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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 165: Takano 135
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 342
Since Uncle Brian was up making breakfast before the eight-thirty service, Tommy joined him, tossed on her skirt and blouse, and came to church with him. The ladies were all to her mind very overdressed, and all wore hats, some of them with lacy veils which didn’t really obscure anything so had to be pro forma. She saw only one other girl near her own age, whom she was pleased to see was wearing a skirt and blouse and no headwear.
She joined everyone else at the coffee hour (poorly named, as it was only about thirty minutes), and noticed that it was poorly supplied for anyone who didn’t drink coffee or tea, but she made herself a cup of tea, heavy on the cream and sugar, and took a couple of the shortbread cookies with her. Since Brian had been introduced as the new choir director most of the attention was on him, and she settled in a chair along the wall.
The girl Tommy had seen in church abruptly plopped down next to her. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Tommy answered. The girl was probably thirteen or fourteen, younger than her own apparent age and much younger than any measure of her real age.
“I saw you in church,” the girl continued. “I’m Megan Fairchild.”
“I’m Tomiko Takano.” She almost said that people called her Tommy, but had not yet decided whether she wanted to be friends with this child.
“Tomiko,” she answered. “Do you drink coffee?”
“This is tea.”
“Oh. Isn’t it bitter?”
“Yes. I learned to drink it when I spent a year living in the woods.”
“Oh, cool. What, are your parents missionaries or something?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“So where are they now, and why are you here?”
A lot of questions, she thought. “My uncle Brian got a job with Berkeley Business Systems, and they had an opening for an internship, so he got it for me. I’m learning about designing com--electronic business machines.” She hoped she had successfully deflected any more questions about her parents. In fact, she so didn’t want to talk about them that she thought if the girl--Megan?--pressed, she would just say cannibals and hope that stopped the conversation. But Megan was neither focused enough to persist on the subject nor sensitive enough to get the perhaps way too subtle hint that Tommy didn’t want to talk.
“Are you coming to Sunday School?”
“Hadn’t thought.”
“Oh, do come. It would be good to have someone else there who wanted to be there.”
Perhaps part of it was pity. Part of it was certainly that her time in the woods had just been brought back to mind, and she recognized the need to learn more about her faith. She agreed, and as a quiet doorbell rang and the crowd dispersed, she let Megan lead her to a classroom with about a dozen teenagers. She wanted to sit in the back, to be unobtrusive, but the seats in the back were mostly taken. A middle-aged woman entered, apparently the teacher, and a couple in the rear who had been, she supposed it might then have been called “smooching”, straightened up and pretended they hadn’t been doing anything. A quick assessment suggested to her that they were there to see each other, most of the boys and some of the girls were there because their parents forced them to come, and maybe one boy and two girls, plus herself and Megan, were actually interested in the lesson.
In an overly pleasant I’m-a-nice-teacher voice the woman said, “Good morning class. Today we are going to be looking at the last chapter of John, John 21.
Involuntarily Tommy groaned.
“Is something wrong, miss--I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“No ma’am, I’m sorry. I’m Tomiko Takano--people call me Tommy. I’m staying with my Uncle Brian, your new choirmaster? I didn’t mean to, whatever. It’s just that one of the lessons I taught in my last--place, was from that chapter, before the locals took over running the service.”
“Tomiko’s a missionary’s kid!” Megan said, apparently very proud of this.
“Truly?” The teacher seemed to take this at face value, and asked, “Perhaps you would be willing to share what you learned from it?”
She shrugged. “It’s been several months. Someone had noticed that Jesus filled their nets with fish, and asked whether they could pray for Him to fill their nets with fish. I’d had to think and pray about it for a week. I decided that we didn’t always have all the answers, but that we could always pray for God to provide, as indeed He had been providing. I also noted that the fishermen had brought their own nets, and those people didn’t have nets--they were spear fishers. Also, they didn’t ask for fish, but He gave it to them anyway. And although of course Jesus had fed multitudes with a few fish before that, and he clearly had some fish cooking by the time they got to shore, He still needed some of their fish to feed them, because He asked them to bring some to Him. Anyway, that’s what I remember.”
The teacher looked flabbergasted. “That’s quite a bit,” she said. The suggestion was in the voice that it was more than the teacher herself had seen.
“Well, it was my job to teach, and I took it seriously and did as well as I could.”
“Does anyone have anything else to say about this, or have any questions?” The class was quiet. “I suppose, then, I shall read the passage, and we can discuss it further after that,” which she did.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #518: Versers Plan. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
