Yūsuke

  then to me

  it seems a policeman

  wants to talk to you

  I recognize the voice, Nakazato-san

  the officer from the police box

  we talked to the old man he says

  who has Parkinson’s disease, by the way

  that’s why his speech is difficult to understand

  anyway, he gave a description

  of the man on the motorbike

  he did? I say

  yes the officer says

  and we found two people

  who’d seen a man

  with one sandal

  riding a motorbike—

  they gave us details of the bike

  and from the descriptions

  we narrowed down possibilities

  asked more questions

  and found the man

  who set the fire

  you did? I say

  who?

  but the officer won’t say

  and adds something I don’t quite get

  to explain why he can’t say

  then he says

  you know

  Takemura-san tried to tell others

  about the sandal—

  his daughter

  the neighbors

  the boy you were with

  but no one listened to him

  only you and your sister

  truly listened

  the officer thanks me

  and reminds me

  to thank Cora, too

  I go upstairs

  to find Cora

  and she’s got her stuffed animals

  doing a sports festival

  all over our room

  the oval track

  made with a circle of blocks

  animals picnicking on handkerchiefs

  other animals propping up paper score sheets

  for the white team and the red team

  but instead of yelling at her

  like I usually do

  when she does this to our room

  I tell her what the officer said

  sugoi! she says wow!

  we helped solve a crime!

  downstairs I ask my mother and Yūsuke

  what’s Parkinson’s disease?

  and Yūsuke starts jabbing at

  his electronic dictionary

  as my mother brings her laptop

  and a medical dictionary

  and we spend the rest

  of my tutoring session

  on words like

  neurological

  symptom

  tremor

  balance

  and Yūsuke thinks

  it’s a perfect opportunity

  for me to study compounds

  using the kanji

  for brain—nō—脳

  um, no!

  that night Cora and I

  whisper back and forth

  in our bunks

  who? we want to know

  who would set fire

  to a fish-shop owner’s house?

  Cora puts on her headlamp

  and we make a list:

  a vegetarian

  a fish (Cora says this)

  another fish-shop owner

  a robber

  the fish-shop owner if he wanted a new house

  someone who got food poisoning from the shop

  then Cora says I bet it was that woman

  who? I say

  the one on the wanted posters at the police box

  and I laugh—I’m sure she doesn’t live around here!

  well, she could—how do you know?

  we run out of ideas

  and soon Cora is asleep

  but I lie awake

  listening to the rin rin rin

  of the bell cricket

  that Yūsuke gave me

  and that we moved

  to the balcony

  because it’s so loud

  I lie there trying to picture

  a man in garden sandals

  setting fire to a house

  in broad daylight

  and I think

  that was

  crazy obvious

  like

  did he hope

  to be caught?

  Chapter 11

  SLAPS

  then on Wednesday

  I learn who

  Shunta spreads the news

  that it was

  the fish-shop owner’s

  youngest son

  Yuki’s cousin

  who set the fire

  angry that his father

  wouldn’t lend him

  money to cover his debts

  to a pachinko parlor owner

  again

  a whole day passes

  without Yuki smacking me

  a whole day when Yuki looks

  not fierce but ready

  to cry

  Shunta milks it

  tells of other times that son

  was in trouble

  drinking

  starting fights

  stealing

  he says that

  people say trouble

  runs in that family

  like a bad gene

  all day long Yuki

  trembles and fumes

  a volcano

  ready to erupt

  then last period

  when Shunta makes

  one more

  stupid wisecrack

  about pachinko balls

  Yuki stands

  throws her chair

  right at Shunta

  then Shunta throws

  his chair back

  and we all duck

  and move away

  and the teacher hollers

  and shoves them both

  into the hall

  we right the chairs

  and sit still and jittery

  in the classroom

  as the teacher yells

  and once

  then twice

  slaps

  in Massachusetts

  at my old school

  some parents wanted

  a no-touch rule—

  no hugging

  no holding hands

  no wrestling or poking

  no hitting

  a rule that some teachers refused

  and most parents ridiculed

  as out of place

  in elementary school

  but inside the Dragon’s Mouth

  I’d vote in a minute

  for that no-touch rule

  or at least a no-hit rule

  some parents here say

  words are not always enough

  and even Yōhei, Shō, and Ken say

  sometimes a teacher needs to slap

  but I think really?

  Chapter 12

  GYŌZA

  after school

  I peel away from Shō and Ken

  and walk the opposite way

  to the after-school center

  just up the street

  from our school

  on Wednesdays second graders

  are let out after lunch recess

  but sixth graders have school till three thirty

  so Cora waits for me there

  now that Mom has afternoon

  university classes

  the after-school center is really just a house

  but a house with empty rooms

  and some toys lying on open floors

  or stacked against beat-up walls

  two women who work there

  stay mostly in an office

  like a closet with a window

  from where they watch the kids

  the first time we visited, Mom said

  you don’t play with the kids?

  oh, no they said it’s very free here!

  children can do what they want!

  no games, crafts, or activities? Mom asked
>
  oh, we do crafts twice each term

  we send notices to the school

  but the rest of the time they can play—

  it’s very free!

  free

  is a word

  that we’ve learned

  has a different meaning

  in English than

  in Japanese

  in Japanese

  free seems to mean

  what Mom calls

  unchecked mayhem

  when I arrive at the after-school center

  Cora is waiting in the entryway

  with her shoes on before

  I’ve even signed her out

  she’s quiet till we reach the hill

  then she says don’t tell Mom

  tell Mom what? I ask

  that I hate the kids there! she says

  then adds they call me gyōza

  gyōza?—dumpling?

  I laugh

  why gyōza?

  her eyes start tearing

  as she holds out her arm

  pointing at the veins

  I’m like gyōza—

  they can see through

  my skin to the stuff inside

  I tell her

  at least it’s a name

  of something that tastes good

  and that they’re just not used

  to different types of skin

  I tell her

  we’ll have our adventure

  in the park across the town line

  the one past the water tower

  with the good swings

  I tell her

  we’ll take cardboard for sliding

  cardboard boxes that will

  fly on the dry grass

  just like sleds

  and Cora wipes her arm

  across her eyes

  okay she says

  we walk to the park on the hill

  beyond the water tower

  with a folded

  cardboard box each

  and we run up and slide down

  the wide brown grassy hill

  until our hair is

  wet from sweat

  then after a while Cora makes a friend

  and they slide together

  then go off to play house

  under a tree

  and I lie back on the cardboard

  stare at the veins

  on the insides of my arms

  and laugh

  I never thought of us

  as gyōza

  Chapter 13

  YAKITORI

  Friday is the one afternoon

  when Yōhei, Shō, Ken, and I

  are all free, so we play soccer

  two on two, in the small park

  near our house

  until they leave for juku

  where they study more math

  more Japanese, more science

  to prepare for entrance exams

  for private middle schools

  the kind connected to high schools

  so they won’t have to take entrance exams

  again in three years

 

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