1001 Cranes (13 page)

The martial artists now break up into pairs. I’m surprised to see Keila facing a guy at least a foot taller than her. They bow to each other and then start grappling, pulling the front collar of each other’s
gi.
I am worried that Keila’s
gi
will fly open, revealing her bra and whatever else, but I am relieved to see that she’s wearing a purple T-shirt underneath. All the girls, in fact, seem to be wearing something underneath their
gi.

Rachel is with an older man who must be at least triple her weight. How can she fight him? He could just step on her and squash her like a bug. But somehow she uses what little weight she has and certain twists of her body to pull the man forward. He falls, tucks his head under, and rolls. When he rolls, he slaps the mat hard with the inside of his arm. It sounds like a huge belly flop in a sea of blue padding.

I can’t help noticing Nathan grappling with Rachel’s father. The men don’t wear anything under their
gi,
and Nathan’s top opens up, held together only by his green belt. I’m surprised to see that he has some rows of muscle on his skinny stomach. I mean, he’s still skinny—I can see his ribs—but maybe he’s not as uncoordinated as I thought he was back at the church.

“We are more into
randori
at this dojo,” says the root beer man. He has a wispy beard.

“What’s
randori
?”

“
Randori
is free style. You just go at it. We don’t go over each
kata,
form, again and again. You gotta just experience it, you know.” The root beer man is missing some of his teeth, and I wonder who he is.

After fifteen minutes, they trade partners, just like in square dancing. It doesn’t matter how old you are, if you’re a girl, if you’re small; you just randomly get matched up with an opponent. It’s obvious that Rachel is one of the stars. Her bows are crisp, and her face determined as she flips and knocks down men, teenagers, and other girls with her foot and arm movements. I know that many of them are just going with the flow; if they were fighting in a dark alley, these big guys would be able to beat Rachel, no doubt. But that doesn’t matter here. She knows about imbalance and balance, and I know that I couldn’t do what she is doing even if I’d started judo when I started walking.

I look back at Grandma Michi, who’s been quiet the whole time. She’s watching Rachel with as much pride as if Rachel was her granddaughter. Her eyes are even shining.

The whole session lasts about an hour, and the younger kids stop first. Rachel comes to the side to get a bottle of water from the cooler and finally notices me.

“Why are you here?” She doesn’t waste any time getting to the point.

“Sorry,” I say. My voice cracks a little. “For getting mad and saying things I shouldn’t have said the other day.”

Rachel Joseph looks away from me quickly and I’m glad she does. My eyes get wet for some reason.

Grandma Michi nods with approval. I guess I’ve passed her test.

“You did real good out there,” Grandma says, and cups Rachel’s head with her hand. Rachel looks like a baby bird with her head and bread-loaf-looking braids nestled in my grandmother’s arm.

I can’t help feeling a tinge of jealousy. What does Rachel have that I don’t? Is it that she’s adopted? That Grandma feels sorry for her? Well, what about me? My parents are alive, but they’re splitting up. My own family’s dying, but Grandma doesn’t seem to notice or care.

“Hi, Mrs. Inui. It’s so good to see you.” Rachel’s mother gets up from her seat. She’s tall and looks smart, like she could be a lawyer, like my mother, only one who works at it full-time.

“My granddaughter, Angela.” Grandma, who’s still holding on to Rachel, nods toward me.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Rachel’s mother says.

I know that might be a bad thing, so I murmur a hello and keep my head down.

Keila comes to the side to get a towel from her athletic bag.

“You should do judo with us,” she says to me.

“It’s not for me.” I don’t like to do anything that requires me to wear a uniform. That was why I quit the Girl Scouts. Plus the fact that you have to sell stuff. I don’t like asking people to do things that they might not want to do. Mom says I shouldn’t take it personally when people reject me. But I do.

“I’m busy, besides,” I tell Keila. “I have these one-thousand-and-one-cranes projects.” I like saying that now. I feel important. I have a job.

We hear yelling on the mat, and it’s Nathan doing
randori
with another boy, who looks like he could be in high school or college. The tops of both boys’
gi
are practically off their bodies as they struggle with each other.

“That Nathan is really going at it,” says the man with the missing teeth.

Keila nods. “He never
kiais
so much.”

“Ki-yah?”

“Ki-ai,”
Keila repeats slowly. “It’s summoning energy from your insides.”

It sounds like just yelling to me.

“I think that he kind of likes you,” Keila observes, wiping her forehead with her towel.

I blush, surprising myself. I feel kind of bad, because it should be only Tony who I think about.

“Keila…,” Rachel’s father calls out again. I have a feeling that Keila gets in trouble for talking too much. I guess she isn’t as perfect as I think she is.

“I hope to see you next Sunday,” Keila says. She gets up and joins the rest of the robed students, who have now formed four lines.

“Kiritsu,”
Nathan calls out. The students stand straight as boards and lift their arms forward, like in a Nazi salute, but not quite.
“Rei.”
All of them bow simultaneously.

The session is officially over.

First Fight

Tonight Tony calls me. I love hearing his voice. It’s husky yet syrupy when he ends his sentences. When he speaks to me, I feel like he’s telling me secrets, even though it’s everyday talk about helping in his uncle Carlos’s store. He tells me about unloading pallets. “Do you know what a pallet is?” he asks me.

“Isn’t that something to do with color?”

“I thought you wanted to be a writer.” I know what he’s getting at. Just like Mom and Grandma, he thinks I’m stupid. I regret telling him that I like to write, although I haven’t written anything since my parents started having problems.

“It’s not like I know every word in the universe,” I say.

Tony senses that my feelings are hurt. “No, no, I’m just teasing. Really. Most people who aren’t truck drivers don’t know what a pallet is. It’s that wooden platform you put boxes of stuff on.”

“Oh,” I say. I make up my mind not to stay mad at Tony. Did we just have our first fight? I don’t know what to do with a boyfriend.

“When can we get together again?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. Grandma Michi has told me that we are going to have to start gluing Kawaguchi’s cranes soon.

While I’m talking to Tony, my mother calls. “I have to take this,” I tell him.

“Call me back later.”

I press the button to talk to my mother. “Hi, Mom.”

“Well, you sound like you’re in a good mood.”

“Not particularly,” I lie.

“Well, I’m going to be out of town for a few days, so stay in touch on my cell, okay?”

“Where are you going?”

“Just taking care of some business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Have you spoken to your father?” My mother is good at changing the subject.

“No,” I say. Actually, with church, Tony, 1001 cranes, and the judo dojo, I haven’t had much time to think about Mom and Dad. And it’s felt kind of good.

“He needs to talk to you about something.”

My heart starts to race. “About what?”

“He’s the one who needs to tell you.”

“You brought it up. You can tell me first.”

“I’m sorry, Angie. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

I feel anger rise to my throat. I hate it when my mother does that. “Just tell me.”

“No, I can’t. It has to come from your father.” I don’t like how Mom says “your father,” like he’s not her husband.

“Are you getting divorced? Is Dad going away? Just tell me, Mom.”

“Angie, stop whining. I can’t stand it when you whine.”

“Well, I don’t like it when you don’t tell me anything!” I’m almost screaming, and I’m glad that Gramps and Grandma Michi can’t hear very well.

“Angela. Stop it. I mean it. We will talk about this later.”

The line goes dead, and I’m mad. I feel like tearing my room apart, but it’s all full of weird equipment. Other than my pillow, there’s nothing squishy or soft that I can crush easily. If I hit something, I’ll probably end up breaking my hand.

So what’s going to happen now? I wonder. I don’t bother to change into my pajamas. I stay sitting on the bed in the dark. Tony tries to call me, but I turn my phone off. I want my mind to turn off, too. But it won’t.

I sneak out of my bedroom, pass the demon and white-faced masks, and open the front door. The air is still warm; there’s a faint breeze and I hear a tinkle of wind chimes from Mr. and Mrs. O’s house.

I walk onto the porch and jump down onto the grass. “Here, Nori,” I call out. “Tofu, Miso.” I kneel and reach for the pie tin. The cat food is all dried up. Aunt Janet, being so busy, must have forgotten to feed the cats.

Kawaisoo
Cranes

The next morning I sit with Aunt Janet in the 1001-cranes room. I can’t believe it, but I’ve folded all the cranes for Kawaguchi’s display. All 1,000. The extra one will be in red origami paper. We’ll do it at the very end, says Aunt Janet.

Now we are starting work on arranging the cranes on a black velvet cloth. I feel both excited and a little scared. What if I make a mistake? Before, I could just toss my D and F cranes away. But this is for real. No going back.

Aunt Janet has drawn the design in white pencil. She explains that we have to use math to figure out how many layers of cranes to put in each area. One problem: I hate math. I don’t see how knowing what a polygon is is going to help me later in life. Or all that x, y, and z stuff.

“You use math everywhere. Like when you leave a tip at a restaurant. Percentages—at least learn percentages,” Aunt Janet says.

Yeah, then I can be like you and still live at home when I’m forty years old.
I’m being mean and I know it. I’m starting to sound—well, think—like my mom, and I’ve been away from her for almost three weeks. I thought I would become less like her as we remained separated, but that’s not the case.

Aunt Janet tells me to divide the design, the star, into four sections and then calculate how many cranes should go into each section. I can handle that part—two hundred and fifty. Then she tells me to arrange the cranes, without using glue, in one-fourth of the design.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. At first I don’t use enough and I have at least fifty left over. I have to start over and pack the cranes more tightly in more layers. Aunt Janet reminds me to use the C cranes in the back. The different grades of cranes are all separated in plastic bags and labeled. At least Aunt Janet doesn’t yell at me, like my mother sometimes does. She does suck in her cheeks like Gramps at times, but he doesn’t have any real teeth, so he has an excuse. Aunt Janet, on the other hand, doesn’t have one.

I finally figure out how many cranes need to be in each row and the distance between each layer. Aunt Janet tells me to write it all down. I do. Next comes the gluing. The scary part. We use white glue that comes in a big bottle with a narrow tip.

“Why does Grandma Michi like Rachel Joseph so much?” I ask while I start gluing the back row.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean”—I take a breath; sometimes Aunt Janet can be clueless—“why is Grandma so nice to her?” And not to me, I add in my mind.

“I guess she feels sorry for her,” Aunt Janet says. “Have you ever heard of
kawaisoo
?” She stretches the last part of the word; her lips are a little puckered and her chin is wrinkled like a peach pit.

“
Kawaisoo.
Nope.”