The first day of band arrived at my small midwestern high school. It was my junior year, and I was all set to take over the first chair trumpet. The only other trumpet above me last year did not come back. I walked into the band room and there sat Hiyori, the Japanese exchange student, in my chair. She was short, plain, and her short, black hair hung in an unfashionable style. I thought she was not at all pretty or cute. "Oh well," I thought, "she is a year older than I am. She probably should get the higher chair, but this will be a long year." Dejectedly, I sat down in the second chair and looked over at her.
"Hi," I said as friendly as I could.
"Hi." She returned the greeting but did not smile.
"So much for being friendly," I said to myself.
Then the band director stepped up onto the podium, introduced herself, and welcomed us. Immediately, Hiyori looked at me in bewilderment. "Wha-?" she questioned, mystified.
"Great!" I thought, "She doesn't even speak English."
I repeated what the director said, and from that point on, it became my duty to slowly repeat any instructions until Hiyori understood them. It was a duty that I grudgingly fulfilled.
Next we tried playing our first song. Hiyori was less than spectacular. In fact, I thought I could play better than she could without even trying. She had simply stolen my chair; therefore, I did not like Hiyori. And, in response, she did not like me either.
A few weeks later, the African-American tuba player walked into band with his hair in cornrows. As soon as she saw him, Hiyori's eyes grew large as she stared. At that point, she jumped up and excitedly ran over to him.
"T-touch?" she inquired, almost leaving the floor with each bounce of excitement.
He just laughed and said, "Sure. Go ahead."
"O-o-o-oh" was the only thing Hiyori could say as she touched his hair. This was a routine that was repeated every day for a week. And, every day my thoughts were, "And she's a year older than I? She looks and acts like a little kid!"
Her histrionics confirmed my feeling that she was weird and was not to be liked. It never occurred to me that, perhaps, she had never seen anything like cornrows before.
Two or three months later in early winter, I finally admitted to myself that Hiyori played better than I did. She practiced more. By now, she had made friends with other people in the band and taught them to say hello in Japanese. My dislike and jealousy of her had eaten at me until I couldn't stand hearing the other kids use her greeting. There was no way I was going to use it.
Later in the winter, I decided I wanted to date Clarissa, the Brazilian girl, who happened to be Hiyori's best friend. Those girls always ate their lunches alone in the school lobby, so to talk to Clarissa, I joined them on occasion. Hiyori was always quite talkative, and always talked to Clarissa instead of me. However, while I was there, I learned more about Hiyori. She watched guys like most girls do, her boyfriend was a catcher on a small team in Japan, she liked baseball, and her favorite baseball player was the L.A. Dodgers' Hideo Nomo. I also found that Hiyori was quite funny and had a good sense of humor. I was beginning to think that perhaps Hiyori was just a normal teenage girl, only a little strange.
In early spring, the girls started eating outside. One day Clarissa was being a little "cold" toward me and walked off, leaving Hiyori and me alone on the swings. Feeling lonely and awkward, I started to actually talk to Hiyori. We talked about baseball and Nomo. I found her willing to talk but a little reserved. She still could not really speak English. The year had worn on, and Hiyori became less of a threat. After that, I talked with her in band about other topics. I found that I was not the only person whom she had rubbed the wrong way. She would say things like, "I hate her," or, "Mrs. Smith hates me." However, she did become a little friendlier toward me. I realized that maybe Hiyori needs friends, and that she might make a good one.
A few weeks later, I went to the local flea market. While flipping through some baseball cards, I saw a Nomo card for 25 cents. I thought Hiyori might like it, and I thought it might be a gesture of good will. I was tired of the bad feelings between us, and she was growing on me.
When I gave the card to Hiyori, she looked at it and said, "Oh, Nomo! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" She was bouncing up and down now. Instead of thinking how degrading her histrionics were, I laughed. I thought she was cute.
The next weekend, the band went to Chicago on tour where we stopped at a mall for lunch and some shopping. In the mall's restaurant, I carried my food to a table and sat down waiting for the other guys to come join me.
"I sit here?" Hiyori's question startled me. I expected her to sit with her girlfriends, but certainly never with me. We were not that good of friends.
"Sure. Why not?" I replied.
She stayed with the guys and me the rest of the day. That cemented it. We were friends now. After that, we treated each other like friends. I teased her about another guy in school, we had a "war" with paper throwing stars, and I willingly helped her with her homework. I remember spending half an hour trying to explain the difference between the two Josephs in the Bible to a girl who had never seen a Bible before and only understood a little of what I was saying. Helping Hiyori was fun now. Either she or I had changed. She was beautiful now.
By graduation, Hiyori had become more than a friend; she was almost a sister. At graduation, as I was saying good-bye to my friends that I would probably never see again, I did not cry. I did not even cry when I said good-bye to Clarissa, whom I had been dating. However, when I told Hiyori good-bye I could not stop the tears.
Sayonara little sister.
- Richard Wright
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Richard Wright Copyright 1999