While I Was Away Read online

  After I undressed, I stepped down into the tiled bathing area. Like the one at my cousins’ house, there was a faucet and plastic bowls outside a deep soaking tub. Before I washed myself, I scrubbed my clothes on the washboard, probably for longer than I needed to. Not because I was particular about them being extra clean, but because it was something to do to help the time go by. I was shivering once I had wrung them out and hung them to dry on the plastic rack hanging a few feet from the bathroom entrance. I soaked in the steaming tub until I felt warm again and then some.

  I had only been at my grandmother’s place for less than half a day, but it felt like weeks. Although I had fought to stay up as late as possible at home, I wanted my day to end as soon as possible here.

  “Oyasuminasai,” Obaasama said as she turned out the light.

  “Oyasuminasai,” I responded as I said good night to my grandmother, just like I would have said to my parents at home. I wore the same pajamas I wore at home too. But everything else was different.

  It’s not so bad, it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad, I told myself as waves of drowsiness ebbed closer and closer. It’s not so bad, it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad . . .

  Who was I kidding? This was bad. Real bad.

  Five

  I must have fallen asleep because I was groggy and confused when a voice pulled me out of my dreams.

  “Excuse me, where is the department store?” asked a man in clear, slow English.

  “Excuse me, where is the . . . department store?” my grandmother repeated.

  The light was on in the room, harsh and bright, but it was still pitch-black outside. What was happening?

  “Please take a right at this corner and go straight for one block. It will be on your left.” It was the radio. That explained the man, but what could explain why it was on in the middle of the night?

  “Please take a right at this corner and . . . go straight for one block. It will be on your left.”

  I buried my head under my pillow. Obaasama turned up the volume.

  “How do you pronounce this?” Obaasama nudged me. I squinted from under the covers. She held a workbook in front of my face. “This.”

  It took me a couple seconds to focus on the word she was pointing to. “Stationery,” I mumbled.

  “Stationery? Slowly this time.”

  I sat up. “Sta-tion-ery.”

  But why was my grandmother learning English? When would Obaasama ever need to speak English?

  Unless . . . was she doing this for me? If so, I guess that was . . . nice, but did she have to do it at five thirty in the morning?

  The radio program ended, and I burrowed back under my covers. But then I sat back up with a start—today was my first day of school!

  Obaasama had moved on from her English lessons to making breakfast in the kitchen. I folded up my futon and my pink-and-white towel-ketto, a terry cloth blanket with more heft than a towel, but lighter than a comforter. I put them away in the closet. I pulled out the bright-green skirt my mom had made and a white blouse with rainbow stripes and puffed sleeves. Cute, but not too dressy. I needed to make a good impression on my first day of school. These were the people I would spend the next five months with.

  On the little dining table was a small black-lacquer bowl filled with miso soup, some wakame seaweed, small cubes of tofu, and a sprinkling of chopped green onions. Next to it, a bowl of steaming white rice, and on a plate, a small square of roasted fish and takuan—sunshine-yellow pickled daikon radish, cut into half-circles. I sat down at the table and waited.

  Obaasama popped her head out from the kitchen. “Go ahead and eat. Your aunt Kyoko will be here soon.” I grabbed my chopsticks, said a quick itadakimasu, and dove into my breakfast. It was different from the frosted sweet cereal I usually had at home, but this breakfast was yummy too. I liked the contrast between the crunch of the sweet-salty takuan and the soft, warm rice.

  “Good morning!” A cheerful, vaguely familiar voice from the street-side entrance of the house signaled the arrival of my aunt Kyoko. Like Aunt Noriko, she was one of my mother’s high school friends. My mom liked her enough to introduce to yet another older brother. Would I want any of my friends to marry my older brother? Annette? No. Kristina? Oh, no. That would never work out. It wasn’t that my friends were unworthy, it was more like I couldn’t imagine them dealing with my older brother. He was what my parents called a “moody teenager.” And when he wasn’t frowning, talking back, or getting in trouble for talking back, he was exercising his uniquely teenage-boy talent—jump-farting. He was able to time his farts and let them out only when I was nearby. Sometimes he’d even jump up and let out that fart—rrrrip!—right in my face. Remembering that made five months in Japan seem a little less terrible.

  My aunt gushed when she saw me. “Oh, Waka! It’s so nice to see you again.” There’s no way my beautiful aunt Kyoko would have married a jump-farter. She was tall, willowy, and elegant. Her hair was cut short but styled to tuck behind her ears, and her eyes were large and smiling. Her dress was crisp and ironed, and, of course, she wore a hat. She was married to my favorite uncle, who was also tall and dashing. I called him Uncle “Bushy-Bushy-Black-Hair” when I was little because of his wavy black mane and thick, distinctive eyebrows. It was no surprise that Mina, the most beautiful of all the grandchildren, was their daughter.

  Aunt Kyoko opened up the large paper bag she brought with her. “These used to be Mina’s, but I thought maybe you could use them.” Aunt Kyoko pulled out blouse after blouse. So many new things! Okay, so they weren’t new but they were new to me, and I didn’t even have to ask or bargain for them like I would have at home. Since they used to belong to Mina, I knew she wouldn’t ever wear anything that would make her stand out or be teased. I almost looked forward to school so I could wear these, especially the light-blue polo shirt with the white collar. That one was my favorite.

  Obaasama piped up. “But what do you think of Waka’s hair?”

  Aunt Kyoko looked confused. “Her hair? It’s cute.” Just before I left, my mom had cut my hair in the style I’d had for years. Chin-length bob, bangs straight across.

  “You don’t think it makes her look . . . like a yuurei?” Obaasama asked.

  Yuurei, yuurei, I searched for the word. The image that came to mind was a pale ghost of a woman—floating, long, limp hair drooping down the sides of her haunted face. Surely, that couldn’t be right. People had told me I was scrawny, but no one had compared me to a terrifying, ghostly, dead woman-spirit before.

  “She does not look like a yuurei!” exclaimed my aunt.

  The good news: I did know what yuurei meant!

  The bad news: Obaasama thought I looked like one.

  “Her face is already narrow, and with her hair hanging straight down like that, it makes her face look even thinner. Don’t you think her hair would be better short? Like yours,” Obaasama negotiated.

  My aunt seemed torn. “It’s up to Waka-chan. If she wants to cut it, we have some time before we have to leave, but . . .”

  I glanced back and forth between Aunt Kyoko and Obaasama. I really didn’t think this was a good idea. I’d had my hair like this forever, and no one had ever suggested I change it before. But if I said no to my grandmother, would she think I was defiant and stubborn? Plus, I didn’t want Aunt Kyoko, who was lovely, to think I didn’t like her hair. And maybe I would end up looking nice like her!

  “Um, okay.”

  “This is going to be darling,” my aunt said. Snip, snip. Long tufts of hair dropped to the newspaper spread out on the living room floor. Snip, snip, snip. “How cute!” Now a huge pile of black near my feet. Snip.

  Obaasama and my aunt assessed the result. “Much better,” proclaimed my grandmother.

  At the same time, my aunt said, “It will grow back . . .”

  I looked in the mirror. Oh, no! I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. I hoped maybe I would be transformed into someone beautiful lik
e my aunt Kyoko, but that sure didn’t happen. With my hair now cut over my ears and short in the back too, not only was I not beautiful, but . . . I looked like a boy! My mom had said Obaasama liked boys better than girls, but I didn’t think she’d actually want me to look like one. I know I said I didn’t like skirts, but I was really happy to have one on now.

  I took another look at my reflection. I didn’t look like myself . . . and I wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad thing.

  But no time to dwell on bad haircuts! I had to get ready for school!

  I shouldered my new, old red leather randoseru. Filled with erasers? Check. Notebooks? Check. Shitajiki, pencils, slip-on indoor shoes? Check, check, and check! I patted my pockets. Pack of tissues in one, Snoopy handkerchief in the other.

  “Ittemairimasu.” I rattled open the back door to let my grandmother know I was about to leave. Ittemairimasu is just a Japanese way of saying goodbye that means “I’ll go and come back.”

  Obaasama was in the garden, tending to her koi. She paused only long enough to answer, “Itterasshai.” Please go and come back.

  I stepped out with Aunt Kyoko and breathed a sigh of relief. I was nervous about school, but I was also happy to leave the old, heavy quiet of the house. We crossed the street to a house catty-corner to Obaasama’s. Reiko Kobayashi, a girl I knew a little from previous visits, lived there.

  “Waka-chan, it’s been a while!” Reiko greeted me when we arrived. Reiko was a little shorter than I was, and . . . she had the same haircut as me! Only hers looked better. Her hair was a dark brown with auburn highlights, the kind of hair I tried to get one summer by spritzing lemon juice on it and playing in the sun all afternoon. But all that happened was my skin turned brown and my hair stayed the blackest black.

  Reiko’s mom and my aunt talked while Reiko and I chatted and gabbed, like years hadn’t passed since we last saw each other. A mini-Reiko bounced into the foyer and hid behind her mother. It was Tomoko, Reiko’s little sister.

  She peeked out and asked timidly, “Waka-chan, do you remember me?”

  Before I could answer, Tomoko disappeared again.

  “Of course, I do!” I replied when she snuck another glance at me. My little brother never seemed as excited to see me, but she reminded me of him anyway.

  “Tomoko! Stop goofing around,” bossed Reiko. Tomoko just smiled. Pretty clear Reiko wasn’t a scary big sister. Reiko turned her attention back toward me. “It’s too bad we’re not going to be in the same class.”

  “We’re not?” That was too bad.

  “But it will be fun to walk to and from school every day with you,” Reiko offered.

  Yes, that was good news. I’d been worried about getting lost.

  As my aunt, Reiko, and I set off for school, Reiko continued with her cheerful conversation. “I can’t believe you came here all by yourself this time—that’s amazing! Have you thought about what club you want to join?”

  “Club?” This was the first I heard about any sort of club.

  “Yeah, they’re after school. There’s Tea Ceremony Club, Sewing Club, Badminton Club, Track and Field Club . . .”

  I was happy Reiko was so talkative. I was so nervous about the first day of school that I could barely concentrate. Luckily, I didn’t have to say much at all.

  We walked past other kids—some our age, some a little younger—with their red leather backpacks (black ones for the boys), heading to their own schools. A flock of preschool students with their matching uniforms and bright yellow caps scurried and bounced about like little chicks. I looked down at my new outfit and was happy to be going to a school without uniforms.

  When we entered the large iron gates to the school, Reiko shouted, “I’ll wait for you here after school, okay? Ganbatte!” She urged me to “do your best” before she bounded across the dusty school grounds toward the six-story building where my mission to learn as much Japanese as possible would begin. Reiko made me feel comfortable and relaxed, but those feelings faded with each step she took away from me.

  I stiffened as my aunt and I entered the school. Students dashed past us as they kicked off their outdoor sneakers, put them in their wooden cubbies that lined the entryway, pulled their red-and-white indoor shoes out of them, and slipped them on in no seconds flat. It was like being in a hive and the students were bees, buzzing all around me. Where was my cubby? How would I find it among the hundreds of identical cubbies with identical shoes? And how long would it take before I could change from outside to inside as smoothly as all the other kids?

  As if reading my thoughts, my aunt instructed, “Go ahead and change into your indoor shoes, Waka-chan. I’m sure your new teacher will be able to show you where your cubby is.”

  After a brief meeting between my aunt and the principal, my teacher, Mr. Adachi, came to get me. Mr. Adachi was tall and thin, his tanned skin almost leathery. He looked like he was about my dad’s age. A lock of slick, wavy hair fell across his forehead. I’d never had a male teacher before at home, but he had crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes, just like Mrs. Davenport. I decided he might be all right.

  “We’ll see you on Sunday for church. Until then, ganbatte, Waka-chan,” encouraged my aunt. Ganbatte, “do your best”—both Reiko and my aunt had said to me this morning. I have been doing my best, I thought. But would my best be good enough here? Of that, I wasn’t sure.

  My aunt gave me a quick pat on my arm. With a bow to the principal and then to Mr. Adachi, my aunt passed the baton of my responsibility to the school. “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!” She thanked them in advance for taking care of me.

  “Shall we go?” Mr. Adachi asked me with an almost-smile. Before I could answer, he strode off, back straight, quickly down the hall and up the stairs. Students flowed in and out of the classrooms like fish racing through a stream, and I half-ran to keep up with him, desperate not to be left behind before I even began.

  Six

  I heard Grade Six, Class Five (6-5) before I saw them. Walking down the hall, I heard a dull rumble grow into a louder rumble, and when Mr. Adachi slid open the doors, the full force of the crazy 6-5 cacophony greeted us. In the back, a pudgy boy with a buzz cut threw a ball to a skinny boy with floppy hair who wore a tank top. Two others ran after each other in a game of chase, or tag, or keep-a-way, it was hard to tell. Students yammered, giggled, and shouted across the room.

  My classes back home were rowdy from time to time, too, but nothing like this, and nothing a sharp comment or look from Mrs. Davenport couldn’t fix. During parent-teacher conferences, all my teachers told my mom what a good student I was, but how they wished I weren’t so quiet. My mom assured them I certainly wasn’t quiet at home—at all. My mom said, “Americans think Japanese people are quiet.” When I saw the shenanigans of the students from 6-5, I thought, definitely not quiet.

  I glanced up at Mr. Adachi, not wanting to see his cheerful face break into a rage. Much to my surprise, it didn’t.

  “Emi-chan! Fujita-san!” he shouted at two girls—one short with freckles and bright twinkling eyes, and the other who was tall and slender. “This is Waka. Can you look after her until I come back?”

  “Yes, Adachi-sensei!” the girls replied with bows and lots of energy. With that, Mr. Adachi left me in the middle of Crazyville. No time to feel lonely or scared, though. Emi-chan took my backpack and Fujita-san steered me toward the middle of the fray.

  “Hi, Waka-chan! My name is Emi.” I relaxed slightly when they used -chan after my name. The Japanese add a lot of different suffixes to people’s names. The different suffixes are used for different people, depending on your relationship to them. -Chan is used after the names of people they feel close to or affectionate toward. A lot of times, adults used -chan toward kids, but I would never (ever!) add -chan to an adult’s name.

  For instance, we added -sensei to the end of Mr. Adachi’s name because he’s a teacher and sensei means teacher. For other adults who weren’t teachers, we’d add -san. But -san isn’t just f
or adults. It’s pretty neutral so it’s a safe bet when you don’t know which suffix to use. -Kun is almost always used after boys’ names, but not after adult men’s names.

  There’s another one, -sama, used for people you have the utmost respect toward, maybe so much you might even be scared of them. You know, like “Obaa-sama.”

  But why did Adachi-sensei call one by her last name (Fujita-san) and the other one by her first name (Emi-chan)? No clue! I didn’t know what everyone in my class went by, so I just listened and tried to file away as much information as I could. My mind was about to burst! I hoped I would get the hang of everyone’s names before they noticed I wasn’t calling them anything out of fear of messing up.

  “Mr. Adachi told us you’re from America. That’s so cool. Can you really speak English? I moved here last year, but only from Osaka, which isn’t all that different from Tokyo. I bet America is way different! This is Fujita-san—”

  “Emi-chan, let her get settled! Nice to meet you, Waka-chan. This is where your backpack goes.” Tall Fujita-san guided me to a wall of wooden cubbies in the back. They were like the shoe cubbies at the school entrance, only these were for our personal items. She eyed my backpack. “You don’t have any charms! Do you like Hello Kitty? Here, hang this on your backpack!” Fujita-san took a charm off her own backpack and handed me a little, plastic white cat hanging from a pink string.

  Before I could thank her, another girl approached.

  “Waka-chan! I sat behind you when you visited last time. Do you remember me?” the girl asked.

  I gave her a little smile that didn’t say yes or no. That visit was short in comparison, so I admit that I didn’t try to get to know everyone. I felt bad and wished I paid more attention then.