While I Was Away Page 10

  “It’s okay,” I answered as I took a bite of my pizza covered in ham . . . and corn.

  “How do you like it?” asked my uncle. “Is it like American pizza?”

  “We don’t put corn on it.” I took another bite. “But I like it!”

  I was grateful to be talking about US–Japan pizza differences and not being bothered by my unsettling thoughts about Obaasama.

  My relief was short-lived as Takumi steered the conversation back to our grandmother. “We can’t believe you’re still alive,” he joked. He was the same age as my older brother Hajime.

  “But it also hasn’t been very long,” pointed out Ryuu.

  “What are you talking about?” Mina play-shoved Takumi. Mina was my sister’s age. “She likes you.”

  Takumi smiled. “Yes, but—”

  “Doesn’t she like you?” I asked Mina. It was hard to imagine anyone not liking Mina.

  Mina sighed. “I don’t think so. Not as much as she likes Takumi, anyway. She gave him money. Out of the blue—”

  I nodded. Annette’s grandma gave her money out of the blue too.

  “But then she didn’t give me or Ryuu any!”

  Oh, that didn’t seem fair. Takumi laughed, “Aw, you’re just mad she doesn’t think you’re as pretty as you think you are.”

  “Shut up, stupid,” Mina responded to Takumi.

  “Mina!” interrupted my aunt. “Is that any way to talk to your brother right after Mass?”

  “Obaasama said Mina needs to wear a corset because her butt’s too flat.” Ryuu and Takumi burst into giggles, almost choking on their pizza.

  Mina rolled her eyes.

  “She told me about the corset too.” It was fun having something to contribute to the conversation, but as soon as I said it, I felt a twinge, like I had picked a side I wasn’t sure I meant to pick. I mean, we were talking about our grandmother.

  “She did?”

  The cousins burst out laughing.

  “Shush—behave yourselves,” chided my uncle. While it felt good to have shared a laugh with my cousins, it felt weird that our grandmother was why we laughed. Our grandmother who stayed at her place, praying the rosary by herself.

  When I arrived back at Obaasama’s after lunch and some shopping, the house was quiet like always. I changed out of my church clothes and spotted my red socks.

  Obaasama was in the garden communing with her koi, as she often seemed to be when I was out. I rattled open the sliding glass door and called out. “Obaasama? Do you think you might like . . .” I paused, still unsure how she would take the gift from me, “these socks?”

  “Your socks?” Obaasama slipped off her outdoor shoes and stepped inside. She took the socks and peered at them through the bottom half of her glasses. “Why?”

  “They’re very thick and warm,” I explained. “I hardly ever wear them, they’re too hot for me.”

  “Hmm . . .” Obaasama examined them for a second more.

  “Maybe you could wear them when your feet get cold?”

  “All right.” Obaasama disappeared into the bedroom with them.

  I think she liked them! She didn’t say she did, but she didn’t refuse them. So I’m going to believe that they made her really happy. The first sock-present in the history of the universe to do so!

  Eleven

  At the end of June, when I had been in school for about a month, we made aprons in our home economics class. Back in Kansas, we had a choice between home economics and industrial arts but not until eighth grade, so I didn’t have anything to compare my Japanese home economics class to. It didn’t involve any kanji, that’s all I cared about! And it was fun. To make our aprons, we started out with a rectangular sheet of off-white canvas, edges already hemmed. Then, we folded down the top two corners, used a needle and thread to stitch one inch from the folded edges, and threaded a rope through them. Ta-da! An apron.

  As we followed our directions, Emi-chan approached me. “Waka-chan, it’s been really fun having you in our class. How is everything? Do you like school?”

  That was really nice of her to check on me, I thought. “Yeah, sure! Everyone’s been really nice.” One of my big worries before coming to Japan was what being a more full-fledged member of the class would be like, as opposed to a short-term visitor like my last time. But it hadn’t been too bad so far. In fact, school had been pretty good! Not that I’d ever let my parents know that.

  Next, we had to attach a pocket to our aprons. We each received a square piece of canvas cloth and embroidery thread.

  “Now embroider a design onto your pocket,” the teacher announced. “Anything you like.” Anything we liked? I wished we had a little more direction than that. Sometimes having more choices was harder than no choices at all.

  While I racked my brain for apron pocket ideas, Fujita-san joined us too. “We really like you . . .”

  I smiled. I liked them too. “How are you going to decorate your pocket?” I asked. “Really, is anything okay—”

  Before I could finish my question, Emi-chan interrupted. “So we’d like to invite you to join our group.”

  I wasn’t sure what Emi-chan meant by this. I mean, wasn’t I already part of her group? She sure made me feel like I was. It’s not that I didn’t understand what she said. The word for group in Japanese was the same as in English; the pronunciation was only a little different—guruupu. But I knew I was missing something, and I sensed it was going to be a problem.

  “Ano . . .” I used this word a lot since coming to Japan. It was like “well . . .” or “umm . . .” and it was useful because it bought me time when I searched for the right word, or didn’t quite know what to say.

  “Ano . . . guruupu-tte?” I wanted to know exactly what they meant by “guruupu.”

  Fujita-san jumped in, “This means we play together at recess, hang out together before class—”

  “But we already do that.” I was still confused.

  Fujita-san and Emi-chan traded looks.

  Then, it dawned on me. “What if I feel like playing with Midori-chan? Or Reiko?”

  “They’re nice girls,” Fujita-san said. “And I’m sure Midori-chan and her friends want you to be part of their group, but . . .”

  Emi-chan chimed in, “And Reiko . . . she’s in a different class altogether. We think, well, it’s a bit unusual you spend as much time with her as you do. After all, she’s in 6-3.”

  What’s the big deal? I thought. She’s in a different class, not a different universe. Unless there were problems with 6-3 that I didn’t know about. “Is there . . . something wrong with the kids in that class?” I asked.

  “Wrong? No, there’s nothing wrong,” Fujita-san answered. “It’s just weird. When you go out of your way to play with someone outside of 6-5, it seems like you don’t like us. Don’t you like us?”

  “Of course I do! But Reiko is nice too, and she lives near me. . . .”

  “Being part of a group is nice. You’ll always have someone to play with. You’ve liked playing with us, right?”

  Yes, but . . . Emi-chan and Fujita-san and the girls they hung out with were nice. But I didn’t feel like any one of them was a best friend, like the kind I always had at home, someone I could be myself around. Midori-chan was that friend two years ago for the short time I was here, and I couldn’t forget that. It was true my friendship with her felt different from how it had been, but I was different too. It didn’t mean she wasn’t my friend anymore. Not being able to play with Reiko anymore because she was a couple classes down the hall was silly.

  “We’ll give you some time to think about it, okay?” Emi-chan told me. Her freckled face and open expression didn’t look mean, even though it sure felt like it was a mean choice to ask me to make. “Oh, and Hello Kitty. I think I’ll stitch a Hello Kitty on my pocket,” Emi said.

  I stared down at my blank pocket. Chatting with Emi-chan and Fujita-san had put me behind on my apron, but at least I could see the designs my classmates had start
ed.

  I wandered over to where Midori-chan, Yamashita-san, Naomi-chan, and Saito-san sat and embroidered.

  Midori-chan stitched a bamboo branch on her pocket. Naomi-chan did the same, pausing only to chew on her nails and look back and forth between her pocket and Midori-chan’s. Yamashita-san just twirled the ends of her ponytail and looked bored. Saito-san, who stitched her name (さいとう) in big black hiragana characters, called me out right away. Somehow, she knew pocket embroidery wasn’t the only reason I was there.

  “What’s with you?” Saito-san yell-asked, even though she was right next to me.

  Naomi-chan rolled her eyes. “Please. Do you always have to talk in such a loud voice?”

  If Naomi’s comment was meant to scold, Saito-san didn’t realize it . . . or she just didn’t care. “This is my voice. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Ano . . .” I shifted my weight from one leg to another. “Emi-chan asked me to be in their group today.”

  Midori-chan cleared her throat. “Yes, we’d like to ask you to be in our group too.” Midori-chan didn’t smile that often, but she smiled at me then. Only it looked more like a grimace.

  Yamashita-san said, “I want you to be in our group too.” I searched Yamashita-san’s face. Of all the girls, she’d been the least welcoming. Not mean, but not warm either. She nodded at me. “I sure do.”

  “We all do,” Naomi-chan chimed in.

  “That’s right!” Saito-san boomed. Naomi-chan and Midori-chan rolled their eyes.

  For the rest of class, I concentrated on my pocket. I decided to embroider a watermelon slice. Back home, I had watermelon all summer long. Since I arrived in Japan, though, I hadn’t had any. Japanese watermelons were perfectly round, uniformly ripe, and absolutely delicious—therefore very expensive, my mother explained. People gave them to each other as gifts.

  I missed watermelon.

  When I heard home economics class was today, I thought I had gotten out of having to work on anything hard, like my reading and my kanji. But it ended up being the hardest day of school I’d had so far.

  What was I going to do?

  Twelve

  Because of the whole “choose your group” pressure, I wrote letters to Annette and Kris, asking them what they would do. Even though it would take at least eight days for their responses to reach me. It was funny how writing those letters made me feel better. It was like my words were crashing in my head like a thunderstorm and putting them down on paper was like the sunshine that comes after. I didn’t realize that would happen, but it was nice that it did.

  But writing the letters didn’t take as long as I hoped they would. Obaasama wasn’t home, and the more time I spent sitting there doing nothing, the louder the silence of her house became. So I got my apron out and finished embroidering my pocket. We didn’t really learn how to embroider at school. Everyone else already seemed to know, so I just “did my best,” like everyone always told me to do.

  Where was Obaasama, anyway? Maybe shopping? It suddenly occurred to me: Did Obaasama have a group? Did she have friends she spent time with while I was at school? She never talked about anyone, and no one outside the family stopped by to meet her granddaughter. I had a feeling no one was clamoring for Obaasama to join their group, and it made me feel squirmy. She’s busy, I told myself. From radio English lessons, to koi feeding, to apartment managing, to rosary praying, Obaasama was never still. She had better things to do than just sit around with a twelve-year-old. Didn’t she? Or maybe she sensed I was uncomfortable and so she made herself scarce. Was that my fault, though? Should I try harder?

  I didn’t like the way my thoughts were making me feel. I wanted to run, jump, shout, and get these letters sent. Obaasama still hadn’t returned, but I knew where the post office was. How long would it take me to get there and back? Less than ten minutes, I bet . . . if I ran, and I wanted to run.

  So get ready, set . . . yoiii . . . don! and I was off! Letters in hand, I dashed down the street, weaving in between businessmen as they made their way to the train station. Careening around the corner and into the post office, I slipped my letters into the mail slot and glanced at the clock. Less than five minutes, yes! I dashed back and almost flattened Obaasama as I leapt into the house.

  “What in the world!” she exclaimed as she put her hand on the wall for balance. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the photo of Ojiisama, my grandfather. My wild hair stood straight up and my face was as red as the tomatoes my mom grew in her garden at home. I shrunk in front of Obaasama.

  I tried to wipe away the sweat trickling down my forehead and comb my hair down with my fingers. “I . . . I just wanted to get to the post office before you came back and wondered where I was. So I ran.”

  “Ran? All the way to the post office and back? Like that?”

  I looked down at my green skirt and lemon-yellow shirt with puffed sleeves and green trim, now damp with perspiration from my run. I nodded.

  “Ara maa . . .” Obaasama was at a loss for words as she stared at me like I was a crazy person. Well, I’ll be . . .

  “Taro-chan’s a good boy!” screeched Taro from his birdcage.

  And then . . . it started out with her eyes crinkling, and then a smile. Then, she burst into a giggle, which crescendoed into a full-blown cackle, rusty and raspy from lack of use. For the first time in the month I’d been with her, Obaasama laughed. And laughed. I frowned—the boys at school certainly laughed at me more than I cared for. But when Obaasama didn’t stop, I found myself smiling too.

  “What a weird kid,” Obaasama chortled as she headed toward the bedroom to put away her gloves and hat.

  I was so relieved I wasn’t in trouble, I didn’t mind that she called me weird.

  When Obaasama laughed, she wasn’t scary at all. In fact, I hadn’t been scared of Obaasama since that first day, I realized. While her nightmare did scare me, that was different. I was scared for her then. But when Obaasama laughed, the house lightened up, too, and the silence that blanketed it lifted and disappeared. I wondered how long it had been since it had done that.

  “What’s this?” Obaasama called from the bedroom.

  I walked in on Obaasama examining my apron. I felt nervous and proud at the same time.

  “I worked on it in home economics class today,” I responded. “It’s the first time I’ve ever embroide—”

  “Why did you do the corners like this?” Obaasama asked as she flipped the apron over. “It seems clumsy to have all this extra fabric.”

  “That’s how the teacher told us to do it,” I mumbled. My face flushed as I took the apron from her, mortified this would make her laugh too. Why couldn’t she see how hard I tried?

  “Do you like to sew?” Obaasama interrupted my thoughts.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” I answered, still a little mad she wasn’t more impressed with my apron. “My mom sews.”

  “Yes, I know she does. She’s my daughter.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I knew that, but sometimes I forgot my mother also had a mother.

  “I sewed, too, you know. To make money when your ojiisama died.”

  “You did?” I knew my grandfather died when he was fifty years old. That meant Obaasama had been in her forties, and a single mother to nine children. I hadn’t known she was a seamstress, though. She must have sewn a lot to take care of so many children.

  Obaasama reached down toward the drawer built into the wall next to where I slept.

  She slid the drawer open. “I collect fabric,” she said. “Would you like to see?” Obaasama settled down on the tatami mat with her legs tucked under her in seiza. I sat down, legs crossed.

  Obaasama took out a deep plum-colored fabric with a metallic sheen. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  She turned it toward the light and it glinted from plum to dark blue, like peacock feathers. I nodded.

  She took out another cut of fabric, this one more golden. And then another, a midnight blue one t
hat shimmered with an undercurrent of turquoise.

  “I’m going to have these made into a dress for me.” She laid out the fabric. “I want the top-right half to be this color.” She spread out the blue. “The left half to be this fabric.” She spread out the plum-colored one. “And the skirt to be this one.” She pointed at the golden one. “I talked to some tailors, but they kept trying to change my mind.”

  “Why?” I asked. If I were a tailor, I’d love to work with fabrics as beautiful as these.

  “They didn’t like my design! Mismatched sleeves, they said. I could tell they didn’t like that they’d be different colors. I’m not going to trust my fabric to people like that.” Obaasama fumed. “I’d sew it myself, but I can’t.”

  “Why not?” I asked. She did everything else herself . . .

  “Because of these,” Obaasama replied as she took her thick glasses off and set them on the table. “My eyes. I can still sew on a button, or fix a hem, but it’s hard to even thread a needle now.”

  Without her glasses on, Obaasama’s eyes seemed small and tired. “My eyes used to be so much better. Your ojiisama used to tell me, ‘Kimi, what big eyes you have.’”

  Kimi was one of the Japanese words for “you.” There’s a lot of them: anata (generally neutral, but not used toward an elder or superior), omae (usually used by guys among friends or colleagues, but generally considered rude). Obaasama used omae toward Taro—especially when he snapped his beak at her. There was also a “you” only used when you wanted to insult the other person, temee (more like, “you stupid jerk”). A lot of English speakers made the mistake of using “you” way too often, “anata this,” and “anata that.” Real Japanese speakers rarely used the pronoun “you” at all. The “you” was unspoken yet understood.

  When Obaasama told me my grandfather used to tell her “Kimi, what big eyes you have,” I sensed they must have liked each other a lot, but it also made me think back to the one time I put on Obaasama’s glasses while she napped. The heaviness of the lenses surprised me. When I looked in the mirror they made my eyes seem huge too. I never told her this, but she seemed to know anyway, which made me nervous.