Kira-Kira

by Cynthia Kadohata

  I tried to concentrate on what Uncle was saying. The thing is, Uncle’s stories never seemed to come to a point. For instance, that night he told us about the time he and his first wife almost saw a legendary tornado. But they didn’t actually see it. They just happened to pass through a town the day before a tornado came through and ripped the town to shreds. The interesting part of this story to me was that he mentioned his first wife. My parents spoke only in hushed tones of Uncle’s first wife. Apparently, Uncle had loved this woman very much, but in a different way than he loved Auntie. I didn’t know what the difference was, but I knew that Auntie knew. I could tell by the way she grew irate whenever this ex-wife was mentioned. But she never said anything about it.

  Then Uncle spent about twenty minutes telling us about the time when he was young and he and a friend decided to practice target shooting with some cans. They didn’t hit anything, even after they moved to two feet away. Again, that didn’t seem like much of a story to me, but Auntie laughed appreciatively as Uncle described missing the cans, and missing them, and missing them again.

  Then he told us about the time a friend of his found a bag containing twenty thousand dollars. The owner of the bag claimed the money before the friend could “make off.” Now, the interesting thing about this story to me was that Uncle seemed a little disappointed that his friend hadn’t “made off.” Uncle was a very honest man and would never steal anything himself, but he seemed to admire people who did. He kept a lot of books at his house about famous criminals from history.

  Most of the story about the twenty thousand dollars consisted of Uncle coming up with ideas about how his friend could have ended up with this money, how he could have spent the money, and how Uncle himself would have spent this money had he been the one to find it. In this last version of the story no one ever claimed the money, so Uncle wasn’t stealing anything. Even in his imagination, it was impossible for him to steal anything or do anything really bad. I guess that was one reason why Auntie loved him so much.

  Uncle kept talking. The fire warmed my face. I wondered where Lynn and Amber were. When Lynn first started getting breasts, she showed them to David and Daniel. They were pretty young, so I didn’t know whether they liked seeing her breasts or not. I wondered whether she might now be showing her breasts to these cute boys. Someday when I developed breasts, I would show them only to my true love, Joe-John Abondondalarama, karate expert and millionaire. One reason I didn’t do so well in school was because many times I was up half the night enjoying my active dream life with Joe-John Abondondalarama. He would have two first names because his father was named Joe and his grandfather was named John, so his parents decided on Joe-John. We would get married, and I would be Katie Natsuko Takeshima Abondondalarama. Here is our story:

  We would meet at the Grand Canyon when I was seventeen. I would be gazing at the awe-inspiring chasm when a freak gust of wind would lift me up and fling me over the rail. I would hang in the wind over the Grand Canyon, moments from certain death. My life would flash before me. I would regret so many things. I would wish I hadn’t talked back so much to my parents. I would wish I had kept my part of the bedroom cleaner. I would wish I could have gotten at least one A in school. My screams would pierce the air. And suddenly, a strong arm would reach out and catch me. At the end of this strong arm would be Joe-John Abondondalarama. The sun would glisten off his black hair. His eyes would shine like the sun. Thunder would sound in my heart! Lightning! Eventually, we would have seven children.

  Even Lynn did not know about Joe-John, although someday she would be my maid of honor.

  Once in awhile I preferred to tell myself alternate versions of how I would meet Joe-John. For instance, I was working on a new story in my head. It was called “The Bathroom Story.” It went like this:

  Joe-John and I would be at a birthday party. We would never have met. Somehow or other (I was still figuring out the details), we would both end up in the bathroom together. Maybe I was admiring the shower curtain, and he came in because he spotted me from behind and liked my sweater. The door accidentally locked behind him, and we couldn’t get out. The party was so noisy that no one could hear us shouting. The window was stuck. We were in a back bathroom that rarely got used. Time passed. We talked until midnight, and then we had no choice but to sleep in the bathtub together. All night we would tell each other secrets, and then by morning we would be in love. As I said, I was still working on the details, but that’s the gist.

  That night, when my sister and Amber returned, they set their sleeping bags next to each other and lay whispering away from the rest of us. Then Lynn remembered me and called out, “Katie, come bring your sleeping bag!” I thought about shunning her for temporarily forgetting about me, but what good would that do? I dragged my sleeping bag over, and they started to tell me about their evening: how Lynn had kissed Gregg, and how Amber had almost kissed the other boy, and how they were the cutest boys in the class. Even Amber acted as if I were her good friend. Then Amber asked me whether I liked any special boys at school. At that moment I felt very close to my sister, and even to Amber. And how I loved camping! Moss hung off the tall pines around us, and the full moon shone through the moss. I remembered how all during my childhood, whenever the moon was full, Lynn used to sing me the “Rabbit on the Moon” song:

  Usagi Usagi nani mite haneru

  Jugoya otsuki-san mite haneru

  I told Lynn and Amber my Joe-John stories. I was pretty pleased about my future with him.

  Lynn and Amber laughed and laughed at me! They didn’t even pretend not to laugh! They didn’t even laugh really, they kind of honked and tried to get their breath. They became so hysterical, they seemed to be in danger of choking. Frankly, I thought all that honking sounded pretty unladylike, but I was too nice to say so.

  When they finished laughing, I realized they weren’t laughing at me—they thought they were laughing with me. They had thought I was just joking about Joe-John Abondondalarama. Lynn hugged me and exclaimed, “I love you, Katie!”

  Amber said, “You’re great! You’re the funniest person I ever met!”

  What could I say? I basked in their praise. I felt pretty phony pretending I’d just been kidding, though. I wished I had my own friend.

  chapter 7

  MY FATHER’S HOURS changed sometimes. His newest schedule was to work for ten to twelve hours, then eat and sleep a few hours at the hatchery, and then get up and work six hours. When he wasn’t working at his main hatchery, he worked at a different one in another town. My mother’s current shift ran from 4:30 A.M. to 1:30 P.M., plus three hours of overtime.

  When school let out for the summer, Lynn spent the first week at Amber’s house. Mrs. Kanagawa couldn’t watch Sam and me that week because she was tending to her sick mother in Oregon. Since I was almost eleven, I felt I was old enough to take care of Sammy and myself all day. But my mother didn’t think so. She decided that Sam and I would have to go with her to work every day. We could sleep in the car until her shift ended.

  The poultry processing plant where she worked was in the next town, about an hour from our house. The same man who owned the hatchery for egg-layers where my father mainly worked also owned several processing plants for his roasters and fryers. His name was Mr. Lyndon, and he was the richest man in the county and one of the richest men in Georgia. I’d never seen him, but my father had seen his car once—a Cadillac—and a girl at school said she once saw him from behind. He never came to his processing plants or the hatchery. If there was a problem that needed his attention, he sent an assistant. He was an invisible legend in the county: the big, mean, rich Mr. Lyndon. His great-great-grandfather, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father had all lived in Georgia.

  I thought of him as my mother drove up in the darkness to the processing plant. His wife was supposed to be very beautiful, with fingernails one inch long. Once when President Eisenhower had visited Georgia years earlier, he supposedly ate dinner at the Lyndons�
�� home. Their home was a former plantation mansion. He had torn down the old slave quarters on his property. In its place his wife had hired gardeners to create an azalea garden that was supposed to be gorgeous. Her garden was supposed to be so big, you could get lost in it. Such a world as they lived in was difficult to imagine. Someday when we owned a house, I would get my mother an azalea plant so she could start her own garden.

  Previously, my mother used to have to drive my father to his job and then drive herself back to the plant. But now we owned a new car. That is, it was an old car, but it was new to us. Rust was eating away at its paint, but my mother said that in its heyday it had been lovely. She had bought the cheapest car she could find. She didn’t want anything to take away from the house she longed to buy.

  I got to sit in front, which was a treat and made me feel like a grown-up. My brother slept in back. I’d sat in front only once before in the truck with Uncle Katsuhisa. You could see everything in the world out the front windshield.

  The road was empty, like so many roads we had driven on in my life. The highways in southern Georgia were famous for how dark they were, no light anywhere, no farm lights or streetlights or town lights. We passed a swamp, and I locked the door. The biggest swamp in Georgia was across the state. It was called Okefenokee Swamp, which means “Land of Trembling Earth” in Seminole. Our local swamp was called Brenda Swamp, named after a girl who died there way back before I was born. Her ghost lived in the swamp. It was looking for her parents. I stared out into the darkness, saw the moss hang like drool from the pines. When the wind blew, the swamp did seem to tremble.

  How I would hate to wander in that murky water for the rest of eternity looking for my parents! I looked over at my mother, but she was lost in thought. I looked back at my brother, who was sleeping peacefully. I looked back out at the swamp and thought of Brenda. She was ten when she died. I thought I saw something move out there, but then I didn’t see it anymore.

  I tried to stay awake to enjoy the ride in the front seat, but I fell asleep, and when I awoke, we were slowing down and I saw the first light I’d seen in awhile. Four tall lampposts stood near the fence surrounding the plant. Insects were like death to a poultry plant, so the lights were allowed to shine on the building but no lights could be attached to it. Inside, my mother said, everything was made of aluminum and steel. There was no wood, even in the chairs and tables in the reception office. Wood attracted insects. There was no vegetation inside the fence.

  Poultry was one of the biggest industries supporting the economy of Georgia, but that didn’t stop many people who did not work with poultry from looking down on those who did. That and the fact that I was Japanese were the two reasons the girls at school ignored me. Sometimes when Mom and I ran into the girls from my school with their mothers, the other mothers would not even acknowledge mine. My mother did not have to work. My father would have been happy to support all of us; in fact, I think he would have preferred it. But there was the important matter of the house that we needed to buy.

  Even within the plant, there was some snobbism. When we first moved here, my mother had started out working in the so-called dirty areas of the plant. That was where the blood and guts and feathers and such were handled. The workers from the clean sections weren’t allowed in the dirty sec-tions, and the workers from the dirty sections weren’t allowed in the clean sections. The dirty-section workers were the lowest of the low.

  The previous year my mother had been promoted into a clean section, where she worked cutting drumsticks and thighs off the bodies of the chickens. She was good with her hands and she wore gloves while she worked, but even so, little cuts often marred her delicate hands. And her wrists were so sore some days, she could hardly move them after work.

  She drove into a dirt parking lot outside the fenced area and parked near the few trees. There were already hundreds of cars parked. I looked around. It was so terribly dark. She looked at me. “Keep the doors locked,” she said. “I’ll come out on my break.”

  “Okay.” I gazed across the parking lot to the dark highway. “Why can’t we sleep inside while y’all are working?”

  “You might steal a chicken.”

  I knew she didn’t mean me in particular, but anyone. There were two things the factory manager possessed a morbid fear of: insects and stolen chickens. Where I might hide this stolen chicken was another matter.

  My mother looked at her watch. “I’m late for my shower. Stay in the car unless absolutely necessary.” There weren’t quite enough showers for all the employees at once, so everyone was assigned a shower time. My mother got out and hurried toward the plant.

  I locked the doors and climbed in back to be near my brother. I laid his head in my lap. When he was sleeping, he was like a rag doll. Nothing could wake him. I ran my hand over his head. I liked to feel his new bristly crew cut. A long truck moved through the gate at the fence. I could hear the clucking and squawking of chickens. The truck moved behind the building. I couldn’t see, but I knew the chickens were being unloaded.

  A big man walked slowly around the building. He didn’t see me. Maybe he was checking for people stealing chickens.

  Another car drove into the lot and parked near me. A woman about my mother’s age and a girl about my age got out. The girl glanced at me, hesitated, and then walked over. I lowered my window. Her mother glanced over but kept heading toward the plant.

  “Hi,” said the girl.

  “Hi.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Waiting for my mother. What’re you all doing?”

  “I do the laundry every morning. Then my uncle comes and picks me up on his way to work, and I hang around his office.” She paused, then repeated proudly, “My uncle works in an office.”

  “What kind of office?”

  “Insurance.” She spoke casually but was obviously very proud. I wished my father worked in an office! “I do the load for the shift that gets off at four thirty in the morning. Then my uncle brings me back during his lunchtime and I do one more load, and then my mother takes me home. I’m saving for a new school dress.”

  “Can I come in and see the plant?” I said.

  “You might steal a chicken!” she said, as if scolding me. I saw the man walking around the building again. She saw me studying him and said, “That’s the thug.”

  “What’s a thug?”

  She looked at him. He was watching us now, but then he kept walking. She leaned toward the car. “Didn’t your mother tell you? The workers are trying to unionize. The thug works for Mr. Lyndon. He discourages union activity. He doesn’t let any of the employees gather in the parking lot, even if they’re not talking about the union.” She checked her watch and said, “Gotta get the first load going!”

  She ran to the building and disappeared around a corner. Insects clustered around the lights at the fence. I wished we would get a house soon so my mother could stop working here. After a pause I decided that I wished that the girl I’d just met would get a house too, and maybe a new dress. My leg was falling asleep, so I shifted Sammy’s head in my lap. He looked so cute. I rolled up the window so the thug couldn’t get in and harm him.

  When I next woke, the hot sun was slanting through the windshield. I saw that Sam was still asleep. We used to joke that if nobody remembered to wake him, he would just sleep through the day and night and not get up again until we called him for breakfast. Lynn was like that too. That girl could sleep. Sometimes she slept for twelve hours in a row. But me, I slept restlessly a lot, and sometimes it seemed I barely slept at all. It was funny, because even though I was bad a lot, I also worried a lot about how bad I was. When I worried, I couldn’t sleep.

  Perspiration spotted Sam’s forehead. I wiped him off with my shirtsleeve. I opened a window, and a muggy gust of air shot across my face. If I’d known how to drive and had the keys, I would have driven the car into better shade. Then I saw my mother rushing across the asphalt surrounding the plant. She seemed even small
er than usual as she hurried over. Lynn was already a few inches taller than our mother. I pushed the car door open.

  “I was so worried!” she said.

  “I saw the thug walking!” I said.

  “What thug?”

  “The man who works for Mr. Lyndon to keep anyone from gathering and doing union activity.”

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  “A girl. I kept the door locked!”

  “You are not to talk to that girl again. And you are not to call that man a thug. He is an employee of Mr. Lyndon. Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah—yes. But, Mom? What’s ‘union activity’?”

  “A union is when all the workers get together and fight the very people who have provided them with a job and the very people who pay the employees money to give them the means to buy a house someday.”

  “So a union is bad?”

  “It’s wrong to fight the people who are trying to help you.”

  She looked at Sam sleeping so peacefully. I felt proud of myself that we were doing fine. She noticed the sweat on Sam’s face and got in and started the car. She pulled directly under a tree but kept the motor running. She tried the air conditioner. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. This time it worked. The noise was loud, though. Once, we had turned on the air conditioner and driven through various neighborhoods where my mother could admire the houses. Now she lay back against the car seat. I noticed a few white hairs that I’d never seen before. She was thirty-three, two years younger than my father. She was starting to look tired all the time. Usually when my parents were home, they were eating or sleeping. They didn’t eat with us because we ate earlier. We never did anything together anymore.

  After a moment I heard my mother breathing evenly. Many minutes passed, and I worried she was going to be late. I didn’t know what time it was, but she must have been on her lunch break. Still, I didn’t think she got long for lunch. I watched the shadows of the trees move over the dirt. Finally, I said, “Mom?”