Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (9 page)

To think that a game like that, which would only tire a grown-up and not be amusing at all, could be such fun to a child! Watching Totto-chan, with dirt in her hair and fingernails and even in her ears, Mother couldn't help feeling a little envious. And she couldn't help admiring the headmaster. His suggestion that the children wear clothes they could get as dirty as they liked was just another example of how well he understood them.

One morning, when they were all running about the school grounds, the headmaster said, "Here's a new friend for you. His last name is Takahashi. He'll be joining the first grade train."

The children, including Totto-chan, looked at Takahashi. He took off his hat and bowed, and said shyly, "How do you do?"

Totto-chan and her classmates were still quite small, being only in the first grade, but Takahashi, although he was a boy, was much smaller still, with short arms and legs. His hands, in which he held his hat, were small, too. But he had broad shoulders. He stood there looking forlorn.

"Let's talk to him," said Totto-chan to Miyo-chan and Sakko-chan. They went over to Takahashi. As they approached him he smiled affably, and they smiled back. He had big round eyes and looked as if he wanted to say something.

"Would you like to see the classroom in the train?" Totto-chan offered. "Mm!" replied Takahashi, putting his hat back on his head.

Totto-chan was in a great hurry to show him the classroom and bounded over to the train, calling to him from the door, "Hurry up."

Takahashi seemed to be walking fast but was still a long way off. "I'm coming," he said as he toddled along trying to run.

Totto-chan realized that while Takahashi didn't drag his leg like Yasuaki-chan, who had had polio, he was taking the same amount of time to get to the train. She quietly waited for him. Takahashi was running as fast as he could and there was no need to say, "Hurry," for he was hurrying. His legs were very short and he was bow-legged. The teachers and grown-ups knew that he had stopped growing. When he saw that Totto-chan was watching him, he tried to hurry faster, swinging his arms, and when he got to the door, he said, "You do run fast." Then he said, "I'm from Osaka."

"Osaka!" cried Totto-chan excitedly. Osaka was a dream city she had never seen. Mother's younger brother--her uncle--was a university student, and whenever he
came to the house he used to take her head in both his hands and lift her up as high as he could, saying, "I'll show you Osaka. Can you see Osaka?"

It was just a game grown-ups used to play with children, but Totto-chan believed him. It stretched the skin of her face horribly and pulled her eyes our of shape and hurt her ears, but she would frantically look into the distance to try and see Osaka. But she never could. She always believed, however, that one day she would be able to see it, so whenever her uncle came, she would ask, "Show me Osaka." So Osaka had become the city of her dreams. And Takahashi came from there!

"Tell me about Osaka," she said to Takahashi.

"About Osaka?" he asked, smiling happily. His voice was dear and mature. Just then the bell rang for the first class.

"What a pity," said Totto-chan. Takahashi went in gaily, swinging the little body that was almost hidden by his bag, and sat down in the front row. Totto-chan hurriedly sat down next to him. She was glad you could sit anywhere you liked. She didn't want to leave him. Thus, Takahashi became one of her friends, too.

On the way home from school, just as she had almost reached home, Totto-chan discovered something enticing by the side of the road. It was a huge pile of sand. How extraordinary to find sand there, so far from the sea! Was she dreaming! Totto- chan was thrilled. After a preliminary little hop she ran at great speed toward the pile of sand and leaped onto its summit. But it wasn't sand after all! Inside, it was a heap of prepared gray wall plaster. She sank into it with a "blop" and found herself covered in the gummy stuff right up to her chest, like a statue, complete with schoolbag and shoe bag. The more she snuggled to get our, the more her feet slid about. Her shoes almost came off, and she had to be careful not to become buried in it completely. So there was nothing she could do but stay still, with her left arm stuck in the gooey mixture holding onto her shoe bag. One or two women whom she didn't know went by, and she said to them, "Excuse me .. ." in a small voice, but they all thought she was playing and smiled and went on their way.

As evening fell and it began to get dark, Mother came looking for her and was astonished to find Totto-chan's head sticking out of the pile. She found a pole and had Totto-chan hold one end of it while she pulled her out. She had first tried to pull her out by hand, but Mother's foot started to get stuck in the plaster.

Totto-chan was covered with gray plaster just like a wall.

"I thought I told you once before," said Mother, "when you see something that looks intriguing, don't jump on it straight away. Look before you leap!"

The "once before" that Mother was referring to happened during a lunch hour at school. Totto-chan was strolling along the little path behind the Assembly Hall when she saw a newspaper lying in the middle of the path. Thinking it would be fun to see if she could jump onto the newspaper, she took a few steps back, gave a little hop, and then, aiming for the center of the newspaper, ran toward it with tremendous speed and leaped onto it. But the newspaper had been left there by the janitor as a temporary covering for the cesspool opening mentioned before. He had gone away to do something and had laid the newspaper over the hole to keep the smell in because the concrete lid was off. Totto-chan fell right through and into the cesspool with a great big "plop." It was really awful. But fortunately they managed to make a clean little girl of Totto-chan again. That was the time Mother was talking about.

"No, I won't jump on anything again," said Totto-chan, quietly. Mother was relieved. But what Totto-chan said next made Mother think her relief was a bit premature.

"I won't jump onto a newspaper or a pile of sand ever again."

Mother was quite sure Totto-chan might easily take it into her head to lump onto something else.

The days were getting shorter and it was quite dark by the time they reached home.

Lunchtime at Tomoe had always been fun, but lately a new interest had been added. The headmaster still inspected the lunchboxes of all fifty pupils to see if they had
"something from the ocean and something from the hills"--and his wife with her two saucepans was ready to supply the missing elements from anyone's lunch--after which they would all sing "Chew, chew, chew it well, Everything you eat," followed by, "I gratefully partake." But from now on, after "I gratefully partake," someone had to give a little talk.

One day the headmaster said, "I think we all ought to learn how to speak better. What do you think? After this, while we are eating our lunch, let's have somebody different each day stand in the middle of the circle and tell us about something. How about that?"

Some children thought they weren't very good at speaking, but it would be fun to listen to others. Some thought it would be super to tell people things they knew. Totto-chan didn't know what she would talk about but was willing to give it a try. Most of the children were in favor of the idea so they decided to start the talks the next day.

Japanese children are usually taught at home not to talk at mealtimes. But as a result of his experience abroad, the headmaster used to encourage his pupils to take plenty of time over their meals and enjoy conversation.

Besides that, he thought it was essential for them to learn how to get up in front of people and express their ideas clearly and freely without being embarrassed, so he decided it was time to put this theory into practice.

After the children had agreed to the idea, this is what he told them. Totto-chan listened attentively.

"You needn't worry about trying to be a good speaker," he said. "And you can talk about anything you like. You can talk about things you'd like to do. Anything. At any rate, let's give it a try.”

The order of speakers was decided upon. And it was also decided that whoever was going to speak that day would eat lunch quickly, straight away after the song was over.

The children soon discovered that unlike talking to two or three friends during lunch hour, standing up in the middle of the whole school needed a good deal of courage and was quite difficult. Some children were so shy at first that they just giggled. One boy had gone to a lot of effort and prepared a talk only to forget all of it the moment he stood up. He repeated several times his fine-sounding title, "Why Frogs Jump Sideways," then started off with, "When it rains..." but got no further. Finally he said, "That's all," bowed, and went back to his seat.

Totto-chan's turn hadn't come yet, but she decided that when it did she would tell her favorite story, "The Prince and the Princess." Everyone knew it, and whenever she wanted to tell it during breaks, the children would say, "We're tired of that one.”

But all the same, she decided, that was the story she was going to tell.

The new scheme was beginning to work rather well when, one day, the child whose turn it was to give a talk firmly refused.

"I have nothing to say," the boy declared.

Totto-chan was amazed to think that anyone could possibly have nothing to say. But that boy just didn't.
The headmaster went over to the boy's desk with its empty lunchbox. "So you have nothing to say," he said.
"Nothing."

The boy wasn't trying to be clever, or anything like that. He honestly couldn't think of anything to talk about.

The headmaster threw back his head and laughed, heedless of the gaps in his teeth. "Let's try and find you something to say.
"Find me something?" The boy seemed startled.

The headmaster got the boy to stand in the center of the ring while he sat down at the boy's desk.

"Try and remember," he said, "what you did this morning after you got up and before you came to school. What did you do first!"

"Well," said the boy and then just scratched his head.

"Fine," said the headmaster, "You've said, 'Well.' You did have something to say. What did you do after 'well?' "

"Well,... uh ... I got up," he said, scratching his head some more.

Totto-chan and the others were amused, but listened attentively. The boy went on, "Then, uh..." He scratched his head again. The head-master sat patiently watching the boy, with a smile on his face and his hands clasped on the desk. Then he said, "That's splendid. That will do. You got up this morning. You've made everyone understand that. You don't have to be amusing or make people laugh to be a good speaker. The important thing is that you said you hadn't anything to talk about and you did find something to say.”

But the boy didn't sit down. He said in a very loud voice, "And then... uh...

All the children leaned forward. The boy took a deep breath and went on, "And then...uh... Mother...uh...she said, 'Brush your teeth'... uh...so I brushed my teeth."

The headmaster clapped. Everyone else clapped, too. Whereupon the boy, in an even louder voice than before, went on again, "And then... uh...”

The children stopped clapping and listened with bated breath, leaning forward even more.

Finally, the boy said, triumphantly, "And then ... uh...I came to school."

One of the older boys leaned forward so far he lost his balance and hit his face on his lunchbox. But everyone was terribly pleased that the boy had found something to
talk about.
The headmaster clapped vigorously, and Totto-chan and the others did, too. Even "And then... uh...," who was still standing in their midst, clapped. The Assembly Hall was filled with the sound of clapping.

Even when he was a grown man that boy probably never forgot the sound of that applause.

Totto-chan had a terrible accident. It happened after she got home from school, while she and Rocky were playing "wolf' in her room before dinner.

They had begun by playing a game where you rolled toward each other from opposite sides of the room, ending in a brief tussle when you bumped into each other. They played this several times and then decided to try something a little more complicated--although it was Totto-chan, of course, who did the deciding. The idea was that when they met in the middle of the room after rolling toward each other, the one who made the fiercer wolf face at the other would be the winner. Rocky was a German shepherd, so it wasn't hard for him to look like a wolf. Ah he had to do was point his ears, open his mouth, and bare all his teeth. He could make his eyes look pretty fierce, too. It was a little more difficult for Totto-chan. She would hold both hands up on either side of her head to look like ears, open her mouth and eyes as wide as she could, make growling noises, and pretend to bite Rocky. At first, Rocky played the game very well. But he was a puppy, and after a while, he forgot it was just a game and suddenly bit Totto-chan in earnest.

Although still a puppy, Rocky was almost twice as big as Totto-chan and had sharp, pointed teeth, so before she realized what was happening her right ear was dangling from her head and blood was streaming down.

Hearing her screams, Mother came rushing from the kitchen to find Totto-chan in the corner of the room with Rocky, holding her right ear with both hands. Her dress was splattered with blood. Daddy, who had been practicing the violin in the living room, came rushing in, too. Rocky seemed to realize he had done something terrible. His tail hung between his legs and he looked pathetically at Totto-chan.

The only thing Totto-chan could think of was what would she do if Mother and Daddy got so angry with Rocky they got rid of him or gave him away. That would have been the saddest and most dreadful thing as far as she was concerned. So she crouched down beside Rocky, holding her right ear and crying out repeatedly, "Don't scold Rocky! Don't scold Rocky!"

Mother and Daddy were more interested in seeing what had happened to her eat and tried to pull her hands away. Totto-chan wouldn't let go and shouted, "it doesn't hurt! Don't be cross with Rocky! Don't be cross!" Totto-chan truly wasn't conscious of the pain at the time. All she could think of was Rocky.