Читать книгу The Cherry Blossom 2-Book Bundle - Jennifer Maruno - Страница 10

School in Town

Ted showed them a small opening in the bush. “It’s an overgrown trail,” he told them. “The wagons took the apples to market this way.” He pointed into the trees. “Follow it until you reach the road, then turn left.”

Michiko trudged alongside Geechan. The hardboiled egg, nestled inside her tiny furoshiki, bounced against her leg. She had two rice balls and fiddleheads for lunch as well.

They pushed their way along the broken branches and grass. The trees seemed to close in behind them as they walked. Geechan had to duck under the low branches more than once. As they wound their way along the pine-scented path, the wind whispered through the needles. Michiko hoped they wouldn’t meet a bear.

Part of the path followed a stream that trickled over the rocks and boulders. Michiko could smell the rotting marsh grasses. When the rasping call of a blackbird rose from the bullrushes, they waited to see the flash of red on its glossy black wing. The croaking and beeping of the frogs beckoned her to a game of hide-and-seek. She wished they could stop longer and watch for dragonflies.

Finally, they emerged from the bush onto the long stretch of dusty road. Thorny bushes covered with wild roses greeted them from the shallow ditch.

They passed a rutted laneway much like theirs, which led into a pasture dotted with daisies. The sound of hammering drifted up to the road. Michiko saw her grandfather’s eyes drift longingly towards the sound. His hands were always restless. Her mother had once told her this was why he made such a good barber. When he wasn’t cutting hair, he was whittling at a piece of wood.

When they reached the narrow metal bridge, Geechan stopped. Past the bridge was the town. Michiko leaned over the handrail to look at the willow that swayed above the river. Grey water rushed past below them with a roar.

Geechan gave her a small push. Michiko knew this meant she was to go on alone. She turned to her grandfather. “What if no one likes me?” she said in a low voice.

“Not like you?” Geechan’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “You are nice girl with a smart head. Why they not like you?”

Michiko took a deep breath and stepped off the bridge. She walked for a bit, then turned to wave, but her grandfather had not waited. He was off to the field of hammers.

She smiled. Uncle Ted often joked about his nine-man team. He said the government paid eight men for eight hours to put up a house. When Geechan helped, they took a longer lunch break.

One night at dinner, Ted had used chopsticks to demonstrate how the little houses went together. “The posts go into the ground, and we lay the main beams,” he said. “Then we put the floor panels down, and the walls go up.” He told them how they built each wall with the door and window spaces right on the ground. Then they lifted the the wall and bolted it to the floor. After the stoves went in, they added the roof panels. The house was finished when they nailed the last panel down.

Several of her uncle’s small square wooden houses with shingle roofs now stood in the orchard. Smoke from one of the chimneys curled up into the pale blue sky. Maybe I will meet someone from those houses at school, she thought as she walked into town.

The spaces between the large roadside maples grew wider. She spied the church steeple as she approached the square wooden buildings on the corner. No buses, no streetcars, and no traffic lights, she could hear her aunt say as she turned and made her way down the main street.

A soft fragrance wafted towards her. It came from a small tidy house with scrolls of woodwork around the porch. A picket fence separated the house from the street. The arched gate was overgrown with a cloud of lavender and ivory lilacs that filled the air with their perfume.

Michiko stopped in the middle of the road to breathe in the fragrance. It reminded her of the cherry tree in her own backyard.

“Hey,” someone yelled, “move.”

The sound of the bicycle bell made her jump. Michiko darted in the same direction as the rider.

“Watch out!” the boy on the bike yelled. He stomped hard on his brakes. The bicycle wobbled and fell to one side. The boy fell off, and the bicycle landed on top of him.

Michiko could only stare at the brightly polished fenders and leather seat.

A boy got slowly up off the ground. He dusted himself off and looked up. “So, is it a dirty Jap that made me fall?”

“I didn’t mean—” Michiko started to say, but he cut her off.

“Next time, I’ll run you over.” His cold blue eyes told her he meant what he’d said. He turned and picked up his bike.

Michiko watched the white-walled balloon tires turn the corner. She continued to walk, but when she turned the corner, the Union Jack was fluttering high on the pole. That meant school had started. She broke into a run, making her pigtails smack hard against the side of her face.

Out of breath, she pushed open the schoolhouse door. Without thinking, she slipped off her shoes as she did at home and stepped into the schoolroom, leaving her shoes outside the door. Thirteen pairs of unsmiling eyes turned her way. The teacher put down her piece of thick yellow chalk. Michiko waited in the aisle, not knowing what to do next.

“Come in,” the teacher said.

Michiko moved forward.

A boy on the aisle looked down. “She ain’t got no shoes,” he exclaimed. “She must be even poorer than me.”

Everyone laughed, and Michiko hung her head.

“Now, now, boys and girls,” cautioned the teacher. “She must have shoes. Her socks are a lot whiter than any of yours.”

Several children bent to examine their own socks.

“Put your shoes back on,” the teacher directed Michiko kindly. “We don’t take our shoes off here.”

Michiko returned and thankfully slipped them back on. The coolness of the dark linoleum floor was already seeping through her socks.

“Come up to my desk,” the teacher said. She sat beside a clay pot of scraggly geranium plants. “My name is Miss Henderson,” she said softly. “You must be the little girl Mrs. Morrison came to see me about.”

Michiko stood before her, her hands at her side. She didn’t know what to say.

“What is your name?” the teacher asked.

Michiko whispered her full name. “I am Michiko Takara Minagawa.”

“Please say it again,” the teacher requested. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

Michiko whispered it a second time. The teacher shook her head.

“Maybe she’s Italian,” someone from the back offered. “Maria didn’t know English when she first came.”

“Write your name for me, please,” Miss Henderson directed as she pushed a piece of paper towards her. Michiko picked up a pencil and wrote her name.

“She better not be one of those yellow bellies,” a different voice from the back piped up.

The teacher looked up and frowned. “That’s enough,” she said. She looked at Michiko’s name for a minute and picked up the pencil. She crossed out some letters and wrote down some new ones. She examined the paper for a moment, then looked up at the class. “We have a new student,” Miss Henderson announced. She focused directly on the boy with the bike. “Boys and girls, meet Millie Gawa.”

“Hello, Millie Gawa,” they chorused.

The teacher pointed to a desk in the second last row. “You can sit beside Clarence.”

“Hey, Clarence,” a boy in the back called out. “Looks like you finally got yourself a girlfriend.”

Miss Henderson clapped her hands loudly. All went quiet.

Michiko slipped into the seat beside the boy named Clarence, who looked as if he had been born on the sun. Red hair fell about his freckled face in curls. His large ears, rimmed with sunburn, stuck straight out like the open doors of her father’s car. His nose peeled. Clarence wore a long-sleeved plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants. One of the buttons on the cuff was missing. The corner of the pocket was slightly torn.

Her mother would never have let her come to school like that, Michiko thought. She’d let down the hem of Michiko’s cotton skirt, washed it, and dried it. Her white blouse was spotless.

They spent the morning writing out addition questions and multiplication tables. At recess, Michiko stood with her back to the wall, watching the children coo like pigeons over the green and ivory bicycle leaning against the wall.

“It’s the New Elgin Deluxe,” one of the boys called out to the others.

Its owner patted the silver mound between the two handlebars. “This is an electric beam,” he boasted.

Clarence came late into the yard, returning the coal bucket from the small stove to the shed at the back. The sun tinged his red hair with gold as he closed the shed door with the toe of his boot.

At lunchtime, Miss Henderson asked Michiko to remain inside, while the others spilled out on to the wooden trestle table in the side yard. She gave Michiko a few words to spell and several passages to read. Then they ate their lunch together in friendly silence.

After lunch, the class had a botany lesson. The teacher directed them to sketch a flowering plant. If they wished, they could use watercolors to enhance their drawing. Michiko’s eyes shone when the students passed back pieces of drawing paper. She found that drawing often helped her to ease her fears. Her joy diminished, however, when she opened the green enamel box. Most of the cakes of colour were gone. Those left had large holes in the centre, and the white enamel of the box’s bottom showed through.

Clarence watched her sketch a long stem with small buds. Below, she drew clusters of small-petal blooms.

“That’s good,” he said. “It’s a lilac, right?”

Michiko looked up, but he turned back to his work.

“Prepare for dismissal,” the teacher announced.

Michiko blew gently on her paper before slipping it inside her desk.

“No leapfrogging across the desks,” Miss Henderson warned the boys at the back as the children crowded towards the door.

Michiko raced along the hard dirt road until she reached the wooden bridge. Then she slowed down to walk the rest of the way. School had not been anything like the one she went to at home. She didn’t know how to tell her mother that she had a new name.

At home, she slapped her furoshiki on to the kitchen table, laid her head down and closed her eyes. Her mother moved her hands to retrieve the bundle.

“What are these small cuts on your fingers?” Eiko asked. “What have you been doing?”

A bundle of thorny dark green stems and small pink roses fell out of the furoshiki.

Michiko opened her eyes. “The teacher said,” she mumbled, “if you pick flowers and hang them to dry, they will keep their colour.” She closed her eyes again. “We always had flowers on the table at home.”