When I tell a story of my childhood, I sometimes preface the story with, “Look, I was an especially slow child.” Truth be told, I don’t think that was quite true. I think I was an especially confused child with a tendency to overthink everything without even knowing, confusing myself even further. I emphasize this because a lot of trouble could have been avoided if I’d simply asked questions or admitted to not understanding more often.
It was entirely situational. In many cases, I could openly ask questions, or just flat out say, “I don’t understand.” But those were cases where I could see that it was permitted, or even accepted. The moment that a person started talking with the assumption that I of course knew what they were talking about, I would not ask.
I don’t remember my early days in Japan well enough to say whether or not I tried asking or admitting to not knowing. In many cases, it was obvious that I didn’t understand. But children are not naturally granted the ability to explain. In most cases, if I’d be confused, the other children would repeat the same words, only more slowly and loudly.
My parents couldn’t afford an international school, and I was young enough that I was just plonked straight into preschool. I’ve been told that my parents wanted to wait awhile to put me in school, but I was insistent. I wanted to go to school immediately.
They found a nearby preschool and took me there to see it. I didn’t care about anything except that I’d get to be in school again. I said I wanted to go there. My parents folded.
Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me before I started that this would mean that I would have to speak Japanese all day, everyday. On my first day, a girl came up to me while I was playing in the sandbox and said, “Okatazuke!” I stared blankly at her. She repeated, “O-ka-ta-zu-ke!” Bored of the repeated syllables, I turned away and back to the sandbox. She went away. Momentarily, the teacher came to me.
“Clean up,” the teacher explained to me through her heavy accent, pointing to the words scribbled on a sheet of paper. At last I understood, and I obeyed. The next day, when a child went around calling, “Okatazuke!” I knew what to do. (I feel that it is important to explain that she didn’t actually speak English. She had minimal knowledge of English and abundant knowledge of children, and somehow this was enough to tide us over for the week or two when I entirely could not understand Japanese.)
I gained Japanese vocabulary rapidly, motivated by the fact that no one understood me. But there were also no rules or lessons to guide me. As my Japanese improved, other children came to expect responses from me. I would still stare at the speaker in incomprehension, but now the question would be repeated more times, with rising irritation. There was no such nuance as I-can-follow-most-conversations-but-this-question-has-a-word-in-it-that-I-don’t-know. I was expected to understand, and so I expected to understand…and felt ashamed when I didn’t.
There was a ritual that all the children engaged in when playing as a group. A child who wanted to join the group would chant, in a sing-song voice, “I-re-te!” (let me in) and the children in the group would chant in response, “I-i-yo!” (yes you can). It was like clockwork. No group ever said anything else. So one day, I decided to try. There was a sort of spinning jungle gym that we all loved: a spherical climbing frame with a hollow center, set up on a platform that rotated. We would take turns sitting on the frame and standing on the outside, running in a circle and pulling the bars with us to make it rotate.
On this occasion, after days or weeks of wishing, I had managed to seize the much-coveted spot at the very top. I was lying there looking up at the sky and enjoying spinning, tactfully silent so that when it was time to swap places, no one would notice that I hadn’t moved. My plan worked, and I basked in my success.
That was when a girl came and sang, “I-re-te!” Elated by my cleverness, I decided to try breaking the pattern. “Da~me!” (No) I said amidst the choir of “Iiyo”s.
The girl wilted before my eyes, all the excitement leaving her in a rush. Her head fell and she began to sniffle. This startled me. At no point had I expected crying. As the other children rushed to comfort her, telling her that no, of course she could play with us, I sat up from my perch. Suddenly I felt small and foolish and wished I’d been somewhere less conspicuous than the very top.
“No, don’t cry! You can play with us!” the children said to the crying girl.
“No, I can’t. Someone said I can’t.”
“Who? Who said that?”
She pointed straight at me. Another girl looked up at me. There was no accusation in her look, just confusion. It made me feel like scum.
“When someone wants to play with you, you say yes,” she explained to me. I nodded. She turned back to the crying girl. “See? She understands now.”
“Come on, play with us!” the other children were saying. I was tongue-tied with guilt. The girl didn’t move and continued to sniffle.
“Play with us,” I managed at last. “You can play with us.”
At last, she climbed into the sphere. Her eyes were still watery.
The other children were a lot less concerned with the girl’s hurt feelings than they were when they realized that I’d been skipping turns when I was supposed to be on the outside, rotating the sphere. I obediently climbed down and took to running on the outer side. The other children let the crying girl have the place at the top that I’d vacated.
She and I were never in the same class. I don’t think she went to the same school as I did after preschool. I don’t believe I ever even knew her name. But for the remaining 7 years of our time in Tokyo, I would see her near our apartment from time to time, usually with her grandmother. Even seven years later, the sight of her made me feel guilty and ashamed. I would duck my head and rush past, hoping that she didn’t remember me.