Tea With Milk (2 page)

Once she was inside, it was Masako who stared.

There were beautiful things to buy. There were restaurants and cafés and hair salons, even a theater. Am I really in Japan? she wondered. She walked aimlessly, whispering to herself, "What if I ... Maybe I should..." Her heart beat faster and faster. She felt dizzy and confused.

Finally she went up to the office and asked if there were job openings. A clerk handed her an application form. As Masako filled it out, she thanked her mother for making her attend the Japanese high school, for the calligraphy lessons.

In the evening she sent a telegram to her parents. She was going to live and work in the city. She would come and get her clothes on the weekend.

The next morning Masako returned to the department store office. No one had read her application yet, the clerk said. Masako asked to see the manager. She was very insistent. After a while, a supervisor interviewed her.

"Can you really drive a car?" he asked, looking at her application. "I've never seen a woman drive."

"Many women drive in America," she said.

"I see." He nodded and picked up his telephone.

Soon a girl appeared and took Masako to a changing room and gave her a uniform. An hour later, Masako was driving an elevator cage up and down, bowing to customers, and announcing the floors.

She rented a room in a rooming house for university students. Her parents were not happy, especially her mother. It was shameful for ladies to work, she said. Masako did not tell her she was an elevator girl.

It was not long before Masako became bored with her job. "Could I do something else?" she asked the supervisor.

"You can stand by the main entrance and bow to the customers," he said.

"Only bowing? All day long?" she asked.

He nodded.

Masako returned to her elevator. No wonder ladies don't work in Japan, she thought with a sigh.

In the afternoon, as she brought down the elevator, she noticed that a small crowd had gathered in the lobby. In the middle stood the supervisor, bowing and waving his arms at a family. Suddenly Masako flushed with excitement. The family was speaking English!

"Can I be of any help?" Masako asked from behind the crowd.

"You sound like an American," a little boy said.

"And you sound like an Englishman," Masako said.

"Thank goodness," the Englishwoman said. "Tell us where you keep your hot-water bottles and umbrellas."

"And handkerchiefs," the man added.

Masako told them, and as the smiling English family left, the supervisor said to her, "I have a new job for you."

Masako became the store's guide for foreign businessmen. She had to wear a kimono for the job. How funny, she thought, that she had to look like a Japanese lady to speak English. The odd thing was that the kimono did not seem so uncomfortable now.

After some weeks, Masako noticed a young man who joined her tour two days in a row. She saw him again on the third morning. He did not look like a foreigner, and so she said to him in Japanese, "Surely you must know every corner of the store by now."

He smiled and said to her in English, "It would give me great pleasure if you would have tea with me." She stared at him.

"I went to an English school in Shanghai," he explained. "They called me Joseph. Won't you have tea with me?"

"I would enjoy that very much," she said in her very best English, and bowed as a proper Japanese lady should.

They met later and had tea in a nearby café.

"Well, Miss Moriwaki," Joseph said, looking at Masako's business card.

"I'd like it if you'd call me May," she said. "Did you always drink tea with milk and sugar?"

"It's how we used to have it at school, with crumpets," he said.

"So what brings you to the store three mornings running?"

Joseph laughed. "I work for Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. I was transferred here six months ago and I haven't had a real conversation since. Then I heard you speaking English at the store the other day."

"What a patient man you are," she said, laughing. "And I'm glad you came back. This is the first real conversation I've had in a whole year."

"Are you planning to stay in Japan?" May asked.

"That depends," he said. "If you have certain things, I think one place is as good as any other."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, a home, work you enjoy, food you like, good conversation. How about you? Would you like to go back to America?"

"I think so, someday," she said. "I wouldn't have to be such a proper young lady there. I could get a job or drive a car and nobody would think anything of it."

And that was the beginning of their friendship. They often met after work and on weekends. One night in the late fall they had dinner at a restaurant they liked. After a while May noticed that she was doing all the talking and Joseph was not eating his food.

"Are you all right?" she asked. Joseph nodded but said nothing.

As they left the restaurant May said, "Tell me what's wrong."

"They are transferring me," Joseph said.

"What?"

"They are sending me to another office."

"Where?"

"Yokohama."

"No!"

They walked in silence until they came to the Kobe harbor. Finally Joseph said, "Yokohama isn't that far away."

"I'm glad it's not in China," May said. "Look, Joseph. I came here on a ship like that."

"You're thinking about San Francisco, aren't you?"

Now May looked away.

"I went to an English school because my foster parents were English."

"Foster parents? You were adopted?"

Joseph nodded. "There were six of us, all adopted and all scattered now and all looking for a home. May, home isn't a place or a building that's ready-made and waiting for you, in America or anywhere else."

"You are right," she said. "I'll have to make it for myself."

"What about us?" Joseph said. "We can do it together."

"Yes," May said, nodding.

"We can start here. We can adopt this country," he said.

"One country is as good as another?" May smiled. "Yes, Joseph, let's make a home."