[ManthaStoirmeil]

Synopsis: Two children learn to enjoy both their similarity and difference


Yukio and Marisol


Yukio sat in the big, airy classroom and took a deep breath to make himself calm, as his father had taught him. It was his first day in the new private school for the children of visiting diplomats in Washington, DC. As he looked around at all the other students from so many different countries, he wondered how much they knew. In particular, he wondered how good their English was. He knew he understood English better than anyone in his class in Japan, and he could read some advanced English books very well. His father was proud of that.

Both parents were proud of Yukio's other talent, too. Yukio spent his summers at home in Japan, learning traditional Japanese calligraphy and inkbrush drawing from his mother's father, who was one of the most famous artists in the whole country. Everyone said how unusual it was for a young person to have such fine control of the brush, but Yukio remained modest about it. Still, it was his private joy. He loved to feel his mind go quiet and flow with the ink along the delicate paper.

Even though he was confident about his English reading, Yukio was embarrassed about his accent, and he didn't want to talk in this new classroom until he had to. In order to avoid looking his teacher in the eye, he straightened his navy blue tie for the tenth time and fussed with his neat white cuffs. Then he bent over and flicked a speck or two of dust from his polished black shoes.

The teacher's name was Mr. Mbamelu. He was telling his new sixth graders that he was an American, but he was originally from Nigeria. He was tall, thin, and very dark, and he moved and swayed like a tree in the wind as he talked. He wore beautiful robes that he said were everyday clothes in his land. His voice was deep, and his English, Yukio noticed, was perfect. He had an accent too, but he wasn't hard to understand. When he spoke he sounded like a happy man, as if one more drop of happiness would make him start to sing instead of speaking.

Mr. Mbamelu was telling them that they must speak nothing but English in class. A few of them groaned. "Yes, I know," he laughed. "Every language is a bag of gold. And it is true, only a fool would leave a bag of gold behind." The students smiled; some nodded. "But you need not carry all your wealth with you all the time," he went on. "In this room, English is the gold you earn and spend."

Yukio's thoughts often flew through his mind, precisely, in words. So, languages are bags of gold, he thought. Mr. Mbamelu is certainly wise. So. I'll bet Father will say he is quite pleased to hear it.

The teacher's handwriting on the blackboard impressed Yukio. It was precise and even, but round and beautiful too, and his lines were straight as an arrow. These were things that went directly to Yukio's heart. He wondered if the man could use a brush and ink.

Mr. Mbamelu had put the students in pairs at big double desks. They would have these partners for the whole first term, unless they were truly incompatible. The teacher was sure, however, that they would all try their best. Yukio's father was a diplomat, and Yukio knew he would be ashamed if his son could not get along. Yukio took another deep breath, then turned to look at the girl who had just come clattering into the room late and plopped herself beside him at the teacher's direction.

She was very pretty . . . Oh! She was Japanese! Her face reminded him so much of home, he wanted to shout. Her black hair was cropped short in little spiky layers all over her head, like the feathers of a bird. Her eyes sparkled as she looked boldly into his own and smiled. She was wearing a purple t-shirt with a golden sunflower as big as her face on the front. He took it all in for a dizzy moment, caught his breath again and then, forgetting instructions, he greeted her rapidly in his own language.

But to his surprise, she giggled and answered him in English with an accent completely strange to him. "Sorry. I don't speak Japanese. I grew up in Brazil, and we speak Portuguese at home. My name is Marisol, what's yours?"

Oh, no! he thought in desperation. Marisol! Of all names, must it be Marisol? He could not get his tongue around the "r" and the "l" properly at all. It came out sounding more like "Mysore." He was terribly embarrassed, and he was about to apologize, when she smiled and said, "That's OK. What's your name?"

It turned out she couldn't say Yukio either. She pronounced it "Zhooky." He was determined to be gracious about it, so he smiled and said, "That's right."

At dinner that evening, his parents asked him about the first day at school. He told them all about his new teacher and the bags of gold. His father gave one of his short, barking laughs. "That's very good! And of course it's also true. So. Mr. Mbamelu is wise. I'm quite pleased to hear it." I knew you would say exactly that, father, thought Yukio.

Yukio also described his new desk partner. "It's so strange, you know?" he said. He was finally comfortable, speaking Japanese for the first time all day. It was like taking off a pair of tight, sweaty shoes. "She's Japanese, but she doesn't speak a word of our language! She told me her father is a lawyer in Brazil, and he's in Washington this year to help start up a new branch of a big company. So she's coming to school with us." He laughed as he remembered. "She can't say my name! She calls me 'Zhooky!'"

His father frowned. "I don't know about this desk arrangement. I'm sure she's a nice girl, but maybe you can change partners. I'll speak to your teacher."

Yukio's heart sank. He was aware of the unfavorable attitude back home about Japanese who left the homeland and settled in other countries; still, he was shocked at how determined his father seemed to be about changing his desk partner. Another thought unrolled across his mind like a ribbon. Could he be displeased because she calls me "Zhooky"? He was about to suggest that he would feel shame before the class if the teacher thought he couldn't get along with her. His mother laid a gentle hand on his arm to interrupt him.

"It's only for one term," she said to his father. "It's not going to hurt anything. I'm sure we can be kind." Yukio relaxed. Better let her handle it, he thought. He knew his mother believed that he and his father were both too serious. Yukio himself didn't think a man could be too serious. His mother, of course, was the daughter of an artist, so he and his father had to look away when she took matters lightly sometimes. Still, Yukio knew it would be terrible if he had to change seats and Marisol felt hurt, and he was content to let his mother take charge of this one.

She poured more tea and changed the subject, and the meal went on peacefully. Yukio already had homework, and when they finished eating, he presented his new books for his father's inspection. Later, when all the assignments were done, he took out his brushes, paper and inkstone, and wrote a little letter about Washington with a delicate drawing of a cherry tree down one side, to send to his grandfather in Japan.

Yukio's mother must have handled it well, for nothing more was said about his father's reaction to his desk partner. Yukio was far too respectful to push it any further; and besides, he didn't want to take the chance of having his seat changed after all. But he still wondered about it from time to time.

The days went by and became weeks. Yukio and Marisol turned out to be more than compatible as desk partners. She didn't understand as much English as he did, and she had a hard time reading some of the advanced books. Mr. Mbamelu made time every day for students to work with their partners on lessons, and Yukio enjoyed helping her. He found that explaining lessons to her made the details stick in his own memory, and so he needed to study much less. This gave him more time for his art work at home, and Yukio couldn't have been more pleased.

On the other hand, Marisol had a good ear. She was much quicker than Yukio to pick up words and expressions from the teacher and other students, and start using them when she spoke. Before long she was chattering away fluently, and although she still made mistakes, she never seemed embarrassed about it. When he saw how much fun she was having, and how much people liked her, Yukio too began to relax and talk to people a little more. In a few months, the English of both of them had improved considerably.

The only thing that sometimes made him regret being Marisol's partner was free art period, twice a week at the end of the day. During free art, Mr. Mbamelu played recordings of all kinds of music for them, and the students could experiment with anything they wanted from the big art supply cabinet. There were paints, chalks and pastels; there were artists' pencils, and charcoals, and clay, and all kinds of paper. There was even a small sink in the back with supplies for cleaning up. Yukio never brought his fine brushes and inkstone to school. His calligraphy and brush drawing were private to him, and he didn't want to explain them to people. So he usually drew with pen and India ink in free art, and his studies of small objects in the room or scenes of home satisfied him.

But free art was often nerve-wracking for Yukio, because Marisol turned into a wild thing when she got into the cabinet. She loved to paint. In fact, she loved the paint itself. She would even smell it when she took the caps off the jars of tempera, breathing deeply. Once Yukio was sure she was about to drink some of it, but instead she held the jar high and tilted it, letting a thick blob of brilliant yellow fall almost a foot straight down onto the paper, then watched it splatter as if she were in a trance. It scared Yukio a little to watch her do it.

And she murdered her brushes. Yukio shuddered to see her mashing the bristles into the paper until they looked like dead hedgehogs. She never drew anything first, and she pulled one color through another until the whole thing was a smeary mess to his eye. Yukio had to admit that sometimes her color blotches, at a distance, made interesting and complicated patterns, but he was pretty sure it was an accident.

And of course, she could never keep her color madness on her own side of their double desk. Yukio had to take many deep breaths to calm down during free art period. Sometimes he felt dizzy with all that breathing by the end of the day.

One day, a free art day, Marisol was unhappy and upset from the moment she sat down in the morning. She worked with Yukio the way they always did, but he was so used to her sunshine mood that he knew something was very wrong. He was far too careful of her feelings to bring it up, but she seemed about to explode, and he wanted badly to share his father's trick of deep breaths with her.

They began their free art work in the afternoon. Yukio was sketching from memory that day, a beautiful, ancient Shinto shrine he had once visited with his grandfather. He was filling in the parts he didn't remember with ideas from his own head. He was pleased with the results and completely absorbed, as if he were in his grandfather's shady house in the summertime. Mr. Mbamelu had chosen flute music of Handel that day, and Yukio was so peaceful he imagined his hand flowing over the paper like water.

Suddenly bright drops of scarlet spattered onto the drawing. Yukio was horrified, and his head jerked up. Marisol was splashing red paint all over her paper, and she was swinging so wildly with her brush that it was threatening to cover her clothes and the floor. A few blobs of paint had even landed on Yukio's polished black shoes.

There was no deep breath deep enough for this. Yukio finally lost it and turned square onto Marisol. "Mysore! What are you doing with that red paint? You are splashing it all over yourself, and the floor, and look! My shoes too! Please put down the brush and tell me what is the matter with you today!"

Marisol flinched at the sound of his voice and dropped the brush. It rolled off the desk onto the floor, making even more of a mess. She bent down to pick it up, but when she saw his shoes she dropped it again and burst into tears. She began to rock slightly, half under the desk, and a low moan escaped from between her teeth.

Yukio was completely at sea. Looking up, he saw Mr. Mbamelu standing near. Before he could speak, the teacher raised his eyebrows and waved his hand at Yukio, plainly saying without words: "She's your partner. Find out what's wrong." Yukio bent down to Marisol, who was still crouching, looking as if she were about to fall on the floor.

"Mysore, tell me please. Look. I am not angry. Look, Mysore, do this like I do: take a deep breath. Sit up! Good. Take another."

He coaxed Marisol to breathe deep, and gradually she got hold of herself. She began to speak in a low voice. "Ohhh, Zhooky! I am so angry. My father told us last night, he has a meeting with the other people at his work. One man from Japan, he say to someone my father is not Brazilian, he is not Japanese, he is a nothing. All the time they say nice things in his face, but behind his face they say he is a nothing, he is a man of nowhere."

Words fluttered through Yukio's head: You mean behind his back, not behind his face. Then his father's own face and words from that first day jolted unexpectedly into his mind, and he brushed the butterfly thought away.

She sniffed once or twice and hiccupped. Fresh tears came to her eyes. "My father is not a nothing!" She turned to face him. "And Zhooky, I am not a nothing!"

"Other Japanese people do not respect you, because your family left Japan to live in Brazil." It was not a question; Yukio knew already it was true.

She nodded. "It was always like that. Once we went to Japan to visit. Oh, it was so beautiful there!" She smiled, and a tear rolled sparkling down her cheek and got caught in the corner of her mouth. "But they do not like us, Zhooky. They say we don't know how to be Japanese, and they don't want us."

She looked at his shoes, with the spots of red paint on them, and she went to the sink at the back of the room to wet a paper towel. He saw suddenly that she was about to wipe his shoes. A lump of misery rose up in his throat. "Please no," he said. He took the towel from her and did it himself. The red tempera came away from the waxy leather without a trace. He lifted her pitiful dead paintbrush from the floor between his thumb and forefinger, and tried to clean that too.

Mr. Mbamelu had already returned to the front of the room. The rest of the students, who had been watching in silence, turned to him as he began to speak. He said, "Yukio has two bags of gold. He is a rich man! Marisol has three bags of gold, but one is buried. When she digs it up, she will be richer still." He looked around, beaming. Then he flung his arms wide and cried, "Continue!"

Yukio looked at his drawing, with all the red spots on it. He had a sudden crazy idea, and he said to Marisol, "Watch what I do now!" He studied the picture for a few moments, thinking hard, then he picked up his pen and began to draw. Everywhere a small red spot was, he drew a delicate stem and leaf under it. Then he added curving lines for hills and valleys, so that every red flower was growing from a patch of earth.

Marisol watched him, fascinated. When he was finished he didn't know what else to say, so shyly he asked her something he had long wanted to know.

"Do you have a Japanese name, Mysore?"

"Oh, sure," she said, "we all do in my family. But we never use them." She dashed away the last of the tears with the back of her hand and grinned at him. "My name is Aiko."

Yukio took a clean sheet of paper, and picked up the sticky brush with its frazzled bristles. Aiko, he thought. Does she know what it means? Aiko, child of Love. Yukio blushed a little, then smiled. Well, he thought, at least I can say "Aiko."

"Look," he said. "This is how you write it. You need a brush for this." It was like trying to snip a silk thread with a hedge-clipper, but Yukio managed to force the ugly remains of her paintbrush through the strokes of the characters. "Now, you do it. Aiko?" She was staring at the paper, but she looked up when she heard her name. "Aiko -- you do it."

"Aiko," she said, her eyes back on the paper and the brush gripped in her hand. "A-i-ko."
Her tongue stuck out a little at the corner of her mouth with the effort, and Yukio blushed again, but she did not see.

At dinner that night, he told his parents about the day's free art period. He had brought the drawing home with him, and was explaining what he had done to work the red spatters into the picture. He did not say much about how unhappy his friend had been. He was sure his mother guessed, but she said nothing. His father recognized the shrine, and said, "What a shame it's ruined. This is really very good. Your grandfather would like it."

"I just brought it home to show you, but I'm bringing it back to school tomorrow. Aiko wants to keep it. I taught her how to write her name today, but the brush was a mess. So I'm going to bring her a few good brushes and an inkstone on our next free art day."

His mother smiled. His father lifted one eyebrow and said, "Are you?"

Yukio knew that eyebrow and that tone. He knew his father wanted him to think about it again, and not to make a hasty decision. And he had never openly disobeyed his father. He didn't even want to, usually. Father and he were of one mind -- one serious mind -- most of the time. But this was not something he wanted to change his mind about.

He hesitated, then he said quietly, "Yes, father, I am going to give her some brushes. She wants me to call her Aiko now." His father regarded him, but said nothing. "Father . . . she wants her name. And I want to help her learn to write it." Father - can't you be quite pleased about this? he thought. This is about a bag of gold.

And he waited.

Finally his father shook his head and sighed. "Well," he said, "If it's as you say -- if the girl wants her name -- " He looked across the table at Yukio's mother. She was gazing down at the drawing. Yukio and his father watched her index finger trace the roof of the ancient temple and touch, one by one, the red flowers growing from the hill of paper and ink. Her face was calm and smooth. She glanced up at Yukio's father, and now the corner of her eyebrow too lifted the least fraction.

Yukio's father sighed again. Suddenly his mind seemed made up, and he rose from the table to take his nightly refuge in the study with his bag of work papers. "Yes, Yukio," he said, "you're right. She'll need a good brush for that."