Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (6 page)

"Look!" she said proudly. There were A's and B's and other characters. Naturally, Totto-chan didn't know yet whether A was better than B or whether B was better than A, so it would have been even harder for Rocky to know. But Totto-chan wanted to show her very first report card to Rocky before anyone else, and she was sure Rocky would be delighted.

When Rocky saw the paper in front of his face, he sniffed it, then gazed up at Totto- chan.

"You're impressed, aren't you?" said Totto-chan. "But it's full of difficult words so you probably can't read all of it."

Rocky tilted his head as if he was having another good look at the card. Then he licked Totto-chan's hand.

"Good," she said with satisfaction, getting up. “Now I'll go and show it to Mother.” After Totto-chan had gone, Rocky got up and found himself a cooler spot. Then he let himself down again slowly, and closed his eyes. It wasn't only Totto-chan who would have said that the way his eyes were closed it really seemed as if he was thinking about that report card.

"We are going camping tomorrow. Please come to the school in the evening with blankets and pajamas," said the note from the headmaster that Totto-chan took home and showed to Mother. Summer vacation began the following day.

"What does camping mean?" asked Totto-chan.

Mother was wondering, too, but she replied, "Doesn't it mean you're probably going to put up tents somewhere outdoors and sleep in them? Sleeping in a tent you can see the moon and the stars. I wonder where they'll set up the tents. There's no mention of fares so it's probably somewhere near the school."

That night, after Totto-chan had gone to bed, she couldn't get to sleep for ages. The idea of going camping sounded rather scary--a tremendous adventure-and her heart beat very fast.
The following morning she started packing as soon as she woke up. But that evening, as her blanket was placed on top of the knapsack that held her pajamas and she said goodbye and set off, she felt very small and frightened.

When the children were gathered at the school, the headmaster said, "Now then, all of you, come to the Assembly Hall." When they got there he went up onto the small stage carrying something stiff and starchy. It was a green tent.

"I'm going to show you how to pitch a tent," he said, spreading it out. "Please watch carefully.”

All alone, puffing and blowing, he pulled ropes this way and set up poles that way, and before you could say "Jack Robinson," there stood a beautiful tent!

"Come on, then," he said. "Now you're going to set up tents all over the Assembly Hall and start camping."

Mother imagined, as anyone would have, that they would put up the tents outdoors, but the head-master had other ideas. In the Assembly Hall the children would be all right even if it rained in the night or got a bit cold.

With delighted shouts of “We're camping, we're camping!” the children divided into groups, and, with the help of the teachers, they finally managed to set up the required number of tents. One tent could sleep about three children. Totto-chan quickly got into her pajamas, and soon children were happily crawling in and out of this tent and that one. There was much visiting to and fro.

When everyone was in pajamas, the headmaster sat down in the middle where they could all see him and talked to them about his travels abroad.

Some of the children lay in their tents with just their heads showing, while others sat up properly, and some lay with their heads on older children's laps, all listening to his tales of foreign countries they had never seen and sometimes never even heard of.

The headmaster's stories were fascinating, and at times they felt as if the children described in lands across the sea were friends.

And so it happened that this simple event--sleeping in tents in the Assembly Hall-- became for the children a happy and valuable experience they would never forget. The headmaster certainly knew how to make children happy.

When the headmaster finished speaking and the light in the Assembly Hall had been turned out, all the children went into their own tents. Laughter could be heard from some; whispers from others; while from a tent at the far end came the sound of a scuffle. Gradually silence fell.

It was camping without any moon or stars, but the children enjoyed it thoroughly. To them that little Assembly Hall seemed like a real camping ground, and memory wrapped that night in moonbeams and starlight forever.

Two days after they camped in the Assembly Hall, the day of Totto-chan's great adventure finally came to pass. It was the day of her appointment with Yasuaki-chan. And it was a secret that neither Mother nor Daddy nor Yasuaki-chan's parents knew. She had invited Yasuaki-chan to her tree.

The students at Tomoe each had a tree in the school grounds they considered their own climbing tree. Totto-chan's tree was at the edge of the grounds near the fence beside the lane leading to Kuhonbutsu. It was a large tree and slippery to climb, but if you climbed it skillfully you could get to a fork about six feet from the ground. The fork was as comfortable as a hammock. Totto-chan used to go there during recess and after school and sit and look off into the distance or up at the sky, or watch the people going by below.

The children considered "their" trees their own private property, so if you wanted to climb someone else's tree you had to ask their permission very politely, saying, "Excuse me, may I come in!"

Because Yasuaki-chan had had polio he had never climbed a tree, and couldn't claim one as his own. That's why Totto-chan decided to invite him to her tree. They kept it a secret because they thought people were sure to make a fuss if they knew.

When she left home, Totto-chan told her mother she was going to visit Yasuaki-chan at his home in Denenchofu. She was telling a lie, so she tried not to look at Mother but kept her eyes on her shoelaces. But Rocky followed her to the station, so when they parted company, she told him the truth.

"I'm going to let Yasuaki-chan climb my tree!" she said.

When Totto-chan reached the school, her train pass flapping around her neck, she found Yasuaki-chan waiting by the flower beds in the grounds that were deserted now that it was summer vacation. He was only a year older than Totto-chan, but he always sounded much older when he spoke.

When Yasuaki-chan saw Totto-chan, he hurried toward her, dragging his leg and holding his arms out in front to steady himself. Totto-chan was thrilled to think they were going to do something secret, and she giggled. Yasuaki-chan giggled, too.

Totto-chan led Yasuaki-chan to her tree, and then, just as she had thought it out the night before, she ran to the janitor's shed and got a ladder, which she dragged over to the tree and leaned against the trunk so that it reached the fork. She climbed up quickly and, holding the top of the ladder, called down, "All right, try climbing up!"

Yasuaki-chan's arms and legs were so weak it seemed he could not even get on the first rung without help. So Totto-chan hurried down the ladder backward and tried pushing Yasuaki-chan up from behind. But Totto-chan was so small and slender that it was all she could do to hold onto Yasuaki-chan, let alone keep the ladder steady. Yasuaki-chan took his foot off the bottom rung and stood beside the ladder, his head bowed. Totto-chan realized for the first time that it was going to be more difficult than she had thought. What should she do?
She wanted so badly to have Yasuaki-chan climb her tree, and he had been looking forward to it so much. She went around and faced him. He looked so disconsolate that she puffed out her cheeks and made a funny face to cheer him up.

"Wait! I've got an idea!"

She ran back to the janitor's shed and pulled out one thing after another to see if she could find something that would help. She finally discovered a stepladder. It would remain steady so she wouldn't have to hold it.

She dragged the stepladder over, amazed at her own strength, and was delighted to find that it almost reached the fork.
"Now, don't be afraid," she said in a big-sisterly voice. "This isn't going to wobble." Yasuaki-chan looked nervously at the stepladder. Then he looked at Totto-chan,
drenched in perspiration. Yasuaki-chan was sweating profusely, too. He looked up at
the tree. Then, with determination, he placed a foot on the first rung.

Neither of them was conscious of the time it took Yasuaki-chan to reach the top of
the stepladder. The hot summer sun beat down, but they had no thoughts for anything except getting Yasuaki-chan to the top of the stepladder. Totto-chan got underneath him and lifted his feet up while steadying his bottom with her head. Yasuaki-chan struggled with all his might, and finally reached the top.

“Hooray!”

But from there it was hopeless. Totto-chan jumped onto the fork, but no matter how she tried, she couldn't get Yasuaki-chan onto the tree from the stepladder. Clutching the stepladder Yasuaki-chan looked at Totto-chan. She suddenly felt like crying. She had wanted so badly to invite Yasuaki-chan on to her tree and show him all sorts of things.

But she didn't cry. She was afraid that if she did, Yasuaki-chan might start crying, too.

Instead she took hold of his hand, with its fingers all stuck together because of the polio. It was bigger than hers and his fingers were longer. She held his hand for a long time. Then she said, "Lie down and I’ll try and pull you over.”

If any grown-ups had seen her standing on the fork of the tree starting to pull Yasuaki-chan--who was lying on his stomach on the stepladder--onto the tree, they would have let out a scream. It must have looked terribly precarious.

But Yasuaki-chan trusted Totto-chan completely. And Totto-chan was risking her life for him. With her tiny hands clutching his, she pulled with all her might. From time to rime a large cloud would mercifully protect them from the blistering sun.

At long last, the two stood face to face on the tree. Brushing her damp hair back, Totto-chan bowed politely and said, "Welcome to my tree."

Yasuaki-chan leaned against the trunk smiling rather bashfully. He said, "May I come in?"

Yasuaki-chan was able to see vistas he had never glimpsed before. "So this is what it's like to climb a tree," he said happily.

They stayed on the tree for a long time and talked about all sorts of things.

"My sister in America says they've got something there called television," said Yasuaki-chan with enthusiasm. "She says that when it comes to Japan we'll be able to sit at home and watch sumo wrestling. She says it's like a box."

Totto-chan didn't understand yet how much it would mean to Yasuaki-chan, who couldn't go very far afield, to be able to watch all sorts of things at home.

She simply wondered how sumo wrestlers could get inside a box in your own house. Sumo wrestlers were so big! But it was fascinating all the same. In those days nobody knew about television. Yasuaki-chan was the first to tell Totto-chan about it.

The cicadas were singing and the two children were so happy. And for Yasuaki-chan it was the first and last time he ever climbed a tree.

"What's scary, smells bad, and tastes good?"

They liked this riddle so much that even though they knew the answer, Totto-chan and her friends never tired of saying to one another, "Ask me the riddle about what's scary and smells bad!"

The answer was, "A demon in the toilet eating a bean-jam bun!"

The way the Tomoe Bravery Test ended would have made a good riddle too. "What's scary, itches, and makes you laugh?"

The night they set up tents in the Assembly Hall and went camping, the headmaster announced, "We're going to hold a Bravery Test one night at Kuhonbutsu Temple. Hands up if you want to be a ghost."

About seven boys vied for the privilege. When the children assembled at the school on the appointed evening, the boys who were going to be ghosts brought costumes they had made themselves and went off to hide in the temple grounds.

"We'll scare you to death!" they said as they left.

The remaining thirty or so children divided themselves into small groups of about five and set off for Kuhonbutsu at staggered intervals. They were supposed to walk right around the temple grounds and the graveyard and then come back to the school.

The headmaster explained that although this was a test to see how brave they were, it would be perfectly all right if anybody wanted to come back without finishing the course.
Totto-chan had brought a flashlight she had borrowed from Mother. "Don't lose it," Mother had said.

Some of the boys said they were going to catch the ghosts and brought butterfly nets, while others brought string saying they were going to tie them up.

It was dark by the time the headmaster had explained what they were to do, and groups had been formed by playing "stone, paper, scissors." Squealing with excitement, the first group set off out of the school gate. Finally it was time for Totto-chan's group to go.

The headmaster said no ghosts would appear before they got to Kuhonbutsu Temple, but the children weren't too sure about that and proceeded nervously until they reached the entrance to the temple, from where they could see the guardian Deva Kings. The temple grounds seemed pitch dark in spite of the moon being out. It was pleasant and spacious there by day, but now, not knowing when they would encounter one of the ghosts, the children were so terrified they could hardly bear it. "Eee!" someone would scream as a tree rustled in the breeze, or "Here's a ghost!" as someone's leg touched something soft. In the end it seemed as if even the friend whose hand one was holding might be a ghost. Totto-chan made up her mind not to go all the way to the graveyard. That's where the ghosts were bound to be waiting, and anyway she felt she now knew all about bravery tests and could go back. The
others in her group made the same decision at the same time--it was reassuring not to be the only one--and they all ran back as fast as their legs could carry them.

When they got to the school they found the groups that had left before them already there. It seemed that almost everybody had been too scared to go as far as the graveyard.