Full Cicada Moon Read online

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA/Canada/UK/Ireland/Australia/New Zealand/India/South Africa/China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2015 by Marilyn Hilton

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hilton, Marilyn.

  Full cicada moon / by Marilyn Hilton. pages cm

  Summary: In 1969 twelve-year-old Mimi and her family move to an all-white town in Vermont, where Mimi’s mixed-race background and interest in “boyish” topics like astronomy make her feel like an outsider.

  ISBN 978-0-698-19127-3

  [1. Novels in verse. 2. Racially mixed people]—Fiction. 3. Sex role]—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.5.H56Fu 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014044894

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Front Cover Girl Image © Terry Husebye, Getty Images;

  Additional Images Couresy of iStock

  Jacket Design by Lori Thorn

  Version_2

  For

  Keiko and Robert, Lois and James Wesley,

  and their families

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Flying to Vermont–January 1, 1969

  Hatsuyume

  Waxing Gibbous

  Reflections

  Arriving

  New House

  First Night

  Like Saturday

  Next Door Boy

  Ready for School

  First Day

  Rules

  Shop

  Getting to Know You

  Obento

  Hungry

  Journal

  Notions

  Science Class

  Little Lies

  Downtown

  Farmer Dell

  Others

  Winter

  Karen and Kim

  Cooties

  Notes

  Detention

  Science Project

  Stars

  February Vacation

  The Soda Jerk

  A Girl Who Twirls

  Skating Pond

  Rendezvous

  Snowfall

  Snow Day

  The Mouse Takes the Cheese

  Consequences

  Tears on Glass

  Life in 1968

  A New Outlook

  Spring 1969

  Crocuses in the Snow

  Kimono

  Relocation

  Liars

  Moving Forward

  Stacey’s Birthday

  Light and Dark

  If I Had a Hammer

  Poults

  Math

  Something Important

  April Vacation

  Inheritance

  April Moon

  Hope

  Secrets

  Weirdos

  Sea of Tranquility

  Sign of Spring

  Water and Dirt

  One-Way

  Mama’s Visitor

  Spatial Reasoning

  Looking Forward

  Kind Of

  Moon Viewing

  The A Group

  Best Friends Always

  Dress, Hair, and Makeup

  Spring Thing

  Science Groove

  No Words

  Full Missing Moon

  Bad Dreams

  Learning Japanese

  Party Snacks

  The End of the Beginning

  Summer 1969

  The Question

  Pie, the Moon, and Stacey

  Magicicadas

  Apollo 11

  Room of Kings

  Remember This Night

  The Real Thing

  The Answer

  Good News and Sadness

  Language

  Tilling

  Babysitting Baby Cake

  Going Home

  Jitter Legs

  One Small Step

  Eighth Grade

  New Boy

  We’re Having Mr. Pease for Lunch

  How to Make Corn Bread

  Victor

  Crush

  Fall 1969

  Sit-in

  Civil Disobedience

  The Principal’s Office

  Suspended

  Fine

  Bad News

  The Way We Say Good-bye: One

  The Way We Say Good-bye: Two

  Reformed

  Switched

  Promises

  Where’s Pattress?

  Wheels

  Words

  Pardons

  Homework

  Thanksgiving

  Winter Again

  Another Try

  Winter Magic

  Welcome Back

  The Party’s Over

  Since Never

  Making Sushi

  Decisions

  Best Prize

  Shopping

  In the Mirror

  Excuses

  The Exchange

  Expressions

  Visitors

  Gifts of the Magi

  Oshogatsu—January 1, 1970

  Confessions

  Vermont Neighbors

  Full House

  This Year and Last Year

  Adventure

  Full Cicada Moon

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary of Japanese words in FULL CICADA MOON

  Word List

  Be loving enough

  to absorb evil

  and understanding enough

  to turn an enemy into a friend.

  —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  “That’s one small step for [a] man,

  one giant leap for mankind.”

  —Neil Armstrong

  Flying to Vermont–January 1, 1969

  I wish we had flown to Vermont

  instead of riding

  on a bus, train, train, bus

  all the way from Berkeley.

  Ten hours would have soared, compared to six days.

  But two plane tickets—

  one for me and one for Mama—

  would have cost a lot of money,

  and Papa already spent so much

  when he flew home at Thanksgiving.

  Mama is sewing buttons on my new slacks

  and helping me fill out the forms

  for my new school in Hillsborough, our new town.

  This might be a new year

  but seventh grade is halfway done,

  and I’ll be the new girl.

  I’m stuck at the
Ethnicity part.

  Check only one, it says.

  The choices are:

  White

  Black

  Puerto Rican

  Portuguese

  Hispanic

  Oriental

  Other

  I am

  half Mama,

  half Papa,

  and all me.

  Isn’t that all anyone needs to know?

  But the form says All items must be completed,

  so I ask, “Other?”

  Mama pushes her brows together,

  making what Papa calls her Toshiro-Mifune face.

  “Check all that apply,” she says.

  “But it says just one.”

  “Do you listen to your mother or a piece of paper?”

  I check off Black,

  cross out Oriental,

  and write Japanese with a check mark.

  “What will we do now, Mimi-chan?” Mama asks,

  which means: Will you read

  or do algebra, so you’re not behind?

  “Take a nap,” I say.

  Mama frowns,

  but I close my eyes

  and pretend we’re flying.

  The bus driver is the pilot

  and every bump in the road

  becomes an air pocket in the sky.

  Hatsuyume

  A jolt wakes me up. I was dreaming

  my hatsuyume—the first dream of the new year.

  If I tell my hatsuyume, it won’t come true

  because in Japanese, speak sounds just like let go.

  And if my dream meant good luck, I don’t want to

  let it go.

  I dreamed I was a bird, strong and brown

  and fast

  with feathers tipped magenta and gold.

  I shot straight up into the air like a Saturn rocket,

  then swooped and dove, the sun warming my back.

  I pumped my wings, then glided

  over the desert

  and the sea.

  The air filled my lungs,

  the wind lifted my wings

  higher and higher

  over the mountains

  and above the clouds.

  The moon grew large,

  and I stretched to touch it.

  Maybe it was a good-luck dream

  and this will be a good year

  for Papa and Mama and me.

  That’s what I hope.

  But, what if my hatsuyume meant bad luck?

  Mama says to let go of your bad dreams by telling them.

  Papa says to bury your bad dreams

  in a hole as deep as your elbow.

  The ground in New England is frozen,

  so if I listen to Papa, I’ll have to wait until spring.

  I’ll listen to Mama instead

  and write my dream on paper,

  so either way—good luck or bad—

  my hatsuyume will not be spoken.

  I have never flown before

  but one day

  soar.

  will

  I

  Waxing Gibbous

  I study

  The Old Farmer’s Almanac

  that Santa had put in my stocking

  from cover to cover.

  I like

  reading about the moon,

  and I’ve memorized

  all its names and phases.

  I know

  the moon tonight

  is waxing gibbous, almost

  the Full Wolf Moon.

  It has chased us outside the bus window

  all the way from Boston,

  bounding through the sky,

  skipping across rooftops,

  dodging trees

  like it has one last word

  to tell us.

  I remember

  Papa said

  if you leave eggs under a waxing moon,

  all your chicks will hatch.

  And Mama said

  if you make a wish on the moon

  over your shoulder,

  it will come true.

  I whisper

  to the moon on my shoulder:

  “I wish

  all my dreams will hatch.”

  Reflections

  This bus lulls.

  Some people are reading, some are sleeping,

  two ladies behind us are talking,

  the baby up front chuckles hoarsely,

  someone is sipping tomato soup,

  and in back, Glen Campbell is singing “Wichita Lineman” on the radio.

  All of us who don’t know one another

  are riding together on this Trailways bus to Vermont

  on the first night of 1969.

  It doesn’t feel like oshogatsu, New Year’s Day,

  because Mama couldn’t make ozoni and sushi

  and black-eyed peas and collard greens,

  and we couldn’t sip warm sake from the shallow cups.

  Mama says she doesn’t care about those things

  because we’re traveling to meet Papa.

  But what bothers her

  is that no man crossed our threshold this morning

  (because we don’t have a threshold today),

  and that means we’ll have bad luck all year.

  I told her we can find a man to visit our new

  house,

  but she said, “Too late.”

  The lady across the aisle is knitting a scarf.

  She has been staring at Mama and me

  ever since the sun set.

  I want to stick out my tongue at her reflection in our window

  just to let her know

  I know,

  but that would disgrace Mama

  and disappoint Papa.

  So, I open the Time magazine

  with the three Apollo 8 astronauts on the cover—

  the Men of the Year—

  that came just before we left,

  which Auntie Sachi slipped into my bag at the door,

  with a note:

  Have a safe journey.

  Arriving

  I can tell by the way Mama looks at herself

  in the window, brushes her bangs to the side,

  and runs her finger under her eyes

  that we’ll be in Hillsborough soon,

  where Papa, in the tweed coat he calls “professorial,”

  will meet us.

  She pops a wintergreen Life Savers in her mouth

  and passes the roll to me.

  I take one

  because I want my kiss on Papa’s cheek to be fresh.

  The bus slows down.

  A barbershop, an insurance company,

  a dentist’s office, a grocery store

  all slide by. The air prickles

  and everyone sits up straight and shifts in their seats,

  finishes talking to the person next to them.

  “Hillsborough coming up!” the driver calls.

  The lady across the aisle winds up her yarn

  and tucks her knitting into a tote bag. She looks at me again

  and leans into the aisle. “Are you adopted?”

  “Nani?” Mama asks me. She must have been daydreaming

  or she would have asked, “What?”

  I whisper, “She wants to know where we’re going.”

  Mama glances at the lady and turns into Mifune.

  But before she can pretend she doesn’t speak English,

  I say, “She’s my mom.”

  The lady looks at me, then at Mama,

  and shakes her head.
r />   “No . . . she’s not your mother.”

  The bus pulls up in front of a diner

  and stops so quick

  that we all jerk forward in our seats.

  The driver cranks a handle and

  the door hisses open.

  He disappears outside

  as cold air scampers down the aisle.

  Papa is waiting in front of the diner

  wearing his coat

  and a red-and-gold scarf, Hillsborough College colors.

  When he sees me inside the bus, he waves.

  But I wave harder.

  Outside, I hold his hand in his pocket

  while he counts our suitcases—four plus my overnight case.

  The icy air pinches my cheeks,

  but my heart is warm.

  He drapes his scarf around my throat

  and says, “Now you’re the professor.”

  The knitting lady steps down from the bus

  for a breath of air.

  “And this is my dad. See?” I say, and smile.

  She looks at Papa, at Mama,

  and back at me. Then,

  not smiling, she says, “Yes, I see,”

  and walks toward the diner.

  When I know Mama and Papa can’t see me,

  I stick out my tongue

  so far that it hurts.

  New House

  Our new house smells like varnish and

  balsam needles and mothballs.

  The floors are all wood, except the kitchen and the bathrooms,

  which are linoleum,

  and they creak when I walk around in my socks—

  which I can’t do for long

  because it’s so cold that my scalp tightens.

  Halfway up the stairs is a stained-glass window

  with a picture of flowers and butterflies in a garden,

  like spring.

  Papa opens the cellar door and flips the light switch.

  I peer down the dark, dusty staircase.

  And in the kitchen sink are the bowl and spoon Papa used for his cornflakes this morning.

  He shows Mama the cinnamon-colored dishwasher built under the counter

  and the garbage disposal built into the sink.

  These are firsts for Mama.

  She opens the dishwasher door and pulls out the top rack.

  “Hmm,” she says, and that’s all.

  Papa and I look at each other.

  We know we’ll find out what that means,

  but it won’t be now.

  “This is our room,” Papa says,