Kira-Kira (2 page)

My father liked to think. Sometimes Lynn and I would peek at him as he sat at the kitchen table, thinking. His hands would be folded on the table, and he would be frowning at nothing. Sometimes he would nod, but only slightly. I knew I would never be a thinker like my father, because I couldn’t sit that still. Lynn said he thought so much that sometimes weeks or even months passed before he made a decision. Once he decided something, though, he never changed his mind. He’d thought many weeks before deciding to move us to Georgia. By the time he decided, there was only six hundred dollars in cash left in the envelope under the refrigerator.

The night Uncle Katsuhisa arrived in Iowa, he left the dinner table early so he could go out and take a walk and maybe talk to himself. After the front door closed, my mother said that Uncle Katsuhisa was the opposite of my father in that he didn’t look before he leapt, didn’t think at all before he made decisions. She lowered her voice and said, “That’s
why he married that woman,” meaning his first wife. Strictly speaking, Mom was gossiping, but who was going to tell her? We all sat silently.

My father and uncle were different in other ways. Uncle Katsuhisa liked to talk to anyone, even to himself. My father didn’t like to talk, except to my mother. He preferred to read the newspaper. My uncle, on the other hand, never read the paper. He did not give a hoot what President Eisenhower had to say.

My uncle was exactly one inch taller than my father. But his stomach was soft. We knew this because we hit him in it once the year before, and he yelped in pain and threatened to spank us. We got sent to bed without supper because my parents said hitting someone was the worst thing you could do. Stealing was second, and lying was third.

Before I was twelve, I would have committed all three of those crimes.

chapter 2

A
LL THE DAY
before we moved, my father and uncle loaded the truck with boxes that my mother had packed. We planned to leave first thing the next morning. Lynn and I sat out on the front porch and watched them work. Uncle Katsuhisa didn’t want us to help because he said we got in a man’s way.

Lynn and I played soldier with the chess set. During a break, Uncle Katsuhisa walked onto the porch, clapped his hands three times, took out a handkerchief, and blew his nose. He clapped his hands again. “I’m the best Japanese
chess player I know,” he said. That was a challenge to Lynn. “Are you up to a game?”

She set up the board. He rolled up his sleeves, as if chess were hard, physical work. Lynn beat him in about fifteen minutes. He was not a good sport and made her play him again and again so he could beat her. My father returned to loading up the truck, but Uncle Katsuhisa didn’t even notice. He lost three games! He said again that he thought of himself as the best Japanese chess player in the whole United States. I have no idea where he got that idea of himself. When Lynn beat him, I kept my face blank, but inside I was cheering for her.

After Uncle’s third loss he stepped off the porch and stared moodily across the gravel yard. He started making noises in his throat. He said, “Yah! Ooo-YAH! Gaaaaaaah! Gaaaaaaaah! Gaaaaaaah! Hocka-hocka-hocka! Geh-geh-geh-geh-geh!!” And then a glob of saliva flew like a baseball from his mouth and over the gravel. It landed on our only tree and dripped slowly down the bark. Lynn and I looked at each other, and she raised her eyebrows as if to say,
See, I
told
you he was an odd fish.

We were poor, but in the way Japanese are poor, meaning we never borrowed money from anyone, period. Meaning once a year we bought as many fifty-pound bags of rice as we could afford, and we didn’t get nervous again about money until we reached our last bag. Nothing went to waste in our house. For breakfast my parents often made their
ochazuke
—green tea mixed with rice—from the crusty old rice at the bottom of the pot. For our move to Georgia, Dad and Uncle loaded up the truck with all the bags of rice that we hadn’t sold at the store. I watched my parents look at the rice in the truck, and I could see that the rice made them feel good. It made them feel safe.

I liked to see them that way, especially my mother, who never seemed to feel safe. My mother was a delicate, rare, and beautiful flower. Our father told us that. She weighed hardly more than Lynn. She was so delicate that if you bumped into her accidentally, you could bruise her. She fell down a single stair once, and she broke her leg. To her that was proof even a
single stair could present peril. When I would approach even a single stair, she would call out, “Be careful!”

Our mother didn’t like us to run or play or climb, because it was dangerous. She didn’t like us to walk in the middle of our empty street, because you never knew. She didn’t want us to go to college someday, because we might get strange ideas. She liked peace and quiet. My father used to say, “Shhhh. Your mother is taking a bath.” Or, “Quiet down, girls, your mother is drinking tea.” We never understood why we couldn’t make noise while our mother was doing anything at all. My mother’s favorite thing to tell us, in her iron-rimmed singsong voice, was
“Shizukani!”
That means “Hush!”

She never said
“Shizukani!”
to my father. She made him food and rubbed his feet, and for this he let her handle all the money. Lynn said our mother probably knew a special foot-rubbing technique that made men silly. My father loved my mother a lot. That made
me
feel safe.

The night before we moved, my father and
uncle sat on a tree stump across the road. Lynn and I peeked out at them before we got in bed. My uncle talked and talked, and my father listened and listened. Sometimes they both laughed loudly.

“What are they talking about?” I said.

“Women,” Lynn said knowingly.

“What are they saying about women?”

“That the pretty ones make them giggle.”

“Oh. Good night.”

“Good night!”

Our mother came into the bedroom in the middle of the night, the way she always did, to make sure we were asleep. As usual, Lynn was asleep and I was awake. If I was awake, I usually pretended to be asleep so as not to get in trouble. But tonight I said, “Mom?”

“It’s late, why are you up?”

“I can’t sleep without Bera-Bera.” Bera-Bera was my favorite stuffed animal, which my mother had packed in a box. Bera-Bera talked too much, laughed too loudly, and sometimes sassed me, but still I loved him.

“Someday you won’t even remember Bera-Bera.” She said this gently, and as if the
thought made her a little sad. The thought made me a little sad too. She kissed my forehead and left. Outside I could hear noises: “Yah! Ooooh-YAH!” Et cetera. Lynn was sound asleep. I got up and watched Uncle Katsuhisa spit. My father no longer sat on the tree stump. It was just Uncle Katsuhisa out there. He was a madman, for sure.

We left Iowa at dusk the next evening. We had meant to leave in the morning but got a little behind schedule for several reasons:

1. I couldn’t find the box with Bera-Bera, and I was convinced he was lost. Naturally, I had to have hysterics.

2. My parents misplaced their six hundred dollars.

3. Lynn couldn’t find her favorite sweater with embroidered flowers. Naturally, she had to have hysterics.

4. Uncle Katsuhisa fell asleep, and we thought it would be rude to wake him.

Uncle woke up on his own. My parents found their money. But Lynn and I didn’t find our items, so naturally, we continued our hysterics. Finally, my mother said, “We must leave or I don’t know what!” She looked at Lynn and me crying. “Maybe you girls should keep your uncle company while he drives.”

“Oh, no,” said Uncle. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of their delightful company.”

“No,” said my mother. “I wouldn’t want you to be lonely.”

So we climbed into the noisy truck with our noisy uncle. Then we cried so much that our uncle refused to drive with us anymore. He pulled to the side of the highway. Then we got in our parents’ car and cried so much that they pulled over and flipped a coin with Uncle Katsuhisa. Uncle lost, so we got back in the truck with him.

Lynn and I were perfectly happy in Iowa. I did not see why we had to move to a new job that my father had told us would be the hardest work he had ever done. I did not see why we had to move to a southern state where my father said you could not understand a word
people said because of their southern accents. I did not see why we had to leave our house for a small apartment.

After awhile Lynn and I ran out of tears and sat glumly in the truck with Uncle Katsuhisa. I knew if I thought of Bera-Bera, I would cry. But I had nothing else to do, so I thought of him. He was half dog, half rabbit, and he had orange fur. He was my best friend next to Lynn. “I want Bera-Bera!” I cried out.

Lynn cried out, “I want my sweater!” We both burst into tears.

It was a warm night. Whenever we paused in our crying, the only other sound inside the truck was the sound of my uncle smacking his chewing tobacco. I dreaded to know what would happen when he spit out that tobacco. Now he rolled down the window, and I thought the Great Spit was about to come. Instead, he looked at us slyly.

“I could teach you girls how to spit like a master,” he said.

My sister squinted at him. She stopped crying. So did I. I could tell she thought it
might be fun to learn how to spit like a master. So did I. Our mother would kill us. Lynn said, “Maybe.”

He belched very loudly, then glanced at us. I realized his belch was preparation for spitting. I swallowed some air and burped. So did Lynn. Then Uncle Katsuhisa’s throat rumbled. The rumbling got louder and louder. Even over the sound of the motor, it seemed like a war was going on in his throat. Lynn and I tried to rumble our throats like him.

“Hocka-hocka-hocka!” he said.

Lynn and I copied him: “Hocka-hocka-hocka!”

“Geh-geh-geh!”

“Geh-geh-geh!”

He turned to his open window, and an amazing wad of brown juice flew from his mouth. The brown juice was like a bat bursting out of a cave. We turned around to watch it speed away. A part of me hoped it would hit the car behind us, but it didn’t. I leaned over Lynn and out the passenger window. “Hyaaahhhh!” I said, and a little trickle of saliva fell down my chin.

No one spoke. For some reason the silence made me start crying again. As if Uncle Katsuhisa couldn’t restrain himself, he started singing my name over and over, “Katie, Katie, Katie . . .” Then he sang Katie songs to the tunes of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” “America the Beautiful,” “Kookaburra,” and some songs I didn’t recognize. For instance, he sang, “Oh, Katie, Kate, for spacious skies, for Katie Katie Kate.” He made me giggle. It was almost as if someone were tickling me. For a while I forgot about Bera-Bera.

Lynn smiled with satisfaction. I knew this was because she liked for me to be happy. The wind hit our hair as Uncle Katsuhisa continued to sing Katie songs. I looked outside over a field and tried to find the
Sode Boshi,
the kimono sleeve in the sky where Uncle Katsuhisa said westerners see the constellation Orion. Then my uncle began to sing Lynnie songs.

She laughed and laughed and laughed.