Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (5 page)

After the incident, Totto-chan never peered down the hole any more after using the toilet. And she felt the headmaster was someone she could trust completely, and she liked him more than ever.

Totto-chan kept her promise and put everything back into the tank. It was a terrible job getting it out, but putting it back was much quicker. She put some of the wet earth in, too. Then she smoothed the ground, put the cover back properly, and took the ladle back to the janitor's shed.

That night before she went to bed Totto-chan thought about the beautiful purse she had dropped into the darkness. She was sad about losing it, but the day's exertion had made her so tired it was not long before she was fast asleep.

Meanwhile, at the scene of her toil, the damp earth shimmered in the moonlight like some beautiful thing.

And somewhere the purse rested quietly.

Totto-chan's real name was Tetsuko. Before she was born all Mother's and Daddy's friends and relatives said they were sure the baby would be a boy. It was their first child, and they believed it. So they decided to name the baby Toru. When the baby turned out to be a girl, they were a bit disappointed, but they both liked the Chinese character for toru (which means to penetrate, to carry far, to be clear and resonant, as a voice) so they made it into a girl's name by using its Chinese-derived pronunciation tetsu and adding the suffix ko often used for girls' names.

So everybody called her Tetsuko-chan (chan is the familiar form of the san used after a person's name). But it didn't sound quite like Tetsuko-chan to her. Whenever
anyone asked her what her name was, she would answer, "Totto-chan." She even
thought that chan was part of her name, too.

Daddy sometimes called her Totsky, as if she were a boy. He'd say, "Totsky! Come and help me take these bugs off the roses!" But except for Daddy and Rocky everybody else called her Totto-chan, and although she wrote her name as Tetsuko in her notebooks at school, she still went on thinking of herself as Totto-chan.

Yesterday Totto-chan was very upset. Mother had said, "You mustn't listen to any more comedians on the radio."

When Totto-chan was a little girl, radios were large and made of wood. They were very elegant. Theirs was rectangular with a rounded top, and a big speaker in front covered with pink silk and carved arabesques. It had two control knobs.

Even before she started school, Totto-chan liked to listen to rakugo comedians, pressing her ear against the pink silk. She thought their jokes were terribly funny. Mother had never objected to her listening to them until yesterday.

Last night some of Daddy's friends from the orchestra came to their house to practice string quartets in the living room.

"Mr. Tsunesada Tachibana, who plays the cello, has brought you some bananas," said Mother.

Totto-chan was thrilled. She bowed politely to Mr. Tachibana, and by way of thanks exclaimed to her mother, "Hey, Ma, this is pretty goddam good!"

After that Totto-chan had to listen in secret when Mother and Daddy were out. When the comedians were good, she would laugh uproariously. If any grown-ups had been watching, they might well have wondered how such a small girl could understand such difficult jokes. But there's no doubt that children have an innate sense of humor. No matter how young they are, they always know when something's really funny.

"There's a new railroad car coming tonight," said Miyo-chan during the lunchtime break. Miyo-chan was the headmaster's third daughter and was in Totto-chan's class.
There were already six cars lined up together as classrooms, but one more was coming. Miyo-chan said it was going to be a library car. They were all terribly excited.

"I wonder what route it will take to get to the school," someone said. It was a challenging topic. There was a momentary hush.
"Maybe it will come along the Oimachi Line tracks and then branch off this way at that level crossing," someone suggested.

"Then it would have to derail," said someone else. "Maybe they'll just bring it on a cart," said another.
"There wouldn't be a cart big enough to hold one of those cars," someone pointed out immediately.

“I suppose not...”

Ideas petered out. The children realized a railroad car certainly wouldn't fit on a cart or even a truck.

"Rails!" said Totto-chan after much thought.

"You know, they're probably going to lay some rails right here to the school!" "From where?" asked someone.
"Where? From wherever the train is now," said Totto-chan, beginning to think her idea wasn't such a good one, after all. She had no idea where the car was coming from, and, anyway, they wouldn't pull down houses and things in order to lay tracks in a straight line to the school.

After much fruitless discussion of one possibility after another, the children finally decided not to go home that afternoon but to wait and see the car arrive. Miyo-chan was elected to go and ask her father, the headmaster, if they could all remain at school until that night. It was some while before she came back.

"The car is arriving terribly late tonight," she said, "after all the other trains have stopped running. Anybody who really wants to see it will have to go home first and ask permission. Then they can come back if they like with their pajamas and a blanket after they've had their dinner.

"Wow!" The children were more excited than ever. "He said to bring our pajamas?"
"And blankets?"
That afternoon no one could concentrate on the lessons. After school, the children in Totto-chan's class went straight home, all hoping they'd be lucky enough to see each other again that night complete with pajamas and blankets.

As soon as she reached home, Totto-chan said to Mother, "A train's coming. We don't know how it's going to get there. Pajamas and a blanket. May I go?"

What mother could grasp the situation with that kind of explanation! Totto-chan's mother had no idea what she meant. But judging by the serious look on her daughter's face, she guessed something unusual was afoot.

Mother asked Totto-chan all sorts of questions. She finally discovered what it was all about and what exactly was going to happen. She thought Totto-chan ought to see it, as she wouldn't have many such opportunities. She even thought she'd like to see the car arrive herself.

Mother got out Totto-chan's pajamas and a blanket, and after dinner she took her to the school. About ten children were there. They included some of the older students who had heard of the event. A couple of other mothers, too, had come with their children. They looked as if they would like to stay, but after entrusting their children to the head-master's care, they went home.

"I’ll wake you up when it comes," the children were assured by the headmaster as they lay down in the Assembly Hall wrapped in their blankets.

The children thought they wouldn't be able to sleep for wondering how the train would get there.

But after so much excitement, they were tired and soon became drowsy. Before they could say, "Be sure and wake me up," most of them fell fast asleep.

"It's here! It's here!"

Awakened by a babble of voices, Totto-chan jumped up and ran through the school grounds and out the gate. A great big railroad car was just visible in the morning haze. It was like a dream--a train coming along the road without tracks making no sound.

It had come on a large trailer pulled by a tractor from the Oimachi Line depot. Totto- chan and the others learned something they didn't know before--that there was something called a tractor that could pull a trailer, which was much bigger than a cart. They were impressed.

The car moved slowly along the deserted morning road mounted on the trailer. Soon there was a great commotion. There were no giant cranes in those days, so to get the car off the trailer and to its destination in the school grounds was a tremendous operation. The men who brought it had to lay several big logs under the car and gradually roll it off the trailer onto the schoolyard.

"Watch carefully," said the headmaster, "they're called rollers. Rolling power is being used to move that big car.”
The children looked on earnestly.

"Heave-ho, heave-ho," chanted the workmen as they toiled, and the sun itself seemed to be rising in time to their rhythmic cries.

Like the other six already at the school, this car, which had carried so many people, had its wheels removed. Its traveling life was over. From now on it would carry the sound of children's laughter.

As the boys and girls stood there in the morning sunshine in their pajamas, they were so happy they couldn't contain their joy and kept jumping up and down, clasping the headmaster around the neck and swinging from his arms.

Staggering under the onslaught, the headmaster smiled happily. Seeing his joy, the children smiled, too.

And none of them ever forgot how happy they were.

That was a red-letter day for Totto-chan. It was the first time she had ever swum in a pool. And without a stitch on!

It happened in the morning. The headmaster said to them all, "It's become quite hot all of a sudden, so I think I'll fill the pool."

"Wow!" everybody cried, jumping up and down. Totto-chan and the first grade children cried "Wow" too, and jumped up and down with even greater excitement than the older students. The pool at Tomoe was not rectangular like most pools, as one end was narrower than the other. It was shaped pretty much like a boat. The lay of the land probably had something to do with it. But nonetheless; the pool was a large and splendid one. It was situated between the classrooms and the Assembly Hall.

All during their lessons, Totto-chan and the others kept stealing glances out of the windows at the pool. When empty it had been littered with fallen leaves just like the playground. But now that it was clean and beginning to fill up, it started to look like a real swimming pool.

Lunchtime finally arrived, and when the children were all gathered around the pool, the headmaster said, “We'll do some exercises and then have a swim.”

"Don't I need a swimsuit to go swimming?" thought Totto-chan. When she went to Kamakura with Mother and Daddy, she took a swimsuit, a rubber ring, and all sorts of things. She tried to remember if the teacher had asked them to bring swimsuits.

Then, just as if he had read her thoughts, the headmaster said, "Don't worry about swimsuits. Go and look in the Assembly Hall."

When Totto-chan and the other first graders got to the Assembly Hall the bigger children were taking off their clothes with shrieks of delight as if they were going to have a bath. They ran our, one after the other, stark naked, into the school grounds.

Totto-chan and her friends hurriedly followed them. In the warm breeze it felt wonderful not to have any clothes on. When they got to the top of the steps outside the Assembly Hall they found the others already doing warm-up exercises. Totto- chan and her classmates ran down the steps in their bare feet.

The swimming instructor was Miyo-chan's elder brother--the headmaster's son and an expert in gymnastics. He wasn't a teacher at Tomoe but he was on the swimming team of a university. His name was the same as the school's--Tomoe. Tomoe-san wore swimming trunks.

After their exercises, the children let out screams as cold water was poured over them, and then they jumped into the pool. Totto-chan didn't go in until she had watched some of the others and satisfied herself they could stand. It wasn't hot, like a bath but it was lovely and big, and as far as you could stretch your arms there was nothing but water.

Thin children, plump children, boys, girls - they were all laughing and shouting and splashing in their birthday suits.

What fun, thought Totto-chan, and what a lovely feeling! She was only sorry Rocky couldn't come to school. She was sure that if he knew he could go in without a swimsuit he'd be in the pool, too.

You might wonder why the headmaster allowed the children to swim naked. There were no rules about it. If you brought your suit and wanted to wear it, that was perfectly all right. On the other hand, like today, when you suddenly decided to go in and hadn't a suit, that was perfectly all right, too. And why did he let them swim in the nude! Because he thought it wasn't right for boys and girls to be morbidly curious about the differences in their bodies, and he thought it was unnatural for people to take such pains to hide their bodies from other people.

He wanted to teach the children that all bodies are beautiful. Among the pupils at Tomoe were some who had had polio, like Yasuaki-chan, or were very small, or otherwise handicapped, and he felt if they bared their bodies and played together it would rid them of feelings of shame and help to prevent them developing an inferiority complex. As it turned out, while the handicapped children were shy at first, they soon began to enjoy themselves, and finally they got over their shyness completely.

Some parents were worried about the idea and provided their offspring with swimsuits which they insisted should always be worn. Little did they know how seldom the suits were used. Observing children like Totto-chan-who right from the start decided swimming naked was best--and those who said they had forgotten to bring their suits and went in anyway, most of them became convinced it was much more fun swimming naked like the others, so all they did was make sure they took wet swimsuits home! Consequently, almost all the children at Tomoe became as brown as berries all over, and there were hardly any with white swimsuit marks.

Looking neither right nor left, her bag flapping against her back, Totto-chan ran all the way home from the station. Anyone seeing her would have thought something terrible had happened. She had started running as soon as she was out of the school gate.

Once home, she opened the front door and called out, "I'm back!" and went to look for Rocky. He was lying on the porch, cooling off, with his belly flat against the floor. Totto-chan didn't say a word. She sat down in front of Rocky, took her bag off her back, and took out a report card. It was her very first report card. She opened it so Rocky could clearly see her marks.