“Please.” She tugged at her mother’s apron.
“I suppose I could make sakura-mochi,” Eiko said. “If I could find the right ingredients.”
“I’ll find what we need,” Sadie piped in. She sat with her feet on a chair, flipping through a magazine. “I know a few people still in business.”
This would be a very special picnic if her mother was willing to make cherry rice cakes. “Did you hear that, Hiro?” Michiko ran to her brother, propped up in his high chair by a purple pillow. “We are going to have a hanami.”
She looked into his bowl. Several toast fingers covered a floral design. Michiko grabbed the bowl and dumped out the toast. “Look,” she held it up. “It has a cherry blossom on the bottom.”
Hiro blinked. His tiny pointed chin quivered, and his round fat face turned red. He opened his mouth wide and howled. Two large teardrops popped on to his cheeks.
“Sorry,” mumbled his sister as she picked up the toast bits and put them into his bowl.
Hiro smiled through his tears. He clumsily picked up one of the fingers of toasted bread. “Ha,” he grunted and crammed it into his mouth.
“That’s right, Hiro,” Michiko prompted him, “ha-na-mi, say it Hiro, ha-na-mi.”
Hiro crammed a finger of toast into his mouth and reached for another.
Geechan tapped the calendar. “Saturday,” he said. “Our hanami will be Saturday.”
That would be the eighth day of blossoms. Michiko looked out the kitchen window. A few petals lay on the grass. She ran outside and gathered them up.
On Saturday afternoon, Sadie and Geechan spread a futon on the grass beneath the pink blossomed branches. Her mother carried out a large pink china plate. Outlines of cherry blossoms, etched in gold, danced along the edge. They drank green tea from small cups shaped like lotus flowers and feasted on sakura-mochi, butter tarts and thin slices of sponge cake.
Geechan brought Happy outside, and Michiko fed him a few crumbs of cake.
“Now it is time for the entertainment,” Sadie announced. She daubed the corners of her mouth with a napkin, then she rose from her knees and straightened the skirt of her special occasion kimono. Sadie extended her hand to her father. “I bring you Hanaska-jiisan, the story of the old man and the cherry tree.”
Geechan pulled a red silk scarf from his pocket. He tied it around his forehead. From his other pocket he pulled a red tin flute.
Michiko’s mother gasped. She pressed her fingertips to her lips and opened her eyes wide. She gathered Hiro onto her lap and pulled Michiko to her side. “We are going to hear a rakugo,” she told the children.
Sadie told the story in Japanese while Geechan played the flute. Eiko quietly whispered the translation in their ears.
Michiko watched her aunt’s face glow as Geechan’s fingers danced up and down the tiny holes of the flute. While her mother whispered, he made the flute sing.
First, Sadie told them of the miserable old man who sat under his cherry tree every day. Geechan played the flute slowly then made a mean face. She told them he wouldn’t allow anyone else to sit under the tree, even when it blossomed.
Then their mother said, “While eating cherries, the old man swallowed a pit.” Geechan collapsed into a fit of fake choking. Michiko and her mother laughed.
When he sat up, a small branch stuck out of his headscarf. Michiko understood that a cherry tree now grew from the top of the old man’s head.
She listened carefully and guessed at parts of the story. “Everyone made fun of him because of the tree in his head,” she said to Hiro. Her mother nodded.
Then Geechan rose up. With great effort, he pulled the branch off and collapsed sideways.
“He pulled the tree out of his head,” Michiko said excitedly.
Geechan reached for a small bowl. He placed it on his head. He walked about the yard, balancing the bowl and playing his flute at the same time. Sadie danced about him, fluttering her fingers up and down around him.
“Auntie Sadie is showing us rain,” said Michiko. “Did the hole in his head fill up?”
Her grandfather sank to the ground. He put down his flute. He took the small glass bowl from his head and picked up the goldfish bowl. He walked about the yard holding the bowl with Happy on his head.
“The hole in his head became a fish pond,” Michiko’s mother told her.
From behind the tree, Sadie took out a stick with a string. She dangled it over the bowl.
“She’s pretending to fish,” Michiko shouted. “Did she catch it?” Her mother nodded. She placed her finger on her lips for a quieter ending.
Sadie removed the fishbowl, and Geechan jumped up. He pretended to be mean and angry. He felt the top of his head. His hand went down his neck and along his back. He slumped and rolled behind the tree.
Sadie put the fishbowl where he sat and told them what had happened in Japanese.
Eiko whispered, “The mean old man turned himself inside out trying to find his fish, until he ended up at the bottom of the pond. All that was left was water.”
Michiko and her mother clapped their hands. Hiro looked about and copied them.
Geechan came out from behind the tree and took a bow. Sadie folded her hands and sank to the blanket.
They sat quietly as the soft early evening breeze caressed their faces. A few petals floated onto the blanket. Hiro yawned. The breeze grew stronger. Suddenly they were in the midst of a flurry of white blossoms.
“Sakura fubuki,” Geechan announced. He held his hands out to let the petals slip through his fingers.
“That’s right,” her mother said, “a cherry blossom snowstorm.”
“Looks like I can still bring down the house,” Aunt Sadie bragged.
Everyone laughed. To Michiko, it seemed as if the cherry tree were laughing too. Her only wish was that her father had been there with them.
Four
The Locomotive
Michiko felt like an overstuffed sausage. Sadie had insisted she wear as much of her clothing as possible to save space in their luggage. First, she put on her sleeveless sundress with the large pockets. Over it she wore a green plaid dress with puffy sleeves. Then she buttoned her long sleeved white cotton blouse over the top and stepped into her new navy wool skirt. When her arms went into the sleeves of her brown hooded coat, the shoulders bunched. She carried her blue straw hat with the white daisy by its elastic string.
The great black locomotive hissed and groaned as the stack churned out white smoke.
Eiko lifted the two cases at her side and moved towards the car in front on them. Michiko
