"On the side of their knees, that’s where crickets have ears,” I told Meg, who had wrinkled up her nose and stuck out her tongue, believing I was making it up.
The pleasant sensation of sleep was beginning to wash over me when I heard another sound that immediately made my entire body tighten up. In the quiet of the night, a human voice cut through the thick walls. My entire being could detect the tone of anger. A crashing sound soon followed. Meg, who was sleeping in the twin bed next to mine, did not stir.
"Jesus Christ, Ellen,” yelled my father. His voice, though muffled, was like a punch.
"You liar,” my mother screamed.
I covered my ears tightly, willing the voices to disappear. After a few minutes, I checked to see that Meg was still asleep and released the pressure on my ears. I dared not breathe. To my immense relief, I heard only the crickets and a frog that had joined their chorus.
A few seconds passed. Then I heard a door open and close. I heard the sound of my father’s footsteps descend the stairs. Finally, the clicking sound of the front door being closed tight mixed with my mother’s muffled sobs.
I stared out into the garden at the tall maple tree, whose strong, dependable branches I loved to climb. I watched the sky lighten gradually. Some things happened so slowly, it made their changing almost invisible to the eye.
The scent of my mother’s lotion awakened me, even before I heard her words. "Wake up, sweetie. It’s late,” she whispered so as not to awaken Meg. The sleeve of her silk bathrobe slid across my arm as she bent over to kiss me on the forehead.
I opened my eyes and stared into my mother’s face. No sign of tears. Had I imagined the argument? Or had it all been a bad dream?
"Don’t go back to sleep. I’m going downstairs to make breakfast. You can eat it in the car.”
I dressed quickly and then grabbed my camera. I snapped a photo of myself in the bathroom mirror, dressed for school in my light-blue cotton jumper. I was recording everything about my life in Japan for my pen pal in California. As I walked past the open door of my parents’ room, I backed up and stopped to see if there was any evidence of the fight I had heard. The bed had been made, magazines and books stacked neatly on the table by the window, and bedclothes put away. Then I saw proof that the sound had not been in my imagination. The mirror over the dresser now had a crack in the bottom corner.
"Are you ready?” my mother called from the hallway. She stopped me at the bottom of the stairs, holding a hairbrush and two rubber bands. "Wait one minute, miss.”
As my mother parted and plaited my hair into two long, tight braids, a chaotic series of questions popped into my head. Who had broken the mirror? What had been thrown? Why was my father a liar? And why were they arguing so much lately?
Instead, I asked, "Where’s Daddy? Isn’t Shibata-san driving him to the office?”
"He took an early train.”
Usually my father let me know when I would be riding alone. "He didn’t tell me he had to leave early.”
My mother paused in the middle of twirling the rubber band at the end of my braid. I could tell she was trying to figure out what to say, but she didn’t end up answering any of my questions.
"You’re taking your camera?” she asked me instead.
"I’m taking pictures to send to my pen pal,” I answered curtly. Then I ran out the door and down the steps to the walkway. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure she hadn’t chased after me, I felt a smug sense of satisfaction. By the time I had reached the bottom of the hill and street level, my anger had shifted to incredulity. I had learned the word incredulous only the day before and had found the perfect use for it already. As I stopped to catch my breath, I imagined my mother’s perplexed reaction. Did she really think that I didn’t notice when she chose to ignore my questions?
I walked toward a Toyota sedan, where I found Shibata-san’s eyes closed, his head leaning back on the linen-covered headrest.
"Ohayogozaimasu, Shibata-san,” I called into the window.
Shibata-san’s eyes popped open and he gave me a big smile. "Good morning, Pamera-chan.”
As he maneuvered the car into the road, I craned my neck to look out the rear window at our house. From a distance, its cracked stucco and chipped paint were invisible. In fact, it looked quite regal, like an old king sitting atop its hill. Prior to moving in a year earlier, my father had been told that it had been built by a German businessmen in the early 1930s. A hundred yards from our house stood my favorite house in the neighborhood, a Japanese home with expansive gardens. Although it was much older than our house, it had aged much more gracefully, surrounded by a classic Japanese stone-and-stucco wall and strategically placed wood-framed windows to provide peeks into the tranquil garden. From the car, I could see the tall peak of the house’s black shingled roof.
The two houses overlooked a neighborhood of Western-style and Japanese houses. Shibata-san gingerly maneuvered its narrow streets, finally reaching the main road and the Shukugawa train station. My mouth watered as I saw the adjoining newspaper and magazine stand that sold stationery supplies and delicious chewy milk caramels. I had grabbed the handle of my lunch pail as I ran out the door, but I hadn’t taken the time to pick up the small paper bag next to it, which would have contained my mother’s standard late breakfast: a piece of toast and jar of yogurt.
Beyond the train station were the markets where Yumiko-san, our housekeeper, shopped for food. Sometimes I accompanied "Yumi” on her trips to the vegetable, fish, and rice markets where I loved to watch the shop owners add up totals on their abacuses. My favorite stop was the rice market, where the old lady scooped rice into a tin, weighed it on a giant scale, then figured out the price on her abacus, sliding black beads up and down, quickly and accurately, calling out the total in a soft voice. As she poured the rice into a thick paper bag, it sounded like raindrops hitting a roof.
Shibata-san drove along an avenue, wide enough to be divided in the middle by tracks and station stops for an electric streetcar. Although early in the day, the air was already turning hot and muggy, and I watched two Japanese businessmen simultaneously wipe perspiration from their foreheads with folded white handkerchiefs, which they carefully refolded and then tucked back into their suit jacket pockets. I checked to make sure I had remembered to put my handkerchief in the pocket of my jumper.
Crossing the intersection, we passed a chauffeur-driven car. In the back seat, a foreign businessman was engrossed in his newspaper, just the way my father was some mornings. Stopped in a traffic jam, I retrieved my camera to take a photograph of a mother who was fanning the baby on her back with a folded newspaper.
Finally, we started to move again.
The car made a little groan as it went into a lower gear, and then struggled up the steep hill to the Stella Maris Girls School. Shibata-san braked outside the main gate, opened his door, and circled around to open my door.
As I passed under an arched entry, a statue of the Virgin Mary smiled down at me. Inside my classroom, Sister McGowan was covering the chalkboard with the multiplication tables for sevens and eights.
All the girls were still talking, in English, with a multitude of different accents: Indian, Dutch, British, Chinese, and Pakistani. I was one of two Americans, which everyone could tell by my brightly colored lunch pail. The boxy bottom compartment held my lunch, while the rounded top held a Thermos of milk. The whole thing was painted red to look like a miniature barn, with stalls for cows and horses on the bottom half. My father always bought us new lunch pails at the beginning of each school year at the Navy’s PX, his favorite place to shop.
"One day we might go back to the States, and then you’ll see how all of the children carry a lunch pail,” he repeated each year as if I might have forgotten.
As soon as the bell rang, everyone stopped talking and found their seats, our attention on Sister McGowan, or at least the visible parts of Sister McGowan: her face and her hands. As she set the small
brass bell down on her desk among a tidy stack of books and papers, I couldn’t imagine that her white summer habit was any cooler than her black winter habit on such a muggy day. Nevertheless, she looked far more rested and cheerful than I felt.
"We’re going on our first field trip next week,” she announced to our claps and cheers.
"We will be visiting Nara, the capital of Japan from AD 710 to 784. Nara was the last stop along the Silk Road, which we will be studying this month.”
By mid-morning the skies were heavy with dark clouds and Sister McGowan decided we would take our morning recess early.
Some of the girls scooped up jump ropes and rubber balls from the tall wooden cabinet at the back of the room. Anita, Anneka, and I ran to an empty corner of the yard and faced each other, our fists touching briefly before moving up and down.
"Jankenpon!”
Anneka and Anita’s hands landed mid-air, index and middle fingers in the shape of scissors. My hand, wrapped into a tight fist, was in the shape a rock, which would break their scissors.
"You win,” Anita and Anneka called out in unison while they stretched the jump rope straight. Swinging it back and forth as I began to jump, they recited one of our favorite jump rope rhymes. "Cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to meet a fella. By mistake she kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?”
My braids smacked me on my back as I leapt over the rope.
"One, two, three, four…”
*
Later that evening, Meg and I lay on the tatami floor in Yumi’s room, enjoying the cross breeze and Yumi’s company. As I watched Yumi iron my mother’s paisley blouse, I recalled the day when the seamstress came to fit the blouse and its matching skirt. In the midst of the fitting, my father had arrived home from a business trip to Tokyo. He presented my mother with a small, beautifully wrapped box.
Was it the last time I had seen them happy?
Heeding the seamstress’s warnings of the pins in the skirt and blouse, my mother had gracefully turned around like the twirling dancer in my jewelry box. She had oh-so-carefully unwrapped the wrapping paper and handed it to me, knowing that Yumi and I would want to turn it into an origami flower, bird, or fish.
A string of creamy white pearls emerged from the box. My mother glowed.
"They’re beautiful,” she said, and reached out to give my father a kiss.
My father had then turned toward Meg and me and asked, "Which hand?”
Meg pointed to his left arm and out came a baby doll, dressed in a lacy pink dress. She squealed with delight and jumped up to reach for the doll. She gave it a hug.
"She’s so pretty! I love her!”
My father brought his other hand forward. It held a leather case, which he held out to me.
"A Brownie for you,” he said.
"A brownie?” I asked, baffled.
He pulled a camera out of the case. "They’re called Brownies,” he said as he handed it to me.
I immediately placed my eye up to the viewfinder. I pressed the shutter. Everyone laughed as the flash went off.
"I’ll go unpack,” my father said. "By the way, there’s already film in it!”
As the seamstress placed her pins, measuring tape, and marking pencil back in her sewing box, my mother began unbuttoning her blouse.
"Ki o tsukete!” the seamstress had admonished.
"Careful, Mommy,” Meg echoed the seamstress’s gentle voice.
In her slip, bra, and pearls, I had never seen my mother look so beautiful. Without thinking, I had placed the camera up to my eye and framed the shot.
Click, the camera went.
My mother gasped and then scolded, "You have to ask before taking pictures of people. Especially when they don’t have their clothes on.”
Meg laughed and pointed at her doll, whose dress she had removed.
My mother reached for a dress on the stool and slipped it over her head. When her head reappeared, she smiled coyly and wagged her finger at me, "That picture is for your eyes only. It does not go into the family album.”
When I was in bed much later that night, I heard the front door open and then the distant voices of my parents as they walked up the staircase together. Before leaving for a party, my father and mother stopped by Yumi’s room together to say goodbye. They were in a good mood, and I noticed that my mother was wearing her pearls.
"You drank too much,” I heard my father say.
"I didn’t,” my mother giggled.
"Yes, you did.”
I lay awake listening to the usual chorus of crickets. I thought about the male crickets, rubbing their wings together to attract the female crickets. Another fact I had learned about crickets: the females preferred the strongest chirpers.
*
I was awakened later by another sound I was getting to know too well. I reached for my alarm clock. What was there to argue about at three o’clock in the morning? I folded my pillow in half and placed it over my head, but it didn’t help. I sat up and looked at Meg, who, of course, was still sound asleep. I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the bedroom door.
The downstairs entry was dimly lit by the shaft of light that snuck through the glass panes above the front door. I made my way to the swinging kitchen door. Squeezing my pillow close, I paused to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark room. Drawn toward the shape of the stove and its dimly lit buttons, I remembered that if I pressed the button on the far end, a gentle light illuminated the top of the stove. I pressed the tiny green button and was rewarded with a warm glow.
Yumi walked into the kitchen, wearing one of my mother’s old robes folded across her nightgown like a kimono.
"Daijobu?”
I nodded even though I wasn’t fine. I had never wandered downstairs in the middle of the night. Yumi offered to walk me back upstairs, but I shook my head.
She noticed my pillow. "Kimashoo.”
I gladly followed Yumi into her room. Laid out on top of the Japanese tatami floor was a futon bed. Yumi’s compact buckwheat pillow rustled as she moved it to make room for my fluffy pillow. I fell sound asleep.
When I awakened in the morning, I was alone. I spent a few minutes staring up at the ceiling, studying an old water stain and listening to the sounds of morning activity. The door slid open, and Yumi entered.
"Ohayagozomaisu.” She smiled.
"Good morning, Yumi,” I answered.
"I made special lunch for field trip,” said Yumi. "Must hurry and get ready, ne?”
I jumped up, excited to be reminded of the trip to Nara. Yumi handed me my pillow.
"Thank you, Yumi,” I said, not meaning the pillow.
*
On the bus ride to Nara, Sister McGowan led the class in Japanese, English, and French songs. Anneka, Anita, and I couldn’t help giggling whenever she turned into this animated singing nun. "Do you suppose she thinks we can be like the von Trapp family?” Anita whispered in her melodious Indian accent.
"In the Sound of Music?” Anneka and I giggled in disbelief.
When the bus arrived at Nara Park, Sister McGowan went from being the singing nun to the colonel nun. She barked out a list of instructions, which included a reminder about using quiet voices in temples, meeting places, and bathroom locations, and during lunch. She paired us up and instructed us not to separate. My partner was Anita.
We exited the bus with Sister McGowan leading the way, looking as if she had led her troops here hundreds of times before. Immediately, we noticed the scattered groups of deer. In every direction, deer rested on their haunches or walked around nimbly. Sister McGowan had explained in class that the deer were considered sacred animals. I noticed that sacred animals still went to the bathroom, as I focused half of my attention on avoiding clusters of brown pellets on the walking paths.
I stopped to pull my camera out of its case. I held the window of the viewfinder up to my eye and moved in a slow, circular movement, looking for the phot
ograph I wanted to take.
A Japanese man, who looked as ancient as the surrounding temples, sat alone in one of the many porch-like structures set up to sell snacks and souvenirs. His calligraphy scrolls were displayed behind him.
"Shashin tote?” the man called out to me.
"Hai. I’m taking pictures.”
"Nihongo hanasemasuka?” the man asked.
I spoke a little Japanese.
"Skoshi,” I answered shyly.
I watched as he dipped his brush into ink and began to paint new strokes on a piece of paper. He finished one character, and then dipped his brush into the ink. The tip of the brush once again touched paper to begin the second character, the squat, solid shapes contrasting with the delicate curves of the first.
Anita, who had walked on with the rest of the class, had dashed back to my side when she realized I was missing. "Everyone has gone ahead. They’re going into the temple to see the Buddha.”
"Wait one minute.”
The man completed the last stroke. He leaned toward the paper to blow the ink dry. Then he lifted the long scroll and handed it to me. I carefully took hold of the narrow piece of paper and studied it. As I had not learned kanji, the most complicated Japanese alphabet, I did not know what the letters said. The first character looked like a girl with a ponytail in her hair, leaning forward to gaze east. The second character was a series of vertical and horizontal lines that sat on two squat legs, strong and steady.
"Shashin. Photograph.”
"You speak English?” I asked.
"Skoshi,” he answered with a twinkle in his eye. "Little bit.”
He turned his focus to the paper, "It is Japanese word for photograph.” He pointed to the first character and translated the meaning: to copy. He pointed to the second: the truth.
How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia Page 5