Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (4 page)

After they had sung the song at the tops of their voices, the children all said "Itadakimasu" and settled down to "something from the ocean and something from the hills."
For a while the Assembly Hall was quiet.

After lunch Totto-chan played in the school grounds with the others before returning to the classroom, where the teacher was waiting for them.

"You all worked hard this morning," she said, "so what would you like to do this afternoon?"

Before Totto-chan could even begin to think about what she wanted to do, there was a unanimous shout.

"A walk!"

"All right," said the teacher, and the children all began rushing to the doors and dashing out. Totto-chan used to go for walks with Daddy and Rocky, but she had never heard of a school walk and was astounded. She loved walks, however, so she could hardly wait.

As she was to find out later, if they worked hard in the morning and completed all the tasks the teacher had listed on the blackboard, they were generally allowed to go for a walk in the afternoon. It was the same whether you were in the first grade or the sixth grade.

Out of the gate they went--all nine first grade pupils with their teacher in their midst and began walking along the edge of a stream. Both banks of the stream were lined with large cherry trees that had only recently been in full bloom. Fields of yellow mustard flowers stretched as far as the eve could see. The stream has long since disappeared, and apartment buildings and stores now crowd the area. But in those days Jiyugaoka was mostly fields.

"We go as far as Kuhonbutsu Temple," said the girl with the rabbit on her pinafore dress. Her name was Sakko-chan.

"We saw a snake by the pond there last time," said Sakko-chan. "There's an old well in the temple grounds which they say a shooting star fell into once.

The children chatted away about anything they liked as they walked along. The sky was blue and the air was filled with the fluttering of butterflies.

After they had walked for about ten minutes, the teacher stopped. She pointed to some yellow flowers, and said, "Look at these mustard flowers. Do you know why flowers bloom?"

She explained about pistils and stamens while the children crouched by the road and examined the flowers. The teacher told them how butterflies helped flowers bloom. And, indeed, the butterflies seemed very busy helping.

Then the teacher set off again, so the children stopped inspecting the flowers and stood up. Someone said, "They don't look like pistols, do they?"
Totto-chan didn't think so either, but like the other children, she was sure that pistils and stamens were very important.

After they had walked for about another ten minutes, a thickly wooded park came into view. It surrounded the temple called Kuhonbutsu. As they entered the grounds the children scattered in various directions.

"Want to see the shooting-star well?" asked Sakko-chan, and naturally Totto-chan agreed and ran after her.

The well looked as if it was made of stone and came up to their chests. It had a wooden lid. They lifted the lid and peered in. It was pitch dark, and Totto-chan could see something like a lump of concrete or stone, but nothing whatsoever resembling the twinkling star she had imagined. After staring inside for a long time, she asked, "Have you seen the star?"

Sakko-chan shook her head. “No, never.”

Totto-chan wondered why it didn't shine. After thinking about it for a while, she said, "Maybe it's asleep."

Opening her big round eyes even wider, Sakko-chan asked, "Do stars sleep?"

"I think they must sleep in the daytime and then wake up at night and shine," said Totto-chan quickly because she wasn't really sure.

Then the children gathered together and walked around the temple grounds. They laughed at the bare bellies of the two Deva Kings that stood on either side of the gate, guarding the temple, and gazed with awe at the statue of Buddha in the semi-darkness of the Main Hall. They placed their feet in the great footprint in a stone said to have been made by a Tengu - a long-nosed goblin. They strolled around the pond, calling out “Hello!” to the people in rowboats. And they played hopscotch to their hearts' content with the glossy black pebbles around the graves. Everything was new to Totto-chan, and she greeted each discovery with an excited shout.

"Time to go back!" said the teacher, as the sun began to dip, and the children set off for the school along the road between the mustard blossoms and the cherry trees.

Little did the children realize then that these walks--a time of freedom and play for them--were in reality precious lessons in science, history, and biology.

Totto-chan had already made friends with all the children and felt she had known them all her life.

"Let's go for a walk again tomorrow!" she shouted to them all on the way back. "Yes, let's!" they shouted back, hopping and skipping.
The butterflies were still going busily about their business, and the song of birds filled the air. Totto-chan's heart was bursting with joy.

Each day at Tomoe Gakuen was filled with surprises for Totto-chan. So eager was she to go to school that mornings never dawned soon enough. And when she got home she couldn't stop talking—telling Rocky and Mother and Daddy all about what she had done at school that day and what fun it had been, and all the surprises. Mother would finally have to say, "That's enough, dear. Stop talking and have your afternoon snack."

Even when Totto-chan was quite accustomed to the new school, she still had mountains of things to talk about every day. And Mother rejoiced to think that this was so.

One day, on her way to school in the train, Totto-chan suddenly began wondering whether Tomoe had a school song. Wanting to find out as soon as possible, she could hardly wait to get there. Although there were still two more stations to go, she went and stood by the door, ready to jump out as soon as the train pulled into Jiyugaoka. A lady getting on at the station before saw the little girl at the door and naturally thought she was getting off. When the child remained motionless--poised like a runner, all set and "on your marks"- the lady muttered, “I wonder what's the matter with her.”

When the train arrived at the station, Totto-chan was off it in a flash. By the time the young conductor was calling out, "Jiyugaoka! Jiyugaoka!"--one foot smartly on the platform before the train had come to a proper halt-Totto-chan had already disappeared through the exit.

The moment she was inside the railroad-car classroom, Totto-chan asked Taiji
Yamanouchi, who was already there, "Tai-chan, does this school have a song?" Tai-chan, who liked physics, replied after some thought, "I don't think it has."
"Oh," said Totto-chan, pensively. "Well, I think it ought to. We had a lovely one at my other school."

She began singing it at the top of her voice:

Tho' shallow the waters of Senzoku Pond, Deep is our learning of vistas beyond ...
Totto-chan had only gone to the school a short time, and the words were difficult, but she had no trouble remembering the song. That part, at any rate.

Tai-chan seemed impressed. By this time other pupils had arrived, and they, too, seemed impressed by the big words she used.

"Let's get the headmaster to make up a school song!" said Totto-chan.

"Yes, let's!" agreed the others, and they all trooped over to the headmaster's office.
After listening to Totto-chan sing the song from the other school and after considering the children's request, the headmaster said, “All right, I'll have a school song for you by tomorrow morning.”

"Promise you will!" chorused the children, and they filed out to return to their classroom.

Next morning, there was a notice in each classroom requiring everyone to assemble in the school grounds. Totto-chan joined the others, all agog. Bringing a blackboard out into the center of the grounds, the headmaster said, "Now then, here's a song for Tomoe, your school." He drew five parallel lines on the blackboard and wrote out the

following notes:

Then he raised both his arms like a conductor, saying, "Now let's try and sing it, all together!"

While the headmaster beat time and led the singing, the whole school, all fifty students, joined in:

To-mo-e, To-mo-e, To-mo-e!

"Is that all there is?" asked Totto-chan, after a brief pause. "Yes, that's all," said the headmaster, proudly.
"Something with fancy words would have been nicer," said Totto-chan in a terribly disappointed voice. "Something like 'Tho' shallow the waters of Senzoku Pond.' "

"Don't you like it?" asked the headmaster, flushed but smiling. "I thought it was rather good."

Nobody liked it. It was far too simple. They'd rather have no song at all, it appeared, than anything as simple as that.

The headmaster seemed rather sorry, but he wasn't angry, and proceeded to wipe it off the blackboard. Totto-chan felt that they had been rather rude, but after all she had something a bit more impressive in mind.

The truth was that nothing could have expressed the headmaster's love for the children and the school more, but the children weren't old enough to realize that. They soon forgot about wanting a school song, and the headmaster probably never considered one necessary in the first place. So when the tune had been rubbed off the blackboard, that was the end of the matter, and Tomoe Gakuen never did have a school song.

Totto-chan had never labored so hard in her life. What a day that was when she dropped her favorite purse down the toilet! It had no money in it, but Totto-chan loved the purse so much she even took it to the toilet with her. It was a truly beautiful
purse made of red, yellow, and green checked taffeta. It was square and flat, with a silver Scotch terrier rather like a brooch over the triangular flap of the fastening.

Now Totto-chan had a curious habit. Ever since she was small, whenever she went to the toilet, she made it a point to peer down the hole after she had finished. Consequently, even before she started going to elementary school, she had already lost several hats, including a straw one and a white lace one. Toilets, in those days, had no flush systems, only a sort of cesspool underneath, so the hats were usually left floating there. Mother was always telling Totto-chan not to peer down the hole after she had finished using the toilet.

That day, when Totto-chan went to the toilet before school started, she forgot Mother's warning, and before she knew it, she found herself peering down the hole. She must have Loosened her hold on the purse at that moment, for it slipped out of her hand and dropped down the hole with a splash. Totto-chan let out a cry as it disappeared into the darkness below.

But Totto-chan refused to shed tears or give up the purse as lost. She went to the janitor's shed and got a large, long-handled wooden ladle used for watering the garden. The handle was almost twice as long as she was, but that did not deter her in the least. She went around with it to the back of the school and tried to find the opening through which the cesspool was emptied. She imagined it would be on the outside wall of the toilet, but after searching in vain she finally noticed a round concrete manhole cover about a yard away. Lifting it off with difficulty, she discovered an opening that was undoubtedly the one she was looking for. She put her head inside.

"Why, it's as big as the pond at Kuhonbutsu!" she exclaimed.

Then she began her task. She started ladling out the contents of the cesspool. At first she tried the area in which she had dropped the purse. But the tank was deep and dark and quite extensive, since it served three separate toilets. Moreover, she was in danger of falling in herself if she put her head in too far, so she decided to just keep
on ladling and hope for the best, emptying her ladle onto the ground around the hole.

She inspected each ladleful, of course, to see if it contained the purse. She hadn't thought it would take her long to find, but there was no sign of the purse. Where could it be? The bell rang for the beginning of class.

What should she do, she wondered, but having gone so far she decided to continue. She ladled with renewed vigor.

There was quite a pile on the ground when the headmaster happened to pass by. "What are you doing?" he asked Totto-chan.
"I dropped my purse," she replied, as she went on ladling, not wanting to waste a moment.

"I see," said the headmaster, and walked away, his hands clasped behind his back as was his habit when he went for a stroll.
Time went by and she still hadn't found the purse.

The foul-smelling pile was getting higher and higher.

The headmaster came by again. "Have you found it?" he inquired.

"No," replied Totto-chan, from the center of the pile, sweating profusely, her cheeks flushed.

The headmaster came closer and said in a friendly tone, "You'll put it all back when you've finished, won't you?" Then he went off again, as he had done before.

"Yes," Totto-chan replied cheerfully, as she went on with her work. Suddenly a thought struck her. She looked at the pile. "When I've finished I can put all the solid stuff back, but what do I do about the water?"

The liquid portion was disappearing fast into the earth. Totto-chan stopped working and tried to figure out how she could get that part back into the tank, too, since she had promised the headmaster to put it all back. She finally decided the thing to do was to put in some of the wet earth.

The pile was a real mountain by now and the tank was almost empty, but there was still no sign of the purse. Maybe it had stuck to the rim of the tank or to the bottom. But Totto-chan didn't care. She was satisfied she had done all she could. Totto-chan's satisfaction was undoubtedly due in part to the self-respect the headmaster made her feel by not scolding her and by trusting her. But that was too complicated for Totto- chan to realize then.

Most adults, on discovering Totto-chan in such a situation, would have reacted by exclaiming, "What on earth are you doing!" or "Stop that, it's dangerous!" or, alternatively, offering to help.

Imagine just saying, “You'll put it all back when you've finished, won't you?” What a marvelous headmaster, thought Mother when she heard the story from Totto-chan.