While I Was Away Read online

  “Always pack what you’ll need for the next two days in your carry-on,” my mom advised. “Just in case they lose your luggage.”

  My eyes flew open as I clutched my backpack to my chest. “Which they won’t. Don’t worry,” Mom quickly added.

  Don’t worry? How could I not worry? I worried I’d get on the plane to Timbuktu by mistake. I worried once I got to Japan, my aunt and uncle wouldn’t be there to pick me up. I worried about going to a Japanese school. I worried about all the kanji I didn’t know. I worried my friends wouldn’t write to me. I worried about living with my grandmother, Obaasama.

  When my parents walked me to the gate, they patted my head. All they had to say to me for ruining my life was, “Be a good girl! Take care, we’ll call you soon.”

  You better, I thought. You better call me and send me letters and care packages and buy me that trampoline you promised because of what you’re making me go through.

  A friendly flight attendant, neat and pretty in her uniform with her blond hair pulled up into a tidy bun, smiled as she approached. “Hi! I’m going to make sure you get to where you need to go, sweetie. You ready?”

  Oh, okay. I guess I didn’t need to worry about accidentally going to Timbuktu. Clenching the straps of my backpack, I took one step toward the flight attendant and away from my parents. One foot in front of the other, I decided not to turn around. Why should I? I knew what I’d see: my mommy with her cropped hair, graying at the temples. My daddy with his goatee and floppy hair much less gray than my mother’s, despite the fact that he’s seven years older. Maybe another reason I refused to look back was that I didn’t want to cry, which would have been so embarrassing.

  Why? Why do I have to go away? I still didn’t understand.

  Three

  “Mamonaku, Narita-kuukou e touchaku shimasu.”

  “We will be arriving at Narita International Airport shortly.”

  The announcement jolted me awake. Since I wasn’t able to sleep the night before I left, I conked out on the plane only to open my eyes to a slow descent through the clouds.

  Now there were clumps of green, squares of brown, zigzags of charcoal gray, and large clusters of white. Japan looked nothing like the vast stretches of Kansan-farmland patchwork I was used to.

  Waft, waft, the charcoal zigzags turned into roads. The white clusters transformed into neighborhoods.

  Trees, fields, and buildings seemed to rush up to meet the plane. It hadn’t felt like we were moving very quickly a minute ago, but the closer we came to landing, time quickened and I sensed just how fast we had been going.

  The jolt of the plane landing was like the jolt I felt at realizing I really was here—in Japan—completely alone. No parents to take care of me, no siblings to look toward to make sure I was doing everything I needed to. No, it was just me who had to take care of me . . . and that scared me. I sat up and searched for the only person I knew—the flight attendant who told me to wait for her once we landed. When I saw her, she smiled and nodded my way. I sighed with relief. Pretty soon I wouldn’t be alone anymore.

  Once we walked through customs, I caught sight of my uncle Makoto with his wavy black hair and glasses. He was thin and not very tall. In fact, he wasn’t as tall as my dad. Uncle Makoto was one of my mom’s older brothers, but I didn’t think they looked much alike. His wife, my aunt Noriko, stood next to him, holding her cute little purse in front of her. “Ahh, Waka-chan,” my aunt Noriko called out to me and waved. Aunt Noriko was almost as tall as my uncle, and her thick hair was short and neatly styled away from her kind face.

  Aunt Noriko was one of my mom’s best friends when they were in high school. My mom introduced her to my uncle Makoto, and I guess the rest was history. The thought of my mom with friends intrigued me. It wasn’t like my mom didn’t have friends in Kansas. There were a few Japanese ladies who she had tea with sometimes, but she never laughed or joked around with them like I did with my friends. When my aunt’s warm smile shone upon me, I realized maybe my mom missed her friends in Japan. When my aunt took my backpack, I felt lighter in more ways than one.

  My aunt and uncle bowed. “Waka-chan, ohisashiburi!”

  I bowed and replied, “Konnichiwa.” And with that one word, I dove into Japan and Japanese. Other than a few books in my suitcase, no more English for me until the end of October! Uncle Makoto helped gather my luggage. Even though he was the one related to me by blood, I stuck closer to my aunt. She reminded me more of my mom.

  On the drive from the airport, it was strange seeing the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road. I couldn’t read the signs—we sped by too quickly and . . . they were written in kanji, the Chinese character set I was woefully behind in learning. Cement barriers along the highway and dark asphalt were everywhere, broken up by the dash of a red or blue car here and there. My aunt and uncle’s place was a little over an hour from the airport, and I wished I could sleep. But the smell of diesel was strong, and when cars and trucks whizzed by me on a side I wasn’t expecting, I jumped a little inside. Why hadn’t I noticed this when I was in Japan before? It was because my mom’s shoulder was there to fall asleep on. I was safe and taken care of. But this time, I was on my own and so I had to be on high alert!

  Japanese cars were kind of like the ones back home; they were just shorter and narrower. Not a single pickup truck here either. They were everywhere in Kansas, sometimes with a dog in the back, lolling about with his tongue hanging out. The Kansan summer landscape was practically painted green, but there were only splashes of that color streaking by—a few trees next to the highway, maybe some shrubs, but then they were gone, and . . . oh my GOD! According to the speedometer, my uncle was driving over 100 miles per hour! But wait, so was everyone else. That’s when I remembered that Japan uses kilometers. We were traveling in kilometers. It still felt really fast, though. Maybe because there were so many more cars than the country roads I was used to.

  When we were off the highway, my uncle slowed way down, and wove the car through streets so narrow I was positive they were only one-way until I saw a car coming right at us! Neither my uncle nor the other driver seemed panicked at all, though. They managed to squeeze past each other without a scratch. The houses were squeezed together too. One after the other, after another. I wondered where the kids played since I didn’t see many yards.

  Finally, we pulled up to a two-story, white, rectangular house. It was nothing fancy, but it was clean and newish. If you plunked this house in the middle of Kansas, no one would look twice. It was a little smaller than my home, and didn’t have a big front yard or garage like our house had.

  When I entered the house, shouts and thumps overhead greeted me as my cousins Hina and Maki ran down from the second floor. They jumped from the bottom two steps and landed in the entryway to take my backpack. They hadn’t changed too much over the past couple years. Maybe they were a little taller, but they were still about my height—short (and young) enough to still have fun!

  Even though we were all related, we didn’t look very much alike. They had black hair like me, black eyes like me, but other than that, we were different. They were both really pale, white even. My sister and brothers and I were out in the sun all the time so no one in my family was that pale. Except for maybe my dad’s legs since he never wore shorts. Hina’s eyes slanted up a little, like mine, but Maki’s didn’t; they slanted down. My cousins were both so neat and tidy too. Their chin-length bobs—ends curled under—didn’t have a hair out of place. Hina wore a pressed, turquoise-and-white striped shirt, tucked into her pleated beige shorts, and Maki’s pink polo was buttoned all the way up to the top, nice and prim-like. In comparison, I was a disaster with my hair that flipped out when I wanted it to curl in and a T-shirt that was half tucked in, half hanging out.

  I slipped my sneakers off and stepped inside. My aunt straightened them out, toes pointing toward the door. I felt bad I didn’t know to do this myself, but my cousins pulle
d me away, shouting, “Follow us!” up the wooden stairs, so steep they were almost like a ladder.

  Once we reached the top, Maki guided me around. I whispered a hesitant hello to my two boy cousins Jun and Hideo who were neither excited nor upset to see me. Jun was my age and Hideo was five years older, the same age as my sister. I wasn’t excited or upset to see them either. They were boys.

  I followed Maki to the girls’ room, which, as far as rooms go, was pretty basic. Thin, no-nonsense beige carpet, no posters of rock bands or movie stars on the off-white walls. The space felt huge, especially with no beds in it even though it was their bedroom—those came out later. There was a sliding door to the balcony that let the sun shine in to brighten the room. Adding a pop of color to the room was a yellow canary, its feathery throat pulsing as it trilled a welcome from its cage in the corner. Maya, my oldest cousin, looked up from her neat little desk in the corner to smile and welcome me, “Waka-chan, konnichiwa!”

  “Konnichiwa,” I said back, waiting for more.

  But she turned her attention back to her books almost immediately.

  I looked toward Hina. Was anything wrong?

  “She’s a juken-sei,” explained Hina. “She has to study several hours every day to pass her college entrance exams.”

  I nodded, kind of understanding. My older sister spent the whole of last year applying for colleges, taking the SAT, and stressing out since my mom said that getting into a good college was very, very, very important because it could determine her whole future. At least that’s how it was in Japan, so that’s how she expected us to approach our studies in America. Poor Maya, having to study so hard on such a nice sunny day.

  Leaving Maya to her books, we scooted back downstairs where my aunt prepared dinner. My uncle watched TV at the long wooden dining room table set for nine. There was already a ton of food on it: a fresh green salad with sliced red tomatoes and small black bowls with lids on them at each spot. My mom had bowls like these, too, but she didn’t use the lids unless we had guests. I wondered if my cousins’ family used them all the time, or was I the guest they were doing it for? I guessed that my aunt made miso soup, but I knew it wouldn’t be polite to open a lid to check. The other food on the table wasn’t familiar at all, like the bowl of pickled vegetables. There was also some sort of pickled cucumber, nothing like the dill chips we put on our hamburgers back home, but it was a brighter green and sliced thicker. I had no idea what the purple things were.

  “These?” asked Maki. “They’re shibazuke.”

  I didn’t know what that meant either, but I nodded like I understood. I had a feeling I’d be doing a lot of nodding in the near future.

  In a corner near the far end of the table next to the TV, there was an exercise machine contraption where my boy cousins, who had come downstairs, took turns doing pull-ups. It looked like fun, but Hina’s excited shout pulled my attention away.

  “Fresh wasabi?” she exclaimed.

  I knew what wasabi was. It was a pale green paste my parents mixed with soy sauce and dipped their rice and cucumber rolls in. It was spicy, but it didn’t stay on your tongue like red pepper spicy. No, wasabi seemed fine at first, but then a fire rushed up your nose and into your eyes. If you ate too much at once, it could make you cry.

  I know that doesn’t sound very good, but I actually kind of enjoyed it. It was like an exciting surprise for my taste buds!

  I always thought wasabi came in a tube from the Asian food store twenty minutes away from our house. But no, apparently it came from a brown turnip-ish root like the one my aunt was grating in the kitchen at the other end of the table. The paste was more a light brown, barely green at all. My aunt was sweating—she was working hard for that tablespoon of wasabi we would all share.

  Maki placed matching chopsticks at each setting, resting the tips of each pair on a hashi oki, a ceramic disc chopstick rest, each with its own colorful pattern. Hina brought out a wooden bowl of rice seasoned with vinegar and plates filled with strips of colorful raw fish—slices of deep pink tuna, glistening white squid, and peach-colored yellowtail. Then my aunt brought a stack of crisp, paper-thin squares of black nori seaweed to wrap the rice and fish in. I wondered if she always put this much effort into making dinner.

  When my aunt called out that it was time to eat, everyone rushed in to squeeze themselves around the table that took up most of the space in the dining room.

  “Waka-chan,” announced my uncle, “we would all like to formally welcome you back to Japan! We are very happy to see you again.”

  “Arigatou,” I responded. Thank you.

  Jun piped up. “Is she really going to live with Obaasama after this?”

  “That’s right!” answered my aunt. Maybe I imagined it, but she sounded a little too enthusiastic and cheerful. It reminded me of the time I asked my mom if my tetanus shot would hurt and she said, “No, not at all!” And then it hurt like heck.

  “Oh, man,” responded Jun. I knew I didn’t imagine the way he said that.

  All my cousins were casting weird glances my way. But when I caught them, they looked down or away.

  “I really like her,” Hina tried to reassure me. “She’s . . . interesting,” she added.

  I thought I saw Jun raise an eyebrow, but I wasn’t sure.

  My aunt finally sat at the table with a clunk and urged, “Waka-chan, you must be starving, let’s eat!”

  “Itadakimasu,” we said before we dug into our meal. That means “I humbly receive.” I know that sounds way stiff and formal, but it’s just something Japanese people always say before eating.

  In a flash, the meal my aunt spent so much time preparing was gone.

  “Gochisousama deshita.” One by one, we thanked my aunt for the meal as we finished. Because that was what Japanese people said when they finished their meals too.

  Since I was their guest, my aunt insisted that I take the first bath. Their bathroom was just off the hallway from their kitchen and it was made up of three parts. First, I used the toilet that was by itself in its own room, like a closet. Then, I went back into the hallway and opened the door next to the toilet where there were two rooms connected to each other: one with a larger area with a sink, the other where the actual bathtub was. In the first room, I washed my hands and brushed my teeth. I also took my clothes off here, set my pajamas off to the side, and gathered my wash towel that my aunt had set out for me. When I was ready, I slid open a door that folded up like an accordion and stepped into the main bathroom, and it truly was a bath room.

  Although I would rather be at home finishing up sixth grade with my friends, I had to admit Japanese baths were better than baths back home. First off, the entire room was for bathing. There was a faucet, showerhead, and drain outside of the deep square bath that had already been filled with steaming hot water. I sat down on the plastic stool by the faucet and filled several plastic bowls with hot water. Then, I poured the hot water over my head until I was soaking wet from head to toe. Using my washcloth, I soaped myself up completely. I shampooed my hair and scrubbed away the trip and the stale scent of the airplane, my sweat from the late-May day. I filled the plastic bowls again and doused myself over and over until I was rinsed free of soap and completely squeaky clean.

  Only then did I step into the deep tub waiting for me. Sitting in the bath with water so deep it came up to my neck, I finally relaxed. This was way better than soaking in my soapy bath half this size at home. But I only stayed in for a few minutes since my cousins and uncle and aunt were waiting to take their baths too. When I got out, I didn’t drain the tub. Since I was clean when I got in, the water in it was technically still clean. Everyone else would take turns soaking in there too.

  After toweling off and getting into my pajamas, I made my way back up to the girls’ bedroom where my cousins took futon mattresses out from the closets. They were folded into thirds, and with a fwump fwump my cousins spread the futons on the floor and covered them in sheets and blankets. This was how a bunc
h of girls could fit into one room.

  In my cousins’ house, when it was time to sleep, it was time to sleep. Lights off, no talking. Maki even threw a cover over the canary’s cage. It stopped chirping and hopped back and forth a few times until it settled down too.

  Back home, I slept in the top bunk in a room I had to share with my little brother. During slumber parties, I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and it was hard and uncomfortable. Not that my friends and I cared much since there really wasn’t much slumbering going on at these slumber parties. But Japanese futons were different from beds or sleeping bags. They were soft and thick. I sank into mine, so glad to finally have a chance to sleep. If all my time in Japan was like today, I wouldn’t mind. In fact, it might even be a little great! I drifted off to the sound of a distant train clicking and clacking over the tracks and the cicadas humming, miiiii-n miiiiii-n.

  Although my sleep was deep, it wasn’t dreamless. Images of brooms and scissors and Obaasama danced in my head with my cousins’ glances at the dinner table when her name was mentioned. My grandmother’s large eyes bore down on me, disapproving.

  I woke up early the next morning surrounded by a cold dampness. I had wet the bed.

  Oh no! This never happened to me, ever. I didn’t know what to do. I was so mortified and embarrassed and just plain ashamed of myself that I couldn’t tell my aunt. But I knew I couldn’t not say anything. So I told Hina instead.

  “I . . . um . . .” What was the best way to put this? In polite terms that made it clear what had happened, like, “An accident has happened,” and not, “I peed in my futon.” This would have been hard enough to say in English, let alone Japanese. As Hina got ready to help me fold my sheets and put my futon away for the day, I blurted it out. “I wet it . . . a little.” Hina’s eyes widened in surprise, but she didn’t make fun of me at all. I breathed a sigh of relief. If something like this had happened at home, my older brother would have never let me forget it.