Dolls of Hope (22 page)

P
art of Chiyo noticed that Yaeko did not drive away until the door opened and Mrs. Sasaki looked out, but the nurse was in the past now. Chiyo faced the doll maker’s unsmiling gatekeeper demon of a housekeeper. She clutched the bundle tighter to hold Emily Grace inside. “Please, Mrs. Sasaki, I have to see Hirata-san. It’s important.”

Mrs. Sasaki’s mouth pinched in a tight line. “Hirata-san has a guest. He cannot see you.” She began to close the door.

Chiyo wedged one elbow between the door and the sill. “It’s important! I have to see the doll maker!”

The housekeeper pressed the door against Chiyo’s arm, but even she seemed unwilling to cause pain and did not press hard. “I cannot help you. You are not expected and you are not welcome.”

“It’s Emily Grace.” Chiyo raised her voice, trying to call past the housekeeper. “The American doll. Someone hurt her. She needs the doll maker!”

The door pressed harder. Maybe the housekeeper didn’t mind causing pain, after all.

Chiyo refused to pull her arm back. If that door shut, she would have nowhere to go. “Please, Mrs. Sasaki. Please, it’s so important!”

The housekeeper glared. “I’ve told you, Hirata-san has a visitor. He has no time for you. Go!”

She pushed Chiyo’s elbow from the door and closed it. Chiyo stumbled back, nearly dropping Emily Grace. She clutched the doll closer. “Hirata Gouyou-san will see us, Emily Grace. I know he will. We just have to let him know we’re here.”

She walked along the side of the house, trying to think where his workshop would be. Near the back, she heard men’s voices through a partly open window. She hesitated before slowly moving closer.

“The empress will bring the princesses to see the Doll Palace,” a man’s voice argued. “The dolls should not just stand there. What good is a palace if the dolls themselves don’t look as if they’re enjoying it?”

“Just put the dolls inside,” Hirata-san advised. “The children who come to see them will make up the stories.”

The doll maker must have been talking with the man who would place the American dolls in the giant dollhouse. Chiyo caught her breath. He wanted the dolls in the palace to look as if they were acting out stories. She could help!

She almost called to the men. Then she sank back, pressing closer to the wall. She could think of interesting ways to arrange the dolls in the rooms. But what would the men think of a girl who knocked on the window?

Slowly, she walked to the front of the house and a short distance down the street. The bright yellow parasol shielded Emily Grace and kept rain from the kimono as long as the wind didn’t blow. That man must have been the museum curator and Hirata Gouyou’s friend, she told herself. If she could find a way to speak to him and suggest stories for the dolls in the palace, surely he would take her past the housekeeper into the house.

She waited for a long time. A few people passed, but no one paid attention to her. Over and over, she imagined words she might say to the man from the museum. She must not shock him by speaking boldly, but she must somehow get him to listen.

The front door opened.

A wiry man in a tunic and dark trousers hurried from the house. Chiyo started toward him, her
geta
clattering on the pavement. The kimono made it hard to move quickly. She wished for her school uniform and shoes.

Wind swept around a corner, hurling rain into her face and wrenching the parasol. When she could look for the man again, he was hailing an approaching streetcar.

A coin flashed as he dropped it into a collection box near the conductor. Chiyo yanked the umbrella down, tucked it under her arm with Emily Grace, and grabbed a handful of her heavy silk kimono. Pulling the material as high as Yaeko’s short skirt, she ran for the streetcar. “Wait!” she called. “Please wait for me!”

She clutched a pole by the step as the streetcar began to move and swung aboard, feeling clumsy. The kimono swirled around her ankles, and the bundle shifted in her arms. “Mama,” the doll protested through the cloth.

The conductor looked at her. She had one sen left. Was it enough? She struggled with Emily Grace and the umbrella while groping for the purse she carried inside her obi. She drew out her remaining coin, hesitated, then dropped it in the box.

The conductor glanced at it and turned to his controls.

Weak with relief, Chiyo sank onto the end of a long bench that faced the street. She had managed the first step. Now she must talk to the man from the doll palace. Doubt gripped her again. Could she do that? Would he listen?

For a moment, she kept her eyes down and sat very still, as was expected of a humble young girl. The moment passed. She raised her head and glanced around to see where the man was sitting.

S
ince the sides of the streetcar were open, rain blew in along with the noise of the street. It felt to Chiyo as if all the people aboard were a group, like a family or a school. They were sharing an adventure. Shouldn’t it be permissible to speak to one of them?

The man from the doll palace sat at the other end of the same long bench. Chiyo moved closer. Her heart beat in her throat.

The conductor rang his bell. People climbed on and off. A man and woman came aboard and sat nearby. The woman glanced at her as if she disapproved of a girl traveling alone. Chiyo lowered her eyes, her mind disappointingly empty of ideas.

All she could think of was Mrs. Ogata’s list of rules.
No talking with men outside of school and family.

She had made a mistake. She should not be here. As the streetcar slowed to a stop, she stood. She must leave before she got farther from the doll maker’s house. The housekeeper must let her speak with Hirata-san now that his visitor was gone.

The woman next to her stood in the same moment and accidentally bumped the yellow parasol. The bundle slipped. Emily Grace cried, “Mama!” Her arms and legs clattered to the seat and floor of the car.

“Oh!” Chiyo bent to grab for an arm. The man and woman left, the woman’s long skirt brushing a doll leg and spinning it toward the street.

Chiyo’s hands were full. She looked helplessly after the leg.

The man from the doll palace caught it before it could topple off. He rescued the other leg and arm as Chiyo sank onto the bench with Emily Grace.
“Arigatogozaimasu,”
she whispered.

With kindness in his eyes, he said, “I believe we saved them all.”

Chiyo opened the bundle, and he placed the arms and legs beside Emily Grace. Despite everything, Emily Grace continued to smile. She was not afraid. The doll’s smile reminded Chiyo of Yaeko, who would not hesitate to speak to a kind man.

Softly, Chiyo said, “My doll has an interesting story.” Would he remember that he wanted the dolls in the doll palace to act out stories? “But the ending is sad.”

Interest filled his eyes. “May I hear her story?”

Chiyo kept her gaze on Emily Grace. Her heart pounded so hard she could almost hear it. “She is one of more than twelve thousand dolls from America. Children there sent them to us.”

“Ah, I know of these Dolls of Friendship. So this is one of them.” He looked at Chiyo more closely. “You are the girl from the newspaper photograph.” He snapped his fingers. “Tamura Chiyo! And this is . . . Emily Grace?”

“Hai.”
Did he disapprove? She couldn’t find the courage — or foolishness — to look into his face for his thoughts, but words pushed past her lips. “The mayor of Tokyo asked me to watch over her.”

“The mayor! But how did she lose her arms and legs?”

Chiyo opened the wrappings again to look at the doll. “A jealous girl cut her apart.”

The man from the doll palace looked thoughtful. “Can she be fixed?”

“I think so.” Chiyo drew in a quick breath. This was the important part of her story. “When I was in Tokyo before, I met a doll maker, Hirata Gouyou-san. I went to his house today to ask if he would help Emily Grace.”

“Did he agree?”

Chiyo shook her head. “His housekeeper wouldn’t let me talk to him.”

“Ah.” The curator nodded. “Many people want to meet the doll artist. Sometimes, I’m afraid, Mrs. Sasaki makes decisions for him.”

Leaning back, he gazed at the wet street. Chiyo felt her courage fading. She was not a bold flapper. She could not stare into a man’s face or argue until he agreed to help.

As Mrs. Ogata’s rules began to push back into her mind, the man turned to her again. “I will help you speak to the doll maker, Miss Tamura, but you must also help me. I am Mori Masaru. You may have heard of the great doll palace built for many of the American dolls.”

“I have,” she exclaimed. She wanted to wriggle with hope and forced herself to sit still.

When he smiled, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “The doll palace will soon be placed in the Educational Museum for all children to see. I am to arrange forty-nine dolls with several Japanese hostess dolls in the house and its gardens, grouped together as if they are enjoying themselves. I wonder if you could help me plan how to arrange them?”

“Hai!”
She couldn’t keep excitement from her voice.

“Excellent! You and I will ride a streetcar back to my friend Hirata Gouyou, and while we travel we will plan how to arrange the little doll ambassadors in the great doll palace.”

T
hey left the streetcar and crossed the street, discovering a noodle shop on the far side. With a keen look at Chiyo, Mori-san declared that he was hungry and would be honored to buy her some noodles so that he might enjoy some as well.

Chiyo had not eaten all day. The noodles in the shop were the best she had ever tasted.

When they returned to the doll maker’s house, the door opened immediately to Mori-san’s knock. Mrs. Sasaki looked out with relief on her face. “Where did you find her?” The housekeeper turned on Chiyo. “You have caused a great deal of worry, miss. Leave that gaudy parasol with your
geta
and come in at once!”

She added to Mori-san, “He has not been able to work since we learned she was missing!”

As hope drove out the cold, Chiyo followed Mrs. Sasaki past a sliding
fusuma
screen into a warm room with hot coals inside a sunken hearth in the center of the floor. A raised table stood over them, with cushions lined along the sides.

“Prepare yourself.” Mori-san settled on a cushion beside the warm coals. “I’m afraid we may be about to hear more scolding.”

“I didn’t know anyone would worry.” Chiyo walked back and forth, too nervous to sit down. She stopped at a window where the shoji screen had been pushed aside and looked out at the terrace with raked white rocks beyond. How had the doll maker learned she was missing? “I thought no one in the whole world cared.”

“Someone always cares.”

My parents care!
The thought hit her so suddenly she nearly dropped Emily Grace. Feeling boneless, she sank onto a cushion with the doll in her lap. What if word had reached
Okaasan
and
Otousan
? They would be afraid for her. Disappearing was worse than going to Masako’s
omiai.
“I didn’t mean to worry anyone. I just wanted help for Emily Grace.”

The
fusuma
screen flew open. Hirata-san rushed in. He stopped when he saw Chiyo. “Where have you been, Chiyo-chan? I received a telephone call from the headmaster at your school. I was about to go out and search the streets for you.”