I awakened disoriented, finding myself curled up across the short width of my bed with my head pressed firmly against a window screen. In a half-dream state, my brain repeated the sentence I had been writing just before bedtime to my new pen pal in California: We live on Tonoyama-cho (cho is the same as street) in a neighborhood called Shukugawa on the outskirts of the city of Kobe, Japan. Then I remembered why my bed was not in its usual place. Out of growing desperation that came from being too hot to fall asleep, I had finally shoved my bed sideways to the closest window and squeezed my pillow onto the windowsill, where a whisper of a breeze finally soothed me to sleep. My head had left a dent in the screen like a shallow bowl. The garden was somewhere out there, covered in pure darkness, with no hint of the next day.
The crickets were still in the midst of song, confirming my suspicion that I hadn’t been asleep for long. Although I had learned the previous week that it was the rubbing of their wings that created the sound, I still liked to imagine them divided into choir sections with mouths wide open. Too sleepy to move my body, I laid my head back on my pillowcase, damp with sweat, and listened to the alternating waves of sound fill the air. They sounded like a million squeaky wheels racing each other. As I scratched an itchy mosquito bite on my knee, I remembered another cricket fact I had shared with my younger sister.
"On the side of their knees, that’s where crickets have ears,” I told Meg, who had wrinkled up her nose and stuck out her tongue, believing I was making it up.
The pleasant sensation of sleep was beginning to wash over me when I heard another sound that immediately made my entire body tighten up. In the quiet of the night, a human voice cut through the thick walls. My entire being could detect the tone of anger. A crashing sound soon followed. Meg, who was sleeping in the twin bed next to mine, did not stir.
"Jesus Christ, Ellen,” yelled my father. His voice, though muffled, was like a punch.
"You liar,” my mother screamed.
I covered my ears tightly, willing the voices to disappear. After a few minutes, I checked to see that Meg was still asleep and released the pressure on my ears. I dared not breathe. To my immense relief, I heard only the crickets and a frog that had joined their chorus.
A few seconds passed. Then I heard a door open and close. I heard the sound of my father’s footsteps descend the stairs. Finally, the clicking sound of the front door being closed tight mixed with my mother’s muffled sobs.
I stared out into the garden at the tall maple tree, whose strong, dependable branches I loved to climb. I watched the sky lighten gradually. Some things happened so slowly, it made their changing almost invisible to the eye.
The scent of my mother’s lotion awakened me, even before I heard her words. "Wake up, sweetie. It’s late,” she whispered so as not to awaken Meg. The sleeve of her silk bathrobe slid across my arm as she bent over to kiss me on the forehead.
I opened my eyes and stared into my mother’s face. No sign of tears. Had I imagined the argument? Or had it all been a bad dream?
"Don’t go back to sleep. I’m going downstairs to make breakfast. You can eat it in the car.”
I dressed quickly and then grabbed my camera. I snapped a photo of myself in the bathroom mirror, dressed for school in my light-blue cotton jumper. I was recording everything about my life in Japan for my pen pal in California. As I walked past the open door of my parents’ room, I backed up and stopped to see if there was any evidence of the fight I had heard. The bed had been made, magazines and books stacked neatly on the table by the window, and bedclothes put away. Then I saw proof that the sound had not been in my imagination. The mirror over the dresser now had a crack in the bottom corner.
"Are you ready?” my mother called from the hallway. She stopped me at the bottom of the stairs, holding a hairbrush and two rubber bands. "Wait one minute, miss.”
As my mother parted and plaited my hair into two long, tight braids, a chaotic series of questions popped into my head. Who had broken the mirror? What had been thrown? Why was my father a liar? And why were they arguing so much lately?
Instead, I asked, "Where’s Daddy? Isn’t Shibata-san driving him to the office?”
"He took an early train.”
Usually my father let me know when I would be riding alone. "He didn’t tell me he had to leave early.”
My mother paused in the middle of twirling the rubber band at the end of my braid. I could tell she was trying to figure out what to say, but she didn’t end up answering any of my questions.
"You’re taking your camera?” she asked me instead.
"I’m taking pictures to send to my pen pal,” I answered curtly. Then I ran out the door and down the steps to the walkway. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure she hadn’t chased after me, I felt a smug sense of satisfaction. By the time I had reached the bottom of the hill and street level, my anger had shifted to incredulity. I had learned the word incredulous only the day before and had found the perfect use for it already. As I stopped to catch my breath, I imagined my mother’s perplexed reaction. Did she really think that I didn’t notice when she chose to ignore my questions?
I walked toward a Toyota sedan, where I found Shibata-san’s eyes closed, his head leaning back on the linen-covered headrest.
"Ohayogozaimasu, Shibata-san,” I called into the window.
Shibata-san’s eyes popped open and he gave me a big smile. "Good morning, Pamera-chan.”
As he maneuvered the car into the road, I craned my neck to look out the rear window at our house. From a distance, its cracked stucco and chipped paint were invisible. In fact, it looked quite regal, like an old king sitting atop its hill. Prior to moving in a year earlier, my father had been told that it had been built by a German businessmen in the early 1930s. A hundred yards from our house stood my favorite house in the neighborhood, a Japanese home with expansive gardens. Although it was much older than our house, it had aged much more gracefully, surrounded by a classic Japanese stone-and-stucco wall and strategically placed wood-framed windows to provide peeks into the tranquil garden. From the car, I could see the tall peak of the house’s black shingled roof.
The two houses overlooked a neighborhood of Western-style and Japanese houses. Shibata-san gingerly maneuvered its narrow streets, finally reaching the main road and the Shukugawa train station. My mouth watered as I saw the adjoining newspaper and magazine stand that sold stationery supplies and delicious chewy milk caramels. I had grabbed the handle of my lunch pail as I ran out the door, but I hadn’t taken the time to pick up the small paper bag next to it, which would have contained my mother’s standard late breakfast: a piece of toast and jar of yogurt.
Beyond the train station were the markets where Yumiko-san, our housekeeper, shopped for food. Sometimes I accompanied "Yumi” on her trips to the vegetable, fish, and rice markets where I loved to watch the shop owners add up totals on their abacuses. My favorite stop was the rice market, where the old lady scooped rice into a tin, weighed it on a giant scale, then figured out the price on her abacus, sliding black beads up and down, quickly and accurately, calling out the total in a soft voice. As she poured the rice into a thick paper bag, it sounded like raindrops hitting a roof.
Shibata-san drove along an avenue, wide enough to be divided in the middle by tracks and station stops for an electric streetcar. Although early in the day, the air was already turning hot and muggy, and I watched two Japanese businessmen simultaneously wipe perspiration from their foreheads with folded white handkerchiefs, which they carefully refolded and then tucked back into their suit jacket pockets. I checked to make sure I had remembered to put my handkerchief in the pocket of my jumper.
Crossing the intersection, we passed a chauffeur-driven car. In the back seat, a foreign businessman was engrossed in his newspaper, just the way my father was some mornings. Stopped in a traffic jam, I retrieved my camera to take a photograph of a mother who was fanning the baby on her back with a folded newspaper.
Finally, we started to move again.
The car made a little groan as it went into a lower gear, and then struggled up the steep hill to the Stella Maris Girls School. Shibata-san braked outside the main gate, opened his door, and circled around to open my door.
As I passed under an arched entry, a statue of the Virgin Mary smiled down at me. Inside my classroom, Sister McGowan was covering the chalkboard with the multiplication tables for sevens and eights.
All the girls were still talking, in English, with a multitude of different accents: Indian, Dutch, British, Chinese, and Pakistani. I was one of two Americans, which everyone could tell by my brightly colored lunch pail. The boxy bottom compartment held my lunch, while the rounded top held a Thermos of milk. The whole thing was painted red to look like a miniature barn, with stalls for cows and horses on the bottom half. My father always bought us new lunch pails at the beginning of each school year at the Navy’s PX, his favorite place to shop.
"One day we might go back to the States, and then you’ll see how all of the children carry a lunch pail,” he repeated each year as if I might have forgotten.
As soon as the bell rang, everyone stopped talking and found their seats, our attention on Sister McGowan, or at least the visible parts of Sister McGowan: her face and her hands. As she set the small brass bell down on her desk among a tidy stack of books and papers, I couldn’t imagine that her white summer habit was any cooler than her black winter habit on such a muggy day. Nevertheless, she looked far more rested and cheerful than I felt.
"We’re going on our first field trip next week,” she announced to our claps and cheers.
"We will be visiting Nara, the capital of Japan from AD 710 to 784. Nara was the last stop along the Silk Road, which we will be studying this month.”
By mid-morning the skies were heavy with dark clouds and Sister McGowan decided we would take our morning recess early.
Some of the girls scooped up jump ropes and rubber balls from the tall wooden cabinet at the back of the room. Anita, Anneka, and I ran to an empty corner of the yard and faced each other, our fists touching briefly before moving up and down.
"Jankenpon!”
Anneka and Anita’s hands landed mid-air, index and middle fingers in the shape of scissors. My hand, wrapped into a tight fist, was in the shape a rock, which would break their scissors.
"You win,” Anita and Anneka called out in unison while they stretched the jump rope straight. Swinging it back and forth as I began to jump, they recited one of our favorite jump rope rhymes. "Cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to meet a fella. By mistake she kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?”
My braids smacked me on my back as I leapt over the rope.
"One, two, three, four…”
*
Later that evening, Meg and I lay on the tatami floor in Yumi’s room, enjoying the cross breeze and Yumi’s company. As I watched Yumi iron my mother’s paisley blouse, I recalled the day when the seamstress came to fit the blouse and its matching skirt. In the midst of the fitting, my father had arrived home from a business trip to Tokyo. He presented my mother with a small, beautifully wrapped box.
Was it the last time I had seen them happy?
Heeding the seamstress’s warnings of the pins in the skirt and blouse, my mother had gracefully turned around like the twirling dancer in my jewelry box. She had oh-so-carefully unwrapped the wrapping paper and handed it to me, knowing that Yumi and I would want to turn it into an origami flower, bird, or fish.
A string of creamy white pearls emerged from the box. My mother glowed.
"They’re beautiful,” she said, and reached out to give my father a kiss.
My father had then turned toward Meg and me and asked, "Which hand?”
Meg pointed to his left arm and out came a baby doll, dressed in a lacy pink dress. She squealed with delight and jumped up to reach for the doll. She gave it a hug.
"She’s so pretty! I love her!”
My father brought his other hand forward. It held a leather case, which he held out to me.
"A Brownie for you,” he said.
"A brownie?” I asked, baffled.
He pulled a camera out of the case. "They’re called Brownies,” he said as he handed it to me.
I immediately placed my eye up to the viewfinder. I pressed the shutter. Everyone laughed as the flash went off.
"I’ll go unpack,” my father said. "By the way, there’s already film in it!”
As the seamstress placed her pins, measuring tape, and marking pencil back in her sewing box, my mother began unbuttoning her blouse.
"Ki o tsukete!” the seamstress had admonished.
"Careful, Mommy,” Meg echoed the seamstress’s gentle voice.
In her slip, bra, and pearls, I had never seen my mother look so beautiful. Without thinking, I had placed the camera up to my eye and framed the shot.
Click, the camera went.
My mother gasped and then scolded, "You have to ask before taking pictures of people. Especially when they don’t have their clothes on.”
Meg laughed and pointed at her doll, whose dress she had removed.
My mother reached for a dress on the stool and slipped it over her head. When her head reappeared, she smiled coyly and wagged her finger at me, "That picture is for your eyes only. It does not go into the family album.”
When I was in bed much later that night, I heard the front door open and then the distant voices of my parents as they walked up the staircase together. Before leaving for a party, my father and mother stopped by Yumi’s room together to say goodbye. They were in a good mood, and I noticed that my mother was wearing her pearls.
"You drank too much,” I heard my father say.
"I didn’t,” my mother giggled.
"Yes, you did.”
I lay awake listening to the usual chorus of crickets. I thought about the male crickets, rubbing their wings together to attract the female crickets. Another fact I had learned about crickets: the females preferred the strongest chirpers.
*
I was awakened later by another sound I was getting to know too well. I reached for my alarm clock. What was there to argue about at three o’clock in the morning? I folded my pillow in half and placed it over my head, but it didn’t help. I sat up and looked at Meg, who, of course, was still sound asleep. I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the bedroom door.
The downstairs entry was dimly lit by the shaft of light that snuck through the glass panes above the front door. I made my way to the swinging kitchen door. Squeezing my pillow close, I paused to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark room. Drawn toward the shape of the stove and its dimly lit buttons, I remembered that if I pressed the button on the far end, a gentle light illuminated the top of the stove. I pressed the tiny green button and was rewarded with a warm glow.
Yumi walked into the kitchen, wearing one of my mother’s old robes folded across her nightgown like a kimono.
"Daijobu?”
I nodded even though I wasn’t fine. I had never wandered downstairs in the middle of the night. Yumi offered to walk me back upstairs, but I shook my head.
She noticed my pillow. "Kimashoo.”
I gladly followed Yumi into her room. Laid out on top of the Japanese tatami floor was a futon bed. Yumi’s compact buckwheat pillow rustled as she moved it to make room for my fluffy pillow. I fell sound asleep.
When I awakened in the morning, I was alone. I spent a few minutes staring up at the ceiling, studying an old water stain and listening to the sounds of morning activity. The door slid open, and Yumi entered.
"Ohayagozomaisu.” She smiled.
"Good morning, Yumi,” I answered.
"I made special lunch for field trip,” said Yumi. "Must hurry and get ready, ne?”
I jumped up, excited to be reminded of the trip to Nara. Yumi handed me my pillow.
"Thank you, Yumi,” I said, not meaning the pillow.
*
On the bus ride to Nara, Sister McGowan led the class in Japanese, English, and French songs. Anneka, Anita, and I couldn’t help giggling whenever she turned into this animated singing nun. "Do you suppose she thinks we can be like the von Trapp family?” Anita whispered in her melodious Indian accent.
"In the Sound of Music?” Anneka and I giggled in disbelief.
When the bus arrived at Nara Park, Sister McGowan went from being the singing nun to the colonel nun. She barked out a list of instructions, which included a reminder about using quiet voices in temples, meeting places, and bathroom locations, and during lunch. She paired us up and instructed us not to separate. My partner was Anita.
We exited the bus with Sister McGowan leading the way, looking as if she had led her troops here hundreds of times before. Immediately, we noticed the scattered groups of deer. In every direction, deer rested on their haunches or walked around nimbly. Sister McGowan had explained in class that the deer were considered sacred animals. I noticed that sacred animals still went to the bathroom, as I focused half of my attention on avoiding clusters of brown pellets on the walking paths.
I stopped to pull my camera out of its case. I held the window of the viewfinder up to my eye and moved in a slow, circular movement, looking for the photograph I wanted to take.
A Japanese man, who looked as ancient as the surrounding temples, sat alone in one of the many porch-like structures set up to sell snacks and souvenirs. His calligraphy scrolls were displayed behind him.
"Shashin tote?” the man called out to me.
"Hai. I’m taking pictures.”
"Nihongo hanasemasuka?” the man asked.
I spoke a little Japanese.
"Skoshi,” I answered shyly.
I watched as he dipped his brush into ink and began to paint new strokes on a piece of paper. He finished one character, and then dipped his brush into the ink. The tip of the brush once again touched paper to begin the second character, the squat, solid shapes contrasting with the delicate curves of the first.
Anita, who had walked on with the rest of the class, had dashed back to my side when she realized I was missing. "Everyone has gone ahead. They’re going into the temple to see the Buddha.”
"Wait one minute.”
The man completed the last stroke. He leaned toward the paper to blow the ink dry. Then he lifted the long scroll and handed it to me. I carefully took hold of the narrow piece of paper and studied it. As I had not learned kanji, the most complicated Japanese alphabet, I did not know what the letters said. The first character looked like a girl with a ponytail in her hair, leaning forward to gaze east. The second character was a series of vertical and horizontal lines that sat on two squat legs, strong and steady.
"Shashin. Photograph.”
"You speak English?” I asked.
"Skoshi,” he answered with a twinkle in his eye. "Little bit.”
He turned his focus to the paper, "It is Japanese word for photograph.” He pointed to the first character and translated the meaning: to copy. He pointed to the second: the truth.
"For you,” the man said in English. "Dry skoshi more minutes, then tie,” he instructed as he handed me a string.
"I can carry your lunch,” Anita offered.
I accepted the gift, carefully taking hold of each end so that the ink would not smear. Bowing deeply, I said, "Domo arigato gozaimashita.”
"Ki o tsukete,” the man said, just before reaching for his brush.
"I’ll be careful,” I promised.
Anita rushed onward, a striking sight with her long, thick black braid against the light blue of her uniform, her arms balanced by the weight of the two lunches, one multi-colored Indian batik bag, and one red lunch pail.
"Anita, wait one second,” I pleaded as I stopped to roll up the scroll, which had dried. I held the string between my teeth. Anita set the lunches down and took the string. She wrapped the string around the scroll, securing it with a bow. We then scooped up our lunches and ran.
As we entered Todai-ji Temple, we were greeted by unexpected silence. Our classmates were staring up at an immense bronze statue of Buddha that was at least fifty times their size. The Buddha appeared to be watching them with a mild expression that inspired quiet. Anita and I looked up, equally transfixed. The scent of incense tickled my nose. I turned away, pressing my finger below my nose to attempt to suppress my sneeze. That is when I caught sight of Sister McGowan, who had silently come to stand a few feet behind me. I saw her wipe away a tear with her long sleeve, but was reassured to see that she did not look sad. In fact, she was smiling. She began to speak in a soft voice that made the girls move closer to her.
"One of Buddha’s teachings is that all things change.”
She reached her arms around the two girls standing closest, which included me.
"We don’t want things to change and yet they do. Some things change quickly. Others change slowly.”
I turned my gaze back to the Buddha.
"Buddha taught his followers to be generous and compassionate toward other people. In addition, he taught them some rules.”
"What are the rules?” one of the girls called out.
Sister McGowan kept her eyes on the Buddha.
"Say nothing to harm others. Do nothing to harm any living creature. Choose a job that hurts no living thing. Try to become a good person. Learn to control your thoughts and emotions to quiet your mind.”
"Like when we pray?” I heard Anneka’s voice ask.
"Yes.”
One of the girls had noticed that a large hole was carved out of one of the beams in the building. In a voice filled with awe, she read aloud a sign affixed to the beam, "This hole is the size of the Buddha’s nostril. If you can crawl through it, you will enjoy eternal happiness.”
The girls turned and congregated around the beam. The largest girl in the class skeptically studied the hole.
"I hope I can fit inside Buddha’s nostril.”
She dropped down to her hands and knees and stuck her head and body into one side of the hole and reappeared out the other. Laughing, all of the other girls lined up to do the same. Holding her index finger up to her lips, Sister McGowan tried to quiet us, while laughing herself, "Shh, children.”
I stayed back as the rest of my class exited the temple building. I knew I had to be quick. I placed my lunch pail and scroll inside the replica of Buddha’s nostril so that I could take a picture of the Great Buddha. I took my time to get a second shot, and then grabbed my lunch pail before running out of the temple.
The bus ride back to school was calmer than the morning journey. Tired from all of the walking, the girls carried on quiet conversations with seatmates or leaned their heads against bus windows or armrests.
The bus headed west toward Osaka, a bustling city southeast of Kobe, where our school was located. Leaning back in my seat with my eyes closed, I tried to distinguish the sounds of the city. Horns, voices, buses, and cars blended together.
Opening my eyes, I watched as we passed through crowds of people, office buildings, and neon signs. I saw a mother bend down to talk to her young son, while the baby on her back looked up in my direction. I hurriedly pulled my camera from its case and snapped a photograph.
The bus moved a few feet, and then stopped for more traffic. I stared at a woman in an exquisite kimono, decorated with yellow, orange, and white painted birds and flowers. She gracefully scooted across the sidewalk in geta, Japanese wooden shoes. Her hair, so carefully constructed into fancy crescent rolls, did not budge. She stopped to look into a shop window. I looked through the viewfinder of my camera and saw what I had not noticed with my bare eye. My photo would include, in the foreground, two teenaged girls in modern dress, waiting at a bus stop. In the background: the woman in the beautiful kimono. I smiled with pleasure at this discovery.
The bus lurched forward, this time moving without interruption for three blocks. It stopped again. I closed my eyes for a moment. Without the sights to distract me, I realized what the city sounded like. Crickets! I opened my eyes and glanced out the window.
The revolving door of a hotel caught my eye. I looked down at the tiny window on the top of the camera that showed me the number of pictures I had taken: eight. I still had four left. A group of three businessmen, dressed exactly alike, popped out of the revolving door onto the sidewalk. I snapped a picture of them, holding matching briefcases, and thought of the three French hens in the Christmas song.
A foreign couple exited and approached the street to summon a taxi. I was still holding the camera up to my eye. I watched as the man held up his arm for a taxi, obscuring his face for a moment. A taxi pulled to a stop at the curb, and the man guided the woman, whose long auburn hair was mostly covered by a red silk scarf, toward the open door of the backseat. They stood talking for a moment, the man’s back to me. When they gave each other a hug, the woman leaned her head on the man’s shoulder, resting her red leather purse on his back. The red of her scarf on his shoulder, next to the red purse resting on his back, were pretty. I snapped a photo.
The man turned his face to say something into the woman’s ear. I tightened my hold on the camera, my index finger frozen on the shutter. I recognized that face. I knew this man. Yet, how could it be? Keeping my eye up to the viewfinder, I both wanted to and didn’t want to see. What was my father doing with this woman?
The woman got into the taxi alone, and my father looked up for a moment in my direction. I gasped, thinking that he might see me. I kept the camera up to my face, hiding, hoping that he would not see me. My father entered the next taxi, and I finally lowered my camera. Pressing my face against the glass, I tried to keep sight of the taxi, but it was hopeless.
From somewhere deep inside my chest, the cry I tried hard to push down rose higher and higher. I held my breath so that no sound could escape. The next thing I knew, Sister McGowan was sitting next to me, her face staring into my eyes, as she pressed a cold cloth against my forehead.
"You fainted. Take deep breaths and you’ll be fine,” Sister said. "We’ll be back to school soon.”
I closed my eyes and heard crickets. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I remembered another fact about crickets I had totally forgotten. Crickets had many eyes, yet their eyesight was very poor. Their hearing was much better. How I wished I had kept my eyes closed, just listening to the sounds of Osaka.
With sudden dread, I began to search around my seat. I had forgotten the scroll! I had left it in the nostril of Buddha. The loss of the scroll was almost too much to bear, for now it seemed it might hold an answer I knew I needed.
I tried to recall Buddha’s rules. Frustratingly, I could only recall one of them: learn to control your thoughts and emotions to quiet your mind. That was impossible.
Shibata-san came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. Yumi was waiting at the gate as Sister McGowan had phoned ahead. She rushed up to the car and opened my door.
"Is Mommy home?”
"Hai, with baby Amy,” Yumi answered.
When we reached the front door, Yumi bent down to untie my shoes. She led me into the kitchen, where a pot of tea waited on the countertop, along with a tray of rice crackers and a plate of peeled tangerine. She turned and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me close. She touched the back of her hand to my cheek, the way she did to check for fever and asked, "Hatsui desu ka?”
I shook my head no. I wished I were hot instead of cold. I wished a fever had made me faint.
Yumi poured a cup of tea and handed it to me. I took a sip, which tasted good but did nothing to soothe the ache in my chest. On the drive home, I had finally remembered Buddha’s other rules. One continued to echo in my head: say nothing to harm others.
From upstairs, my mother’s voice called down, "Yumi-san?”
"Hai,” Yumi answered.
"It’s okay. I’m okay,” I said, even though it and I were far from okay.
Yumi pushed the swinging door open and disappeared. The kitchen was still and quiet. I leaned against the counter, sipping tea and thinking. I knew what I had to do. I had to keep the truth to myself, for sharing it would certainly harm others. I went to my school bag, slowly undid the two buckles, and retrieved my camera from the big inside pocket.
*
I went outside and leaned against the maple tree. I thought of the Great Buddha, whose expression had seemed to change subtly even though I knew it was impossible—it was a statue. Yet I wondered whether anyone else had noticed. Might the photo I had taken have captured his expression?
I looked up at the house where I lived, where everything was changing. I heard Yumi singing a Japanese song to Amy, which quickly soothed the baby’s cries. I wondered if my mother and father were going out for the evening. If so, would my mother notice that anything was different?
I looked back down at my camera. It had seen too much. Was there a way to get rid of the one moment and keep the rest? I pressed the button on the back of camera, which released the latch. The back of the camera swung open, revealing the negative from the last few images I had photographed, including the final photograph of my father with the woman. Holding the door open, I raised the camera to the sky and waved it around. That would erase the last few images, but possibly save the earlier ones.
Sighing deeply, I sat on the ground and leaned against the tree trunk. I gently placed the camera on the ground in front of me and prepared to close the door and re-wind the film. Instead, I stared at the film and saw a tiny scroll. I had captured a truth, and it was too painful to see. Carefully, deliberately, I removed the shiny, light brown cartridge from my camera, and slowly began to unroll the film. Then, holding my arms taut, I held the long scroll to the sky.
Born in Japan, Pamela Beere Briggs spent her first decade in Kobe. She moved "home” to Napa, California in 1968. Realizing years later that "Napa” is ”Japan” spelled backwards without the J describes her memory of leaving: turned around with a missing piece. She went on to become an award-winning documentary filmmaker and has written essays for a variety of publications. She is currently working on three World War II novels for middle-grade readers and blogs with her teen daughter at www.TwointheMiddle.com.