While I Was Away Read online

  Dedication

  To my family and friends,

  near and far

  then and now

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  One wintry January afternoon, my mom said to me:

  「和歌、ちょっと洗濯たたんでよ。」

  “Waka, chotto sentaku tatande yo.”

  She was on the floor, legs tucked under her, and surrounded by a huge pile of laundry when she spoke in that parent-telling-you-to-do-something-you-don’t-want-to-do tone of voice.

  She was asking me to help fold the laundry, but there was a lot going on in the house. I got distracted, so I didn’t answer her back right away. Dad was doing his calisthenics in front of the TV while he watched the news. “They’re rajio taisou,” he said, or the “radio exercises” he grew up with in Japan. I called them “Dad-isthenics.” Shuffle to the right, deep side lunge. Shuffle to the left, deep side lunge. Lunge-walk forward to adjust the antenna on the TV, and backstroke back into position. Add some arm circles and, oh wow, even high kicks, can-can style.

  If the exercises alone weren’t enough of a distraction, my dad’s goofy outfit made it worse. He was wearing gray-and-black checkered polyester pants, a blue-and-white striped polo shirt, and a long washcloth tied around his head to control his floppy black hair. We were almost halfway through the ’80s, but it was pretty clear that style-wise my dad was stuck in the 1970s.

  Again my mom said, “Waka, chotto sentaku tatande,” but again I did not answer her. I was too busy keeping an eye on my siblings to be bothered with her request. My five-year-old brother Taiga had been quiet too long, and I never trusted when he was quiet. He did things like get into my nail polish and use it to spike his hair into a mohawk, so every now and then I had been peeking in on him in our room. I had my eye on my older brother Hajime too. He was working on his homework at the dining room table, but I knew once Dad finished watching the news, there’d be a dash to the dial. I wanted to get there before Hajime did so I could change the channel to what I wanted to watch.

  My mom’s request rang out a third time. “Waka, sentaku tatande.” Her requests to fold the laundry were getting shorter and more direct. I should have noticed. I should have folded the laundry when I heard the edge in my mom’s voice. But my older sister was sitting right there! Why couldn’t she help? But instead of folding the laundry, I looked toward Aya, hoping to draw my mom’s attention to her.

  If I didn’t respond to my mom’s plea for help with the laundry, it definitely wasn’t because I didn’t understand what she said. But fast-forward a week later when I realized she had an entirely different take on the situation.

  My mom was making dinner when she said, “Waka, natsu yasumi ni mata Nihon ni ikanakucha.”

  Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . if I heard correctly, my mom had just ruined my summer vacation as she calmly stir-fried the chicken with the zucchini. I closed my eyes and tossed Mom’s words around, letting them cook, hoping I had misunderstood her. I hadn’t.

  “What?” I asked. “You want me to go to Japan this summer? Again? Why?”

  “Every time I ask you to do something in Japanese, you look at Aya to translate.” Mom splashed some rice wine into the wok. “Like last week when I asked you to help with the laundry.”

  Not true! My mom was speaking to me in Japanese right now, and I understood exactly what she said. The food sizzled and hissed like a snake. I wanted to hiss right back.

  “But I just went!” I responded in English. Sometimes I did that when I got stressed and had to get the words out quickly. It was exactly the wrong thing to do in that moment.

  “A couple years ago. Clearly, that wasn’t enough time for your Japanese to stick.”

  The aroma of my mom’s cooking made my stomach growl with hunger. But it was also growling at my mom. I mean, my Japanese was decent enough! I could hold my own in a conversation for about five minutes before anyone suspected I wasn’t Japanese. After which they might cock their head to the side and wonder what part of Japan I was from because there was something about the way I said things that might be a little different from how they would say it. In another couple minutes, before they assumed I was slow or something, my mother would jump in and explain that I was actually born here, in the US. This information usually resulted in an amazed Ohhhh that I knew as much Japanese as I did. Pretty darn good for an American like myself.

  I groaned. “But I’ve been going to Japan since I was five.”

  “When you were five,” corrected my mother. “And that was only for three weeks. Do you even remember anything from then?”

  I did remember! Unfortunately, the first memory that popped into my mind was that of a squat toilet. That trip was the first time I had ever seen one. It’s like a urinal, but one that’s lying on the floor instead of upright. To use it, you squat down over it . . . and go! All the while making sure not to pee on your underpants in the process. But . . . that was probably not the best example to bring up.

  “I remember going to the beach.” I substituted a better memory to share with my mother.

  “How about language? What Japanese do you remember?”

  That first trip was when I learned the word “gehin,” which I guess means “vulgar,” but at the time I thought it meant “dirty like poo.” I called my older brother “gehin” as much as possible. I couldn’t let my mom know, though, that potty words were the only language I came back with from my first trip to Japan.

  I frowned. “So the international school again?”

  My mom laughed as she moved the chicken around the wok with her long, cooking-style chopsticks. “That school was too expensive, and you know you just spoke English there with all your friends.”

  I was nine the second time we went to Japan. During that summer, my mom sent Aya, Hajime, and me to an international school that was about thirty minutes by train away from my grandmother’s house. Boy, was I upset about having to go to school then! The international school was full of other not-quite-Japanese kids upset at losing their summer too. A lot of them had lived in the US like us—their language skills not good enough to attend a regular school either.

  One afternoon during that trip, my mom asked, “What did you learn in school today?”

  “Sumo wrestling!” I responded with glee. Even though I didn’t like the international school, the sumo wrestling during PE class was definitely a highlight for that particular day.

  My mom’s brow furrowed. “The girls too?”

  “Yep! I’m pretty good at it too.”

  “Girls don’t sumo wrestle.” My mom wasn’t pleased. “How about Japanese? What Japanese did you learn?”

  I shrugged and tried to sumo my brother in the living room.

  This was probably when my mom decided to send us a third time.

  Thinking back to that third trip, a chill ran t
hrough me. If I’m not going to the international school, then . . .

  “You’ll go to the local school.” My mom confirmed my worst fears.

  The summer after my fourth grade when I was ten, my parents made my brother and me go to the local school—the one we would have attended if we were just normal Japanese kids. It was for two months (“Only two months!” my mom exclaimed when I complained then as well), but it was two long months. No one spoke English at the local school.

  I barely understood anything there, but it’s not like I was really expected to. Teachers and students treated me like a visitor, and I was more than happy to act like one. Not like a serious student. If only I had put in some effort, then maybe my mom wouldn’t be thinking about sending me again. While my time at the local school wasn’t awful, I got overwhelmed just thinking about it—I mean, I was really behind, even then. Which I know is the point my mom has been trying to make, but . . . sending me to Japan again was not a good idea!

  “You’re going too, right? And Aya?”

  My mom stopped me. “No, you’ll go by yourself. It’s the last summer before your sister goes to college, and I have to stay and help her get ready and take care of your little brother. Get the rice and the chopsticks, please.”

  I was about to point out that I set the table yesterday and shouldn’t it be somebody else’s turn? But then I realized that would not be the wisest response in this situation. “Well, what about—?”

  “He’ll be a sophomore so he really can’t be absent from school.”

  Oh my God, was this for real? I’d be the only one going? My siblings were annoying, sure, but on these summer trips to Japan it was nice having them around. To goof off together, or to have someone to speak with in English when we were in Japanese overload.

  But wait, did she also say something about being absent from school? I almost dropped the bowls of rice I carted to the table.

  When we went to Japan before, it had only been for the summers, or part of the summer. We never missed any American school. “How long are you talking about, Mom?”

  “You could leave at the end of May and come back at the end of October,” she explained. “Five months is long enough, I think. You wouldn’t be treated like a visitor then.”

  Stunned, I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t imagine actually having to work and study like a regular student.

  “It’s just five months, Waka. Obaasama has already agreed to it,” my mom reassured me.

  Obaasama, her own mother. What I remembered most about my grandmother was how she’d look at us through her thick glasses, as if she was judging us and didn’t approve of what she saw.

  “It’s not like it’s forever. Dinner’s ready!”

  Dinner? How could this woman be thinking of food right now? I guess ruining people’s lives makes some people hungry. Not me, though. My appetite was destroyed.

  Miss the end of sixth grade and the start of seventh and my ENTIRE SUMMER?! Five months is more than long enough. Five months is forever.

  Sometimes my parents said things they didn’t really mean. Like how my dad every so often said we were moving back to Japan “in three years.” Before I was born, he came to the US with my mom, older sister, and older brother to study medicine. Now he has a steady job here in Kansas as a psychiatrist, but ever since the move, it’s been, “Three more years and we’ll move back home.” Every. Single. Year. I hoped that sending me to Japan for five months was just one of those things they said with no follow-through.

  For the next few days I avoided my parents when I could, hoping they’d drop this idea. Every time Mom asked me to do something in Japanese, I jumped to it. One evening after a McDonald’s dinner, my parents sat around watching TV. I was there, too, happy and full from my meal of fries and my favorite burger—the Quarter Pounder (with cheese)! Technically, it was past my bedtime and my parents didn’t like me to watch too much television, especially not this show. It was juicy, juicier than even my burger that I drowned in ketchup and mustard. The show was about an evil but charming cowboy who had a wife and a girlfriend. They drank lots of liquor and threw it in each other’s faces when they fought, which was a lot. I liked the show’s theme song too. So brassy! In fact, it was the reason I chose to play the trumpet for school. Sometimes I told my parents I just wanted to listen to the theme song. If I stood way behind the dining table where they couldn’t see me, they’d forget I was there, eventually start talking amongst themselves, and I could watch for a little while longer before they realized and made me go to bed. Tonight was one of these times they started talking.

  “Are you sure she’s going to be okay?” asked my dad.

  “Waka will be twelve by then and we both know the older she gets, the harder it will be for her to really learn the language. Just look at us.”

  “That’s true, but is your mother—?”

  “I know she’s nicer to the boys in our family than the girls, but Waka’s kind of like a boy.”

  Hey! I thought. I might not be the girliest of girls, but what the heck?

  My mom continued. “She’s responsible. They’ll be fine together. You’re the one who said Waka reminds you of her.”

  “When would I have ever compared my own daughter to Obaasama?”

  “Waka was a baby, having one of her temper tantrums. You practically had to straitjacket her to calm her down. You said her tantrums were because she couldn’t communicate. And that she reminds you of my mother.” Mom took a sip of green tea. “I think Waka is what Obaasama would have been like if she hadn’t had such a hard life.”

  “But, aren’t you worried about—”

  “Mom, Waka’s still up,” came the voice of a traitor from the kitchen.

  Ratted out by my own brother! I stood there feeling hot and cold at the same time. I couldn’t believe the trip was really happening. I was so frozen in disbelief—as frozen as the trees outside coated in February ice—that I didn’t hear my older brother come up behind me.

  My parents shooed me off to bed. I didn’t get to see what happened when the cowboy’s wife found out about her husband’s girlfriend, but I did get to hear that Plan Ruin Waka’s Life was still in effect.

  With less than four months left to change their minds, it was time to get my own plan, Operation Stay in Kansas, up and running. Phase One: Avoidance clearly hadn’t worked. Now it was time for Phase Two: Study Japanese in Plain Sight.

  The following week, I came home from school ready to strategize. First, I kicked off my shoes like my parents made us do because Japanese people don’t wear their shoes inside their house. (“Shoes are dirty. Our house is clean—and I want to keep it that way!” my mom often explained.)

  I planted myself on the sofa in our living room with some Japanese books and flashcards where my mom would be sure to see me. I read through my favorite Japanese fairy tale about a princess born from a melon and the time she let a mischievous demon inside her house.

  To really drive the point home, I dug up the locket my mom gave me when I was five for learning all my hiragana, the basic Japanese alphabet. There are forty-six hiragana and I threw a fit at the time, thinking there was no way I could learn them all. I mean, heck! I just learned my ABCs and there were only twenty-six of those. So Mom went and bought me a beautiful heart-shaped locket with a pink rose on it.

  “Waka, I have something to show you,” my mom said. She opened the little pink box the necklace came in. “It’s made out of real fourteen-karat gold.”

  Real gold? When I was five, I had beads and plastic bracelets, but nothing real like my mom had. “Is that for me?” I asked. I could hardly believe it. I normally only received presents for Christmas and my birthday. The day I saw that locket was neither.

  “Yes,” my mom answered.

  My heart burst with joy! Until . . .

  “If you learn your hiragana.” My mom closed the lid with a snap. Then she tucked the locket and all the happiness I just felt inside her bedroom dresser.

  What w
as I to do? Those hiragana all seemed so hard. But I wanted that locket. I was obsessed with that locket. I thought about that locket every day for a week. So I sat down and memorized my hiragana. It took a while, but I did it, and I wore it now so my mom would be reminded that I could learn just fine without being sent away.

  Apparently, my mother was not as sentimental as I had hoped. She saw me reading, but she didn’t say, “Good job!” or “I can tell you’re trying hard, so we’ve changed our minds.” Instead, she said, “I made curry tonight! It’s a little spicier than I usually make it, but you’ll have to get used to that in Japan.” Again, my mom with the food!

  Operation Stay in Kansas wasn’t being met with much success yet, but no way was I going to give up. I upped my efforts and read through more books, this time with katakana, another set of Japanese letters. There are the same number of katakana as hiragana and they sound the same. They look different, though, and they’re used to write out words borrowed from other languages (like chokoreh-to, “chocolate,” or hambaagaa, “hamburger”). I learned those too, even though I didn’t get squat for that.

  I also got out the 4" x 6" kanji flashcards my dad made for us. In addition to hiragana and katakana, the Japanese language has kanji, which are characters adopted from the Chinese language. Some of them are easy because they kind of look like the word they’re describing, but a lot of them are complicated, and Japanese people have to learn about two thousand by the end of high school. Since there are so many kanji, kids begin learning them when they start school, and sometimes earlier if their parents want their children to be super geniuses. But even nongenius types are expected to know eight hundred kanji by the time they enter sixth grade. I knew about fifty; but if you took into account the forty-six hiragana and the forty-six katakana I also knew, and the English alphabet besides, I was doing great (in my humble opinion)!

  But my parents were hyper-focused on those seven hundred fifty plus kanji I didn’t know.

  Kanji, simply put, were a pain in the butt. Take the kanji for the number “one,” for instance. It’s just one line across and it looks like this: 一

  Easy enough, right?