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him what they should do. I imagined all the men leaning forward in their seats, looking anxiously at Charlie.
    “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing yet. Pete’s probably right. They’ll get the message that they’re not welcome here, and it will probably take care of itself.”
    There were grunts, whether of agreement or disapproval I couldn’t tell, but it was clear the discussion was over. He had spoken. And soon all the men but Jim stood up and made their goodbyes, Pete kissing my grandmother on the cheek and pinching my ear as he left.
    Sitting at the table later, eating the now-dried steak and lukewarm vegetables, I wondered what they’d been discussing. They were upset about someone coming, that much I understood—I pictured an invader of some sort, riding into town on a horse, cutting people down with a sword. And someone connected to this trouble-some presence might even be at my school. I wondered if I should be worried, and if someone would tell my father—maybe this news would even hasten my parents’ return. I was filled with a vague but chilling fear, and I wondered what could possibly be so dangerous and threatening that it so upset the strongest men in town.

TWO
    I found out the next Monday at school. Like every other child in town between the ages of five and ten, I attended Deerhorn Elementary, the old, one-story brick building on the other side of town. It had always been a trial for me to get there. Although I’d figured out the safest routes by now, I sometimes still encountered kids who jumped out from behind trees to scare me or who tried to keep me off their streets. The most persistent of these was a girl named Jeannie Allen. Her house was situated in the cradle of a Y whose right arm led to the school. If she was out in her yard, she’d try to turn me around or chase me down the left side of the Y, adding a half a mile to my trip.
    Jeannie wasn’t outside her house that morning, but arriving at school was no relief. As I entered the hallway, someone shoved me hard from behind, and I couldn’t tell whether this contact was accidental, or a special Monday morning greeting just for me.
    “Morning, niphead,” a fifth grader offered as he passed, and the girls around him giggled. The week before, a group of fourth graders had pushed me against a wall and made me count to ten in Japanese, but today I made it to my locker without further incident. I saw that there were fresh ink marks on the front of my locker, black scrawlings that were supposed to be kanji. The janitor had painted over them several times before finally giving up, and now things just collected, layer upon layer of jagged black marks, spelling out my difference.
    “Your daddy’s a Jap-lover!” a girl hissed behind me.
    “Yeah,” said her friend, “I heard her mama’s a geisha whore.”
    “That can’t be,” said the first girl. “’Cos geishas are pretty. And Michelle’s butt-ugly—just look at her.”
    I didn’t reply—I never replied—and fought the urge to turn and face them. After I got my books, I walked quickly to class and kept my eyes trained on the floor.
    Although technically, as a nine-year-old, I should have been in fourth grade, the school officials had decided when I arrived the year before that my reading and writing in English were spotty enough to keep me back a grade. It hadn’t helped that I’d lived in Deerhorn for more than a month before I’d gone to school; because my grandparents didn’t think I was staying, it hadn’t occurred to them to enroll me. By the time it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere, I’d missed several weeks of the school year already and was way behind my class. So now I was assigned to Miss Anderson’s third grade class, a year below the rest of my age group.
    Penny Anderson was a tall, dark-haired woman in her late twenties. She was completely unlike the teachers I’d had in Japan—both the stern, daunting teachers in the Japanese school, and the friendly but