1001 Cranes

by Naomi Hirahara

  “We’ve already been assigned an interim minister. I think he knows you, in fact. He mentioned something about you two going to the same college.”

  Kawaguchi looks confused. “Same college…What’s his name?”

  The back door opens, and it’s the man who served as my tour guide. “Hello, Lisa. It’s been a long time.”

  Kawaguchi is surprised and spills her Day-Timer on the floor. The rings of her binder spring open and the pages fly out, littering the front of the sanctuary with a rainbow of dates and lists of things to do. The other woman immediately kneels down to collect all the loose pages.

  Oh my God, I think. This guy, the minister, knows Kawaguchi. And I told the minister that Kawaguchi was mean. She’s not going to be happy to hear that.

  “You’re the new minister here? I thought that you were out in Watsonville,” Kawaguchi says.

  “Been reassigned. It’s so good to see you, Lisa. You look great.”

  Something in the way he looks at her makes me think that these two are more than college friends. Maybe the wedding coordinator gets the same impression, because she quickly excuses herself after giving Kawaguchi her Day-Timer pages.

  Kawaguchi seems to forget that I’m in the sanctuary. That doesn’t surprise me, because I’m pretty invisible most of the time. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; sometimes it helps me figure out what’s really going on.

  “So you’re the new minister here. For good?”

  “Well, until Nako-sensei recuperates. Maybe some months.”

  “This isn’t going to work, you know. Kevin is not going to like it.”

  “Is that his name: Kevin? What’s his last? Maybe I know him.”

  “You don’t know him. He doesn’t need to know anything about you.”

  “Then why is it a problem that I conduct the ceremony?”

  “You know what the problem is!”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “He’s going to know. He’ll sense it.”

  “What, is he a mind reader or something?”

  “No, but he’ll be able to tell. You can’t do the ceremony. I’ll just have to get another minister.”

  “Well, then you’ll have to find another church.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lisa, churches aren’t like hotel rooms. You can’t just pay money for the rental of the sanctuary. If you want this church, then I come with it. It’s a package deal. I’m over you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m totally cool with doing your wedding.”

  “I’m not going to be able to find a temple on such short notice. And all the invitations are out already. I can’t just change the location.”

  “Well, then, I guess you’re stuck with me. We can be friends, Lisa.”

  “I don’t need a friend right now. Just a minister.”

  Kawaguchi is so mean that I can’t believe it. I start coughing and Kawaguchi finally notices me sitting in the pew.

  “Oh, that’s my new friend,” the minister says.

  I lower my head, hoping that I somehow won’t be that visible. But it’s too late.

  “She tells me that she’s doing some work for you.” My fingers dig into my thighs. I cringe while waiting to hear him repeat how I described Kawaguchi: “kind of mean” or something like that. “She said that you were so easy to work for.”

  Kawaguchi is taken aback by that, maybe even more than I am. “Well, don’t want to keep you here,” she says to me. “Don’t want your grandparents to worry.”

  “The deposit?” My voice is a mere squeak.

  Kawaguchi digs in her purse and pulls out her checkbook. “Inui Flowers. A hundred and fifty dollars, right?”

  Ding-dong

  On my way home I stop by Tony’s uncle’s store. The uncle—I think his name is Carlos—smiles down at me from behind the counter. He recognizes me and I feel special.

  “Is Tony here?” I ask.

  Uncle Carlos shakes his head. Using a page of an old receipt book, he writes down a number. Although it’s summertime, he’s wearing long sleeves, and the cuffs go down to his palms.

  “You call him,” he says to me, handing me the sheet from the receipt book.

  I try to call Gramps and Grandma Michi first, but I get a busy signal. I try Tony’s next, but I get his voice mail. “Thanks,” I say. “It all worked out. This is Angie, by the way.” I close the phone and feel silly, but a good silly. I have a check for Gramps and Grandma Michi in my back pocket. And Tony’s phone number is now the fourth one to be entered into my cell phone.

  Before I can open my grandparents’ screen door, Grandma Michi beats me to it from the other side. I’m still smiling, but Grandma’s not.

  “What did you do to Rachel?” Her chin is stiff and her spotted neck is tight, like that of a lizard who’s ready to slurp up an insect.

  For a minute I forget who Rachel is.

  “She went crying to her father. Her gi was sopping wet.”

  “She did that to herself, not me.”

  “But you said something to her, didn’t you? She wouldn’t say to her father, but he figured out that something you said hurt her feelings.”

  “I barely said anything to her. She was just getting in the way.”

  Grandma’s eyes are like hammered-down nails. She doesn’t blink. Not even once.

  “I just told her to go back to her own family,” I finally admit.

  For a second I think that Grandma Michi is going to slap my face. Not that she has her hand out, but I notice that her fingers are rolled up like bear claw donuts.

  “I want you to call and apologize to her.”

  “Why?” I say. “She was the one who was spilling water all over the place.” My cheeks feel flushed like they do whenever I stretch the truth. The last thing I want to do is say I’m sorry to Rachel Joseph. But deep down inside, I know I did wrong.

  The doorbell rings, and Grandma hesitates, as if she doesn’t plan on answering it. She gets on her tippy-toes and looks through the eyehole. “What does she want?” I hear Grandma Michi mutter. She then opens the door with a big fake smile on her face.

  It’s the lady from next door, Mrs. O, and she wants to talk to me.

  “I’d like to invite you to church with me. Mr. Oyama will be on a fishing trip, so I’ll be on my own.”

  “Isn’t that on Sunday?” I ask.

  “Of course. It’s always on Sunday.”

  I’m supposed to meet Tony on Sunday. That’s the only thing on my mind.

  “I don’t think that I can make it,” I tell her.

  Grandma Michi then butts in from behind me. “She’ll go,” she says.

  A few minutes later I’m using the poison red cell phone to talk to Mom. “Grandma Michi is making me go to church tomorrow.”

  “What kind of church?”

  “A Christian church.”

  “Let me talk to Grandma.”

  I walk over to Grandma and hand the phone to her. She says a few words and then walks into her bedroom and closes the door.

  I don’t go try to overhear Grandma’s one-way conversation with my mom. I pretty much know what she’s telling her. After about ten minutes, Grandma comes out and shoves the phone back into my hand.

  “Angela,” Mom says, “I know that you’re going through a lot right now. Maybe it’s good if you go and meet some other girls your own age.”

  Well Woman

  It’s not that I’m totally clueless about religion. My friend Abby goes to temple at certain times of the year, and instead of a Christmas tree, her family puts out a giant wooden star that they hang ornaments on. Instead of Santa Clauses or snowmen, tops called dreidels appear on tables in their living room. And I’ve been to Buddhist temples, like I mentioned before. And not only for funerals and New Year’s rice cakes. Every summer Jii-chan and Baa-chan take me to an Obon, which is kind of a Japanese day of the dead.

  But I’ve never been to Buddhist Sunday school or anything like that. It seems boring. I mean
, we have to sit at desks five days a week for regular school. Why would I want to do that during the weekend, when I could be skateboarding or reading manga?

  So when Mrs. O picks me up for church on Sunday, I’m in a bad mood. I didn’t bother even to brush my hair; I can feel a giant knot on the back of my head. Grandma Michi notices it before I’m out the door.

  “Angela, you can’t go out like that.” From the bathroom she brings a fine-tooth comb, one of those with a pointy end that could easily poke out your eyeball. She tears the teeth of the comb through my knot. I feel like she’s pulling my hair out of my scalp, and tears come to my eyes. Church early Sunday morning is so not worth the trouble.

  After my hair knot is untangled and I’m deemed presentable, I get into Mrs. O’s car. Mrs. O drives pretty fast for an old person, and within a few minutes, she parks in a lot that’s large enough for a grocery store. The church building itself looks like a fancy gymnasium. I don’t see any crosses outside anywhere.

  Most of the people walking into the church look Japanese, Chinese, or Korean—some kind of Asian. There are a few hakujin and even a couple of black people. I’m not used to being around so many Asians so many times a week. In Mill Valley, there are only a handful of us. Of course, when we go south across the bridge to San Francisco, it’s a different story. But San Francisco’s our weekend world, not our everyday world. I don’t know how I would survive in an around-the-clock Asian American world. My own family is one thing. I don’t think of them as being Japanese or Asian American. They are just Mom and Dad. Even with my grandparents and the 1001 cranes, they don’t seem that Japanese-y to me. I don’t feel that we are separate or clumped up like weeds on a nice lawn. But somehow, this church makes me feel a little like an outsider, even though on the outside I look like an insider. I don’t want to go in, but Mrs. O is there, her hand on my shoulder.

  There’re a lot of kids, some really young ones who barely know how to walk. Mrs. O takes us through the building to some open double doors. A chubby man wearing a name tag smiles and hands me a yellow program.

  This main room is big, with rows of purple upholstered chairs. I thought all churches had wooden pews, like the Buddhist temple a few blocks away. I want to stay in the back, but of course, Mrs. O steers me to the third row. “I’m a little hard of hearing,” she says.

  There’s a band onstage—a real band, with drums, an electric guitar, and an electronic keyboard. And congas in the corner. I’m getting a little mixed up. Here are Japanese people playing congas in a Christian church.

  The music starts and it kind of sounds like regular music that you might hear inside a department store. People standing in the front row, and others sprinkled here and there in the crowd, lift up their hands while they sing. It scares me a little. I’ve never seen Japanese people acting this way.

  Mrs. O, thank goodness, doesn’t close her eyes or move her body. But I notice that as she clutches her program, her hands are shaking. The singing finally ends and we get to sit down for a while as we hear announcements. Then the speaker dismisses the children.

  “You can go with Keila,” Mrs. O says. She has her hand on the shoulder of a slim Asian girl with big brown eyes the size of pennies. They look Asian, but the rest of her face looks kind of hakujin, so I know that she’s half something else. “She’ll take you to your Sunday school class.”

  “Hi,” the girl says. Her voice is soft and comforting, like a favorite pillow.

  “You mean I’m not staying with you?” I say to Mrs. O. I sound kind of desperate. I am desperate. I’ve never gone to a Christian church service and don’t know what they will do to me in Sunday school. Dunk me in water? Force me to lift my hands and sing? I don’t sing out loud even when I’m by myself. I’m not going to do that in front of people I don’t know.

  “I can go with you and check you in—”

  “It’s okay. I’ll go with her,” I say. I don’t want to do it, but at least I’m not going to be a baby and have an old lady as my chaperone.

  We walk back out the double doors and I follow Keila down a hall decorated with kids’ drawings.

  “So are you Mrs. Oyama’s granddaughter?” she asks me.

  “No. She’s just the neighbor,” I say.

  “Oh. Mrs. Oyama’s so nice. I really like her.”

  Is this girl for real? I think. She has no zits, as far as I can tell, and even without makeup is beautiful. Her hair is like my mother’s, shiny and straight. Even her name is pretty. I’ll bet she has lots of brothers and sisters. And parents who are still together.

  “I don’t really know her.” I try to distance myself from Mrs. O. “I’m just staying in Gardena for the summer. Then I’ll be back in San Francisco.”

  “San Francisco—how neat. It’s so pretty up there. Do you live near the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  That is a nerdy question, for sure, but one I can appreciate. I love the Golden Gate Bridge. I never tire of looking out the window at the persimmon orange cables and beams that hold the bridge together.

  “Go over it at least four times a week,” I say.

  “Wow, you’re so lucky.” Keila is one of those genuinely nice girls—not like me, with only a thin layer of sweetness on the outside. I wish that I also could be soaked through and through with good and pure thoughts. But I know it’s too late for me.

  Keila takes me to a classroom at the end of the hall. I sign in and sit on a cold plastic chair with the rest of the girls. There are about nine of them and most are the cliquey, beautiful kind. One, wearing heavy eyeliner and a short cropped top, looks like the main troublemaker. Gazing into one of those free mirrors you get with a twenty-dollar makeup purchase, she adjusts her lip gloss. Five boys are running around, punching a deflated beach ball toward the ceiling. Tony wouldn’t be as immature as these guys, I think.

  At this moment, I’m glad to be sitting alongside the shininess of Keila. No one can feel completely alone with her.

  The teacher—I find out later that he’s called the youth pastor—walks into the room. He’s young but has a full beard. I can tell by how the other girls look at him, even the troublemaker, that they all have a crush on him. “That’s Pastor Barry,” Keila whispers, her eyes getting a bit dreamy. Ha, I think, this girl is human after all! Her crush is more grade school than junior high, though. She needs to like somebody who can be a real boyfriend, like Tony.

  Pastor Barry makes me introduce myself and no one looks halfway interested except for one of the hyper guys who were throwing the limp ball against the ceiling a few moments ago. “So you’re moving here?”

  “No,” I say in a loud voice that startles even me. “I’m just here for the summer, if even that.”

  The boy looks disappointed, and I’m surprised. Why would anyone want me to be here, in Asianville? Can’t he tell immediately that I don’t fit in? But I take his response as a compliment. Maybe I’m not as much an outsider as I think I am.

  Pastor Barry then asks the same boy, Nathan, to say some sort of prayer. Nathan looks a little embarrassed and then bows his head. The rest of them, even the troublemaker, close their eyes. I keep mine wide open—just in case. It’s like watching a magic show: some don’t want to know about the tricks, but I do.

  “Dear Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for everyone who’s here, and be with the people who can’t be here. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

  Nathan opens his eyes, quickly glances at me, and then turns away.

  Pastor Barry then starts telling us a story about Jesus and a woman at a well. She’s apparently living with some guy and has a string of ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands. Jesus starts asking her for some water from the well. According to Pastor Barry, Jewish men of a certain class didn’t talk to strange women during that time.

  “Angela…”

  As soon as I hear Pastor Barry call out my name, I know that I’m in trouble.

  “What do you think about how Jesus approaches the woman at the well?”

  Why are you picki
ng on me? I think. I’m new. I shrug. “I dunno,” I say.

  “You must have some thoughts.”

  This Pastor Barry is pretty tricky, I think. If I say nothing, it means that I have no thoughts. That my head is empty. Well, I’m not going to fall for that. “It’s kind of weird that Jesus asks the lady for water,” I say. “Seems like he can get it himself.”

  The girls in the back start to giggle. If it wasn’t for Keila, nodding seriously at my side, I would have done something very unchristian.

  “Exactly. Exactly,” Pastor Barry says, and he’s not kidding. “But asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness. In fact, that’s how you build relationships.”

  The room gets quiet, and I’m not following the pastor. How can asking for help be good in any way? Mom and Dad are always saying that you can’t count on anyone but yourself. Gramps says that in camp, he had to gambaru on his own. My family’s not into help, and come to think of it, neither am I.

  As Pastor Barry goes on with his lesson, I picture Mom as that woman at the well. If Jesus came to her asking for water, she would just tell him to get it himself.

  At the end of the lesson, Pastor Barry wants to pray again, but this time silently. “God knows all your problems, your struggles. Just talk with him about it.”

  Everyone bows down again. Again, I keep my head up and my eyes open. Nathan’s lips move slightly and I wonder what he’s thinking, saying. What problems could he or any of them (besides the troublemaker girl) have?

  I finally come up with my own prayer, or maybe it’s more of a dare. “If you’re really out there, God, then get my parents back together.” I don’t believe that it will happen, but something deep inside me wants it so badly. If this God knows everything and is all-powerful, then he will be able to do this. That is, if he really exists.

  After Sunday school, Mrs. O is waiting for me outside the door.

  “Bye, Angela. Maybe we can get together sometime,” Keila says to me.

  “Yeah,” I say, not really thinking it will happen.

  “You had a good time?” Mrs. O asks me after Keila leaves to join her parents.