Kira-Kira (15 page)

For Thanksgiving weekend my parents needed a break from me and Sammy, and we needed a break from them. No one felt like eating turkey. My parents arranged for Uncle to take us on a camping trip. He took his kids camping almost every weekend, even when it rained. He called every Friday night and asked
whether we wanted to come. We always said no. I wanted to stay with Lynn. But this time my parents made me go.

We left early on a Saturday morning. My parents seemed relieved to see us go. It made me surprised and guilty to find how glad I felt to get out of the house where everything reminded me of my sister. I felt guilty whenever I left my sister’s side, but at the same time I could not be with her every moment. If I had been, I would have lost my mind. Maybe I
was
losing my mind. Sometimes, even just for three minutes, even when it was my turn to be with Lynnie, I had to step outside. I had to look at the sky. I had to be anywhere else but in that sad room with her.

In addition to Sammy and me, Uncle was bringing his family, my friend Silly, and his friend Jedda-Boy, a local land surveyor. Silly and I rode in the truck with Uncle. Amazingly, it was the same truck he had driven us to Georgia in years earlier. It didn’t go more than twenty-five miles an hour, so Jedda-Boy’s truck lost us in the first ten minutes. Unfortunately, Uncle had never been to our destination
before. We were going to one of Jedda-Boy’s favorite campsites. Uncle got lost and refused to stop for directions because, he kept saying, he knew the way, which he obviously didn’t.

At one point we went down a small road that ended at a cliff. The truck got stuck and wouldn’t back up. I could literally see down into a canyon before us. If we went forward, we would fall to our deaths. Then Lynn would miss me and might get sicker. Uncle wanted Silly and me to sit in the truck bed to get better traction. So she and I got in back and prayed that my uncle wouldn’t go forward by accident.

The truck revved and revved and shook and shook, but it was still stuck. Then Uncle tried to explain to me how to use a clutch, so that I could back up the truck while he and Silly sat in the bed, since he was heavier than I was and would give us better traction. I couldn’t figure out the clutch. In fact, at one point while I was learning, the truck jolted forward several inches. Uncle screamed a scream as high-pitched as a girl’s and rammed his foot on top of mine on the brake. He taught Silly instead.
She was like Lynn in that she could do anything, including crazy stuff like learning how to use a clutch.

Uncle and I climbed in back. Silly turned once to look at us. She crossed her fingers and then turned forward. The truck shook and rattled, and then we backed up.

Uncle was sweating. He seemed to think we would all be dead if he hadn’t slammed his foot on mine. My toes still hurt. He looked at me with new respect, I guess over just how much trouble I was capable of causing. He got in and started driving again. We pulled around a corner, and I felt myself totter uncertainly and then lean into the door. He’d told me the door came loose sometimes. I tried to stop myself, but the door fell open. The next thing I knew, my back was scraping along rocks on the roadside.

Unbelievably, no one noticed, not even Silly. They rolled merrily along while I lay on the road and watched the truck recede. I screamed, “Wait for me!” In a moment the truck came slowly down the road from the opposite direction. I saw Silly point at me
excitedly, and the truck pulled over. I got in the truck and refused to talk to Uncle Katsuhisa. My shirt was torn in back. Basically, there were already about a thousand things I could snitch on Uncle for if I wanted.

He seemed to realize that, because he handed me a piece of rice candy and said, “I’d like to give you this.” I continued to shun him. “All right, then, here,” he said. He handed me the whole pack of rice candy plus a Hershey’s bar. I took the rice candy, handing the Hershey’s bar to Silly.

“Now, don’t you tell your parents you fell out of the truck.”

“I won’t.”

He shook his head. “I still remember when I could bribe you for half a stick of gum.”

At the campgrounds Jedda-Boy had already set up camp. When I started to tell the story of the cliff, Uncle frowned at me, so I didn’t say anything. He smiled innocently at Auntie Fumi.

David, Daniel, Silly, and I ran off to play a game we called Hunter and Hunted with water guns. At first I hadn’t felt like playing,
but they begged me. Silly and I chose to be the deer first; David and Daniel would hunt us with their water guns. I found I loved pretending to be a deer, loping through the forest as the boys counted to one hundred. Silly and I moved as quickly and quietly as we could. We had to balance our movements between speed and noise. Silly was like an animal, with perfect animal instincts about where to go and how to move gracefully. We heard David and Daniel call out, “Here we come, deer!”

I thought I could feel the blood rushing through my body. For a moment I forgot I was human. We moved very quietly. Then we stopped moving and just listened. We couldn’t hear a thing. Suddenly, there was a huge crashing nearby, and we crashed away in the opposite direction. I found myself laughing crazily as I ran. I felt so free!

Silly and I split up in different directions. I heard Daniel yelling, “I’ll get Silly!” I ran desperately through the woods. There was a sudden open area, and I ran and ran across. I felt like a real deer, graceful and fast. I saw an arc of water by my side. It missed me! Then
water splattered on my head. I collapsed to the ground and groaned the way I thought an animal might. David ran up and put his foot on my stomach and pounded his chest and said, “For I am the greatest hunter
alive
!”

We turned to watch Silly running into the woods chased by Daniel. In a minute he came out of the woods looking confused. He stood still to listen. David and I helped him look for Silly. About ten minutes later we still hadn’t found her. Daniel yelled, “Ollie, Ollie, ocean free!” Silly appeared right where we’d just come from. I was so proud of her.

Then it was the boys’ turn to be the deer. They went to hide. We didn’t chase them. Instead, we returned to camp to play cards in our tent. We were so funny! When the boys finally figured out where we were, they refused to speak to us. So we refused to speak to them.

David said, “How can you not speak to us when you’re the ones who played the trick?” But we didn’t answer because we weren’t speaking to them!

When night approached, Uncle made us a fire, and I lay near it and felt the heat on my
body. I stared at the sky, as I had done so many times with my sister. I was surprised to realize that I hadn’t thought of my sister for nearly an hour—the whole time we were playing and about half an hour after. That was the longest I hadn’t thought about her for a while. I felt refreshed, as if I could now sit with her for ten years straight if necessary to help her get well.

Auntie and Sam sat next to me. David, Daniel, and Silly were playing some game. Uncle and Jedda-Boy took a couple of surveying instruments and discussed mud and sand and other important surveying matters. Jedda-Boy was talking about how once when he lived in Nevada, he got helicoptered to a secret location to measure some land. The land was in the desert near where nuclear bomb tests had been held. He finished the job even though the area was probably radioactive, because a self-respecting surveyor always finishes a job no matter what it involves, including, he said, wild dogs, gunshots from angry neighbors mixed up in a property dispute, snakes and alligators, and radioactivity.

I said quietly, “Auntie, when is Uncle Katsuhisa going to quit his job at the hatchery and become a land surveyor?”

She pushed back my hair and said sadly, “Sweetheart, nobody in Georgia is going to hire a Japanese man to be a land surveyor.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s been turned down for five jobs.”

“But he can be whatever he wants. Lynn is going to be either a rocket scientist or a famous writer.”

“It’s different for you children. You’re younger, the world is changing.”

Jedda-Boy was talking loudly. “The first time I got chased by an alligator, I was scared, I admit that. But I finished the job later.”

Sammy smiled serenely and looked at the beautiful sky. Lynn liked to say the stars were the ultimate thing you could describe as
kirakira.
The second most ultimate thing was the way the sun glittered off the ocean. Of course, she had never seen this, but she could imagine exactly how it would look.

Uncle came and sat down with us. I said, “Uncle, can’t you become a land surveyor?”

He drank from his canteen and wiped his mouth. He didn’t answer for a long time. Everyone was quiet. After a time he said, “I remember that when I was a boy, I thought I was going to grow up and map the world.”

Auntie stroked his face.

Uncle saw Sammy gazing at the sky, and he looked at the sky too. “Would you look at those stars! I can really see how the ancient Egyptians or whoever the hell it was said, ‘Goddamnit, let’s name those goddamn stars and go down in history!’ ”

I didn’t know what the ancient Egyptians had said, but I doubted they had said exactly that.

Uncle’s face got wistful as he stared into the sky. Auntie kissed his face. He put his arm around her, and they leaned against each other. I saw in their faces how happy they were, and sad, too, because Uncle Katsuhisa would never be a land surveyor.

New Year’s is the biggest holiday of the year for the Japanese. Every year since we’d lived in Georgia, Mrs. Muramoto held a big party. She served
sake
and
mochi
and a couple dozen
different snacks. We would usually stay until about ten and then go home. Just before dawn I would get up and write down my
hatsuyume
, first dream of the new year. Then we would meet the other families and go to the empty lot nearby with our lawn chairs to watch the sunrise. Watching the first sunrise is the traditional way to celebrate New Year’s in Japan. The last few years, though, nobody had bothered getting up for the sunrise. The fathers were all too tired for such a celebration.

Mrs. Kanagawa stayed with Lynn and Sammy while I went to Mrs. Muramoto’s for just half an hour before returning to sit with Lynn. Mrs. Kanagawa told me Lynn had been very peaceful. We made quiet small talk about the party, and then Mrs. Kanagawa left. Lynn continued to sleep, her breath catching heartbreakingly, as if breathing had become a hardship for her body. Her hair had grown stringy. I moved a strand of hair from her forehead, then pulled a chair to the window and spied on Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s party next door. It was quite a bit noisier than the party at Mrs.
Muramoto’s. Everybody seemed drunk. All at once the men started to put bows on their foreheads and run out the front door. I had no idea what they were doing. I hurried into the alcove and peeked out our front window. The men ran down the street shouting “Happy New Year!” with the bows on their foreheads. Even though I was in a sad mood, I couldn’t help smiling at these crazy white people.

I went into the kitchen and called my parents at the party and told them Lynn was sleeping peacefully. Someday when Lynn got better, we were going to get her a phone for the bedroom. Gregg and Amber both used to call all the time, so when she got better and made more friends, she would need a phone.

I put on my pajamas around 11:30 and lay on the floor next to Lynn’s bed. The Rabbit on the Moon looked so pretty shining in the outlet.

“Katie?” Lynn said softly. She hadn’t talked all day.

I sat up. “Yes?”

“You have to try to get better grades. Promise?”

“Okay.”

“You should go to college. Promise?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Take care of Mom and Dad and Sammy.”

“Okay, I promise.” I hesitated. “When you get better, you can help me take care of them.”

“Okay, I promise.” She laughed very softly, almost soundlessly.

The phone rang, and she seemed to perk up a bit. But it stopped after just one ring, and she seemed to deflate. It was amazing that as sick as she was, she could still be interested in something as small as the ring of a phone.

She groaned suddenly. “Can we open the window?”

I jumped up to open the window. She closed her eyes, and I sat next to the bed and stared at her. Her skin looked almost purely white, like the white of the ghost of Brenda I’d seen at the swamp. She opened her eyes again.

“It’s too dark in here,” she said.

I turned on the light. A little brown moth flitted in. It wasn’t big, not even an inch long.
It landed on the ceiling. Lynn stared at it. Then it flitted toward the lamp and away again. Lynn kept watching. For a moment the party next door quieted down. Our room was so quiet, I could just make out the sound of the moth’s wings. Lynn didn’t move, except for her eyes. Her eyes moved this way and that as she watched the moth. It was strange because although her eyes showed no emotion or interest, she must have been interested in order to be watching the moth so closely. She couldn’t take her eyes off that little bug as it sailed across the room and back again, across and back. And then I thought I saw something in her eyes, some emotion or interest, but I wasn’t sure what it was.