Kira-Kira Read Online Free PDF Page B

it!"
    "Okay." Sometimes Lynn didn't seem to make sense. That was because I was so young and she was such a genius.
    Then she kissed my face and said, 'You're the most wonderful girl in the world!"
    Right then my mother came in with scissors to chop off my long straight hair. This was a ritual all the local Japanese mothers performed the day before they sent their daughters off to school for the first time. My mother cut my hair to my chin and made me sleep in pin curls all night. This was okay with me because Lynn wore curls during the school year, and so I knew it was what big girls did. But when I woke up and took out the bobby pins, I was too shocked even to cry or scream or stomp around the house. I looked like a feather duster! After the shock wore off, I was ready to cry and scream and stomp. "I'm not going to school!" I screamed. "I'm not!" I stared in the mirror, closed my eyes, and stared again. I stomped one foot and then the other. Lynn gaped at me. She looked kind of half amused and kind of half horrified.
    My mother "fixed" my hair by combing it. She said I looked like Ava Gardner, who Lynn said was a beautiful famous actress with about seventy thousand boyfriends. If she was so famous, why had I never heard of her? Still, I liked the idea of looking like a movie star. I calmed down a bit. My father said, "You look like ... you look like ... well, you look awfully cute!" It was the middle of the night, because that's when my parents went to work. They were both running a little late so that they could spend time with me on my first day of school.
    My mother put me in a yellow chiffon party dress. I liked the dress. And I was starting to like my hair. As a matter of fact, I started to think I looked quite ravishing. After my parents went to work, I just sat there and wouldn't move in case my hair got mussed. I wouldn't even let Lynn try to comb my hair because it was already perfect. When Mrs. Kanagawa came over to check on us, she oohed and aahed over how cute I looked.
    I felt like an empress on the way to school. I wasn't even nervous as we walked on the shoulder of the road to school. Lynn was just wearing a jumper, but her hair was curled like mine. She stopped when we stood across the street from the school.
    "That's it?" I said. The school wasn't any bigger than our little apartment building.
    "That's it," she said.
    I was a little disappointed. I didn't understand what all the commotion had been about or why I was wearing my best dress.
    When we walked into the schoolyard, I saw that all the other girls were dressed more like Lynn, in jumpers or plain skirts with white blouses. Lynn walked me to my class line, where I stood on the number—Classroom #100—by myself. All around me girls were playing and talking. They all wore curls, nh°ng no one's hair was as curly as mine. Finally, the bell rang, and about a dozen kids lined up behind me.
    Somebody tapped me on my shoulder, and when I turned around, the girl right in back of me said, "Are you Chinese or Japanese?"
    "Japanese," I said.
    Another girl called out, "What's your native name?"
    I wasn't exactly sure what she meant, but I said, "Natsuko." That was my middle name. It means "summer"—when I was born. My sister's middle name was Akiko, which means "autumn"—when she was born.
    Then a girl said to me, "What happened to your hair?"
    I could tell she wasn't insulting me; she was just curious. I felt my face grow hot. I didn't answer.
    Then the teacher came to walk us into class. She smiled at my dress and said, "Going to a party?" I would have gone home right then, but I wasn't sure I could find the way without Lynn.
    When class opened, the teacher said everyone could sit where they wanted, just for today. All the girls screamed and giggled and rushed this way and that around me. Then they all sat down. At recess I stood in the middle of the schoolyard in my party dress. Once, two girls from my class walked by not far from me, and I called out,