A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki Read Free Book Online Page B

to her sides, spreading the wide black sleeves of her robes like a crow stretching its wings and preparing to
fly. She stood like this for a moment, perfectly still, then brought her arms together in front of her body and started swinging them back and forth. Her sleeves flapped and filled with air, and
just when it looked like she might take off, she appeared to change her mind, and instead reached around and clasped her fingers behind her, pressing them into the small of her back and attempting
to arch her spine. Chin tilted upward, she examined the moon.
    Up, down.
    The smooth skin on her shorn head caught the light. From a distance, where Ruth stood, it looked like two moons, talking.

Nao
    1.
    Timing is everything. Somewhere I read that men born between April and June are more likely to commit suicide than men born at other times of the year. My dad was born in May,
so maybe that explains it. Not that he’s succeeded in killing himself yet. He hasn’t. But he’s still trying. It’s just a matter of time.
    I know I said I would write about old Jiko, but my dad and I are having a fight and so I’m kind of preoccupied. It’s not really a huge fight, but we’re not talking to each
other, which actually means that I’m not talking to him. He probably hasn’t even noticed because he’s pretty oblivious to other people’s feelings these days, and I
don’t want to upset him by telling him, “Hey, Dad, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re having a fight, okay?” He’s got a lot on his mind and I don’t want to
make him even more depressed.
    What we’re not really fighting about is me not really going to school. The problem is that I screwed up my high school entrance exams, so I can’t get in anywhere good, so my only
option is to go to some kind of trade school where the stupid kids go, which is so not an option. I don’t particularly care about getting an education.
I’d much rather become a nun and go live with old Jiko at her temple on the mountain, but my mom and dad say I have to graduate from high school first.
    So right now, I’m a ronin, which is an old word for a samurai warrior who doesn’t have a master. Back in feudal times, samurai warriors had to have lords or masters. The whole point
of being a samurai was to serve a master, and when your master got killed or commited seppuku 32 or lost his castles in a war or something, that was it.
Snap!
Your raison d’être was gone, and you had to become a ronin and wander around having sword fights and getting into trouble. These ronin were scary dudes, kind of like what
the homeless guys living under tarps in Ueno Park might turn into if you gave them really sharp swords.
    Obviously I’m not a samurai warrior, and nowadays ronin just means a dummy who screws up her entrance exams and has to take extra classes at cram school and study at home while she works
up enough enthusiasm and self-confidence to take the test again. Usually ronin have graduated from high school and are living with their parents while they try to get into university. It’s
pretty unusual to be a junior high school ronin like me, but I’m old for my grade, and actually now that I’m sixteen, I don’t have to go to school if I don’t want to.
That’s what the law says, anyways.
    The way you write ronin iswith the character for wave and the character for person, which is pretty much how I feel, like a little
wave person, floating around on the stormy sea of life.
    2.
    It’s really not my fault that I screwed up my entrance exams. With my educational background, I couldn’t get into a good Japanese school no matter how much I
crammed. My dad wants me to apply to an international high school. He wants me to go to Canada. He’s got this thing about Canada. He says it’s like America only with health care and no
guns, and you can live up to your potential there and not have to worry about what society thinks or about getting sick or getting shot. I told him not