1001 Cranes (5 page)

“Not bad,” the girl says, and takes one of my origami papers. Her slender fingers then move back and forth quickly, as if she’s knitting the paper with her bare hands. And then, voilà—a perfectly formed grade-A crane.

I sit here, stunned. This pint-sized karate kid knows her origami.

“I was going to help Michi with the one-thousand-and-one-cranes displays. But that was before you came along.”

I narrow my eyes. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of Grandma Michi, but she still is
my
grandmother, not this girl’s.

“Why are you dressed in a karate outfit?” I finally ask. It’s not like me to speak to strangers like that, but I feel she is challenging me.

“It’s not karate; it’s judo. And it’s called a
gi.
” She sticks out her front teeth (she has a slight overbite anyway) and spits out the last word. “My dad works at the dojo around the corner sometimes.”

I look at her blankly and she sighs. “Do-jo. It’s a place where we learn judo.”

I know what she’s getting at: I’m the Japanese person, so I should know all this stuff. But I don’t, and I’m kind of proud that I don’t. Like I’m a little bit like Baa-chan right now, with her American flag pin that she sometimes wears.

The bell rings, and Grandma steps in, sweat running down the sides of her face like clear liquid sideburns. She looks dazed for a moment, as if she has been exposed to the sun too quickly.

She then takes note of the white-uniformed girl in the store and smiles. “Oh, so you’ve met my favorite little helper, I see,” she says.

Eggs, Ketchup, and Shoyu

Grandma Michi’s little helper has a name. It’s Rachel Joseph. I’ve made up my mind that I don’t like Rachel Joseph. I don’t care that Grandma Michi calls the girl her favorite, but it’s obvious that Rachel Joseph does. I can tell by how she smiles, her upper teeth all jammed in her small jaw. She likes to be called Grandma Michi’s favorite. That’s fine, I think. You can wear that crown.

“I’d like you to be nice to Rachel,” Grandma Michi says as we are driving home.

I’m surprised that my grandmother is still thinking about that little judo girl.

“I’m nice,” I say, knowing that it really isn’t true. But how did Grandma Michi figure that out so quickly?

“Sometimes she likes to sit in the shed in back of the shop, next to the Dumpster. It’s a playhouse for her. She knows the combination to the lock.”

Whatever, I think. If she wants to hang out in a probably rat-infested shack, it’s her business.

When I get back to the house with Grandma Michi, I check to see if Dad has called. But he hasn’t.

“Are you sure the answering machine is working? Looks pretty old.” Their message machine has two minicassettes—one for outgoing messages, the other for incoming—and I flip up the lid to make sure the tape for incoming is still intact.

“No messages for you, Angela,” Janet repeats. “I checked, two times.” She flutters her single eyelids, her straight lashes pointed downward like the brushes of a vacuum cleaner. “What about your cell phone?”

I haven’t touched my phone since Mom gave it to me this morning. If it was any other time, I would be checking out all the features and text-messaging my friends in Mill Valley. But somehow, the cell phone makes me mad. Like it’s a bribe for me to behave myself. I do want to hear from Dad, so I finally open it up and check for messages. Nothing. Maybe Dad doesn’t even have my number. I wait for a little while and call his cell. The voice mail picks up. My heart first jumps at the sound of his voice and then feels heavy. I think about leaving a message but hang up before the recording gets to the beep.

Before I go to bed tonight, I walk over to the two masks beside the door. I focus on the face of the smiling woman.
What are you so happy about?
I ask her silently. And why is your face so pale? I’ll never understand why being the color of plaster is considered beautiful in Japan.

The more I stare at the mask, the more confused I become about her expression. Is she really laughing? Or maybe crying? Or both.

I sleep in the sleeping bag again, this time on the couch, where my mother slept the night before. When Gramps wakes me up to eat on Sunday, it is nine o’clock. Grandma and Aunt Janet have already left to deliver a 1001-cranes display to a wedding.

“I can do breakfast real good. In camp I worked in the mess hall,” Gramps says. The camp he’s talking about is not summer camp, but a camp in the swampland in Arkansas where he and his family were locked up during World War II for being Japanese. I don’t know why anyone would have mistaken Gramps for being real Japanese—that is, born in Japan. He speaks hardly any Japanese, and his favorite television shows are all-American westerns, although a lot of times he has seemed to root for the Indians more than the cowboys.

He breaks four eggs, two in each hand, against the edge of the skillet, lines of egg whites dripping onto the stove top. He is all thumbs, but I can’t blame him for trying to cheer me up.

“Set the table, will you, An-jay? And don’t forget the ketchup. And the shoyu.”

I’m not quite sure what Gramps is preparing for breakfast, but I am too tired to ask. In Mill Valley, we usually eat fresh raspberries and blueberries over granola with soy milk. What appear here are two runny sunny-side up eggs over fried bologna and a side of rice.

“You eat rice for breakfast?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Gramps says, squirting ketchup on his eggs and then dousing them with soy sauce. “In fact, I betcha most of the world eats this stuff.”

My stomach starts to turn and I take a sip of orange juice.

Gramps notices that I’m not eating. “You’ve been living up in that
hakujin
town too long.”

Whenever I’m with Gramps, he inevitably starts his
hakujin
talk. His universe is clearly defined for him: the Japanese world and the
hakujin,
white, world.

“I have a black friend at school,” I say.

“But I bet she’s
hakujin
inside.”

I roll my eyes. When Gramps gets into this mode, there’s no talking to him.

“So what are you going to do today? I was thinking of fixing Janet’s old bike for you.”

“I brought my skateboard.”

“Skateboard? Isn’t that what those crazy
hakujin
boys do?”

My skateboard, an old concave wooden deck with four tan polyurethane wheels, is nothing special. But it’s my main source of independent transportation and I am planning to go as far as it will take me.

“Well, don’t go too far,” Gramps says. “Gardena isn’t what it used to be.” In spite of his reservations, he takes an old shoelace threaded through a key and places it around my neck. “Put that underneath your shirt, so no one can see,” he says.

I do as I am told, feeling the coldness of the key against my breastbone above my bra. It is one of those bras with molded cups, 34A. In the crisscross intersection is a tiny embroidered pink flower sitting in the middle of a green fabric leaf.

I don’t make it past the lawn before I hear someone calling to me from the driveway next door. It is a Japanese woman about my grandmother’s age. “Hello there. Hello. You must be Michi and Nick’s granddaughter. I’m Ruth Oyama and this is my husband, Jack.”

Mr. Oyama holds a black Bible; Mrs. Oyama’s Bible is in a quilted book cover with handles. My family isn’t religious, so I always am both curious about and repelled by people who go to church. Certain Christian people’s faces seem especially bright, like they are shining a light into the dark corners of my mind. The lady, Mrs. O, has a piercing gaze, and I feel that she can see right through me.

“Oh,” I finally say, realizing that they are waiting for me to introduce myself. I drop my skateboard onto the driveway. “I’m Angela. Angela Kato.”

“Kato…Your dad related to the Katos in San Gabriel?” Mr. Oyama asks.

I crinkle my nose and nudge my skateboard with the toe of my sneaker. “I don’t know. My dad’s from northern California,” I say.

“We’re going to be late, Jack. It was so nice to meet you, Angela. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again.”

I wait until they pull their Honda out of the driveway and into the street. Mrs. O turns and waves to me. I look down, hoping that I have dodged the light.

As soon as they leave, I race down the street on my skateboard.

For the first time in several days, I feel totally free.

Mixed-up
Mon

Gardena is flat and unadorned; nothing looks organic or particularly wild. The buildings and the three-bedroom ranch homes seem snapped into place like pieces of Lego.

I stand on my skateboard, and with some quick thrusts of my right foot, I am rolling down the concrete road. The pavement is rough, full of cracks and holes, and the ride is jerky, as well. I turn a couple of corners, move over to the sidewalk, and then approach a business district. There is a series of small storefronts squished together like friends conspiring to keep secrets. Only the Mexican pastry shop seems interesting, and as I roll past, I almost bump into a middle-aged woman doing her weekend shopping.

I have about a dollar in my pocket, so I go to a corner liquor store and buy some sour gummy worms. Bright blue, orange, red, and yellow, they are tart enough to make me cringe.

I go down more streets; I don’t recognize the trees growing beside the sidewalks, and their unfamiliarity upsets me. Instead of being heavy and full, they look a bit stunted, controlled. Smog trees, I call them, and begin to feel better. The smog trees, deformed like something inside me, could be my friends.

I’m looking at some of them when I arrive at a neat black wrought iron fence that comes up to my chin. Behind it are two giant cement Japanese lanterns and a huge structure with a sloped roof. The Buddhist church. Although I’ve been here twelve times before, the white building seems kind of new to me. I notice a pretty crest—called a
mon,
I remember—right below where the two sides of the roof meet.
Mon
seem always to be inside of circles. This
mon
looks like two flattened furry fern leaves tied together.

I skateboard down a large boulevard and then can see a big overpass and a school. The school, a wallflower attempting to blend in and be unnoticed, is a nondescript tan. Beyond the main building is an open yard with outdoor basketball, handball, and tetherball courts and picnic tables. And a dozen skateboarders.

Some merely circle the tetherball courts. The more adventurous ones sail down the stairs or grind their wooden decks down metal railings.

I’m watching them from the other side of a chain-link fence when one of the skateboarders finally rolls toward me. A guy, kind of cute, maybe thirteen. He wears a white T-shirt and an open yellow plaid shirt. He has long dark-brown hair that curls up a little. As he gets closer, I notice that he has sideburns and a light mustache.

“Hey,” he says. He kicks up his skateboard and I see the huge skull image on its deck.

I look down and tighten my grip on my skateboard. My fingers are still sticky from the gummy worms. “Hello.”

“Are those OJs?”

“Huh?”

“Your wheels. They look like Santa Cruz OJs. They’re classic. From the eighties.”

“No,” I say, “they’re just regular ones. Your skateboard’s nice.” I blush at how stupid that sounds.

“You go to this school?”

I shake my head. “I’m from Mill Valley.”

The skateboarder frowns.

“It’s near San Francisco.”

“You’re pretty far from San Francisco.”

“I’m staying with my grandparents. Not far from here.”

“Cool. Come out with us.” He grasps the chain-link fence and I notice that his knuckles look knotty and his fingernails have fine white lines on them.

I’m not wearing a watch, but I know that it’s late. I shake my head. “I have to get going.”

“Well, next week, then. We’re here every Sunday afternoon.” He backs up and begins walking toward his friends. I reposition my head so that I can place the boy in one of the diamonds in the fence.

“Hey,” he says, turning back. “What’s your name?”