Full Cicada Moon
DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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Copyright © 2015 by Marilyn Hilton
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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.
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,