In a Flash Read online

  Naoki looks astonished. But his face lights up. “Then we’ll play navy. Pretend you’re on a ship. Japan has the best navy in the world. I’ll serve on a ship someday.”

  “We came here on a ship,” says Carolina. “But our grandmother stayed behind. She’s old. Nonna writes to us. And we write back. Well, I draw pictures. But that’s just as good. The letters take weeks and weeks to get back and forth, though. We got a letter just a few days ago. When we send ours tomorrow, we won’t get an answer from her for over a month.” Carolina pauses. “I miss her.”

  “Sometimes I miss my grandmother.” Naoki looks away. “I missed her a lot last night.”

  “Where—” Carolina begins.

  That’s enough. “Basta,” I say to Carolina in Italian. “Don’t ask anything else.”

  Naoki glances at me. His face is pinched. “So…what was the ship like?”

  “Big,” says Carolina. “Loud.”

  Remembering that ship makes me feel seasick.

  Naoki smiles. “I know more about ships than you do. My uncle’s in the navy. So I’m in charge in this game. I’m the navy! You’re the enemy!”

  “No,” I yelp. “We’re friends.”

  “Enemies are more fun.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to be the enemy.” At school the girls stand and watch the boys over the wall. The boys run at each other with sticks, shouting, “Kill the Chinese.”

  Carolina looks at Botan. A silent message must pass between them, because Botan says, “We’ll play with you.”

  “But first I have to put Lella away. She doesn’t like playing navy.” Carolina runs inside.

  When she’s back, Naoki says, “Good. Go hide behind that bush.”

  The girls run off. I’m too cold to play anyway. I go inside and wander through the halls. The kitchen radio is on, blasting the news in Japanese. Above the radio noise, I hear Papà speaking Japanese in his halting way. I peek. Papà is short and thin, like me, but when he talks, he seems big and strong, and everyone listens. He’s telling the kitchen servants to chop vegetables finer. None of his sentences are right, but they understand, because his hands fly through the air, showing exactly how to do everything. I’m guessing dinner will start with minestrone.

  I retreat into the hall. On a mat in a side room lie two stacks of colorful square cloths with fancy designs. I pick one up. A furoshiki, one of the first Japanese words I ever learned. Hatsu taught Carolina and me how to wind the sides of a furoshiki up the handle of a basket and make a fancy knot at the top. She taught me to fold a furoshiki into a perfect holder for chopsticks. The ambassador and his wife always use forks, like in Italy. But when Japanese guests come, chopsticks appear.

  A couple of months ago, at the end of September, Italy and Japan and Germany signed a big agreement—the Tripartite Pact—and the next week the ambassador went to a huge party at some palace. Oh, the embassy is like a palace, too, but not huge. The ambassador came home smelling of tobacco. For weeks after, important men came to the embassy for dinner, and I folded their chopstick holders. Papà praised me, because the edges were perfectly matched: “You understand Japan. Already. My smart girl.”

  The furoshiki in my hands now is frayed and faded, like the others in this stack. But the ones in the second stack are lovely. Hitomi has sorted out this old stack to get rid of.

  I smile. I know where Hitomi keeps the needles and thread.

  I pick out four tattered furoshiki with patterns that fit well and arrange them in a big square on the table. I sew them together with my tiniest stitches. If I were working beside Nonna, we’d sing. So I sing now. But not an Italian song. That would make me miss her too much. And I won’t sing an ugly marching song. We sing too many of those in school.

  I choose a sweet song: “Momotaro-san.” My classmates sing it at recess, and I listen closely and sing in my head. It’s about a woman who is washing clothes in the river when a peach—a momo—floats past. She and her husband take a bite, and—plop—out falls a boy. They’re so happy to have a child. They name him Momotaro. When Momotaro grows up, he goes to an island to kill ogres, and he makes friends with a dog and a monkey and a pheasant. And somehow they help him, so that he winds up rich forever after.

  Nonna might like this song. I’ll tell her about it in the letter I’m writing now. I add to that letter each night.

  I’m just finishing up when Naoki and Carolina and Botan come in.

  “What are you making?” asks Carolina.

  “A present.”

  “For who?”

  Naoki elbows Carolina in the ribs. “You, of course.” His voice is sharp. “You don’t even need it. You’re spoiled, living here. But your sister will make something for you anyway.”

  “That’s not so!” We’re not spoiled. I suddenly realize who I’m making this present for. “It’s for you, Naoki.”

  Naoki’s face freezes. Then he shakes his head. “That’s not boy cloth. Everyone would laugh at me.”

  “You could use it like a blanket,” says Botan.

  “No.”

  “There must be something,” says Carolina. “Simona sews good.”

  “I guess you could make me a horo,” says Naoki.

  “What’s that?”

  “The old samurai wore them. They’re cloaks like big bags. When the samurai galloped on horses, the bags blew up. That way no one could shoot them with arrows.”

  “That sounds funny,” says Carolina.

  “Samurai are fierce!” Then Naoki smiles. “Maybe it was sort of funny, too.”

  “Wait.” I run to our room and rush back with paper and pencil. “Draw it.”

  Naoki sits down and draws. “I’ve always wanted a horo.”

  After dinner, I go to the bathing room and roll back a tiny section of the slatted boards that cover the deep tub. I splash myself. Then I stand in the middle of the room and scrub myself with soap so hard, my belly gets red. I dip a wooden bowl into the water and rinse off, watching the dirt and suds swirl down the drain in the floor. Now I roll back more of the slatted boards, enough so that I can climb in. Japanese baths are one of the best things in the world. The coal fire under the tub keeps the water so hot that it hurts, but not bad hurts, and everyone uses the same water over and over. So long as you go in clean, the water stays clean. I ease in and slide down till the water reaches my chin.

  This has been the best day in Japan so far. I haven’t made friends at school yet. It’s hard, because the other girls have been together since first grade. And I can’t say half the things I want to say. Aiko still whispers to me now and then, usually to let me know I’m doing something wrong. But she never smiles if anyone else is watching. And she stays away from me at recess. It doesn’t matter, though, because maybe I’m making a friend here at the embassy. When Hitomi told Naoki it was time to go home, he said, “Can I come back next Sunday?”

  Usually I spend most of every night practicing writing. I do at least a page of characters. I have to memorize how to draw them and what they mean. And I write lots of words in kana—symbols that stand for sounds. But this next week I won’t do that. I’ll finish sewing Naoki’s horo.

  There’s a knock on the door. It opens without anyone waiting for an answer. Carolina and Botan stand there, shy.

  “Can we come into the bath?” Carolina uses such charming little-girl Japanese that I want to hug her. But why is Botan still here?

  Carolina laughs at my puzzled face. “Botan’s mother is letting her sleep with us tonight. Because of my birthday. So…can we come in?”

  I take baths with Carolina all the time, but we’ve never invited anyone else in. It’s a wonderful idea, though. There’s a public bath nearby; people who don’t have a bath at home go daily to soak with others—women in one area, men in another. Carolina and I went once with Hatsu and Botan, just for fun.
/>   But both these girls are small enough that the tub water would go over their nose. That’s why Carolina has a special low tub stool. I point at it now and look at Botan apologetically. “We have only one stool.”

  “Botan can have it,” says Carolina.

  “Thank you, Karo-chan,” said Botan.

  I press my lips together in envy. Chan is what you add to the end of a girl’s name when you like her a lot. Carolina has a real friend, one who calls her Karo-chan. Botan is sweet to Carolina.

  But Carolina is sweet to Botan, too. Carolina deserves a friend. “How generous of you,” I whisper in Italian.

  “I’ll sit on your lap,” Carolina whispers back in Italian.

  I laugh. So she wasn’t sacrificing after all.

  We stay in the water till our skins are as wrinkled as the dried salted apricots that Hitomi chops and stuffs into rice balls to eat when you have a cold. Hitomi believes in the values of the Shinto religion, and she makes different kinds of rice balls, each special somehow in helping one be pure and in harmony with nature. The apricot rice balls smell like they taste, stinging and wonderful. I feel almost calm, almost harmonious.

  16 DECEMBER 1940, TOKYO, JAPAN

  My school lunch is wrapped in a furoshiki that sits on the little table near the servants’ door. I could buy a used bento box at the market, but I like the furoshiki because that’s become my favorite Japanese word. Papà packs me whatever the servants are going to eat each day, and it’s always yummy. He still cooks Italian food for the ambassador and his wife, but he makes Japanese food for the rest of us. Papà learned to cook Japanese style so that he could make everyone happy.

  “Your fingers must be sore.” Carolina comes up beside me. “From sewing on Naoki’s horo every night.”

  I smile. I gave the finished horo to Naoki yesterday, and he pretended to gallop around the side yard while Carolina shot imaginary arrows at him, all of which sailed right through the billowing cloth, missing Naoki. Each time he triumphantly laughed. I pretended to be the servant who kept repairing his horo when an arrow pierced it.

  Carolina puts a rice candy on my palm. “For being so good to Naoki.”

  The candy is misshapen, and bits of rush grass are embedded in the outer layer of rice paper, the part that dissolves in your mouth immediately. But these candies are delicious. I haven’t seen any in the market for weeks. Many things are rationed now. “It’s dirty,” I say, wrinkling my nose.

  “I hid it under my futon. It got pressed into the tatami mat. If you don’t want it, give it back.”

  I close my fist around the treasure. “Where did you get it?”

  “Pessa.”

  We call the ambassador’s wife Pessa now—short for principessa—princess. She hardly ever leaves the top floor of the embassy except for the evening meal. And then she talks only to the ambassador, though it’s clear she loves Papà’s cooking. She uses bread to wipe every last drop of sauce off her plate.

  Why would Pessa give Carolina candy? “You don’t bother her, do you?”

  Botan and Hatsu come through the door with a burst of cold air. They bow a greeting and plant their shoes on the shelf by the table.

  Carolina sets a small furoshiki beside my bigger lunch one. “From Papà,” she says, shifting to Japanese. She and Botan walk off holding hands.

  I wonder how Carolina’s doll Lella feels about Botan. The rag doll has been sitting in our room alone lately. But I guess that’s good. Carolina is growing up.

  I tie on my school shoes, then pick up both furoshiki and step outside. It’s earlier than I normally walk to school. I check my jacket buttons because of the cutting cold. This is as warm as I’m going to get.

  The gray wall of the embassy yard has an iron fence on top. Sharp points at the top stab the dull air. It might rain today. I wish it would snow. Then the bitter cold would be worth it. Papà says snow in Tokyo is as rare as snow back home.

  I walk around to the front and out the gate, and smile big at the guard without showing my teeth. Aiko taught me that girls my age don’t show their teeth when they smile. The guard never smiles back.

  After a couple of blocks, I open the smaller furoshiki. It holds leftovers from the ambassador and his wife’s breakfast: the crusty end of a loaf of bread, buttered. I can’t remember when I last had butter. I nibble slowly.

  “Breakfast?”

  I turn my head.

  “Don’t look back. Walk as though I’m not here.”

  It’s Aiko. How lucky. I’ve never come across Aiko walking alone. Maybe I should always walk to school earlier.

  “I can smell it from here. Something odd.”

  “Butter.” I take another bite.

  “Last week you came to school smelling of plum.”

  “Plum jam.” It was delicious. I nod.

  “Don’t nod,” she snaps.

  My heart beats hard. Why are we walking like this, her behind me?

  “And before that it was something else. You shouldn’t eat fancy food.”

  I swallow the last bite of bread and butter.

  “People say the Italian embassy is full of gluttons. With expensive food. Eggs all the time. Meat. Foreign food. They have a nickname for you: ishuu.”

  I know that word. It means different religion, and it sounds like the word that means stink. Someone’s being mean and clever. I feel sick.

  “I’m going to pass you now. Don’t look at me.” Aiko walks around me swiftly. Why is she taking this risk for me?

  I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. My eyes burn. I miss Nonna more than ever.

  Aiko meets up with a group of girls on the corner. They walk together toward Mita Elementary School. All the other kids walk in groups. Except me.

  Last week Naoki said we’re spoiled because we live at the embassy.

  We’re servants. We don’t live like the ambassador and Pessa, but people here don’t know that.

  What matters now is that Aiko has done me a favor. She’s trying to help me.

  I walk back half a block to the closest pine tree. I rip off a handful of needles, stiff with winter. I stuff them into my mouth and chew. They poke the insides of my cheeks. I chew harder and swipe at my eyes. Pine scent finally. I gnash my teeth, grinding out every last bit of pine juice.

  I march to school, eyes on the sidewalk. If anyone gets close enough, I’ll breathe on them. They’ll think they’re in a forest.

  I don’t meet anyone’s eyes all morning.

  When it’s time to clean the classroom, the teacher tells us to put on our shoes instead. We’re going on a bus ride with women from the Adult Assistance Group. Everyone else seems to know about it. Our teacher must have announced it last week. Or maybe she wrote it on the board and I couldn’t read it.

  On the bus, I sit by a window. People file in to sit in twos. I look out the window. Finally someone plops down beside me. I dare to peek. It’s Aiko. She stares straight ahead.

  A girl named Mutsuko gets on. There are no more free seats.

  “Sit with those two.” A woman points at Aiko and me. It makes sense; we’re the smallest, so there’s room.

  Mutsuko perches on the edge of the seat and talks softly with Aiko.

  We drive through so many streets. I see women of all ages, but the men are old. The young ones are off at war. I lean my forehead against the cold glass as we bump along.

  We get off at a huge park, and I look around in awe.

  “The Komazawa green,” whispers Aiko. “People play golf here.”

  No one is playing golf now; instead, soldiers train everywhere I look. They are boys, with skinny necks. They wear floppy pants and bands around their heads, and their shirts are dark with sweat, despite the cold.

  Three women lead us out onto the field. “Clean it up!”

  Girls form pai
rs. I expect to work alone, but Aiko stays with me. She glances around, and when she sees that no one is looking, she gives me a small smile. We pick up cigarette butts and scraps of paper and throw the rubbish into a trash cart.

  The women herd us through the streets now, and we collect metals. The military needs iron and copper and brass for war tools. We take the metal strips off the bottoms of doors and from the edges of roofs. We gather old metal teapots and broken hibachis. We go into a Buddhist temple with a huge tree out front. The leaves shine green, even though it’s December. An old woman stands at the base and hugs the main trunk. I wish someone would hug me.

  “I’ll be back,” whispers Aiko. “Act normal.”

  I go inside with the other girls. We take the altar lamps, the brass bells, the incense burners. Even the beggar bowls. I feel strange, like this is a sin. But Aiko told me to act normal, so I hold one of the big bags while other girls stuff things into it. The women who lead us around keep telling us what a good job we’re doing.

  When we go back outside, Aiko appears again. “Did anyone notice I was gone?”

  “I did.”

  Aiko covers her mouth and laughs.

  I put something into her hand. I’ve been clutching it all day, ever since she warned me about my plum-jam breath, hoping I’d find the right moment to give it to her.

  Aiko holds her hand close to her belly and looks down into it. She gives a little gasp. Then she pops the rice candy into her mouth. She didn’t even pick out the bits of grass.

  I imagine that soft cube oozing sweetness across her tongue. I wonder what flavor it is.

  The woman in charge calls, “When you turn twelve, if this war is still going on, you can take jobs in the munitions factories.” She beams.

  “I don’t want to quit school at twelve,” I whisper to Aiko.

  “Me neither.”

  Our group walks to a station and gets on a streetcar. When the car passes the imperial palace, the woman tells us to lower our heads and pray for the peace and prosperity of Emperor Hirohito and the imperial family, because Emperor Hirohito is a direct descendant of Amaterasu—the sun goddess who made the world. I bow my head like everyone else.