She stood looking down in mortified silence as he introduced himself. “My name is Peter Jenkins,” he said, holding out a hand to her, and she shook it. And then she slowly looked up at him again. He was even taller than Kenji. He was very long and lean, with soft brown hair, blue eyes, and an air of solidity about him. He seemed very young, but he was actually twenty-seven, and Tak's assistant. He was an assistant political science professor at Stanford.
“I went to Japan once. It was the most beautiful country I've ever seen. I especially liked Kyoto.” He knew that was where she was from, and he really meant it. “This must all seem so foreign to you,” he said gently. “Just coming back from Japan was a shock for me. I can't even imagine what it must be like for you, never having been here.” Seeing his own culture through her eyes made it all seem very odd even to him, and he smiled at her warmly. He had a friendly face and kind eyes, and even without knowing him, she liked him.
But Hiroko lowered her eyes again in embarrassment, and smiled hesitantly. He was right. It was a shock. She had been trying to wrestle with all the new impressions and experiences that had assaulted her since that morning. Even her cousins had been different than she expected. And there seemed to be no one here that she could really talk to, at least not for the moment.
“I like it very much,” she said softly, staring at her feet, and feeling that she should have bowed to him, but Reiko seemed to think that she shouldn't. “I am very lucky,” she whispered, trying to look up at him, but unable to do it. She was simply too shy to look at him again, but he knew that. She was like a little girl, and yet very much a woman. And despite her age, she was nothing like any of his students. She was so much more delicate, so withdrawn, and yet at the same time, one sensed something quietly strong about her. She was an interesting girl, and apparently a bright one, but she had all the exquisite delicacy and gentleness of her culture, and just looking at her in the backyard, Peter Jenkins was bowled over by her. She embodied everything he had loved about Japanese women when he'd visited Japan. And all he could do now was stare at her, as she stood trembling before him.
“Would you like to go back inside?” he asked gently, sensing that he had cornered her there, and she was too embarrassed to flee him. She nodded, and barely glanced up at him through dark lashes. “I hear from Tak that you're going to St. Andrew's in September,” he said as they walked slowly back to the house, and he silently admired her kimono. It was lovely. A moment later he found Reiko chatting with two friends, and he left Hiroko there with her cousin, who smiled at him and introduced her easily to the two women.
Hiroko bowed low to them, showing her respect for the Tanakas' friends, and the women looked faintly amused as they watched her. Across the patio, Peter was telling Tak that he had just met their cousin.
“She's a sweet girl, poor thing, she must feel so lost here,” Peter said sympathetically. There was something about her that made you want to take her under your wing and protect her.
“She'll get used to it.” Tak smiled, holding a glass of wine. The barbecue had gone well, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the party. “I did.” He grinned. “You're just fascinated with Japan, ever since that trip you took.” It was true. Peter had been completely enamored with the entire country.
“I can't understand why you don't miss it.”
But Tak always said he loved the United States, and it was obvious he would have been a citizen if he could have become one, but he couldn't. Despite twenty years of living in the States and having married an American, it was against the law for him to become an American citizen.
“I was stifled there. Look at her.” Takeo glanced at his young cousin. To him, she embodied everything he had hated about Japan, and had fled from. “She is strangled and bound; she is afraid to look at us. She is wearing the same garment they wore five hundred years ago. She'll bind her breasts if she has any, and if she gets pregnant, she'll bind her stomach, and she probably won't even tell her husband she's expecting. When she's old enough, her parents will find her a husband she's never met before. And they'll never have a single real conversation. They'll spend their entire lives bowing to each other, and hiding their feelings. And it's exactly the same thing in business, only worse. Everything is run by tradition, everything is appearances and respect and custom. You can never just speak out and say what you feel, and go after a woman simply because you love her. I'd probably never have been able to marry Reiko in Japan, if we'd met there. I would have had to marry the woman my parents selected. I just couldn't live with it. Seeing Hiroko brought it all back to me today. She's like a bird in a cage, too frightened even to sing. No, I don't miss Japan,” he smiled ruefully, “but I'm sure she does. Her father's a good man, and somehow he managed to keep his spirit alive in spite of all that repression. He has a lovely wife, and I think they really like each other. But when I see Hiroko, I see it all again. Nothing ever changes there. It's oppressive,” he said, and Peter nodded. He had seen the repression there, and the traditions too. But he had seen so much more. He couldn't understand why Takeo didn't love it as he did.
“You have such a sense of history in Japan, just being there, knowing that nothing has changed for the last thousand years, and hopefully nothing will for the next thousand either. I loved it. And I love watching her. I love everything she stands for,” Peter said simply, as Tak looked at him in amusement.
“Don't let Reiko hear you say that. She thinks Japanese women never get a fair shake, and they're completely dominated by their husbands. She's as American as apple pie, and she loves that. She hated going to school there.”
“I think you're both crazy.” Peter smiled, and then he got pulled away by two of the other professors from Stanford, and he never got to speak to Hiroko again. But he saw her bowing as she said good night to some of the Tanakas' friends, and despite everything Tak had said, Peter thought she looked dignified and graceful. It was a custom he found touching, and not in any way degrading. And as he prepared to leave, their eyes met for a single moment, and for an instant he could have sworn that she looked right at him, but within a fraction of a second her eyes were lowered again and she was talking to one of her cousins.
No one had spoken Japanese to her that night, and she smiled when Peter bowed slightly to her before he left, and said sayonara. She looked up at him to see if he was making fun of her. But his eyes were warm, and he was smiling at her. She bowed formally to him then, and kept her eyes down when she told him that it had been an honor to meet him. He said the same, and then left with the attractive blonde he had come with. Hiroko watched him for a moment, and then took Tami upstairs to her bedroom. She was yawning and it was late, but she had had a good time. They all had. Even Hiroko had enjoyed it, although she didn't know anyone, and everything she touched or tasted or encountered was so different from everything she knew and everything she had expected.
“Did you have fun?” Reiko asked as Hiroko came down to help in the kitchen again, after putting Tami to bed. They had invited several students her age, but she had been too shy to speak to them. She had spent most of her time alone, or with Tami. Peter Jenkins was the only adult guest she had actually talked to. But that had been his doing and not hers. It had been difficult for her to speak to anyone, even him. She was just too shy, but she had found the evening interesting and the guests friendly.
“I have fun,” she confirmed, and Reiko smiled at her. She knew that Tami would take cafe of Hiroko's English. Lassie was lying on the floor wagging her tail as they spoke, waiting for scraps from the party. Ken and Tak were outside cleaning up the barbecue, and collecting abandoned glasses. Only Sally seemed not to be helping. She was in the downstairs closet, on the phone with a friend, and had promised half an hour before that she'd be off in a minute, but there was something she had to tell her.
“You were a big success,” Reiko said, and meant it. “Everyone loved meeting you, Hiroko. And I'm sure it wasn't easy.” The young girl blushed, and went on helping with the dish
es in silence. She was so shy that it still surprised all of them, and yet Reiko had seen her talking to Peter. He had come to the party tonight with his new girlfriend. She was a model in San Francisco, and she had noticed Ken eyeing her with approval.
“Did everyone have a good time?” Tak inquired as he came in from the patio with a tray full of glasses. “I thought it was a really nice evening,” he complimented his wife, and smiled at Hiroko.
“I too,” she said softly. “Hamburgers are great,” she paraphrased Tami, and they all laughed, as Ken helped himself to some leftover chicken. He ate constantly, but he was the right age for that, and he was going to start football practice for school at the end of August. “Thank you for a very nice party,” Hiroko added politely, and a little while later they all went upstairs to their respective bedrooms.
Sally and Hiroko undressed quietly, and then slipped into bed in their nightgowns. And as they lay there, Hiroko thought of how far she had come, the long journey she'd had, the people she'd met, and the warm welcome she'd had from her cousins. Even if they weren't Japanese anymore, she liked all of them. She liked Ken, with his mischief and his long limbs, and his insatiable appetite, and Sally with her fascination with clothes and boys and telephones and secrets, and especially little Tami with her remarkable doll-house and determination to make Hiroko American, and their parents who had been so kind to her, and even given her a party. She liked their friends too …and even Lassie. She just wished, as she lay there, thinking about all of it and what an adventure it had been, that her parents and Yuji could have been there too. And maybe then she wouldn't have been so homesick.
She turned on her side, with her long black hair fanned out behind her on the pillow, and she could hear Sally already snoring softly. But Hiroko couldn't sleep. Too much had happened to her. She had spent her first day in America. And she had more than eleven months ahead of her, before she could go home to her parents.
As she drifted off to sleep, she first counted the months, and then the weeks …and finally the moments…. She was counting in Japanese as she began to dream, thinking that she was home again, with them…. Soon, she whispered as she slept…. Soon …home …And in the distance she heard a young man say sayonara. …she didn't know who he was, or what it meant, but she sighed as she turned over and put an arm around Sally.
Chapter 5
HIROKO SPENT her second day in America pleasantly with her cousins. They drove to San Francisco in the station wagon in the afternoon. They went to Golden Gate Park, had tea in the Japanese tea garden, and went to the Academy of Science. They drove her downtown, and she got a glimpse of I. Magnin from the car before they returned to Palo Alto.
Lassie was waiting for them at home, in the yard, and she wagged her tail when she saw Hiroko.
And as soon as they got home, Sally disappeared again, as did Ken, and Hiroko went to help her Aunt Reiko cook dinner. After she had set the liable for them, Tami ran downstairs to play with her dollhouse. Reiko had told her to set the table for seven, and Hiroko wondered who was coming to dinner. She thought maybe it was one of the children's friends, but Reiko said casually that it was Tak's assistant.
“I think you met him last night, at the barbecue. His name is Peter Jenkins.” Hiroko nodded and lowered her eyes. He was the young man who had spoken to her outside, and told her how much he liked Kyoto.
And he was just as pleasant, and she was just as shy with him as she had been the night before, when he arrived carrying a bottle of wine for Tak, and a bunch of flowers for Reiko.
He asked how they'd spent the afternoon, as he sat down easily in their living room, and Hiroko disappeared immediately to cast an eye on dinner in the kitchen. As she had the night before, she had bowed low to him, and he had bowed to her, which Tak thought was amusing.
“She's incredibly shy, poor little thing,” Tak said, once she'd left the room. He hadn't seen women behave that way since he'd left Japan twenty years before. And he hoped she'd get over it during her year in California. Even with him, as a relative, she barely dared look up at him, and with a young man like Peter, she barely dared say a word to him.
Hiroko was quiet during dinner that night, and she seemed thoughtful about their conversation. Ken and Sally were, arguing about a movie they had seen, and Tami was just daydreaming. But Peter and Tak and Reiko were having a serious discussion about the war in Europe. The situation was obviously escalating, and the poor British were taking a terrible beating, not to mention the frightening situation between the Germans and the Russians.
“I think we're going to have to get into it eventu-ally.” Takeo said quietly. “Roosevelt apparently admitted it privately. There's just no other way.”
“That's not what he's saying to the American public,” Reiko said firmly, looking worried. Her husband was too old to be called into it, if America entered the war, but Ken was young enough to get drafted in two years, if it continued. And that prospect frightened both Tak and Reiko.
“I thought about volunteering for the RAF last year,” Peter admitted seriously, as Hiroko glanced at him cautiously from under her lashes. None of them was paying any attention to her, and it was easier to look at him now, and concentrate on what they all were saying. “But I didn't want to leave the university. There's a real risk I might not get my job back.” Everything was seniority and tenure, and he had a great job in the political science department as Tak's assistant. He didn't want to give that up, even for a worthwhile cause, but he knew that maybe eventually he'd have to. But for the moment, he was still thinking about his future. At twenty-seven, he didn't feel as though he could just throw it all away to go and fight someone else's battle.
“I don't think you should go unless we do get into it,” Takeo said thoughtfully, although he knew he might have been tempted himself if he were younger. And then, as they finished the meal, the conversation turned to other subjects, the lecture Tak was preparing with Peter's help, and some changes he wanted to make in the department. And it was only then that Peter realized Hiroko was following their conversation very closely.
“Are you interested in politics, Hiroko?” he asked quietly. He was sitting across from her, and she lowered her eyes again before she blushed and answered.
“Sometimes. My father speaks of these things too. But I do not always understand them.”
“Neither do I.” He smiled, wishing that she would look at him again. She had eyes that seemed bottomless in their shiny blackness. “Your father teaches at the university in Kyoto, doesn't he?” Peter asked. She nodded, and then got up to help Reiko with the dishes. She could barely bring herself to speak to him, although he seemed very pleasant, and she found his conversation with Takeo both interesting and enlightening.
He and Takeo went into the study after that, to do some work, and when the dishes were done Hiroko went downstairs with Tami to help her work on her dollhouse. She made some tiny origami flowers and birds for her to put in it, and the smallest of drawings to hang on the walls, including one of the mountains at sunset. Reiko was amazed when she came downstairs and saw what she had done. She was not only a girl of gentle manners, but one with many talents.
“Did your mother teach you how to do that?” Reiko was fascinated by the minuscule origami birds she had made for Tami.
“My grandmother.” She smiled. She was wearing a green-and-blue kimono as she sat on the floor, with a bright blue obi, and she looked very lovely. “She taught me many things …about flowers and animals, and how to care for a house, and weaving straw mats. My father thinks these things are very old-fashioned and quite useless,” she said sadly. It was all part of why he had made her come here, because he thought she was too much as her grandmother had been, too old-fashioned, and not modern, as he was. But it was what she felt in her soul, she loved the old ways, and the ancient traditions. She loved helping her mother run their home and do the cooking, and tend the garden. And she loved being with children. She would make a good wife one day, though perhaps not a mode
rn one. Or maybe in America she would leam those things that her father felt were lacking in her. She hoped so, so that she could go home again, and be with them. After two days in America, she liked being there, but she was still terribly homesick.
Tami showed her mother the drawings Hiroko had done, and eventually, the two women went upstairs and put Tami to bed, and then came back down to find Takeo and Peter. They were finished with their work by then, and were sitting in the living room with Ken and Sally. They were playing Monopoly, and Hiroko smiled as she watched them, and they laughed, and Ken accused Sally of cheating.
“You did not have a hotel on Park Place. I saw you, you took it.”
“I did not!” she squealed at him, and then accused him of stealing Boardwalk. And the fight went on as everyone laughed, and Hiroko tried to understand the game. It looked like fun, but mainly because they were having such a good time at it, and Peter played with them just like one of the children. He offered to give his place to her, but she declined. She was too shy to play with them, although it reminded her of when she had played shogi with her brother. He often cheated too, and they got into endless arguments over who had really won, and no one ever seemed to agree on the winner.
It was after ten o'clock when Peter finally left, and Reiko promised to have him to dinner again that week. They wanted to get to know his new girlfriend. But Takeo reminded her that they were leaving for Lake Tahoe the following weekend. They were going to be gone for two weeks. As they did every year, they had rented a cabin. Takeo and Ken loved to fish, and Sally loved to water-ski, although they all agreed that the lake was freezing.
“I'D call you when we get back,” Reiko said, and Peter waved as he left, and thanked her for the evening. He and Tak had a big week ahead of them, mapping out the curriculum for the coming term. They both wanted to get it done before Takeo left for his vacation.
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