Full Cicada Moon (6 page)

There are two hundred and sixteen steps

from our driveway to Farmer Dell's house.

I slip through the last forty-three

because he hasn't spread any sand or salt.

Maybe he doesn't want company.

I knock on the outside door,

and step back down to the walk

and wait. I hear heavy footsteps inside,

and the door opens

just wide enough for Mr. Dell's face to show.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“I'm Mimi Oliver.”

I shift to my other foot. “We're neighbors.”

“What do you want?”

“Well . . . we're shoveling, and there's a lot of snow,

and it's hard shoveling all that snow.”

“Why'd ya come here, then?”

Farmer Dell has exactly the growl I imagined,

his nose hooks over his mouth,

and his eyebrows are thick and bushy,

like moths nesting on his forehead.

“I was wondering if . . .”

He stares. He's going to make me ask.

“. . . we could borrow your snowblower.”

“I don't give my things out to strangers. What do you think I am—

a charity?”

“N-no.”

“Is that all?” Farmer Dell asks, and starts to shut the door.

“Wait,” I say. “Is that boy here?”

“What boy?”

“The one who was playing with Pattress.”

And just then, Pattress pushes the door open

all the way with her nose.

When she sees me, she wags her tail and barks happily.

“Hi, Pattress! Do you want a snowball?” I ask.

Her ears stand up at
snowball
,

and she throws her head back, barking.

“So, is he home?” I ask.

“There's no boy here.”

“Well, maybe when he comes home we can play with Pattress.”

Mr. Dell's eyes narrow.

“You go home now,” he says, and shuts the door.

Pattress barks behind it

for her snowball.

I turn around and walk

two hundred and sixteen steps

back home. Mama and Papa

have finished the driveway,

so I shovel a path to the back door.

Papa has never been so mad.

“I told you to leave him alone.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“I told you that some people don't want to be friends.”

“It's hard to shovel snow.”

“There will be a lot harder things in life,

so shoveling a few inches of snow is good training.”

“You mean a few feet.”

“Mimi,” he says, and takes my hands gently

to make me pay full attention.

“It is important that you understand.

We are new here. These people have lived in this town

many years. Their parents and grandparents

and great-great-grandparents were born here.

To them we are visitors—”

“You mean strangers?” I ask.

“To some people, we are. And you should know that

we might always be. But we still have to respect them

and their ways.”

“Then, let's go back to California,” I say.

Papa drops my hands. “It's not that easy, Mimi-chan.

Besides, life wasn't perfect there, either.”

“At least we didn't have to shovel snow.”

Papa nods and chuckles

but gets serious again. “What should you have done differently?”

When I was five or even ten

the answer would have been “Obey you and Mama.”

But something's different now. That

is no longer the only solution.

Then Papa says, “If you can't tell me,

then go to your room and think about it.”

But first, he hands me something from his briefcase.

“You want to take this with you?”

It's a
Life
magazine from January.

On the cover is that picture of Earth

taken from the moon.

I snatch the treasure and hug it tight. “Where did you get this?”

“It comes to the department. Everyone else has read it.”

“You spoil her,” Mama says. “How will she learn consequences?”

Papa sighs and looks sheepishly at Mama. “Just this once, Emi—

It might help her find the answer.”

I try to blink away

Mr. Dell's scowling face

and his angry words

because I don't want to let him

make me cry.

Is it me that makes people here act so chilly?

Or is it my family?

We are American,

we speak English, we eat pizza

and pot roast,

and potatoes sometimes.

I feel like I have to be

twice as smart and funny at school,

and twice as nice and forgiving in my neighborhood

than everyone else

to be acceptable.

But everyone else can be

only half of that

to fit in.

Sad thoughts

just make you sadder if you let them.

I'm too sad now to stop them from taking me

with them.

I can't blink fast enough,

and when I press my face against the cold pane,

my tears turn to crystals.

Last year, I knew about the Apollo program.

And I knew about Dr. King

and Bobby Kennedy—each time,

Auntie Sachi kept the TV on

to hear the news

and cried.

When we could watch
My Three Sons
again,

we knew life was back to normal.

But I didn't know about the two widows hugging each other.

One is Mrs. Kennedy, and the other is Mrs. King.

They both lost their husbands.

They both must have cried through boxes of tissues,

knowing they'd never see them again.

So, did they both wonder,

when
Hogan's Heroes
came back on,

why their lives weren't back to normal?

When this photo of Earth was taken from the moon,

I was in Berkeley

in California

in the United States

in North America

on Earth—

that same shimmering blue and white ball

twirling in blackness

and swirling with storms

that's in the picture.

But from space there are no borders

separating countries, states, people—only

land from water,

earth from sky,

dark from light.

Who I am and

who I become

depend on

what I look at,

what I listen to,

what I touch and smell and taste.

The Apollo 8 astronauts

watched Earth rise above the moon

and were changed.

Now I am seeing what they saw,

and it is changing me.

Spring
1969

When Papa and I come home today,

Mama is standing by the side of the house,

hugging her coat around her and staring at the ground.

“Look,” she says, pointing at a purple flower

with petals cupped like hands piercing the snow.

“Is that a tulip?” I ask.

“It's a crocus,” she says.

“Someone who used to live here planted a bulb.

And now the bulb is a flower.”

Did the people who planted the bulb when the ground was soft

hope to see the flower today?

Did they plant it before they knew they would leave this house?

Or did they plant the bulb just for us,

like wrapping a present

and never seeing it opened?

When the ground is a blanket of snow

and ponds turn to ice

and everyone mummies up in scarves,

it feels like everything has stopped moving,

stopped breathing,

stopped living.

But secret things are still happening

in the deep below.

And when the time is right

they make their way to the surface

and explode in a surprise of purple.

Mama uses her mother-of-pearl-handle scissors

to unwrap a package from Auntie Sachi.

“Look, Mimi-chan!” she says,

and slides her fingernails pink as blossoms

under the seam of the brown paper wrapping,

winds the twine around her fingers,

and ties a loose knot for safekeeping.

Then she carefully peels back the paper

covering a box.

“What's in it?” I ask impatiently.

“Wait,” Mama says, and lifts the lid.

Inside is tissue paper.

“Auntie sent us tissue paper?” I ask.

“Let's see,” Mama says, and opens the layers.

Underneath lies a length of silk

blue as a robin's egg

and a note.

Dear Emiko,

You never treat yourself,

so use this silk for a kimono

for spring.

“It's so pretty,” I say, touching the fabric. “Isn't it?”

Mama just makes her Mifune face,

then gently folds up the silk

and puts it back in the box.

In history, David Hurley says his uncle was killed

at Pearl Harbor, and it was a good thing

we bombed those Japs.

“We only did it to end the war,” he says.

“We're the good guys.”

“What do you say about that, people?” Miss O'Connell asks.

I want to say what I heard from Auntie Sachi

about when she was a little girl and had to move to Arizona.

I want to say maybe good guys

don't always do good things.

But I'm afraid to here in class.

“Mimi? Your family is Japanese,” she says.

“Well . . .” I look around—

now I have to say something. “What about the relocation camps?”

“The what?” David asks.

“When Americans who were Japanese

had to leave their houses and live in camps in the desert

until the war was over.”

“That never happened,” David says, and

“I never heard of that,” Linda says.

Auntie Sachi was there, so I say, “I'm sure it happened.”

Miss O'Connell raises her hands for quiet.

“You have to understand

how the country felt at the time.

People were scared because

we were at war with Japan.”

No one is saying “Yeah, that doesn't make any sense”

or “That sounds horrible” or

“How could they do that to people?” or even

“Is it true?”

They're just looking at me like I made it all up

and want to cause trouble. But Miss O'Connell says,

“You weren't alive at the time,

so you can't understand.”

Now I wish I'd kept quiet,

the way Uncle Kiyoshi tells Auntie to be

whenever she brings up her life in Arizona.

Auntie Sachi wouldn't have given me the
Time
magazine

if Uncle Kiyoshi hadn't read it yet.

She wouldn't have let us stay in their house

if she wanted us to move out.

She wouldn't say she loves both her daughters the same

and give one more rice.

She is always truthful—

so I know she didn't lie

when she told me that during the war

her family had to sell their house and grocery store

and everything they owned in Sacramento

and move to Arizona

to live in a shack

in a camp

surrounded by barbed wire

with hundreds of other families

while her big brother fought in the army

for our country.

“You're a liar, Liar!”

they're telling me in history.

“Show us where that's in our book,”

they want to know.

It's not in our history book.

Maybe the people who wrote the book

forgot what happened to Auntie,

or decided to leave that part out

so no one would ever know what happened.

And after a while, everyone would forget

or call those who remembered

liars.

Tonight I tell Mama and Papa

what happened in history.

“It's true, right?” I ask.

Mama picks up her plate and takes it to the sink.

“Mama, right?” I repeat, in case

she didn't hear me the first time.

“What is past is past,” she says,

her back still to us. “We need to forget

and do our best now.”

Papa has been watching her back

and now turns to me. “I agree with Mama

to a point. We can't dwell on what happened

but we need to remember

so we don't do it again.

It is our history,

but we don't want it be our future.”

That is why I've decided

that even after I hand in my journal to Mr. Pease

in June, I'll keep writing in it.

I don't want to forget,

and I don't want someone else

to tell a different story about me.

At 3:36 this afternoon

Stacey will turn thirteen.

She wanted to come to the drugstore

and share a banana split to celebrate

the moment of her birth.

Today is also that soda jerk's day off,

so I feel okay being here.

But I wish I didn't have to think about

where not to go.

“What do you want for your birthday?” I ask.

I hope she says earrings, because

last week I'd bought her some, and

they're in my pocketbook.

She slices the banana with her spoon.

“I really want the Cream album

but Daddy says it's devil music, so I know I won't get it.”

“My dad has that one. It's cool.”

“Then I'll have to listen to it at your house,” she says,

tipping her spoon at me.

“Sure,” I say, happy that she'll be over again.

We eat more ice cream

and I ask, “Are you going to have a party?”

It would be my first one here.

She pokes the banana with her spoon, then mumbles,

“I don't know . . . not today, anyway.”

Then she turns bright red

and buries her face in her arm.

“I'm so sorry, Mimi,” she sobs.

“Why—what happened?” I ask.

She lifts her head and wipes her nose with a napkin

and looks at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“I'm having a party Saturday,

but . . . didn't ask you.”

“Oh,” I say, guessing why.

“Mimi, you're my best friend,

but Mother—she's so old-fashioned.

I wanted you to be there so bad,

but I knew she'd say no.”

This soda fountain hasn't been good to me.

And now I know

that Stacey wanted me to come here on her birthday

because I couldn't go to her house for her party.

The clock says 3:38. The moment has passed.

I put Stacey's present on the counter

and say, “Happy birthday.”

But I don't say things like “I thought we were friends” and

“I hope it rains at your party,”

because then I'd feel worse than I do now.

And because angry words are like minutes on the clock—

once you use them, you can't get them back.