Dolls of Hope (21 page)

“Don’t worry, Emily Grace,” she said softly. “At Toride, farmers will be taking produce to the Tokyo markets. We’ll ride the rest of the way on a wagon.”

She thought of letting Emily Grace watch the passing houses and trees with her, but it might look strange to the few other passengers if she held an armless and legless doll to the window. They would remember her, if anyone asked. After a few minutes, she leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes.

It seemed only minutes before the conductor called her awake. “We’re coming into Toride, miss. You don’t want to pass your stop.”

It was nice of him to warn her, she told herself. She’d have been glad of it if she
wanted
to go to Toride. Or if she really knew someone there who would take her to Tokyo.

When she walked from the station, her heart sank. The sun had risen while she slept. Farmers going to Tokyo left before dawn to be at the markets by sunrise.

The road was empty now, except for an occasional automobile, and those all zipped past. Farther along, hope rose when she saw an approaching truck with caged chickens in the back. It passed on by as if the driver were used to seeing a girl in a kimono standing beside the road.

Another car passed her, then later, a carriage moving fast behind two horses, both heading toward Tokyo. Neither slowed. The sky looked heavy with the kind of rain that would fall steadily all day. A first drop spattered her new kimono. She rubbed it with her hand, trying to dry the silk.

“We might be in trouble, Emily Grace,” she said softly. Another drop spattered the kimono. Again she wiped it away, this time choking back a sob.

A car rumbled up the road behind her. As she looked around, a raindrop hit her face. She blinked, then blinked again, thinking she must be seeing things. Was the car really slowing? It was stopping!

A young woman with short hair swinging across her cheekbones leaned from a window. A pretty headband circled her forehead. “Hey, kiddo!” she called. “Need help?”

Where was the driver? Could a car drive itself? That wouldn’t be any stranger than for a woman, even a flapper, to be driving it.

Chiyo wanted to answer
hai,
she needed a ride, but she wasn’t at all sure she wanted one with a flapper behind the wheel.

T
he woman left the car and came around to sit on her heels in front of Chiyo.
Okaasan
would have been shocked by the fringed blue dress that barely covered her knees. “What’s happened, kiddo? Why are you out here alone in your pretty kimono? You’re coming all apart!”

She turned Chiyo around and with quick fingers tied the obi properly.

Chiyo looked over her shoulder. “Are you a flapper?”

The woman grinned. “You got it, kiddo. But what about you? Do your parents know you’re out here? It’s going to rain hard in a few minutes. You’d better run home.”

“I don’t live here.” Chiyo gulped as everything hit her at once. Words tumbled out as if that rock balanced above her village had come loose, shaking a rush of words from her.

“My school blamed me for something awful, but I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t,” she explained. “They were going to send me away, so I left. But I only had money enough to ride the train to Toride.”

The flapper sat back on her heels. “What kind of awful thing could they blame on a sweet girl like you?”

Chiyo opened the cloth a little to show the doll. “This is Emily Grace. She came all the way from America to my school. I promised to take care of her, but someone cut her into pieces. Headmaster was going to throw her in the trash! So I’m taking her to Tokyo.”

The flapper folded the cloth back a little more. When she saw the loose arms and legs and the cut pieces of rubber bands in the empty sockets, she drew in a soft breath. “Someone didn’t like this pretty doll.”

Chiyo’s eyes blurred.
It’s the rain,
she told herself fiercely, and wrapped the cloth over Emily Grace. “She didn’t hurt anybody and now she’s all in pieces! I have to get her to a doll maker I know.”

The flapper put one hand gently on Chiyo’s shoulder. “The school must be looking for you.”

“No. They just want city girls in their school. I’m from a village in the mountains. They didn’t want me in the first place. Now they want to forget me.”

The woman looked into her eyes. “You may be judging them a little harshly, but I can see why you’re upset. You’re sure this doll maker will repair her?”

“Hai!”
There was no doubt in Chiyo’s mind. She drew a deep breath, going against all she had been taught, to ask a stranger for a ride. “Please, will you take me closer to Tokyo?”

The woman looked around, as if hoping one of Chiyo’s teachers would appear. “Someone must be looking for you.”

“No.” Chiyo knew that her face looked as sad as she felt inside. “Please take me as far as you’re going. I can walk the rest of the way. I’m used to walking.”

There were no pedestrians in sight. An occasional automobile went past without stopping. Decision settled in the woman’s face. “I’m a nurse at the hospital in Tokyo. I don’t think my doctors can fix your doll, but I can take you to the doll maker.”

Joy leaped through Chiyo. She scarcely noticed the raindrops. She couldn’t help asking, “A nurse? Aren’t nurses men? Like doctors?”

The woman’s smile made her eyes sparkle. “You’ll see more of us, kiddo. A few years ago, only thirteen thousand women worked as nurses in all of Japan. Now I’m one of more than fifty-seven thousand.”

Chiyo thought of the flappers in the restaurant who all worked in a business office.
Okaasan
was right. Japan was changing. “Do you have to be a flapper to be a nurse?”

Laughter burst from the woman. “No, but if you are a nurse or in any job where you have made your own choice, you can choose to be a flapper . . . or to do anything else you like.”

Even to drive a car. Chiyo had never seen a woman handle any kind of machinery unless she counted the rice huller at home.

“Your nice kimono is getting wet,” the nurse warned. “You don’t want to stand out here in the rain.”

“No,” Chiyo agreed. It took courage to climb into the motorcar, but she had to get Emily Grace to the doll maker even more than she needed to get her kimono out of the rain. She sat on the edge of the front seat while the flapper turned a crank, just as the mayor’s driver had. When the motor caught, she hurried around to climb inside.

Chiyo clutched the seat so hard her knuckles turned white. This was not like riding behind the mayor’s uniformed driver. The car didn’t feel as solid, either. It rumbled noisily along, and she felt every bump under the tires.

“I’m Yaeko, by the way,” the woman told her. “What’s your name?”

“Tamura Chiyo.” It was hard to talk when she was holding her breath and staring out the windshield. She couldn’t help feeling as if they might run off the pavement if she looked away. But she was going to Tokyo!

The woman had introduced herself by her first name. What was Chiyo supposed to call her? It might be safer not to call her anything, but she couldn’t help asking, “Does it cost a lot to buy your own automobile?”

She heard amusement in Yaeko’s answer. “Yes. This one belongs to a doctor at my hospital. To tell you a secret, he’s sweet on me. He thought it was a lark to teach me to drive.”

Chiyo nodded. Adults lived in a world different from hers, especially adults in Tokyo. She knew that
Otousan
would never teach
Okaasan
to drive, or loan her his car, if he had one.
Okaasan
would never agree if he did offer.

“Does the ride scare you, Chiyo-chan?”

Chiyo sat a little straighter. “I rode in a car before. With the mayor of Tokyo.”

“Oh, yes? Traveling in high company, were you?” The sparkle was back in the nurse’s eyes. Then Yaeko looked at her for so long that Chiyo wanted to urge her to watch the road. “Say,” the nurse exclaimed, “you’re the girl from the poster! Your face is all over Tokyo. And this is the doll!”

Chiyo nodded, pulling her gaze from the road to look down at Emily Grace bundled in her lap.

“Someone got jealous, huh?”

“The teachers think I hurt her! But it wasn’t me! I would never hurt her! I love her!”

“Of course you do! If your teachers can’t see that, they’ve had their noses in their books for too long.”

Chiyo was surprised to feel a laugh bubble up when she’d thought she would never laugh or even smile again. She looked out at the road flying by. Even the mayor’s car hadn’t gone this fast. Maybe it could, but had to go slow in the city. The speed amazed and thrilled her. “Maybe someday I will drive.”

“I’m sure you will,” Yaeko agreed. “I can tell you’re a free spirit at heart.”

Chiyo thought again of the women in the restaurant smoking cigarettes and looking boldly at men. “No,” she said quickly. “No, I will go home to my village when my sister is married.” She wished Masako’s wedding was today. Or yesterday!

“Your sister?”

“She is marrying a man who wants me to be a traditional Japanese girl. I must know how to act when I visit Masako’s new home. That’s why I was going to school in Tsuchiura instead of my village. He thinks school will teach me to be serene.”

“Is that working?”

Chiyo looked at Emily Grace. “Not yet.” And now it never would. She swallowed hard and looked ahead.

She soon realized that Yaeko liked sound better than silence. The nurse had begun to sing a song about a red, red robin.

“What are you singing?” Chiyo asked when Yaeko paused.

The nurse glanced at her. “Ever hear of a guy called Al Jolson?”

Chiyo shook her head. What kind of name was that?

“No, I guess you wouldn’t have. He’s in vaudeville in America, and now he’s acting and singing in moving pictures. That was his number one song last year.” She glanced at Chiyo. “Would you like to learn the words?”

Chiyo almost said no, but why not? Kaito-sensei and the others weren’t here to frown.
“Hai,”
she said instead. “But they aren’t in Japanese.”

“Then you’ll learn a little English.” Yaeko taught her a line. As they sang it together, the scenery flew past. Chiyo’s voice blended with the nurse’s and brought an approving smile. They both laughed when she made mistakes.

Together, they sang about living, loving, and being happy. Yaeko grinned at her after translating the song into Japanese. “Those are words to live by, kiddo.”

Chiyo felt far from her parents’ goal of learning to behave like a modest Japanese girl, but she wasn’t in the village now. And she liked singing with Yaeko, even words that were silly but sometimes made sense.

“This man your sister’s marrying,” Yaeko said after a while, “the one who expects school to change you? He’s right, Chiyo-chan, but not in the way he thinks.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world is your oyster, Tamura Chiyo. And I can tell you’ve got the nerve to swallow it whole.”

“Even the pearl?”

The nurse laughed. “Especially the pearl, kiddo. Especially the pearl!”

Rain was falling harder when they reached Tokyo. Yaeko turned a handle back and forth to brush long thin wipers across the outside of the windshield. What a clever vehicle the automobile was. Chiyo couldn’t imagine any way to make it better.

When she recognized the railroad station, she directed Yaeko from there to the old-on-one-side, new-on-the-other street where the doll maker lived.

Yaeko twisted the wheel abruptly to turn the car away from rails. “Oops. Here comes a streetcar.”

Yaeko’s little car rocked from side to side when the streetcar rushed by. “How does it move?” Chiyo asked. “Horses aren’t pulling it. And it doesn’t have room for a big engine.”

“Electricity, kiddo. See those wires overhead? We live in a modern age.” The flapper drove across the rails and pulled to a stop in front of the dark house with a slanting roof that Chiyo remembered from her earlier visit.

The nurse leaned over the seat and lifted a bright yellow parasol from the back. “You take this with you. Try to keep your pretty kimono dry.”

“But it’s yours.”

Yaeko smiled. “It’s my gift to Emily Grace. We can’t have her getting wet after all she’s suffered.”

“Arigatogozaimasu,”
Chiyo murmured, willing to accept the parasol for Emily Grace, if not for herself.

“Now listen, Chiyo-chan,” Yaeko said, looking unusually serious as she leaned across to open the passenger door. “You said the doll maker knows people at your school, so he’ll know what to do. But if things don’t work out like you hope, you get someone to bring you to the hospital — St. Luke’s. Remember that. When you get there, ask for me, okay?”

“Hai,
but I’m sure he will help me.” Chiyo climbed to the street, her attention shifting to the doll maker’s house.

Yaeko called, “Chiyo?”

When Chiyo looked back, Yaeko grinned. “Live, love, and be happy, kiddo.”

Chiyo grinned back at her, turning the bright yellow parasol over her head like a flower in the rain. “I promise!”

In her arms, the doll shifted. “Mama!” Chiyo’s laughter vanished. Turning from the car, she ran across the flat gray stone to the door. Urgency drove her, and she knocked harder than she meant. From beyond the door, footsteps padded toward her.