Full Cicada Moon (4 page)

We head down the street to town—

Papa striding and I with quick, short steps

so I don't slip and crack my head open,

which is Mama's biggest fear.

Everything is white and black and gray

and slush.

Except for the sky, which is . . . sky blue . . . and alive

with sunlight and snow rainbows.

We walk past a lawyer's office, a barbershop,

the Hillsborough Savings Bank, and a drugstore,

where I see toys and a soda fountain

through the frosted window.

Somewhere, a shovel scrapes cement.

We pass—

A round woman

in a gray coat with big buttons that look like

mine

and a plaid scarf over her mouth.

She carries a grocery bag

and wipes her eyes with a tissue.

A boy in a blue parka with the hood string pulled so tight

his face is a thumb,

and mittens pinned to his cuffs.

A college girl in a long skirt made out of

jeans

and a short, red sweater.

Her hair bounces around her shoulders as

she walks.

Each one stares at us until we get close

and then they look away.

Papa says, “Hello,”

and gives a little nod.

Round woman nods back

and clutches her grocery bag.

Boy backs up to a signpost

and twists around it as we pass

to stare.

College girl just keeps on walking,

as if she doesn't see us.

As if she didn't hear

my gentle dad's hello.

Our neighbor's house,

where I saw Pattress and the boy,

is long and low, and snuggled into the snow.

There's also a garage that's twice as high as the house.

Old cars and trucks and propane tanks

lie around the yard like lazy farm animals.

A mailbox sits on a post at the end of the driveway,

with
DELL
stenciled in white letters. Whenever I see it,

I sing “The Farmer in the Dell” in my head.

The man who lives there doesn't look like a farmer,

and I never see a wife or a cow, but I call him

Farmer Dell.

Farmer Dell always wears the same thing—

green work pants, a plaid wool jacket buttoned to his neck,

and work boots. If it's really cold, he wears a red-checkered hat

with the flaps over his ears.

Pattress is always with him,

and sometimes when Papa and I drive to school,

she's sitting at the garage door.

But I haven't seen that boy again.

Sometimes Farmer Dell is driving a backhoe,

clearing snow in the yard. In the afternoon

another car or truck will be lying in the nest he made.

Sometimes he's walking to his mailbox

or standing beside it.

And sometimes he's pushing a snowblower

down his driveway.

The snow cascades into a perfect trim,

like piping on a birthday cake.

Every time we pass by our neighbor,

Papa waves to him.

But no matter what Farmer Dell is doing,

he never waves back.

Each time he doesn't wave back,

my mouth goes dry.

This morning, I ask, “Why?”

Papa says, “Maybe he can't see very well.

Or maybe he doesn't like us.”

That is why my mouth goes dry.

“But he doesn't even know us.”

Papa shifts his hands on the steering wheel. “You're right, Meems—

he doesn't . . . yet.”

And then the spit comes back into my mouth

because even if Mr. Dell doesn't like us,

Papa said the words,

so they don't scare me as much.

Outside the car, light and dark and gray all stream by,

and I think,
Drip, drip, drip
.

In Berkeley we lived in a two-bedroom house

next to my second cousins, Shelley and Sharon,

and Auntie Sachiko (who's really Mama's cousin)

and Uncle Kiyoshi.

There was no fence between our backyards,

so it was like we all lived in the same house.

Auntie let us live there

while Papa finished his schoolwork,

as long as

he did repairs on their apartment building

and Mama told people he was Italian.

Shelley and Sharon have Japanese middle names

like me: Akiko and Tomiko.

Sometimes they speak Japanese to Auntie and Uncle

and to each other,

and sometimes they combine English and Japanese.

My cousins taught me the Japanese words

that Mama would never say.

Sometimes we pretended we were Southern belles

who could speak Japanese—

“
Ohayo gozaimasu
, y'all.”—

which made Mama and Auntie cry-laugh

out of breath.

Papa wants us to speak only English,

not because he doesn't like Japan

but because he says people get scared

when they hear a different language.

My cousins were my best friends.

We had other friends

whose parents or grandparents came from Japan

or China, Korea or India, Ghana or Germany or Mexico.

We all understood our families' languages

and ate the foods of their countries.

It was like we were all in the
Other
check box,

having in common

speaking English,

being American,

and feeling that we didn't belong either in our parents' worlds

or in this one.

But I am not Other;

I am

half my Japanese mother,

half my Black father,

and all me.

Quiet

sounds like winter in Vermont:

Snow taps the bare trees

Flames sing in the fireplace

Mama's slippers scuff the floors

The teakettle applauds to a boil

Hot water pours into a cup

A sip—

And Papa's “Quiet, please. I'm grading papers.”

The two girls carry their trays to my table,

pocketbooks swinging from their elbows,

and sit on either side of me.

I didn't even need to invite them.

“We want to get to know you.

I'm Kim, I'm Karen,” they say.

“You lived in California?” Karen asks.

I nod. “Uh-huh, in Berkeley.”

“Did you go to wild parties there?”

“Did you surf?”

“How many movie stars did you

meet?”

“Did you go to Disneyland

every weekend?”

I laugh and sip some milk.

“No. No. No. No,” I say. “I didn't live in Hollywood.

I lived up north, near my mom's cousins.”

“Can I touch your hair?” Kim asks.

It's a strange thing to ask, but I lean toward her.

She smooths the top of my head and runs her hand down my braid.

Then Karen takes a turn, and says, “It's so curly.”

Mama likes my hair pulled back tight and neat,

but a few curls always escape.

“I wish my hair was curly like yours,” says Karen,

whose hair is straight and long and blond,

and I don't believe her.

“What nationality are you?”

I try not to sigh. “My dad is Black and my mom is Japanese.”

“
Japanese
-Japanese, or was she born here?”

“Japan. Hiroshima.”

“Didn't we bomb Hiroshima?”

“Yes.”
And the radiation is ticking in Mama's bones.

“Do you know any Japanese words?” Kim asks.

“
Sukoshi dake
,” I say,

and they look puzzled. “It means ‘Just a little.'

My dad doesn't want us talking Japanese.”

“What does he do to you if you talk

Japanese?”

“What? Nothing.”

“I mean, I just thought . . .” Karen looks at

Kim.

My neck is prickling.

“Do you get a tan?”

I look at my arm. “Well, I get browner in the summer.”

“But not your palms, right? They still look like ours.”

Kim shows her hands to compare.

My lunch is done,

and so am I

with Karen and Kim.

The first thing I notice about Stacey LaVoie

is her feet. We're standing in the corridor outside the gym

and she's wearing red tights—and not the textured kind.

Even I know that you stop wearing red tights after fifth grade.

But I like that Stacey wears them anyway,

and that her big white toe sticks out of a hole

like a marshmallow.

She tries to cover the toe with her other foot,

but I've already seen it.

The next thing I notice is that black eyeliner

circles her whole eye

and ends with a little wing,

and she has pierced ears (Mama would never let me),

and earrings that dangle

just short of disobeying the dress code.

Miss Bonne, our gym teacher, is weighing us.

We are lined up in our stocking feet

outside the locker room.

Miss Bonne holds a clipboard in her hand

and a pencil in her mouth

while she slides the weights up and down the scale,

nudging them, zeroing in on the target.

“
Next!
” she calls.

“Watch out for the cootie hole,” says the girl next to Stacey

as we move up another person-space in line.

“The wha-at?” Stacey asks,

sounding like my cousins talking Southern,

only Stacey sounds real.

The girl points to a little hole in the wall

near Stacey's waist. “Don't touch it, or you'll get cooties.”

Stacey nods, making her dark hair bounce

like a girl in a Breck shampoo ad.

“I don't know what she's talking about,” she whispers

to me. “Do you?”

“I think they're invisible bugs that you can catch.”

The thought of cooties running all over me

makes me shiver, even if they're made up.

“Sounds kinda stupid,” she says,

and I agree.

“Next!”

We move up, and now I'm next to the cootie hole.

Cooties are stupid, but I move away from the wall anyway.

“I was new in September,” Stacey says.

“We came from Georgia. My daddy teaches at the college.”

“Mine, too,” I say, feeling happy

that we're both new

and both professors' daughters.

“It sure is different here, huh?” she says,

and shifts her weight to her other foot.

But she loses her balance

and falls onto me,

and I fall onto the next girl,

and on down the line.

“Stop pushing!” someone says,

shoving the girl who just knocked into her,

and the ripple swells up the line,

growing in strength and force

and intent.

When it comes back to me, I stop it

by falling into the wall,

against the cootie hole.

“Cooties!” the girl beside me says, and jumps away.

“I don't want to catch them!”

“Cooties!” say the girls. “Mimi's cooties.”

All but Stacey, who yells, “It's my fault,”

over the chorus,

and touches my arm. “Now I've got them.”

“Next!”

As stupid as cooties are,

I'm happy she took them from me.

But even though she made a big deal about rubbing my arms

to catch the cooties, no one pays attention—

they just keep yelling

“Mimi's cooties, Mimi's cooties,”

as if they've been waiting to say that

ever since my first day at school,

and now they can.

Linda, the girl who sits next to me in history,

slips a note on my desk.

I tuck it into my notebook

and look at Stacey, who sits next to her.

She smiles, so I know her note says something good.

When Miss O'Connell turns to write on the board,

I unfold it quietly and read:

Want to do something after school?

She signed it
S

with a long, loopy tail.

I could just nod at her,

but I've never passed notes before,

so I write back:

The drugstore!

I'll have to ask Papa

and figure out how to get home,

but I want to sit at the soda fountain with Stacey

and eat a sundae and look around the store.

The note is too small to explain all that,

so I just sign
M

with no loops or flair,

then fold it up and slip it onto Linda's desk.

She covers it with her hand and passes it to Stacey,

who coughs and opens it.

“I'll take that, Miss LaVoie,” Miss O'Connell says,

holding out her hand at the front of the room.

Stacey hands it to her,

then goes back to her desk without looking at me.

Miss O'Connell puts down her chalk and opens the note.

“It's too bad,” she says, “that instead

of sitting at the soda fountain this afternoon,

you'll be in my classroom.”

I've never had detention before

and my neck prickles.

Now Stacey looks at me with a big-eye face

like she's pretending to be scared,

but I wonder if her heart is pounding

as hard as mine.

I had to tell Papa after school

about the notes and detention.

He blinked and said, “I'll be back in an hour.”

The way he pressed his lips together

told me he was disappointed in me.

That stung more than getting caught passing a note.

Detention in Miss O'Connell's room

means sitting far away from Stacey,

and watching dust drift through the slanted sunlight,

and listening to kids' voices in the corridor

fade away,

and willing the red hand on the wall clock

to speed up

while Miss O'Connell helps a boy with homework.

When he leaves, Miss O'Connell says,

“An hour watching the clock is the longest hour you'll ever spend.”

Stacey and I nod.

“But you can help yourselves. You can take five minutes off

for each history question you answer correctly.”

I raise my hand. “Can we answer them together?”

Miss O'Connell sticks out her chin, and says,

“Okay.”

Stacey and I smile at each other,

and I sit next to her.

Miss O'Connell takes out a stack of index cards,

shuffles them, and sits on her desk.

“First question—

What was the first battle of the American Revolution?”

I wink at Stacey, and say, “Lexington and Concord in April 1775.”

“Yes,” Miss O'Connell says. “You got five minutes off.”

Thank you, Papa,
I think.

She shuffles the cards again. “Hmm, let's see about this one—

What does the first section of the Declaration of Independence state?”

she asks,

and looks at Stacey.

“Do you know?” Stacey whispers to me,

and I answer, “All people are born with equal rights.”

Miss O'Connell says, “That's another five minutes.

Now, let's see . . . ,” she says, looking at the cards. “Here's one—

How many times was Franklin Roosevelt elected president?”

Stacey says, “I know that . . . four.”

“Very good. I'm impressed,” Miss O'Connell says. “Last question—

I bet you girls can't get this one—

What was the name of the first

American-manned space mission?”

How easy can a question be?
I think. “Freedom 7.

It was on May 5, 1961, and lasted fifteen minutes.

And Alan Shepard was the astronaut.”

“Whoo-ee!” Stacey says.

“That's right, Mimi,” Miss O'Connell says slowly.

“And for a bonus point—where was he born?”

She sits back on her desk and taps the cards in her palm,

waiting, I think, for me to get it wrong.

But I don't. “Derry, New Hampshire.”

Miss O'Connell doesn't look impressed.

“These are not easy questions, Mimi.

Are you looking at the answers?”

She checks the backs of the cards,

but there's nothing there to see.

“I just like learning about the space missions.”

“And her daddy teaches history,” Stacey says.

“Well,” Miss O'Connell says, sliding off her desk,

“you girls may go now. But no more notes.”

We leave detention twenty-five minutes early.

“Do you want to meet my dad?” I ask Stacey

as we leave the building. “He'll be here soon.”

“Can't now—my mother's here,” she says,

and points to a yellow car at the curb. “Let's go to the drugstore

over vacation,” she calls over her shoulder,

then gets into the car.

I wave good-bye,

but I don't think she saw.