Red Tea Page 2

  “Akushu!” Kenji supplied.

  Ryusuke smiled with relief, his face flushing. He sheepishly looked toward the class, and with great emphasis, wiped his palms on his slacks. Everyone laughed at this, Jordan included, and he enveloped her hand in his. He shook it firmly and turned away.

  “He was very excited to meet you,” Mrs. Okubo said to Jordan as the boy returned to his seat, then she addressed the whole class. “Well done, everyone. Now let’s all listen as Jordan-sensei tells us about herself and where she’s from.”

  “Well, for starters, I’m twenty-two years old and just graduated from college. I have a very big family,” Jordan said and made a sweeping motion with her arms to indicate a long line. “I have two sisters and two…uh, one brother. I’m the youngest.” She forced a smile to gloss over the fumble and looked at the floor, allowing herself a moment to recover. Mrs. Okubo glanced in Jordan’s direction when she didn’t continue right away.

  “I heard you’re from Las Vegas. Is that right?” Mrs. Okubo prompted.

  “Yes, I am,” Jordan said quickly and raised her head, taking care to project her voice.

  “Oh! Like in James Bond,” one boy said and mimed shooting a gun with his hands clasped together. Others nodded in sudden understanding.

  “Um, something like that,” Jordan said gamely and continued. As she spoke, she tried to take in each student. Some nodded with excitement, while others listened politely as the sun climbed up the window.

  “You survived your first class,” Mrs. Okubo said when they arrived at the teachers’ room.

  “Barely.” Jordan smirked to show she was joking. Actually, she felt remarkably at ease. If every student was so open and friendly, she imagined her time in Ogawa High School wouldn’t be as intimidating as she had feared.

  “We have about ten minutes before the next class, so please take your seat for a moment,” Mrs. Okubo said but had no intention of taking a break herself. She scurried off and disappeared among the other teachers milling near their desks and filing in and out of the copier room.

  As Jordan took her seat, she was happy to find a cold glass of green tea placed on her desk. She drank the tea gratefully in a few gulps, parched by the heat and from speaking throughout the entire class.

  A female teacher seated close by glanced in Jordan’s direction at the sound of her chair scraping the floor, but she returned her attention to a student instead of greeting Jordan.

  The student was a gawky boy. He looked younger than the students Jordan had just met—a second-grader, judging by the color of his nametag—and he seemed upset. His eyes were red, and his voice quavered as he spoke. Jordan knew it would be impolite to eavesdrop, yet she couldn’t help but train her ears on him.

  “…he keeps insisting that Yuki didn’t do it,” the boy said between hiccuping gulps of breath. “I just—I wonder if he’s right.”

  “He’s upset. After all, he lost his brother.” The teacher didn’t sound sure of her own words, and her voice wasn’t much steadier than his. “Denial is common after a death. I know it’s hard to understand, but…”

  Jordan shifted her focus elsewhere and reprimanded herself for listening in on such a private conversation. Selfishly, she also regretted that her snooping had poked at her own deep, gnawing aches.

  Before long, the boy excused himself and left, his head drooping with the weight of his thoughts.

  With a sigh, the teacher shook her head and stared at her clasped hands. A minute passed before she remembered Jordan’s presence, but once she did, she perked up and turned in her chair to face her.

  “You must be Jordan-sensei,” she said in Japanese. “My name is Reiko Tatsuya.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jordan said and bowed as best she could while seated. Ms. Tatsuya also bowed her small frame, thin and bird-like, and readjusted her glasses after they slipped down her sharp nose. “What subject do you teach, Tatsuya-sensei?”

  “Mathematics,” she said. Her lips stretched over her jutting teeth in an odd sort of smile. Then she lowered her eyes. “It’s not as exciting as English, I’m sure.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Your students must like you very much if they come to visit you in the teachers’ room.”

  “Oh, you mean that boy just now? Akira?” Ms. Tatsuya’s large glasses made her look bewildered and wide-eyed. “Akira was Yuki’s best friend. I asked him to see me since he’s having such a hard time of it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Jordan said, feeling discouraged. She tried to piece together the bits of conversation she had just overheard but couldn’t place them in some larger picture.

  “Yuki? He died about a week ago.” Ms. Tatsuya’s eyes teared up behind her glasses. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “Oh! I had heard something… I just didn’t know the student’s name. I’m sorry.” Jordan could tell the diminutive woman was upset, and she didn’t relish wading into others’ personal tragedies. She would have let the matter lie, but Ms. Tatsuya picked it up after a beat.

  “He committed suicide,” she said, her voice becoming a pitiful wail.

  “I’m so sorry.” Jordan felt her throat constrict around the words.

  “Yuki wasn’t just Akira’s best friend. He was probably his only friend. They were both in my homeroom class.” She sniffled but restrained herself from crying, eyes shining and red. “I can’t believe Yuki would kill himself. He had so many plans. He never…”

  Jordan nodded and waited for Ms. Tatsuya to continue, but the other woman stared at the handkerchief she had pulled from her pocket and turned away. Mumbling to herself, Ms. Tatsuya picked up and set down a handful of papers, only to grab at them again a moment later, forgetting all about their conversation.

  “Ready?”

  Jordan jumped at the brusque voice behind her, not hearing Mrs. Okubo approach. “Yes!” Jordan grabbed her textbook and darted out of her seat, grateful for the excuse to leave. “I’ll see you soon, Tatsuya-sensei. Umm, it was nice to meet you.”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes, the pleasure’s all mine,” Ms. Tatsuya said as though she were just waking up, her distracted gaze never leaving her desk.

  “She’s an odd duck, that one,” Mrs. Okubo whispered once they were out of earshot of Ms. Tatsuya. “Just come to me if you have any questions, okay?”

  Jordan nodded and followed Mrs. Okubo out of the teachers’ room. As she slid the door shut behind them, she spared one last glance at the mathematics teacher, who stared out the window silently.

  Jordan exchanged her indoor slippers for the flats in her cubby, purse and jacket in hand. Jordan was alone in the entryway at the foot of the stairs. Either most students had returned home at the close of the school day or they were attending their many after-school clubs.

  Jordan felt a bit uncomfortable heading home when the faculty room was still packed with teachers poring over assignments. But as far as she knew, she had no further duties for the day and would only be wasting time by pretending to look busy at her desk.

  She decided it was best not to concern herself with the other teachers’ responsibilities as she stepped out the door. She was tired and had had a long day, after all.

  Her apartment was a short distance away, and she planned to walk home instead of calling a cab. It was still bright out, and the oppressive midday heat had mellowed.

  As she passed the covered bicycle port and made for the road, she heard a voice calling her name. Turning back, Jordan saw two figures loping toward her at a brisk pace. A moment later, she recognized the boys from her first class that morning: Kenji and Ryusuke.

  “Jordan-sensei,” Kenji said with gusto. Despite Kenji’s youthful features, Jordan could tell he would grow up to be quite handsome. He was favored with a straight, bright smile and eyelashes so dark they seemed painted on. “Would you like to watch our baseball team practice?”

  A quick glance showed he was dressed for it, wearing a nondescript jersey with the sleeves rolled up,
baseball pants, and high socks paired with cleats.

  His tall friend was dressed the same, glove in hand, and stood beside him, smiling. Jordan could feel beads of sweat stippling her neck after only a few moments outdoors, and she longed for some rest after an exhausting first day. But she suspected the boys would be disappointed if she declined, and she was flattered.

  “I’d love to, Kenji,” she said in English. At the confused expression that crossed Ryusuke’s face, she added in Japanese, “Sure, let’s go.”

  “Please follow me,” Kenji said, and Ryusuke’s smile broadened.

  Jordan took a seat on the concrete risers as Kenji and Ryusuke returned to the field. A few of the other boys looked to the stands and waved. Jordan waved back. She glanced around for an instructor, but it appeared as though the students had organized themselves.

  They formed small clusters in the fields, tossing balls in practiced drills. Jordan watched attentively for a few minutes, but the warm sun still hanging high above began to lull her.

  Kenji left his group and barked an order to the rest of his teammates. Some of the players trotted to the diamond. One began to don catcher’s gear, and three took places in the outfield. Jordan decided Kenji must be team captain, if he was leading the group.

  Kenji spoke to Ryusuke as he passed, prompting the tall boy to stop and say something playful back. Kenji pushed him and grinned. From her place in the risers, Jordan heard Kenji say, “You are such an idiot.”

  Ryusuke ambled to the pitcher’s mound, and Kenji joined the line near the batter’s box. Soon, Ryusuke began pitching to his teammates—rather expertly, Jordan noticed. He had seemed oafish before, a little too tall for his own skin, but on the mound, he was fluid and imposing. He threw each pitch with obvious force and power, and very few balls floated past him to the outfield. Kenji came to the plate and was struck out in three pitches.

  “Home run!” Ryusuke teased. “We’ll never win with that swing, Captain.”

  Kenji handed off his bat and headed for the mound.

  “Yeah, well, pitchers don’t have to be good hitters, right?” Kenji said and motioned to Ryusuke, who gave him his glove before jogging toward the plate.

  The drill continued at a steady but relaxed pace. Kenji and Ryusuke took turns on the pitcher’s mound with two other boys, and the outfielders switched out to bat. Jordan watched the balls arc through the air, as though plowing furrows through the humid dampness. They skirted the sky like tiny sails at sea, and the trees’ shadows barred the field as the sun drew to the horizon.

  It was dusk by the time baseball practice ended. After saying goodbye to the team, Jordan began to make her way home. She walked the same narrow road her taxi had followed that morning, passing a fire station with an almost comically large statue of a fire extinguisher out front. This was followed by rows of houses with yellow lights in their windows.

  After a few minutes, she came to the largest, and only, major roadway through town. The north-south highway ran the entire length of Ogawa, primarily used by commuter vehicles and shipping trucks passing through on their way to larger cities. Jordan had yet to explore all of Ogawa, but of what she had seen, she could count every stoplight on one hand, and all of them along this single roadway.

  Jordan crossed the highway via an underpass and made her way toward a Lawson store just off the road. The convenience store’s blue-and-white sign cast a pale light across its parking lot. Jordan pushed open the door and felt a sweep of conditioned air across her flushed face.

  Though she had done little but stand and shake hands all day, Jordan was exhausted and hungry, now that the nervous tension began to loosen its grip on her stomach. She passed aisles of snack foods on her way to the refrigerators along the back wall.

  Jordan skipped over the sandwiches, from egg salad to yaki soba noodles piled in torpedo rolls. She selected two onigiri: triangular mounds of rice the size of her fist. One was filled with flaked bonito and the other with cod roe, both wrapped in sheaths of seaweed.

  She also grabbed bottled oolong tea and melon pan, a sweet roll crowned with a lattice of sugary crystals. The store was empty, so Jordan went straight to the register, which was manned by a teenage girl.

  The girl smiled politely from behind sleek, dark hair that draped her face, but she showed no other sign of recognition. Not one of her students, then. Jordan offered a greeting and placed a handful of yen and her point card in a tray near the register.

  As she waited for the girl to complete her transaction, Jordan’s eyes fell on a stand of newspapers. The shelf contained the national Mainichi Shimbun newspaper and a local publication bearing Ogawa’s symbol in the header.

  The front page’s lead story featured a record-breaking strawberry grown by a local farmer in his greenhouse. Jordan took another glance at the photo of the grinning man, holding a huge fleshy strawberry the size of an apple, and added the newspaper to her purchase. Though she knew she’d be unable to read many of the kanji characters, she hoped she could glean enough information to make small talk around the school.

  She thanked the young clerk and stepped outside. The sky had become inky with only a shrinking swath of blushed light along the horizon. The path to Jordan’s apartment was sparsely lit, so she quickened her pace while she could still make out the deep, treacherous gutters that lined each sidewalk.

  She passed a pharmacy and a grocery store before walking down a narrow side street that hedged in a few dozen houses. When Jordan emerged onto a larger road, she could see her apartment building.

  Beside the building was a fallow rice paddy that sprouted with thin, pale weeds. Jordan skirted the edge of the dry paddy and walked in its soft dirt to avoid the shoulder of the dark road. The soft chirping of frogs emanated from the vacant paddy and the lush, water-drenched fields that stretched along the opposite side of the road.

  Jordan entered the apartment building’s stairwell and climbed the steps to its second floor. Her apartment was flanked by two identical spaces that mirrored those below. She had yet to meet any of the building’s other occupants, who either kept to themselves or held different schedules than hers. Jordan saw only two cars in the parking lot and could barely make out the sounds of a television behind her neighbor’s door.

  As she entered her own apartment, she took off her shoes in the recessed entryway and placed them in her shoe shelf. She had no indoor slippers, enjoying instead the feel of the warm wooden floor beneath her bare feet. The entryway opened up into the kitchen, which was connected to the living room past sliding glass doors.

  Jordan had been more than pleasantly surprised by the amount of space when she had moved in just the day before. She had imagined she might have to live like a sardine in a tin or squeeze into a pod-like room, as popularized by hotels in Tokyo.

  Instead, she had a furnished kitchen with a small table and two chairs, a living space with a television, a three-tatami bedroom, and separate toilet and bath rooms. It wasn’t much smaller than the loft in Las Vegas she had just moved from.

  Jordan was still getting used to calling the apartment “home,” and its interior gave little indication of who lived there. The furnishings had accumulated over the last decade, as the assistant language instructors before her had come and gone. They had created a hodgepodge of personal aesthetics, from a vintage bookshelf to zebra-striped couch cushions.

  Advised by her Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program counselor to bring just two large suitcases’ worth of belongings, Jordan had packed only clothes, personal necessities, and a few teaching aids—nothing to distinguish the place as her own yet.

  She dropped her purse and jacket in a pile on the kitchen table and fished a bonito onigiri and the oolong tea out of their plastic bag. Jordan sat down with a sigh and nibbled the crisp, salty seaweed on the onigiri, unfolding the newspaper with her other hand.

  The publication was thin, especially for a weekly edition, and she thumbed through the local and national news sections in no time, only unders
tanding a portion of the content. Jordan turned to the recreation section and saw a photo of Ogawa High School’s baseball and kendo teams posed in solemn groups. She recognized Kenji, Ryusuke, and most of the other boys from that afternoon, though it was odd to see them so unsmiling.

  The article was positive, either boasting of the baseball team’s record or their promise for the season. She couldn’t be sure without consulting a dictionary, so she flipped to the next section. Birth announcements and obituaries.

  Below the photos of plump, soft-cheeked babies, an image in the obituaries caught Jordan’s eye: a serious teenage boy with wire-thin glasses. A kanji character below the photo read “Yuki,” and Jordan’s pulse tripped as she scrambled for her phone to bring up Google Translate.

  Yuki Watanabe, age 15. Survived by his mother and father, Shiori and Hiroshi Watanabe, and younger brother, Shun. Yuki loved science and hoped to one day become a chemist. He will be sorrowfully missed by his family and his friends at Ogawa High School. Memorial services will be held on September 4 at the Yamashita Funeral Home.

  Jordan remembered Akira from that morning, Yuki’s best friend, and she felt a pang. Familiar feelings of grief began to curl their cold fingers around her neck, her wrists.

  Jordan closed the paper quickly and finished the second onigiri. Minutes passed with her doing nothing but staring at a few grains of rice that had fallen on the table. Finally, she heaved herself from the chair and went to the writing desk in the corner of the living room. Only an unadorned photo album sat on the desk―the single nonessential Jordan had allowed in her overstuffed suitcases.

  She touched the cover of the album, hesitating for a moment before letting it fall back to expose its glossy leaves. From the book, her own face looked back, her mouth open with laughter and cheeks blushed by the sun. On either side of her stood her four siblings with their arms thrown over one another’s shoulders. Both of her sisters and one brother were dark brunets—the other brother fair-haired like Jordan—but the upturned noses and high cheekbones they all shared gave them away as family.