Kira-Kira (4 page)

Our new town was called Chesterfield. Uncle told us the population was 4,001. Six other Japanese families lived in Chesterfield. Including us, that made a grand total of thirty-one Japanese people. All of the fathers worked at the hatchery in a nearby town.

We had ridden most of the day in the truck with our uncle because he wanted to talk chess with Lynn. I mostly just stared out the window the whole time. Shortly before we arrived in Chesterfield, I took a nap. When I woke up, I saw I had wet my pants. I didn’t tell Lynn or my uncle. We were going to Uncle’s house, where he planned to throw a little welcome party for us that night. I thought maybe I could sneak inside his house without anybody noticing. We rolled down a curvy road. Here and there I saw a small frame house with chipping paint. Old rusted cars or piles of tires sat in the yards. Chickens ran loose. We saw a dead chicken in the road, and Lynn and I screamed. Finally we stopped at a small house just like all the others.

Uncle Katsuhisa’s family came out to greet us. He was the only Japanese in town who owned a house. The front yard was composed of gravel with bits of yellow grass, and the paint on the house was chipped. Still, it seemed okay to me. My own family would be living in the same cheap apartment building as the other Japanese who worked at the
hatchery. Uncle Katsuhisa lived in a house because he was different. He had big plans. First of all, he had inherited two thousand dollars from a man whose life he’d saved during World War II. So while he wasn’t rich, he was better off than most of us. Second of all, he was studying with a friend to work as a land surveyor, which is where you measure and study land. He knew a lot about soil and mud and things like that. He did not want to work in a hatchery all his life.

When we arrived at his house, my six-year-old twin cousins, David and Daniel, were waiting with Auntie Fumiko. Auntie was a round woman, with a round face, round tummy, and round calves. Even her hair was shaped into a big round thing on her head. Someday I planned to knock it over and see what was inside it. Uncle popped his horn and waved at them. We got out of the car, and almost the first thing that happened was my auntie Fumi started shouting at the top of her lungs, “Katie wet herself! Katie wet herself!” I was so embarrassed that I burst into tears. Everybody laughed, and David and Daniel
shouted out, “Katie wet herself!” My mother said, “Katie wet herself!” My father looked proud of me. He was proud of us no matter what we did.

Later, when the other Japanese families arrived, we ate all night long: salted rice balls, fish cakes, rice crackers, rice candies, and barbecued chicken. Rice balls are called
onigiri
, and they were the only thing I knew how to make. To make
onigiri
, you wash your hands and cover your palms with salt. Then you grab a handful of rice and shape it into a lump. My mother made fancy triangle-shaped
onigiri
, with seaweed and pickled plums, but I just made the basic kind. Someday when I got older, I would have to learn to make fancy
onigiri
too, or nobody would marry me.

We picked fruit off a peach tree nearby and listened to our parents talk about business. My father would be working as a chicken sexer, which he told us is where you separate the male chicks from the female chicks when they’re still wet from being inside the egg. From what I could gather, you had to separate them so that the male chickens could be killed.
They were useless since they couldn’t lay eggs. Uncle Katsuhisa said that it might seem sad to kill them, but eventually, we would learn to be kind of like farm kids—farm kids understood the meaning of death. They understood how death was part of life. When he said that, my mother and Auntie Fumi frowned at him. They did that all the time when he was talking. That meant he had to stop talking.

After they frowned, there was a silence. I looked around and saw Lynn playing with some kids closer to her age. “Come on!” she called, and I ran after them. Sometimes older kids didn’t like me around, but Lynn always made them play with me. We played until bedtime, and that night Lynn and I slept on the floor in the living room. There seemed to be a million crickets singing around us. The half-moon shone through the windows. My sister and I practiced our howling and barking so we would be able to talk to our dogs if our mother ever let us get any. Our mother came into the room to quiet us down. She looked tired and worried for some reason. In fact, she looked as if she might cry. So we settled down immediately.

Seeing my mother like that made me remember Iowa. Here are the things I already missed:

1. The view. When I used to look outside my bedroom window on summer mornings, I saw nothing but corn and blue sky. In winter I saw snow and blue sky.

2. The Iowa State Japanese American Bowling League. Every Saturday all the Japanese Americans for many miles around met at a bowling alley in the middle of the state. My father’s friends always gave us coins and told us what songs to play on the jukebox.

3. Mrs. Chan, the Chinese widow from down the street. We’d helped her plant tomatoes in her yard earlier that summer. By the way, she was the one who could take out her top teeth.

4. Snow. Making angels and snow men was fun. Sometimes our father
played with us. Once, our mother came outside, and Dad actually threw a snowball at her. I thought she would faint, but after a long pause she smiled slightly.

5. My parents. They worked regular hours in Iowa. Here in Georgia they planned to leave for work every day very early in the morning. Our father would work two jobs, and our mother would work overtime if it was available. I already missed them.

chapter 4

O
UR APARTMENT BUILDING
in Chesterfield was one story, shaped like a U around a courtyard. The inside of our apartment consisted of two very small bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The wall-paper in the kitchen was dirty and peeling. Mold grew on the wall in the bathroom. Lynn and I followed our parents from room to room.

Our mother was obviously unhappy, which made our father unhappy. She didn’t complain, but we could all tell how she felt because she wore a look like she did when she
had a headache. Our father said, “Kiyoko, we’ll make part of the living room into your sewing area. That’ll be nice.” She didn’t answer. He said, “There’s a free refrigerator here!” She still didn’t answer. He said, “I’m going to paint the girls’ room white with pink trim!”

Finally, she spoke. “There’s only space for two small beds and one small desk in their room. Where will we put Katie’s desk when she starts school?”

“Let me think about that,” he said.

“We’ll have to put it in my sewing area.”

Nobody answered. I felt guilty because my future desk would ruin her sewing area. I didn’t even want to go to school, anyway. I forgot to think nonsense words. That’s why my mother was able to read my mind and know I felt guilty. She pulled me to her and hugged me. “It’s not your fault!” she said, suddenly cheerful.

A swing-set frame sat in the middle of our courtyard, but there were no swings. Some of the kids liked to climb on the frame. Everyone played outside all the time because there was
nothing to do in our small apartments. When the fathers wanted to talk outside, they sat on the curb in front of Mr. Kanagawa’s apartment. He was sort of their leader.

His wife, Mrs. Kanagawa, didn’t work, so when fall came, she took care of the preschoolers all day. I could have gone to kindergarten, but when I went for one week, I cried and screamed so much that my parents thought maybe I shouldn’t start school until first grade. There were three of us preschoolers, but the other two were yonger than me, so I played by myself. I could read and write a little bit, I could color or jump rope alone, but mostly I played with Bera-Bera. He chattered on and on, even when I was trying to take my nap.

At 3:30 each afternoon, I would watch out the window until I saw Lynn walking down the street—there were no sidewalks in our small town. I would run outside to meet her. Mrs. Kanagawa said I was like Lynn’s pet dog.

Most days in southern Georgia were warm and humid. After school Lynn, some of the other kids from the residence, and I used to lie
about and stare at the clouds. If it was cool enough, we would play dodgeball. At night before we went in for bed, the parents would sit on the stoop and we children would either play or lie on our backs and watch the Milky Way. Watching the sky was all Lynn’s idea. Just as Mr. Kanagawa was the leader of the fathers, Lynn quickly became the leader of us kids. She was a big believer in watching the sky. She pointed out that if beings from outer space ever came, they would probably want to talk to us. So we should keep our eyes open.

Some nights before bed Lynn and I would make our wishes. First we made selfish wishes, and then we finished with unselfish wishes. One night, though, Lynn said, “Let’s just make selfish wishes tonight.”

That seemed bad, so I said, “Okay.”

“You start.”

“I wish for a bed with a canopy and a box of sixteen crayons instead of eight.”

“I wish that I’ll go to college on a scholarship someday. I wish I’ll be homecoming queen in high school. I wish we could afford a nice house.”

“I wish we had a better hot-water heater so the water wasn’t so cold all the time.”

She didn’t say anything. She probably felt bad, like me. I felt like maybe we should make some unselfish wishes.

She said, “Maybe we can each make one unselfish wish.”

“I wish for a house for you and for Mom.”

“I wish you would be happy forever.”

That left our father. I didn’t know what he wanted most. It seemed the only thing he wanted was to take care of us. Every time it was his birthday, we got him aftershave lotion that our mother paid for. He always seemed to like it.

I said, “I wish Dad never loses his hair like Grandpa did before he died.”

The last thing before we went to bed, Lynn and I would talk about what we should spend our money on the next day. Every weekday our father gave us a nickel to get ourselves a treat. But that night Lynn said, “From now on we’re going to save our nickels to help Mom and Dad buy our first house. That way, instead of just wishing for a house, we’re helping to really get one.”

That was a hard thing to agree with, but I didn’t argue because Lynn was boss. Usually when Lynn got home from school, we would go to the market, where we studied the treats for a long time before picking out what we wanted: often a powdered-sugar doughnut. Then we would walk along the highway eating. It was sad to think all that was over, but I guessed a house would be worth it.

“Good night, Katie,” she said.

“Good night.”

During the autumn the sultry air made us tired but not too tired. If it was too hot, we took a nap before supper. Then Lynn would read to me. Since she was a genius, she could read anything, even
Encyclopædia Britannica.
We had the “P” volume from
Encyclopædia Britannica
that somebody had left behind in our house in Iowa when we moved in. We planned to read it all the way through. Our other favorite book was
Silas Marner.
We were quite capitalistic and liked the idea of Silas keeping all that gold underneath the floorboards.

Whenever Lynn was late from school, I would cry. Mrs. Kanagawa would tell my mother whenever I cried. My mother said I was a crybaby, but Lynn said I was actually happy because it was my nature to be so, just like it was Lynn’s nature to be a genius. It was also Lynn’s nature to be a little bossy. Mrs. Kanagawa told me that.

Lynn didn’t seem to be making many friends at school. So she spent a lot of time with me. That was the way I passed the first year in Georgia: waiting all day for Lynn to come home and then playing with Lynn until bedtime. When summer came again, we played all day and all night until bed.

By the time I was six and ready to start school, my accent had already become very Southern. I no longer called my sister “Lynn,” I called her “Lee-uhn.” I was kind of a celebrity in my neighborhood, the little Japanese girl who said “you all” instead of “you,” and “You don’t sah-eee” instead of “Really?” Sometimes people would pay me a few pennies to talk to them. My sister encouraged this enterprise, and soon we were rich.
We kept the money in a moldy hole in the tile under the bathtub. Once a month we would count it.