Mieko and the Fifth Treasure

by Eleanor Coerr

  “Are you sure?” Yoshi asked, her eyes full of smiles. “We have no Tengu around here. At least, I don’t think so.”

  Mieko’s cheeks turned pink.

  “I ... I honestly did hear something. ”

  “Probably some small animal.” Yoshi looked curiously at Mieko. “Why don’t you come to school anymore?”

  “The doctor told Grandma that I needed a rest, ” Mieko said softly.

  “We thought that you didn’t like any of us at school. ”

  “But I thought ... ” stammered Mieko, “I thought you might not like me.”

  An awkward silence fell between them.

  Finally, Mieko said, “Well ... I guess I should be getting back home.”

  Yoshi nodded and followed Mieko down the mountain. When they came to Mieko’s yard, Grandma was sliding clothes off the bamboo clothes-line into a basket.

  “Hello!” Grandma waved. “Come in and sit down.” She served them a special treat of bean cakes. Grandma asked Yoshi many questions, but Mieko sat silently sipping her tea.

  Between bites of the light-as-air crispy pastry filled with sweet bean-jam, Yoshi told Grandma all about herself and school.

  “My parents were killed when I was a baby,” she said, “so I live with my aunt and uncle.”

  Mieko stared at her in surprise. She had imagined that Yoshi was the luckiest girl in the world who had absolutely everything. She wondered how Yoshi could smile and be nice all the time when she had lost her family.

  She accompanied Yoshi to the gate and watched her walk toward home.

  In the days that followed, Mieko lingered outside, hoping to see Yoshi again. But she didn’t see her until a week later. Mieko and Grandma were buying tea in the grocery shop when Yoshi came in.

  “Aunt Hisako sent me for some tea,” she told Mieko .

  “We came for the same thing,” Mieko said, smiling.

  They walked together back to Grandma’s house.

  “Would you like to see my room?” Mieko asked shyly.

  “Well ... sure. I guess.”

  Upstairs, Mieko wanted to show Yoshi something, but she had no special clothes or pretty dolls. She hesitated, then opened a drawer and brought out her four treasures: the inkstone, inkstick, brush and roll of rice paper.

  Yoshi ran her fingers over the lily that was carved into the inkstone. Then she stroked the bristles of the brush.

  “What fine art supplies!” she exclaimed .with admiration. “You must be good at painting.”

  Mieko did not answer. She put the treasures away. She could not bear to tell Yoshi about how she had lost the fifth treasure. Mieko was sure that Yoshi would not like a girl with so much hatred inside of her.

  To change the subject, Mieko took Yoshi to the garden where they puzzled over the words on Grandpa’s rock.

  As Yoshi was leaving, she asked, “Are you going to school tomorrow?”

  Mieko wasn’t sure she was ready for school, but she didn’t want to say no to Yoshi.

  “Maybe.”

  By suppertime she had made up her mind. Mieko stopped eating her noodle soup and said, “I think I’ll go to school tomorrow.”

  Her grandparents looked up, surprised.

  “Grandpa,” Mieko went on, her dark eyes serious. “I’m beginning to understand the words on your rock. They mean that I should not worry about my scar, or about going back to school.”

  He pulled her close to him.

  “I do believe you are becoming wise,” he said with a chuckle. “You are learning to accept things you cannot change. And most important, you are accepting yourself—scars and all.”

  After the dishes were washed and put away, they sat and talked—all smiling—until the stars came out.

  At bedtime Mieko stared at her face in the mirror. It was plain and round, framed by black hair and bangs. That was all. Mieko wished that a tiny bit of goodness showed in her face like it did in Yoshi’s.

  This time, as she was falling asleep, there was no sick feeling at the thought of school, and her throat was not so tight. It was as if she was coming into the light after being in a dark tunnel. Maybe everything was going to be all right.

  SEVEN

  THE CONTEST

  As soon as Mieko entered the classroom, she knew that something was different. Everyone was smiling—except Akira, who scowled at her from his new place in the front row under the teacher’s nose.

  “We are happy to see you back, Mieko,” Miss Suzuki said pleasantly, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “We’ve been studying the atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” one of the girls said. “You must have been brave.”

  Mieko felt the bitterness inside of her beginning to disappear like the early morning mist.

  After that, school went surprisingly well. Mieko managed to write her lessons with a pencil. Miss Suzuki looked pleased. In composition class, Mieko wrote her first letter home.

  Dear Mother and Father,

  I have a new friend, Yoshi, and I like school. My hand is still sore, so my writing isn’t good. I haven’t painted with my brush yet. I miss you, too.

  Love,

  Mieko

  One day, in her bedroom, Mieko opened the drawer and brought out her four treasures. Sitting on a cushion, she rubbed the inkstick onto the wetted inkstone. When the ink was black and thick enough, Mieko picked up the brush and began to make the stroke for “one.” She felt like a small child learning to write for the first time.

  Holding a pencil hadn’t hurt much, but a flash of pain went through her hand when she pressed the brush hard onto the paper. Mieko caught her breath and finished the stroke. She frowned at the crooked line. It didn’t look at all like the graceful bone stroke that she had made perfectly countless times before.

  Grandma came in and bent over for a look. Mieko tried to cover the paper, but Grandma had already seen the sloppy “one.”

  “Here.” Grandma took the brush and smoothly painted the stroke. “So—that is the way it goes,” she said. “Now you try again.”

  Without a word, Mieko cleaned the brush and inkstone and put the four treasures away. Of course she knew how the stroke should look. Why didn’t Grandma know that?

  Mieko and Yoshi began spending more and more time together.

  “You girls are as close as a pair of chopsticks, ” Grandpa said.

  Sometimes, after school, Mieko took Yoshi to her secret place. Inside the pipe they sat and watched the hermit crabs skittering crazily around on the sand. Or they collected tiny shells, and pebbles worn smooth by the waves.

  They wandered up the mountain, gathering yellow and gold leaves for Grandma and for Yoshi’s Aunt Hisako. Mieko loved the mellow autumn colors that spread over the earth and trees. Often they flung themselves down onto the grass, looking at the sky, trying to find animals in the puffy clouds. Mieko was forgetting the loneliness that used to bring her to the mountain and to the shore.

  All the while they kept an eye out for Tengu.

  “He has probably gone underground for the winter,” Yoshi said with a giggle.

  As they raced back down the mountain, they sang,

  “Tengu’s nose grows and grows. Tengu’s feet—red as a beet!”

  The folktale demon became their private joke. During dull history classes they passed notes to each other, adding more lines to their song. Then they hid their faces behind their books and tried not to laugh.

  There was a touch of winter in the air when Miss Suzuki made an announcement.

  “Our school is having a calligraphy contest on the last day before the New Year’s holidays. It will be for those students who paint word-pictures with a brush. At the last minute, I will write the contest word on the blackboard. The one who paints the word with the most artistic brushstrokes will win. Those brushstrokes will be copied onto a brass square and fastened to the big rock in the schoolyard.”

  “Let’s enter the contest!” Yoshi said eagerly.

  Mieko shook her head.
How could she think of entering a contest when she couldn’t even paint the easiest strokes?

  “Please!” coaxed Yoshi. “It will be fun. Besides, none of us had calligraphy lessons during the war, and you studied brush-painting for a long time.” She pulled on Mieko’s sleeve. “You have a better chance to win than any of us.”

  “Oh, yes!” Mieko thought bitterly. “I’ve had lessons, but they are all wasted.”

  She glanced at Yoshi’s delicate fingers. How could she compete against someone like her? And all the others with their perfect hands? Worst of all, Mieko knew that she would never win without the special magic of the fifth treasure.

  But Yoshi talked about the contest all the way home and into Mieko’s yard. Grandma was washing clothes in a big tub. She lifted a shirt, then slapped it hard against the washboard to get the dirt out. Slap! Slap!

  “There’s an art contest at school,” Yoshi told her, “and I think Mieko should try.”

  Grandma stopped working, her wet red hands on her hips.

  “I think so, too.” She looked hard at Mieko. “Your parents would be so proud ... ”

  “No!” Mieko said quickly. “I’m not ready.” She paused. “I ... I can’t.”

  And that was the end of it. At least, so Mieko thought.

  EIGHT

  AUNT HISAKO

  One crisp fall day, Yoshi announced, “I’m having a tea party on Sunday. And I want you to come.”

  Mieko was wildly excited. She was sure Yoshi’s house would be like a castle in a fairy tale.

  On the special day Grandma did not go out to the fields to help Grandpa harvest rice. Instead, she stayed home to make certain that Mieko was properly dressed for the important occasion. She tied a blue ribbon in Mieko’s hair, knotting it so tightly that Mieko yelled. Grandma puffed out the bow and smoothed Mieko’s best skirt.

  “Mieko, where is your clean hankie?”

  Mieko pulled it from her pocket.

  “Don’t forget to use it,” Grandma said. She gave one last pat to the dress. “There! You are ready.”

  At Yoshi’s house Mieko stood in front of the tall closed gate. Off to one side was a small door. After a few minutes Mieko worked up enough courage to knock lightly on it. At first there was silence. Mieko knocked louder.

  Soon she heard the clatter of geta inside the yard.

  “It’s me, Mieko,” she called, giving a polite bow even though nobody could see her.

  The small door opened and Yoshi stuck her head out. “I knew it was you,” she said, laughing. “Come on in.”

  At the entrance the girls removed their clogs and donned slippers to walk down the hall. As they flip-flopped along, Mieko’s big slippers kept falling off. She was glad when they reached the sliding door of the living room so that she could step barefoot onto the tatami.

  Mieko caught her breath with wonder. The room was so big—eight mats! Silk cushions were waiting near a low table. Mieko’s mouth watered when she saw cookies and cakes beside a teapot and matching cups. She hoped they could eat soon.

  “Do sit down,” Yoshi said in a grown-up hostess voice.

  Mieko tucked her feet under her and sat opposite Yoshi. At home she sometimes sprawled, but here she was extra ladylike so as not to shame Grandma.

  In the silence the clock on the wall ticked loudly. Mieko looked at the pictures that hung in the alcove and above the door. She liked the black ink dragon best. The artist’s brushstrokes flicked and skipped across the paper, making the dragon come alive. Mieko could almost feel the heat from its fiery breath.

  The other painting was a poem in calligraphy that said, “In the midst of the world’s corruption, a heart of pure white jade.”

  Mieko wondered what corruption meant.

  Suddenly, Yoshi said, “We don’t have to be so quiet. It’s just us, alone.”

  Mieko grinned, and soon they were eating the sweets and chattering about school.

  Mieko had crammed the last cake into her mouth when a slim, elegant woman padded into the room. She was dressed in a green silk kimono with peonies on it and a brocade sash that glittered with gold threads. Her glossy black hair was pulled back into a soft bun.

  Mieko stared at her face—so beautiful and smooth, as if she did have a heart of pure white jade.

  “Aunt Hisako, this is my best friend, Mieko,” Yoshi said.

  Aunt Hisako flashed a cool smile in Mieko’s direction and lowered herself gracefully onto a cushion.

  “When you have finished eating, little stranger, you may call me Aunt Hisako,” she said primly. “By the way, young ladies in this house chew each bite thirty times.”

  While the girls chewed and chewed, Aunt Hisako asked Mieko, “What is your favorite subject at school?”

  Mieko had lost count of the chewing, but she was sure that she had done at least thirty, so she swallowed and answered, “The reading class, Aunt Hisako.”

  Mieko’s leg began to go numb and she tried hard not to wriggle. When she could not stand the pins and needles tingling any longer, Mieko sneaked a hand down and rubbed her leg.

  Aunt Hisako’s eyebrows lifted disapprovingly. She began to talk about calligraphy, using big words that Mieko did not understand.

  “Do you paint word-pictures?” Mieko asked meekly.

  “Heavens no!” Aunt Hisako replied in her deep voice. “I am only a scholar of brush-painting. In other words, I study the work of famous writing masters. It gives me great pleasure.” She fixed her eyes on Mieko. “I suppose you will try to win the school contest, too?”

  Mieko shook her head.

  “I’m too clumsy.”

  “Nonsense!” Aunt Hisako threw up her pale hands. “Clumsiness is in your mind. Besides, your hand looks almost completely healed. So that is no excuse.”

  “But ... ” began Mieko, wondering how best to explain to Aunt Hisako about the lost fifth treasure.

  “Little stranger,” Aunt Hisako said, “have you not heard of the holy priest, Kobo Daishi, who could paint the most exquisite word-pictures? And not only with his right hand.”

  Mieko shook her head.

  “With his left hand,” Aunt Hisako continued, “or holding a brush between the toes of his right foot, or between the toes of his left foot, or even between his teeth.”

  Mieko was speechless, trying to imagine what the priest looked like painting with his feet.

  “If he can do that, little stranger,” Aunt Hisako said sharply, “you can surely paint with one hand.”

  Mieko shifted uneasily on the cushion, wishing that she had not come. She wondered how long she would have to live in the village before Aunt Hisako stopped calling her a stranger.

  “Nothing in life is easy,” Aunt Hisako said, rising to her feet. “You don’t want to be a coward, do you?”

  A coward!

  The word thudded inside of Mieko’s head. For the first time in weeks the old tightness was back in her throat. She sat there with her head bowed.

  “Why don’t you look at me?” asked Aunt Hisako. “Do I scare you?”

  “A little,” Mieko said in a low voice. “But I have seen lots of other frightening things.”

  Aunt Hisako almost smiled.

  “So I am a frightening thing?”

  Mieko didn’t know what to say.

  Aunt Hisako turned, saying, “It’s time for my nap.” As she wafted out of the room she pulled a book from a shelf in the corner. She opened it to show them an illustration, then closed it with a snap that made Mieko jump.

  “You may take this book home,” Aunt Hisako said. “If you study the brushstrokes on these pages, and practice, one of you might win the prize. Remember, a gem, unless polished, does not glitter.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Hisako,” the girls said in chorus, bowing until their heads almost touched the tatami.

  After she left, Yoshi said, “I’m really sorry. Aunt Hisako sounds terrifying, but she only wants to help.”

  On the way home Mieko thought about what Aunt Hisako had said.
She didn’t want to be a coward. But how could she try to win the contest without the fifth treasure?

  She dutifully told Grandma every detail about Yoshi’s grand house and the tea party and Aunt Hisako—everything except the coward part.

  But that night she lay awake for a long time. She couldn’t forget what Aunt Hisako had said.

  As her eyes were closing, Mieko whispered, “I will enter the contest. Even if I have no chance of winning. That will show her I’m not a coward.”

  NINE

  FRIENDSHIP

  There was one thing about the contest that Mieko did not understand. It buzzed around in her head like a pesky fly all through breakfast.

  “You are unusually quiet,” Grandpa said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well ...” Mieko tried to explain. “If two students paint the contest word the same way, who will win?”

  Grandpa rubbed the gray stubble on his chin.

  “I don’t think that is possible,” he said slowly. “The wetness, dryness, and speed of one artist’s brushstrokes will be different from anyone else’s. Painting a word-picture is much like playing the piano. No two expert musicians will play a piece of music in exactly the same way.”

  He opened Aunt Hisako’s book and pointed out some of the masterpieces of calligraphy.

  “Here is the word-picture for ‘happiness.’ It looks quite different when painted by two great artists, doesn’t it? They each have a fifth treasure, but their own personalities and styles show up in their work.

  Mieko pored over the pages.

  “You must paint not what the eye sees,” Grandpa said, “but what the heart knows. If your heart has beauty, so will your painting. Do you understand?”

  Mieko nodded. “Sort of.”

  Grandpa smiled broadly.

  “Does your question mean that you will enter the contest?”

  “Yes, Grandpa,” she said, not telling him her reasons.

  Grandma turned from the sink. She came over and held out her arms. Mieko buried her face in the clean-smelling apron and hugged Grandma hard.