Cynthia Kadohata - Kira Kira

A buttonlike scar marked one side of Uncle Katsuhisa's nose. The story was that when he was a boy in Japan, he was attacked by giant crows, one of which tried to steal his nose. He, my father, and my mother were Kibei, which meant they were born in the United States but were sent to Japan for their education. The crows of Japan are famous for being mean. Anyway, that was the story Lynn told me.

It was a sweltering day when Uncle Katsuhisa arrived in Iowa to help us move to Georgia. We all ran outside when we heard his truck on our lonely road. His truck jerked and sputtered and was generally as noisy as he was. My mother said, "Will that truck make it all the way to Georgia?"

My father hit his chest with his fist. That's what he did whenever he wanted to say, Definitely! He added, "He's my brother." Our father was solid and tall, six feet, and our mother was delicate and tiny, four feet ten. As tiny as she was, she scared us when she got mad. Her soft face turned hard and glasslike, as if it could break into pieces if something hit it.

As my parents watched Uncle's truck, my father reached both of his arms around my mother, enveloping her. He stood with her like that a lot, as if protecting her.

"But his being your brother has nothing to do with whether the truck will make it all the way to Georgia," my mother said.

My father said, "If my brother says it will make it, then it will make it." He didn't seem to have a doubt in the world. His brother was four years older than he was. Maybe he trusted Uncle Katsuhisa the way I trusted Lynn. Lynn whispered to me, "Frankly, I wonder whether the truck will make it all the way up the road to our house, let alone to Georgia." "Frankly" was her favorite word that week.

Our mother looked at us suspiciously. She didn't like it when we whispered. She thought that meant we were gossiping, and she was against gossiping. She focused on me. She was trying to read my mind. Lynn said whenever our mother did that, I should try to think nonsense words in my head. I thought to myself, Elephant, cow, moo, koo, doo. Elephant . . . My mother turned back around, to watch the truck.

When the truck finally rumbled up, Uncle Katsuhisa jumped out and immediately ran toward Lynn and me. I stepped back, but he swooped me up in his arms and shouted, "My little palomino pony! That's what you are!" He twirled me around until I felt dizzy. Then he set me down and picked up Lynn and twirled her around and said, "My little wolfie girl!"

He set Lynn down and hugged my father hard. He hugged my mother delicately. While Uncle hugged my mother, she turned her face away a bit, as if his loudness made her feel faint.

It was hard to see how my father and Uncle Katsuhisa could be related. My father was mild, like the sea on a windless day, with an unruffled surface and little variation. He was as hard as the wall in our bedroom. Just to prove how strong he was, he used to let us hit him in the stomach as hard as we could. Some days we would sneak up on him and punch him in the stomach, and he never even noticed. We would sneak away while he kept listening to the radio as if nothing had happened.

My father liked to think. Sometimes Lynn and I would peek at him as he sat at the kitchen table, thinking. His hands would be folded on the table, and he would be frowning at nothing. Sometimes he would nod, but only slightly. I knew I would never be a thinker like my father, because I couldn't sit that still. Lynn said he thought so much that sometimes weeks or even months passed before he made a decision. Once he decided something, though, he never changed his mind. He'd thought many weeks before deciding to move us to Georgia. By the time he decided, there was only six hundred dollars in cash left in the envelope under the refrigerator.

The night Uncle Katsuhisa arrived in Iowa, he left the dinner table early so he could go out and take a walk and maybe talk to himself. After the front door closed, my mother said that Uncle Katsuhisa was the opposite of my father in that he didn't look before he leapt, didn't think at all before he made decisions. She lowered her voice and said, "That's why he married that woman," meaning his first wife. Strictly speaking, Mom was gossiping, but who was going to tell her? We all sat silently.

My father and uncle were different in other ways. Uncle Katsuhisa liked to talk to anyone, even to himself. My father didn't like to talk, except to my mother. He preferred to read the newspaper. My uncle, on the other hand, never read the paper. He did not give a hoot what President Eisenhower had to say.

My uncle was exactly one inch taller than my father. But his stomach was soft. We knew this because we hit him in it once the year before, and he yelped in pain and threatened to spank us. We got sent to bed without supper because my parents said hitting someone was the worst thing you could do. Stealing was second, and lying was third.

Before I was twelve, I would have committed all three of those crimes.

All the day before we moved, my father and uncle loaded the truck with boxes that my mother had packed. We planned to leave first thing the next morning. Lynn and I sat out on the front porch and watched them work. Uncle Katsuhisa didn't want us to help because he said we got in a man's way

Lynn and I played soldier with the chess set. During a break, Uncle Katsuhisa walked onto the porch, clapped his hands three times, took out a handkerchief, and blew his nose. He clapped his hands again. "I'm the best Japanese chess player I know," he said. That was a challenge to Lynn. "Are you up to a game?"

She set up the board. He rolled up his sleeves, as if chess were hard, physical work. Lynn beat him in about fifteen minutes. He was not a good sport and made her play him again and again so he could beat her. My father returned to loading up the truck, but Uncle Katsuhisa didn't even notice. He lost three games! He said again that he thought of himself as the best Japanese chess player in the whole United States. I have no idea where he got that idea of himself When Lynn beat him, I kept my face blank, but inside I was cheering for her.

After Uncle's third loss he stepped off the porch and stared moodily across the gravel yard. He started making noises in his throat. He said, "Yah! Ooo-YAH! Gaaaaaaah! Gaaaaaaaah! Gaaaaaaah! Hocka-hocka-hocka! Geh-geh-geh-geh-geh!!" And then a glob of saliva flew like a baseball from his mouth and over the gravel. It landed on our only tree and dripped slowly down the bark. Lynn and I looked at each other, and she raised her eyebrows as if to say, See, I told you he was an odd fish.

We were poor, but in the way Japanese are poor, meaning we never borrowed money from anyone, period. Meaning once a year we bought as many fifty-pound bags of rice as we could afford, and we didn't get nervous again about money until we reached our last bag. Nothing went to waste in our house. For breakfast my parents often made their ochazuke —green tea mixed with rice—from the crusty old rice at the bottom of the pot. For our move to Georgia, Dad and Uncle loaded up the truck with all the bags of rice that we hadn't sold at the store. I watched my parents look at the rice in the truck, and I could see that the rice made them feel good. It made them feel safe.

I liked to see them that way, especially my mother, who never seemed to feel safe. My mother was a delicate, rare, and beautiful flower. Our father told us that. She weighed hardly more than Lynn. She was so delicate that if you bumped into her accidentally, you could bruise her. She fell down a single stair once, and she broke her leg. To her that was proof even a single stair could present peril. When I would approach even a single stair, she would call out, "Be careful!"