Gaia Girls Way of Water

by Lee Welles

I guess that means I’m done. This was scary. In the past, her parents were always there to steer things. Now she had to steer herself. She resisted the urge to stop and get little gray Shinju, her stuffed dolphin, out of her backpack.

  At Customs, the stern-faced agent asked her if she had anything to declare. She wanted to say, “I declare this to be the worst year of my life!” But she simply said, “No.” The man gave her backpack a quick glance and then waved her on.

  Now what? Miho felt her heart beat faster and her legs began to feel like lead. She stood rooted, looking at the massive baggage claim area beyond. There are hundreds of people! How will I know my uncle?

  Somebody bumped her from behind and that made her legs start moving forward. She walked as slowly as she could, afraid to get too deep into the sea of dark haired, mostly Japanese people. She felt she would get lost. But how can I get lost if I don’t know where I am supposed to be?

  Then she saw the man with the small white sign. It had her name on it! “Oji!” (She had been sure to know the word for uncle.) Her voice was high, and the relief of finding her only family propelled it loudly ahead of her. She ran toward her uncle and threw her arms around his waist.

  The man jumped back and pushed her off. He looked around at the other people and quickly said, “No! No! I no Oji!” He straightened his jacket. “I drive.” He made a motion like turning a steering wheel. “I drive…” He tapped the sign with her name on it.

  Miho stared at him, the information slow to sink into her mind. Not Oji? My uncle sent a driver? The brief happy lift Miho had felt, sunk. Miho said, “That’s me. I’m Miho.”

  The man looked confused, so Miho said, “Watashi no namae Miho Mary Rivolo desu.” (My name is Miho Mary Rivolo.) The man looked from the sign to her face then to the sign again. He pointed at her and raised his eyebrows in question. Then he shrugged and bowed slightly, “Yoroshiku.”

  Miho knew this meant, “Pleased to meet you.” She bowed in return and also said, “Yoroshiku.” The man lifted the card from around her neck, read it through and then gave it back to her.

  “I drive,” he said and motioned for her to follow him.

  Miho hesitated. This situation went against what her parents had taught her. Miho knew that anyone they ever sent to pick her up would also say, “Thar she blows!” It was a funny joke, but also a way of knowing that it was okay to go with someone.

  But how could her uncle know that? Kazuki Kiromoto had never been to visit them. He had never called. Miho thought that he had never even written a letter—at least not one that she ever saw. How would Kazuki Kiromoto know what she looked like or what secret password to give this driver?

  Miho didn’t have a choice. What else could she do? She had to trust that this man really had been sent by her uncle. How else would he know my name?

  Miho didn’t have a choice.

  5

  Riptide

  Miho sat in the back seat of the big black car and stared, wide-eyed at the city that swept by her. It was so big! They drove on and on, past an untold number of storefronts with signs she couldn’t read. Occasionally a word, written in English, would appear. Miho couldn’t begin to know why words like, “Much Cats” or “Freshy” would be on a store sign. She felt like she was being swept by a riptide away from the shore and into unfamiliar water.

  Miho had been pulled from shore by riptides before. Her father had once drawn a picture of what a rip was. His drawing had little waves curling toward the beach. He explained that the motion of the waves often dug a channel in the sand and then the water would rush back out. You couldn’t see it, but you would feel its pull.

  Miho knew you couldn’t fight a riptide. You would get tired before it did. You had to turn sideways and swim out of it. You had to swim parallel to the shore until the rip let you out of its grasp.

  However, now, Miho didn’t know where the shore was. She was being pulled into Nagoya and had no idea where she was, where her uncle was, or where this car would stop. She had no choice but to let this current sweep her into the unknown.

  Finally, the car stopped in front of a very tall, very drab, gray building. Miho couldn’t read the sign, but the driver, when he opened the door said, “This home Kiromoto-san.” He lifted the card from her neck and tapped a line that was written in katakana. “Home,” he repeated.

  Miho understood this to mean that they were now at her uncle’s address. Perhaps her uncle had been getting a room ready for her. Maybe he had been out buying food for a special, welcome-to-Japan dinner. Just as Miho toyed with another idea of what nice thing her uncle might be doing for her, the driver held out a key.

  She took the key from his hand and looked at him. He gave her shoulder a little push and said, “Go. Go home.”

  Go home? I would give anything to go home! Miho realized—for the first time in her life—that home was not a place; it was a feeling. She had lived in many different countries and in many different houses. She had even lived on boats. But she always felt that home was where her parents were. Home was where love was. And she had lost the people she loved the most.

  This realization hit her hard. Tears welled up in her eyes like high tide during a full moon. Miho crinkled her nose against them, but her breath started to hitch and the tears started to spill.

  The driver grabbed her shoulder and ran her into the building. He pulled a hanky out of his coat and started to pat her face. “Sh! Sh! Sh!” he said. Miho looked up, thinking he was trying to make her feel better. But the driver was, again, looking around nervously at the other people in the lobby and pushing the elevator button repeatedly.

  The elevator opened, he pushed her in, and began hitting the arrows to close the doors. When they shut, he sighed and looked relieved. He looked at Miho, who was swallowing her obviously shameful tears and was wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

  They got off on the seventh floor. The driver walked ahead and Miho followed him down the hall. They stopped at a door that had 714 on it. The driver slid the key in the door and opened it slowly. “Ohayo gozaimasu,” he called through the doorway. “Ohayo?” Miho knew this meant, “good morning.”

  There was no one in the tiny apartment. The driver pushed Miho in and then handed her the key. “Domo sumimasen,” he said, bowed quickly, then backed out the door and pulled it shut before Miho could even remember what ‘domo sumimasen’ meant.

  The silence filled her ears and the reek of stale cigarette smoke filled her nose. Miho slowly set her backpack down, unzipped it, and pulled out Shinju. She pressed the old, gray dolphin to her mouth and nose, hoping to block out both the smell and the fear.

  Miho looked around. It was a short look. The apartment was smaller than some of the boats she had lived on.The living room had a small sofa, a dirty ashtray on the floor and a TV on a stand, nothing more. The kitchen was really just a little alcove off the living room. There was a small hallway that had three doors. When Miho examined them, she found a closet, a bathroom and a bedroom. That was all there was. There were no pictures on the walls, no flowers in a vase, not even a telephone.

  She sat on the sofa, squeezing Shinju tightly under her chin and wondering what she was supposed to do. She tried watching television, but couldn’t understand the actors. She finally took out her portable CD player and fell asleep on the couch, listening to the lilting, other-worldly sound of great whales.

  6

  Oji-SAN!

  Something was burning and somebody was shaking her foot! She rubbed her eyes and squinted into the dark room. The man whose face was lit by the glow of his cigarette was still shaking her foot. “Oji?” Miho asked.

  He threw his head back and laughed. However, when he stopped, he looked anything but happy. He squinted his red-rimmed eyes at her and then leaned over to flip the switch on the wall. The sudden light made them both wince a little.

  He was wearing a suit, but was carrying the jacket and had the tie pulled loose. He swayed slightly and a bit of ash fell on the carpet. “Oji
-SAN!” he yelled. Then he turned and went down the hall, bumping the walls a couple of times. He slammed the door.

  Miho stared up at the ceiling. She should have known to use the term of politeness and honor. Oji-san, Oji-san, Oji-san. She repeated this in her mind, making sure she wouldn’t forget again.

  Sleep was slow to come back. Her body felt wide awake and her ears had nothing to do but listen to the snores coming from her uncle’s room and the city sounds, seven floors below. She talked to Shinju. She assured her that they would be okay. Miho slipped her headphones back on and finally, listening to her whales, slept again.

  Again, somebody was shaking her foot. A thin, feeble light came through the room’s single window. Miho sat up quickly and tore the headphones from her ears.

  “Ojisan,” she said.

  Kazuki Kiromoto was now smartly dressed in another dark suit, a blue tie knotted snug against his neck and only a little redness still rimming his eyes. He stared at her and then pursed his lips as if he were holding back words.

  “I go work now,” he finally said.

  “Ojisan,” Miho got to her feet and blurted out, “what am I supposed to do?”

  Her uncle looked around the apartment, as if some entertainment would magically appear. His gaze stayed on the kitchen. He reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a wallet. He extracted paper bills and handed them to Miho. “Make dinner,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and walked out the door.

  The click of the lock seemed to echo forever. Miho stared down at the bills in her hand. This had to be a bad dream. The kind of dream where you had to take a test but couldn’t find a pen, or the one where you went to school and then realized you were in your pajamas or worse, your underwear! Miho wouldn’t have been surprised if the room suddenly filled with people pointing and laughing.

  She wanted to cry, but instead, stared at the scar on the back of her hand. She rubbed it a little and reminded herself that she’d beaten a shark! If she could do that as an eight-year-old, she could figure out how to make her uncle dinner. She got up and brushed her teeth. She put Shinju, the money, her Japanese phrasebook, her passport and the card she had worn on the airplane into her backpack. She took a deep breath, rubbed the scar on the back of her hand and, with the key safely in her pocket, went down the elevator and out into the city of Nagoya.

  She stood for a long time looking at both the tops and the bottoms of the buildings around her. She knew from traveling in boats with her parents, especially through inlets and coves, that you had to be familiar with your landmarks.

  What she saw were not the hills and trees and interesting rocks she would normally mark, but the A-1 Bento Box to the left of her uncle’s apartment building and the shoe store to the right. These would have to do.

  Part of Miho wanted to go striding off into the city. She wanted to do something dramatic to prove she wasn’t as scared as she really was. But in her mind, she could hear her father’s voice. “Never dive first, Miho.” They had been standing on a rocky ledge near their new home in Alaska. “You should always swim in or jump feet first, because you don’t know how deep the water really is.”

  She didn’t know how big Nagoya really was, but she decided to swim around a little first. She walked the one block around Ojisan’s gray box of a building. Then she walked two blocks. She became a little more comfortable.

  All around her Nagoya swirled like a mad sea of people, cars, buses and subway centers. Almost everyone that walked past her looked twice. She thought it was because, although she was only ten, she was as tall, if not taller than many of the adults around her.

  Miho saw a subway entrance with a map on it. She stopped to study the map and although she couldn’t fully read the kanji and the katakana on it, she could see the shape and size of the city.

  Nagoya was near the sea! Her cheeks pulled into a little smile as she stared at the blue on the map. It looked like Nagoya sat at the back of a bay! “Ise Bay,” it said in English. Miho studied the map more and decided she could walk to the water. Over five blocks, down six, over three and down twelve. 5,6,3,12. Miho repeated these numbers so she would know how to get there. 5,6,3,12. 5,6,3,12.

  An hour later, Miho regretted her decision. She could smell the sea on the wind, but was still looking at gray buildings and busy roads. She felt to go back now would be to have wasted all this walking, so she plodded on.

  Finally, the buildings became smaller and the skyline shrunk until there was nothing ahead but docks and sky and boats and seabirds. Miho found a place to sit and watch the boats come and go.

  For a long time she thought of nothing; she simply let her eyes fill with the light that bounced off the water. She listened to the shrill calls of gulls and the low guttural sound of diesel engines pulling boats from their slips. She longed to be on one of the boats, heading out into the blue expanse. She wondered if she would ever be on a boat again.

  A shiver ran through her and alerted her to the fact that the spot she was sitting in was now in shadow. The sun was slipping down the backside of the day and she was far from Ojisan’s gray box!

  She jogged up five blocks and turned left and had gone two more when she realized her mistake. She should have first walked 12 blocks back! She had done her numbers backwards! Miho turned around in a circle and didn’t recognize…anything.

  7

  So American

  A feeling like the one she had at the airport stole over her. Her legs got heavy and her heart began to pound. Think, Miho! Think! What would Mom and Dad tell you to do? She had to swallow hard, once, to make sure the words “Mom and Dad” didn’t crack her open.

  But thinking of them, although painful, was the mental nudge she needed. She remembered that if you were in any kind of trouble, you should find an adult, preferably a policeman. She fished her phrasebook out of her backpack and looked up “Police.” She found the phrase asking where the police station was, but instead of trying to learn to say it properly, she simply marked it with her finger and waited.

  When a woman walked past her, Miho grabbed her sleeve. The woman looked startled, then annoyed. Miho pressed the book toward her, pointing to the phrase. The woman, in turn, pointed over Miho’s shoulder to a small box on the corner and then pulled away.

  Miho walked toward it, wondering if it was a big phone booth. But there was, indeed, a policeman inside. Miho tapped on the window; she already had her finger held in the phrasebook.

  “Konnichiwa,” said the policeman and stepped out. Miho pointed to the phrase, “I’m lost” and then pulled out her card from the airport and pointed to the address of Ojisan’s building. The policeman took the card and pointed at her. “Genkin?” he asked.

  “Money! Yes, I have money!” Miho pulled the bills from her pocket and showed him. The policeman held up one finger to indicate she should wait. He stepped inside the box and picked up the phone. When he hung up he came out and stood next to her. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. He looked at her and said, “Amer-i-ka?” She didn’t want to explain that she was both, or half, or gaijin, so she nodded.

  A taxi pulled up and the policeman showed the driver Ojisan’s gray box address. He took the money from Miho and gave most of it to the cab driver. Then he bowed a bit and said, “Sayonara.” Miho bowed back and said, “Sayonara,” and got into the cab.

  All the way back she worried. I don’t have food and now I don’t have money!What will he do? He’s gonna yell, for sure! Miho began to tremble a little at the thought.

  As luck would have it, when she walked through the lobby, a pizza delivery man, who was actually a teenager with headphones on, was waiting at the elevator. She followed him in.

  As it began to rise she said, “Konnichiwa.” The young man glanced at her and then looked back at the elevator doors, bopping his head to a beat she couldn’t hear. Miho tugged his sleeve and pulled out all her money. She pointed at the pizza and waved the money a little. His eyebrows raised and he looked over the bills in her ha
nd.

  “Hai,” he said and handed her the pizza. He rolled the bills up, tucked them in his pocket, and grinned. At the seventh floor, Miho got off and said, “Bye.” The young man just grinned again and threw her a salute.

  Miho hurried down the hall and was surprised to see three large boxes outside the door. They were hers! The boxes contained all her clothes, some books and toys from home! She had been so scared and worried about finding her uncle and then being in a strange apartment in a strange city that she had forgotten to be worried about her things.

  She nudged the door open and pushed the boxes through with her knee. She set the pizza on the counter and began to look through the cupboard for plates. The doorknob rattled and she looked up in time to see Kazuki Kiromoto’s feet fly up into the air as he fell over her boxes!

  He scrambled up, his face turning red and his eyes casting about until they fell on her and the pizza. “Konnichiwa, Ojisan,” Miho said and remembered to bow a little.

  Ojisan began to shake his head and his voice boomed out, “No! No! NO! Not Konnichiwa! Not afternoon! Kon-ban-WAH. It is NIGHT!”

  He took two steps to the little kitchen, “This dinner? This?” He lifted the lid and held up a slice of pizza that, strangely, had pepperoni and corn niblets on it. He tossed the slice back in.

  Her uncle walked in a tight circle around his apartment, lit a cigarette, drank in the smoke and muttered thickly in Japanese.

  Miho tried not to cough from the smoke and decided she had better try to fix things. “Ojisan,” she bowed again. “Thank you for bringing me into your home. I’m so happy to meet you and I…” She sifted through her mind as to what to say next. “I’m happy to meet you and I tried to find a grocery store and I got lost. I got lost and…”

  “Silence!” He had stopped circling and now stood still, chewing on his bottom lip. He seemed to smolder like the hot, red tip of his cigarette.

  “This is not good for me to have you here.”