Things Left Unwritten

Weekly story for fiction class...

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“I know! I’m so excited!” Brittany said into her bright yellow cell phone with the jingling bell charm hanging off of it. She walked into the hallway from the garage and tossed her keys toward the shelf. “I can’t believe I have a date with Sean Walker!”

She paused, listening. She climbed the stairs to her room and threw her backpack off her shoulders, still clutching the phone to her ear.

“No, he just came up and asked!” she bubbled. “It was at lunch, and I….”

Another pause followed, in which her mother came up and tapped on her open door. She motioned for Brittany to come downstairs.

“Wait, Kristen?” Brittany interrupted. “I have to go, my mom wants me for something. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!” Brittany clapped the phone shut and ran downstairs.

“Well, you’re sure in a good mood, Brit,” her mother said as Brittany skipped the last two steps down into the dining room.

“Well, you know that guy I’ve been talking about for the past three months?” Brittany asked her mother, plopping down into a chair at the table. “I have a date with him for tonight!”

Her mother raised her eyebrow. “Don’t be out too late. You have Japanese school tomorrow.”

“I know, I know.”

“Is he going to pick you up?”

“Yes, Mom. Around 6:30ish.”

“Is he coming in?”

“Whatever! Do you want him to come in?”

“Yes, of course I do. Is that okay?”

“Yesssss,” Brittany sighed, hoping that was enough to satisfy her mother.

“Anyway, the reason I wanted you down here,” her mother continued, “was that Grandma and Grandpa decided to clean out their garage. They brought a few boxes of old books for you to look through.”

Brittany was excited, but she was still thinking mostly about her date.

“Most of the stuff in there is pretty old and useless,” her mother said. “I peeked through one box already. But if you find something, and I’m sure you will, they said you can take it. You know Nisei—they can’t throw anything away, but they can give it to the grandchildren.”

Trying to get equally excited about the boxes of books, Brittany managed a smile.

“Where are they?”

Her mother pointed toward the living room. Brittany made a hasty exit, still wondering what she and Sean would do that evening. She nearly stumbled over the first of three hefty, dusty boxes.

“Figures,” she muttered, opening the first. “I wonder what kind of stuff is in here?”

For the moment, curiosity overcame dreams of romance. Brittany lifted out book after book, each one as dusty as the box it came from. The first set of three volumes she pulled out was an encyclopedia from 1965. Old, but not terribly useful, she thought.

Next, she pulled out what looked like romance novels. She smiled furtively as her thoughts returned to Sean. She flipped to the inside cover. 1978. Getting a little bit more recent, though as she flipped through the pages, she didn’t think she’d be very interested in them. I might as well give one of them a try, she thought, putting the most liberal-looking one aside. Only finding some more research dictionaries and novels from the 60s and 70s, she moved on to the second box.

The second box was full of comic books. Not bothering to even look through these, Brittany put the lid back on. Probably her dad’s or uncle’s from when they were kids. They looked old enough, with their covers faded and falling apart.

Slightly disappointed, Brittany reached toward the last box. Opening up the lid, she looked inside and was startled to see Japanese characters over the covers of the first few.

“Find anything good?” her mother asked, as she joined Brittany.

“Not really. I think those are Dad’s old comics,” Brittany replied, pointing toward the second box. “But I haven’t gone through this box yet.” She held up a book. “What do you think these are?”

“You can probably read more of it than I can,” her mom admitted, taking a glance at it. “It looks like some kind of lesson book. Maybe you should take it in tomorrow and ask Sensei about it.”

“Hmm.” Brittany didn’t relish the idea of asking Nakamura-Sensei about some old fifty-something year old book, but it might be intriguing. She kept sorting through the remaining books.

Eventually, she and her mother had pulled most of the deteriorating texts out of the box. They flipped through a few.

“Ooh, this one looks like a hymnal or something—it’s got music notes in it.”

“That must be Auntie Jin’s; she went to church all the time before the war.”

“What’s this? It’s blank inside….”

“Looks like an empty journal. Kind of pretty, though!”

“Here’s another one of those lesson books. I wonder who used them?”

On that note, Brittany and her mother searched back through the stacks of books, trying to find some kind of name that would give them a hint. There was nothing at all in the lesson books, but they did find some kanji characters scrawled in the blank journal.

Brittany stared at it. She was learning some kanji, but she couldn’t read these. The script was flowing and natural, not at all like her strained attempts at Japanese school. She turned it upside down, and her mother laughed.

“We’ll have to get Uncle Tad to read it this weekend,” she said, alluding to their family get-together that Sunday. Since Great-auntie Mary was visiting from New Jersey, Brittany’s dad’s whole side of the family was coming to Brittany’s house to welcome them in for the few weeks they were in town. Brittany’s great-uncle Tad, Mary’s brother, was the best one to go to for help reading obscure kanji and vocabulary.

“I think I’ll take this one for now,” Brittany said as she picked it up along with the novel and some assorted lesson books. “The rest can go.”

Her mother winked. “Don’t tell Grandma and Grandpa. Just tell them you found some things that you liked.”

“Oh, I will.” Brittany glanced down at the hand-stitched flowered cover of the journal. She looked back up, and her gaze caught the grandfather clock.

“5:30! I need to get ready!” she shrieked and took off up the stairs.

Shaking her head, her mother covered the boxes back up and pushed them over to the wall, to be disposed of.

Upstairs, Brittany dropped the books on her bed and dashed into the bathroom.

#

It was 11:38 by the time she unlocked the front door and stepped into the entryway. The house was dark, except for the office light, which usually meant that her brother Jason was up. She peeked in. Yes, Jason was sitting mesmerized in front of the screen. Brittany tip-toed up the stairs.

“Brit, you home?” she heard out of her parents’ bedroom.

“Yes,” she called softly.

“Was it fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

She washed up and climbed into bed, still glowing about the night’s events. She was about to shove the books off onto the floor until she remembered what crumbling state they were in. Not quite sleepy enough to turn off the light, she picked them up one by one, looked through them once more, and set them on the floor by the nightstand in a neat pile.

Saving the journal for last, she studied the name inside once again. She thought she recognized part of the second kanji, but she didn’t know what the whole character stood for. She doubted she’d learn the next morning in Japanese class.

Struck by a sudden inspiration, she took a pen from her nightstand and wrote her name in kanji next to the first name, trying to make her writing fluid and casual. She might as well make use of this piece of her family history. Turning to the first page, she wrote, “February 17—Tonight was my first date with Sean….”

Continuing until the night’s narrative was recorded for all posterity, she finally turned out the light and sank back into her pillows.

#

Sunday afternoon was spent cleaning the house. Every room was vacuumed and dusted, and the bathrooms were Jason’s special chore. Brittany washed and dried the remaining dishes in the sink, as her mom had warned that that would be the first place Grandma would head if there was a lack of things to do when she got there. Her dad began barbecuing steaks marinated in teriyaki sauce, and her mother started cooking the special soup which was a Tanaka specialty.

Around 4:00, her relatives started arriving. Uncles and aunts galore trooped in, bringing the requisite cousins and traditional dishes. Auntie Mary made it in with Brittany’s grandma and grandpa, followed by Uncle Tad and his wife Auntie Grace. Eventually, they got settled in, and the great-uncles and aunts sat at the table, while the Sansei sat on the couches surrounding the basketball game, and Brittany and her cousins sat around in chairs and on the floor.

After a couple rounds of food and a Yonsei cousin Super Smash Brothers tournament, people started to talk about leaving, though they all kept sitting at the table eating Yoku-Moku cookies. Auntie Mary looked ready to fall asleep, sinking down into the big chair in the corner.

“Brittany,” her mother whispered. “Go get those lesson books and that journal, and bring them down here to Uncle Tad.” Uncle Tad was still going strong on the cookies, crunching and dropping crumbs on the table.

Brittany dutifully ran up and got the books. She brought them down as her mother was explaining things to Uncle Tad with her grandma listening.

“So you found some things in those old boxes?” her grandma asked as Brittany sat back down.

“Oh, yeah,” Brittany replied, handing over the books. “Pretty cool.”

Uncle Tad took the lesson books and looked through them.

“Wow, I haven’t seen things like this in years,” he commented. “They look like the things that we used in grade school, but I don’t know who used these ones. Mary? Mary!”

Auntie Mary started out of sleep. Rubbing her eyes, she called out, “What? Time to go?”

“No, come look at this.” Uncle Tad went over himself and stood by Auntie Mary’s chair, holding out the book.

“Oh, these were Sumi’s,” Mary said after some studying the pages. “She wanted them to teach her children someday. And then she never had children.” Her voice was somber. Their sister had passed away years before, during the war.

Brittany thought that this made the lesson books far more significant than if she had taken them to Japanese class the day before. She watched as Auntie Mary continued looking through the text and Uncle Tad picked up the journal.

“Oh,” he said, flipping open the cover and seeing the names written there. “This is yours, Mary. I don’t remember it at all.” He read the names. “Not bad, Brittany—I can read your name.”

Brittany blushed. Her kanji was horrible. But of course her uncle wouldn’t say so.

Auntie Mary took the journal tentatively. She ran her hands lightly over the embroidered flowers and rubbed her finger down the spine.

“I remember this,” she said simply and set it down, not bothering to open it, to my relief. I didn’t know how much of my love life I wanted my old aunties and uncles knowing about. Not to mention the additional entry of the day before about how much I disliked Japanese class.

Feeling that there was more to the story, I asked her, “When did you get it?”

“An old friend, well, you might call him my first boyfriend—he gave it to me the day we left for the assembly center at Santa Anita. I promised him I would keep a journal of everything I did, and when I came back, I would let him read it.” She paused. “Of course, I never did go back.” She folded her hands as if that told the story.

Working up the courage, Brittany asked her aunt, “Why is there nothing in it?”

Auntie Mary’s folded hands betrayed a slight tremor. “Once we left Santa Anita for Arizona, I packed that journal away in my knapsack. Of that story, the story of the wartime, I often think, some things are best left unwritten.”

#

Up in her room after the relatives had all left and her parents had gone to bed, Brittany gathered up the lesson books and placed them carefully on her shelf. She looked at the journal and opened the cover. Her finger traced the outlines of her name next to her aunt’s.

Her first instinct was to tear her own entries out. Next to her aunt’s pain and silence, how could she write such trash in a journal like this? She had the pages between her fingers when she thought of something else. Slowly, she took up the pen from her nightstand and wrote, “February 19—Maybe it is better that some things be written. Tonight, Auntie Mary told me a story….”