While I Was Away Read online

My lack of recognition didn’t seem to bother her. “Would you like this?” She handed me another charm; this one was a bell attached to a brightly colored paper ball. “It’s for good luck in your studies.”

  Emi-chan attached both charms to my backpack. “There!” she said with satisfaction. “Now it’s looking quite cute.” I didn’t even know my backpack was lacking anything, but it looked better than it did before.

  Just like my mother said, most of the girls wore skirts. A few of them wore shorts, though, so I was happy to know this was an option. My clothes weren’t too different—their skirts hit right at the knee and mine were only a couple inches longer. They didn’t mention a word about my clothes—no disdainful looks either. All good signs!

  In the corner, I spied my old friend Midori-chan. Despite not remembering the girl who sat behind me, I did manage to make a friend in Midori the last time I was here. I was new and didn’t have any friends, and she was shy and didn’t have any friends. So we became each other’s best friend. Even though I didn’t understand everything she said to me, it didn’t matter. We ran around the schoolyard together at every recess shouting, “Come on, let’s play!”

  “Midori-chan!” I waved. I hadn’t realized she would be in my class. What a nice surprise! She glanced up, but I wasn’t sure she saw me. I waved harder. “How are you?”

  She looked the same—stick-straight black hair falling down the sides of her face, bangs cut straight across. Obaasama’s voice, “Yuurei,” popped into my head before I quickly dismissed it. There was nothing about my friend that was like a floating woman-ghost with drooping hair.

  “Oh, hi, Waka-chan. I’m fine,” Midori-chan replied. She smiled, but for a half second, it felt like she wasn’t as happy to see me as I was to see her.

  “Hi, I’m Tanaka,” a girl next to Midori-chan greeted me. I didn’t recognize her, but she introduced herself with her last name, which was the same as mine! Something that never happened back home. In the US, I never bothered to check the rack of keychains and magnets at souvenir stores to see if my name was there. But Tanaka is like the Smith of Japan. We were a dime a dozen.

  “If you want to be called Tanaka, you can call me Naomi so there’s no confusion,” she offered. It never even occurred to me to have everyone call me by my last name! She was shorter than I was, and her chin-length hair framed her plump face, her cheeks soft and white like mochi rice cakes. “In fact, I think I’d rather be called by my first name.” Naomi chewed her nails as she looked back and forth between me and Midori-chan.

  “Really?” asked Midori-chan. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

  “I don’t know,” Naomi answered. “Everyone just started by calling me Tanaka when I moved here, so I—”

  “I’m Yamashita,” a tall, lanky girl interrupted. I noticed she introduced herself with her last name too. She was even more tan than I was, and she pulled her thick, black hair back into a high, bouncy ponytail. Her shiny, dark eyes glinted like obsidian.

  “I’m Saito!” a big girl shouted over the din. Even compared with this very loud class, she was the loudest by far. “Nice to meet ya!” Saito-san’s messy bob was pulled back in a headband, and she didn’t wear clothes that were cute like the other girls. There was a smudge on her shirt, but I could tell she didn’t really care about it or what other people thought of it either.

  Midori-chan tossed her slick, shoulder-length hair back. “These are my friends.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh!” For a second, I was surprised that I was surprised Midori-chan had new friends. After all, it had been a couple years since we’d seen each other, and I wouldn’t have wanted her to be lonely all this time.

  Naomi spoke up before the silence between us grew too long, “Maybe we can all play together.”

  I smiled. “Sure!”

  Then Mr. Adachi entered the room and the shouting stopped. Students scrambled. Within seconds, the chaos disappeared, and all forty students became as orderly as the desks in the classroom—organized two-by-two in rows and all facing the blackboard. Except for me. I didn’t know which desk to go to until Emi-chan pointed it out for me.

  Fujita-san and a boy whose name I didn’t know yet stood, backs straight, at the front of the room.

  “Kiritsu!” Fujita-san commanded.

  Chairs scraped on the floor as students rose from their seats.

  “Ki wo tsuke!” the boy barked.

  All students immediately assumed the stiff posture of soldiers.

  “Rei,” Fujita-san said.

  All together, everyone bowed to Mr. Adachi who stood in front of the class. “Ohayou gozaimasu,” we said, then snapped back to an upright position after our morning greeting.

  “Take your seats,” Fujita-san ordered. My classmates pulled out their chairs, sat down, and scooted into their desks. I was a split second late but managed to sit before looking completely lost.

  Mr. Adachi motioned to me. “Waka-chan, come up here, please.” At home, I went to school in the same district since I was five years old. I met Annette when I was in preschool and Kristina on the first day of kindergarten. I was never “the new kid.” Here, not only was I the new kid, but I was the new, weird kid who spoke funky Japanese. I walked up to Mr. Adachi, but I didn’t know what to say, how to stand, or where to look. Luckily, Mr. Adachi knew what needed to happen. He took hold of my shoulders and turned me around to face the class.

  “Many of you already know Waka from the short time she spent at this school a couple of years ago. Well, now she is here for much longer. Her parents want her to learn Japanese. You may have already noticed Waka can’t speak Japanese as well as you.”

  I can’t believe he said that! It might be true, but called out like that in front of the whole class? Mrs. Davenport would never have done that.

  Pudgy Buzz-Cut Boy shouted, “What is she, stupid?”

  My face grew hot. The word for stupid in Japanese is baka. Although my siblings had figured out baka rhymed with Waka, I really hoped my classmates wouldn’t.

  No such luck.

  The scrawny, floppy-haired boy sitting next to Pudgy Buzz-Cut Boy snickered, “Baka Waka.”

  Mr. Adachi’s ever-present smile morphed into a scowl. He strode over and—SMACK!—brought his hand down on top of Pudgy Buzz-Cut Boy’s head.

  Holy cow! I flinched and my heart pounded. Teachers at home never hit us. The only person who was “allowed” to punish any student like that was the principal, who had a paddle hanging in his office—not that I’d ever seen it. According to school legend, the paddle had holes in it so there was less air resistance when swung. No one actually knew anyone who had ever been paddled, though.

  “Ow!” the boy yelped and rubbed his buzzed head. Judging from everyone’s (non) reaction, teachers smacking kids was not that big of a deal here.

  “You’re the baka, Suzuki-kun,” Mr. Adachi berated the boy as he returned to the front of the room. “Remember, Waka’s English is better than your Japanese, and by the time she leaves, her Japanese will be as good as yours. Maybe better.” Suzuki-kun glared at me as he rubbed his head. Suzuki, I highlighted his name in my brain. Avoid Suzuki-kun.

  “Waka has already finished sixth grade even though she’s the same age as all of you. Basically, she’s so smart she skipped a grade.” I fidgeted because Mr. Adachi’s comments weren’t exactly true. While I had finished sixth grade in the US, it was only because the school year at home happened to end in May and the Japanese school year happened to start in April. So I was a little younger for my grade in the US, but one of the older students for my grade in Japan. I hadn’t skipped anything. Even so, students whispered around me. Some of them looked at me differently now, in both good and bad ways. I didn’t know where to look or how to escape their stares; all I wanted was to sit down as soon as I could.

  “I would like all of you to help Waka as much as you can. If you would like to know more about America, I am sure she’d be happy to answer your questions. Most of all, I hope you can be
come good friends.” With that, Mr. Adachi pushed my head down into a bow. “It is very nice to meet you!” he stated for me.

  What the heck? I felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy at being puppet-mastered like that. Not that I minded that much. It was better than looking like I didn’t know what to do.

  My classmates bowed. “It’s nice to meet you too!”

  Mr. Adachi released my head, and I popped back into standing position. He gently nudged me back toward my desk by the window, where I exhaled, glad that the hard part, or at least what I thought was the hard part, was over.

  I received my new textbooks—thin and floppy, not like the giant hardcover volumes I carted around at home. When I flipped through my language arts book, a bunch of kanji I didn’t know greeted me. Yikes!

  Although Mr. Adachi taught most of the subjects, we went to a different classroom for music class.

  “Who’s this?” asked the teacher when she saw me. Her voice was stern, and she did not have crow’s feet.

  I waited for someone to answer. Not a word from anyone. I guessed this meant I had to answer.

  “Waka-san desu.”

  Her already-unsmiling expression changed into an appalled-unsmiling expression. Uh-oh. What did I do wrong?

  “Waka! Her name is Waka,” squeaked one of my classmates.

  “Yeah, she’s a gaijin,” explained another girl. “A foreigner. She just came from America.”

  The teacher adjusted her glasses and leaned in to search for any sign of America in my very Japanese face.

  “Is that so?”

  My heart pounded under her inspection.

  If anyone asked me if I was more American or Japanese, I would have responded, “American!” in a second. But something about the way my classmate said “gaijin” made me feel a little funny, and not funny in a good ha-ha way.

  To write gaijin in kanji, you combined the characters “outside” and “person.” “Outside person,” that’s what she called me.

  After class, Emi explained, “Waka-chan, just so you know, never, ever add -san to the end of your own name.” Her eyes were no longer twinkling when she told me, and even her freckles looked serious.

  “But I thought it was more polite—”

  “Yes, if you attach it to someone else’s name. Attaching it to your own name is like saying, ‘My name is Waka, but that’s ‘Miss Waka’ to you. It’s . . . rude. Introduce yourself with your last name before your first name too.”

  How embarrassing. I didn’t even know the right way to tell someone my name.

  Thank goodness Emi-chan was looking out for me.

  At the end of school, Emi-chan and Fujita-san asked if they could walk me home.

  “Thank you,” I responded, flattered by their offer. “But I live across the street from Reiko, and I promised I’d walk back with her.”

  “Reiko Kobayashi?” asked Fujita-san. “Isn’t she in 6-3?” When I nodded, Emi-chan traded glances with Fujita-san.

  “Well, sometime soon then, okay?” Emi-chan said.

  I nodded again and waved as they skipped away together, wondering what the look meant but not caring too much since my first day was over. I ran to the front gate where Reiko was waiting.

  “So,” she asked as we started walking, “did you have a good first day?”

  I thought, Suzuki-kun called me stupid, there were books full of kanji in my backpack, and I felt weird when that girl called me a “gaijin.” But, Mr. Adachi did smack Suzuki-kun for calling me stupid, I saw Midori-chan again, even if she did act a little weird, and some of the girls gave me new charms. “Yep! Really good,” I responded.

  “Good for you, I’m glad!”

  Reiko was nice too. So what if she was in 6-3 and I was in 6-5? A friend is a friend is a friend. Reiko and I ran, skipped, and walked the rest of the way back to Obaasama’s house. Sometimes we stopped to pick seeds from flowers or to check out a slimy slug oozing across a rough cement wall. Plants with dark-green leaves and giant orbs of blooms lined our paths.

  I stopped to examine one. It had pink, blue, and purple flowers, all on the same plant!

  “Waka-chan, doushita no?” Reiko asked me what was the matter.

  “These flowers are kinda weird. Like, my cherry tree at home has pink flowers. The pear tree has white flowers. But this has different colored blossoms, even though they’re on the same plant!”

  “Those are ajisai,” explained Reiko. “They’re known for that. Aren’t there any ajisai in Kansas?”

  I shook my head. I’d never seen any ajisai back home. I wondered what they were called in English. I sketched one during my next social studies class because I didn’t understand anything that was going on and I was bored.

  Even so, school wasn’t as bad as I had worried it would be. I might be able to survive this, I thought.

  And I did. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Can you believe I had to go to school on Saturdays too? Well, I did, because that’s just how Japanese schools are!

  First week of school done. Only twenty-two weeks (oh my GOD!) more to go.

  Seven

  When I arrived back at Obaasama’s house on Saturday, silence greeted me just like it had every day I returned home from school.

  I opened the sliding door that led to the hallway outside the kitchen and slipped off my shoes. “Tadaima,” I called out to let her know I was back. I stepped inside and set down my randoseru backpack.

  After a few seconds, Obaasama called out, “Okaerinasai,” from the garden. Welcome back. That’s where she was when I left this morning. Was she out there this whole time?

  Obaasama poked her head inside.

  “Have some snack,” she said. “I’ll be in soon.”

  I sat at the tiny dining table by myself—again. Several soy-flavored sembei rice crackers wrapped in crispy black nori seaweed and a few pale-orange loquats were set on a separate plate for me. I never saw loquats at home. I carefully peeled one and its skin came off in four even strips. It was like a cross between a plum and an apricot, juicy and tart and sweet all at the same time.

  Tick, tock, tick. Obaasama’s old windup clock counted time from across the room. Tick, tock, tick. The house was so quiet, the steady rhythm boomed in the silence. My afternoons had been like this all week. Since school was only a half day on Saturday, the afternoon would be even longer.

  Obaasama opened the door from the garden with a rattle.

  “Um . . .” I cleared my throat. “Thank you for the snack.”

  Obaasama looked surprised, almost as if she’d forgotten she prepared it for me. “You’re welcome.” She unwound her scarf and removed her hat.

  What else? What should we talk about? Since it was Saturday, there was no buzz and hustle of businessmen making their way to and from work. It was really quiet today.

  Click. My grandmother turned on the TV. I loved TV. The first thing I used to do after school back home was turn on the TV and watch reruns of my favorite sitcoms. Not here, though! After all, this wasn’t my house, so it felt weird to turn on the television and search for shows on my own. I mean, I was a guest and what kind of guest does that? So I turned my chair to watch whatever was on. Maybe it would be cartoons since it was Saturday? Saturday cartoons were the best part of weekends back home.

  Obaasama sat in front of the TV and stretched to reach her toes. These were her “radio exercises,” though they were nowhere near as crazy as the ones my dad did. I crunched the salty sembei quietly so I wouldn’t disturb Obaasama watching her show.

  I watched too, but (sigh) it was just old people—you know, people over thirty—talking about . . . I don’t even know. Something. Something boring that I didn’t understand. That would have made Mom mad to know, but I wasn’t about to tell her or Obaasama. Even when I did understand, I was bored. I watched and crunched, crunched and watched. Sadly, there were no cartoons.

  We sat through a news program, and then a cooking show. When the program ended, I realized I had been with Obaasama for
a whole week and I had no idea what she did while I was at school.

  “Um . . . what did you do today?” I asked.

  “Me?” Obaasama answered, surprised again. “I worked on the apartments.”

  Obaasama had a few rooms on the other side of the house that she rented to university students. Since there were separate entrances for the apartments, I had only seen one of her tenants so far. “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. Obaasama turned off the TV and so now it was really quiet.

  Tick, tock, tick. The school week sped by, but time seemed to slow to a crawl this Saturday afternoon.

  Clank! I turned my head toward the sound outside.

  “I wonder if that’s the mail—” began my grandmother. I jumped up and dashed out back, barely getting my shoes on as I tumbled out to the mailbox.

  I’d been in Japan for more than a week and still no letters. I checked every day, but still no letters. I reached the mailbox just as the mailman was leaving, and I quickly reached in. And today . . . today! Today there was a LETTER! It was from home.

  Obaasama wasn’t around when I ran back in, so I dug around in a kitchen drawer for a letter opener. Nothing in that drawer, so I opened another. I spotted my grandmother’s hefty cleaver on the cutting board by the sink and briefly considered using that to CHOP open my letter—I was that impatient! Finally, I found the letter opener in the third drawer I rifled through.

  At that moment, Obaasama appeared from the bedroom wearing . . . holy moly! My jaw dropped.

  Obaasama had changed from her usual outfit of loose-fitting trousers and a long-sleeved blouse to a yellow-and-black tiger-print dress, the swirl of black stripes over the vibrant yellow background wilder than anything I’d ever seen any old lady wear! As she adjusted the birdcage netting of the tiny hat perched on her head, her large, gold rings glinted at me. One was a huge dark-purple amethyst as big and round as an eyeball.

  “What do you think?”

  I was too distracted by another ring she wore to answer. It looked like something Wonder Woman would have—a deep yellow-gold zigzag that looked like it could repel lasers.