It was windy outside when my mother woke me up for school. I could hear rain pummeling the metal storm shutters we closed every night over the windows for privacy.
“The news said there is a tropical storm coming. What did they say at school yesterday? Should you still go?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. I knew what to do if there was an earthquake or a tsunami, but a tropical storm?
“The rain is coming down sideways.”
I sighed. When the rain came down sideways I left my umbrella in my bag. It was useless. The wind would only turn it inside out. I would have to wear the purple slicker my mother bought me. What an embarrassment.
“You should probably get ready to go, just in case.”
I heard my mother rouse my sister and brother and carry the baby downstairs. Meg waited in my doorway. She is not a morning person. We had to take a shower together in the ofuroba, a Japanese bathroom, so as not to waste water. My mother cleaned its tiled walls nearly every day to cut down on the mold, which grew anyway. I longed for a soak in the tub, but that was only for special occasions. It was too expensive to heat the water every day. Meg and I took turns reaching for the towels placed just outside the door. It was useless for both of us to get cold. Japanese homes are not usually insulated so the cold seeps in. I could see my breath in the hallway as we raced into my parents’ bedroom, doors closed to conserve the heat from the kerosene heater. There we would find our school uniforms, neatly pressed, waiting on the bed.
I poked my head out of the paper, shoji, door that separated my parents’ bedroom from the family room and kitchen.
“Anything from the school yet?”
“No. Your breakfast is ready.”
Could you please call? I wondered to myself silently. My mother would never call. She never called anyone. She never spoke to anyone she didn’t know. Once my brother brought a Japanese woman home from the park. She was a newly converted evangelical Christian, eager to practice her English and spread her faith. When my brother buzzed the intercom to let my mother know he was coming in the gate with a new friend she yelled, “I don’t speak English” into the receiver and refused to open the door until the visitor was gone.
I sighed.
We ate our breakfast in silence and then dutifully piled in the car. On the way to the train station I glanced at the clock, 5:37am. We were never going to make the 5:40 train. The station seemed more crowded than usual. It smelled like cigarettes and hair gel, the kind old men use to slick back their hair. There would be a greasy film on the train car windows. We were stuffed, like marshmallows in a plastic bag, onto the train. Sometimes it was so crowded my feet left the ground.
No one sings on the trains in Japan. No one speaks. No one looks directly at another human being. We were in complete isolation. Sometimes my blue eyes or my sister’s wildly curly hair attracted attention. Children on their way to school would point at us- gaijin, foreigners.
Once my garish, enormous, turquoise Beverly Hills 90210-lunch box got stuck in the doors as they closed. I was mortified. An attendant violently shoved the lunch box in with a baton without even a glance in my direction.
I clung to my adopted little brother who looks almost Japanese even though he is Korean, so small he was frequently pulled out of the train with the departing passengers. He would then blend into the crowd, making it nearly impossible for me to find him before the doors closed and the train left. Once I did lose him. The rule was for him to wait at the train station until I could take a train in the opposite direction and retrieve him. I called “Chris-to-pher” into the crowd several times. No answer. My palms began to sweat as I imagined his scared lost face as our train pulled away from him. I tried to see over the other passengers, but there was not enough room for me to turn my head. Suddenly there was an umbrella poking out between two people. They grunted in frustration and tried to move away. The umbrella was soon followed by a hand, and then a squished little face. As Christopher poked and squirmed he inched is way closer to where Margaret and I were standing. When he was safely wedged between me and Margaret he said triumphantly, “I used my umbrella,” and smiled hugely. Nothing ever phased him for long. When little old Japanese women asked him questions in department stores he would grin at them and speak in complete gibberish. They probably thought he was retarded, a fact we reminded him of often when he was a teenager.
While I was in middle school I believe my sister Meg’s sole mission in life was to embarrass me. At first she tried little things, speaking in a slightly raised voice, pointedly smiling at passengers who refused to look at her. I would beg her, plead with her, to stop. Once we were picking up her uniform skirt from a department store in Yokohama. All of our uniforms were hand-me-downs from other, richer, students, except hers. I was already jealous. Christopher, who believed it was as much his mission to annoy Meg as it was hers to annoy me, began to taunt her.
“I’m not touching. I’m not touching.” He jumped in front of her and waved is little fingers in her face. Before I could respond with a motherly scolding Meg began to hit him with the box that containing her brand new skirt. This went on for several minutes, my begging, her hitting, and him shrieking. I am sure it was a confusing sight to the passengers waiting for the red train that day. Two gaijin ganging up on a little Asian boy.
At this time in our lives we were convinced that my mother knew everything, had spies everywhere. So, when we arrived home that evening, we sheepishly told my parents what had happened. As we learned from my brother who lied, badly, constantly, there was usually a lesser punishment for children who came clean immediately, rather than waiting for the parental unit to find out. Dad explained that misbehavior could impact him at work if his commanding officer was notified that LCDR Rennix’s children were acting up on the trains. From then on I lived in constant fear that we would get my father fired. I also think we were grounded, a punishment more humiliating than harmful.
No one sang on the trains, except my sister.
“STOP in the name of love…BE-FORE you BRE-AK my heart… Think it O-OVER.”
I could hear it, but I couldn’t believe it. Margaret was belting out the same line over and over again. She didn’t know the rest of the song. There was enough room on the train that morning for her to incorporate dance movements as well. The other passengers pretended not to notice her.
“Meggie, pul-eeze stop”
“STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE,” she motioned for me to stop then held her hands over her heart. “THINK IT O-OVER,” she pointed to her head in time with the music.
Though Margaret has a pretty singing voice now, she was decidedly tone deaf as child. This, accompanied by jerky dance movements, created what I now consider a comical picture; but at twelve I thought my life was over. My father would be fired and I would get in trouble for failing to control the situation. Christopher was no help, doubled over with laughter. He didn’t care if people looked at him. Margaret eventually became bored with her game, but I remained humiliated.
Our trip consisted of three different trains, a total of forty-five minutes, and then a one mile walk up to St. Joseph’s International School in Ichicowa-cho. Public buildings are always on the tops of mountains in Japan where no one can grow anything. The trains usually run in the valleys with buses that bring people from valley to peak. My parents believed that the buses were too expensive, so we walked. The tropical storm lashed the train car with heavy waves of rain. When we disembarked (30 minutes late) at the last station before our hike the wind picked up. The rain ran down the streets and stairs that led to the school in small rivers. Stores were barely open, storm shutters still closed with the faintest light inside visible through cracks in the doors. When we finally reached the school it was well into first period. I half expected school to have been canceled so we could turn around and go home, but it wasn’t. In the office the principal asked for our excuse for being late.
“There is a tropical storm,” I said hopefully. “We thought school would be canceled.”
“A tropical storm. Exactly. Not a typhoon. You are tardy.” He said tardy like we had committed a capital offense. I had never been tardy before. I could not even imagine what punishment it entailed. As it turned out, tardy meant we went to class with a stern warning to come to school on time. I was sure I would have to show the tardy slip to my mother. But my siblings and I agreed that just this once we could forgo our policy of total disclosure and keep the tardy slip to ourselves. It was one of the only things we agreed on for most of my adolescence.
