Heartbreaker
(Winter 2009)
2-Thumbs Sideways?
Though small, the theater wasn't crowded, about two-thirds of the seats taken. The Pines family arrived about ten minutes before showtime and found seats on the center aisle about halfway back. Right away, Mabel hopped up on her knees, facing the back of the auditorium, before turning around and sitting on her heels. "Something's not right here," she said, though softly.
"What's wrong?" Mr. Pines, sitting to her left, asked.
"Where's the kids?" Mabel asked. "Where are the sick girls my age? Look, just old people as far as the eye can see!"
"I wish you wouldn't use the word 'sick' to mean 'great,'" her mom, to Dipper's right, scolded mildly.
"I asked her not to, Mom," Dipper said.
"You're avoiding the problem!" Mabel said, finally plopping down. "How come we're nearly the only kids here, Mr. I-Know-Secrets? Huh?"
Dipper said, "This is an art-house theater, like Dad said. That means that a lot of people who come here are grown-ups who're interested in movie technique. Uh, and cartooning as an art. And this is a Japanese film."
"Don't Japanese people have kids?" asked Mabel.
"Yes," her dad said, "and if you'd looked more carefully, there's a Japanese family three rows back. I count four children and two parents."
"Oh, then that's OK," Mabel said. "Hey, can I have some money for—"
"They don't sell popcorn at this theater," Dad said. "No concession stand."
"My life is over," Mabel muttered, shrinking down.
"Don't pull your sweater over your head," Mom said. "We're here because you wanted to see the movie."
"Oh, that's right," Mabel said, straightening up again. "We want the show! We want the show! We—why isn't everybody joining in?"
"It's about to start," Dipper said. "The lights are dimming."
"Yay!"
The movie began with a bright blue sky and drifting white clouds. A man's voice spoke about the weather—in Japanese.
The English translation appeared at the bottom of the screen.
"What?" Mabel asked in a fierce whisper.
Then a little girl, lying on her back in a green field with yellow flowers appeared, staring at the sky. The wind ruffled her hair bow, and she suddenly picked up and shut off a small red radio. She jumped to her feet and ran through a beautiful landscape—a streambed, a river or inlet of the sea off in the background, a quaint old house covered with vines—the girl picked up a black cat and leaned in a window, calling something in Japanese.
The subtitle read, "Mother!"
"I have to read?" Mabel asked.
Dipper leaned toward her. "It's a Japanese movie. Those are subtitles. They let you know what the characters are saying."
"This is like Homework, the Movie," Mabel complained.
However, she settled back and soon got into the flow of the story. There were moments when she laughed out loud, moments when she groaned, "Oh, no!" and other moments when she gripped Dipper's arm so tight that it hurt—like when Kiki fell off her broom and plunged down toward the earth, or when she desperately tried to rescue a friend who was barely clinging onto a tower.
When the movie ended, there was applause. As they got up from their seats, Dad asked, "How did you like it?"
"It was funny and the art was beautiful," Mabel said. "The reading part, not so much."
"The film's never been widely released in the United States," Dad said. "I think the video recordings may be dubbed, though."
"Well, that's OK, too." Mabel said. "What does that mean?"
Dipper said, "It's like the anime cartoons I watch sometimes. They take off the Japanese sound track and put on an English one."
"Huh. I didn't know—hold up a minute!"
The Asian family was in the aisle just behind them. Mabel waved. "Hi! My name's Mabel. I'm nine and I'm learning to knit! I just wanted to ask—are you Japanese?"
Smiling, the young father said, "We are. We're the Itos."
"We're the Pines family!" Mabel said. "What I wanted to ask you—"
"Don't be rude," Mrs. Pines cautioned.
Mabel did a little bow from the waist, like Kiki in the movie. "Without being rude, Mr. Ito, I just wanted to ask, did you understand the speeches in the movie?"
"Yes," he said with a smile. "We all speak Japanese."
"Then did the sub—the, uh—Dipper, little help?"
"Subtitles," he said.
"Did the subtitles in English bother you?"
"A little," Mr. Ito admitted. "Sometimes the translation was not very close."
"Well, they bothered me, too!" Mabel said.
"Come along," Mr. Pines told her. "We're holding up the people. Thank you, Mr. Ito."
"You are welcome, Mr. Pines. And Mabel—arigatou."
"Thank you!" she called.
Back in the car, Mabel asked, "Why did Mr. Ito say 'alligator?'"
"He said arigatou," Dad corrected. "That means 'Thank you' in Japanese."
Mabel repeated, "Arigatou. Arigatou. Interesting. Hey, what did everybody think about the movie?"
"I liked it," Dipper said.
"I couldn't quite get the period," Mrs. Pines said. "Transistor radios, but a Zeppelin right out of the thirties, and an old-fashioned airplane. And witches on broomsticks just an everyday thing!"
As he started the engine, Mr. Pine said, "It's a fantasy world, I think. Not our world, but another one stuffed with things that Hayao Miyazaki just likes. The plot was a little odd, but that's probably the difference between Japanese and American story-telling."
He had lost Mabel at "fantasy world." She said dreamily, "One day I want to live in a world with just everything that I like."
"Can't," Dipper said.
"Can, too, if I try."
"No," Dipper said. "You know why?"
"Why?"
Dipper was not a good singer, but he began, "It's the real world after all, it's the real world after all, it's the real, real world—"
"Don't argue in song," Mom said.
They stopped at the mall—Mabel talked them into letting her buy a bag of jellybeans from a kiosk, a treat to replace the popcorn she didn't get at the movies—and Mom said, "Don't start to eat them now. Wait until after dinner."
"You always have to wait for everything good," Mabel complained.
With Mom's mission done—both her children now had new pairs of shoes—they started back to the car for the drive home, but Mom said, "Oh, wait, we need to go in here."
"Here" was Mall Hearts, a card-and-gift shop. "What are we going to get here?" Mabel asked.
"Valentine's Day is coming up in a little more than two weeks," she said. "And you're supposed to have cards for the students in your classroom. And anybody else you want to send one to."
"How many kids are in your class?" Dad asked.
"About a million," Mabel said.
Dipper, more accurately, said, "Twenty-seven, counting us."
"How do you know that?" Mabel challenged.
"Six tables in the room, five chairs at a table, Mrs. Wright stands or sits at her desk, and only three of the chairs don't have a student in them."
"Dad," Mabel said, "something's seriously wrong with my Brobro."
"He's observant," Mom said. She sighed. "Twenty-five cards to buy. Great. That means we have to by two packages of twenty-four, plus some extras."
"And two for the teacher!" Mabel said.
"I think one nice one will be fine," Mom replied. "You both can sign it."
"My name goes first," Mabel said. "I'm the oldest."
"By five minutes," Dipper said.
"Don't squabble," Mom told them.
Mabel selected a set of cards decorated with cartoon figures. Dipper got a package with lots of puns—"Knock! Who's there? Don! Don who? Don you wan to be my Valentine?"
And Mom bought a smaller pack of half a dozen cards to make up the difference, plus an expensive large card for the teacher with a red-and-gold bow.
When they got home, Mabel asked for her package of Valentine cards, but Mrs. Pines said, "We won't get the class list until Monday. You'll exchange cards on Friday. That's plenty of time for you to write your classmate's names on the envelopes and your name on the cards."
"But I could add some personal decorations!" Mabel said "Kitties for everyone!" Art-wise, Mabel was in her Cat Period, drawing each kitty with a sort of triangle for a body, a circle for the head, pointed ears, big eyes, a dot of a nose, a mouth like a 3 rolled onto its side, and a squiggly tail.
"I know you'd decorate them. That's why you can't have them until just before the holiday," Mom said. "One cat per card might be all right, but if you started now, you'd have nothing but cats."
"Good point," Mabel reluctantly agreed.
The next day Mabel tried to sketch Kiki on her broom with her black cat. "How does this look?" she asked Dipper, swiveling the drawing pad so he could see.
"Mm, her head's too big," Dipper said. "Pretty good Jiji, though."
"Yeah, heads are hard. That's the black cat's name? Jiji?"
"That's what the subtitles said."
"It was a pretty good movie," Mabel murmured as she started drawing again, this time doing Kiki's head first so she could adjust the body. "I liked it. Except for the having-to-read part. Did you think Kiki was cute?"
"She's a cartoon," Dipper said, frowning down at a multiplication problem. "But, yeah, I guess she was drawn cute."
"If she was real, would you like her?"
"Huh? No, I don't think so," Dipper said. "Why?"
He was stretched out on the floor doing his math homework. She was stretched out next to him, still working on her drawing of Kiki. "Well," she said, "I think Kiki would like you. She liked the boy in the movie. What was his name?"
"Tombo."
"Yeah, him, so she'd probably like you."
Dipper finished the last row of problems and put his homework inside the math book. "Why do you think that?"
"Tombo was a nerd, kinda," Mabel said. "Like you, kinda. No hard feelings."
"No, I guess I am kind of a nerd," Dipper said.
Mabel rolled on her side and, bending her elbow, propped her cheek on her palm. "I'm sorry about what happened before break."
"Yeah." Dipper looked away.
"They were mean to you."
Her brother shrugged. "If it wasn't for Wallis—oh, never mind. It doesn't matter."
"Does too matter. You should have told Mrs. Wright," Mabel said.
"Didn't want to talk about it." Dipper sat up. "Still don't."
What had happened, well, it had happened before, too. Not for a year or more, though. Whomper Wallis—he was a bully and had picked up the nickname that way, though he told everyone it was because he was good at hitting baseballs—lived not too far from the Pines kids. Back when Dipper and Mabel were preschoolers, Wallis picked on Dipper once, mocking his birthmark. And then several other times. Once he had cornered Dipper once in the park and had threatened to punch him until Dipper yelled, "I'm a dip-poop!" loudly.
That was when Mom began brushing his hair forward to hide his forehead.
Now Wallis was in sixth grade, still bigger than Dipper and Mabel, but one of the shortest kids in his own class. One day as the class had lined up in the hall after lunch, waiting for Mrs. Wright to come out of the lunchroom and lead them back to class, Wallis came strutting down the hall. Dipper flattened his back against the wall. He thought Wallis was going to pass without noticing him, but suddenly the bigger boy turned, yanked Dipper's brown cap off, and said, "Hey, look! Pines has a dipper on his head!"
He pushed up Dipper's hair, brayed with laugher, and then as Dipper flailed without hitting anything, Wallis jammed the cap backwards on Dipper's head before turning the corner and vanishing down the side hall.
In a few seconds, Mrs. Wright came back, and Mabel shot up her hand.
"Don't," Dipper pleaded. "That'll make it worse."
And . . .Mabel put her hand down, but it got worse anyway. When school ended, about half a dozen girls crowded around Dipper and Mabel. "Why'd that big kid pick on you?" one asked. "You didn't do anything to him!"
"He's just a big poop-head," Mabel said. "Just 'cause Dipper has a birthmark—"
"Where?" asked Rhonda.
With a sigh, Dipper held up his hair.
"It's like a picture," Susan Tyler said.
"Like the star-thing, the constellation," Margery agreed.
"Yeah, the Big Dipper," Rhonda said.
And then Briana, the finicky girl, made a face and said, "You know, doctors can take those off."
Dipper just shook his head, afraid he was going to cry in front of all those girls. And by the next day, everyone—everyone—in class wanted to take a look at it. Mabel tried to step in again: "If he wanted to show it off, he wouldn't wear the cap or comb his hair over it!"
Later, Dipper told Mabel, "Don't do that. Don't try to talk people out of making fun of me. It doesn't help. It just puts the trouble off for later."
"Aw, Brobro," Mabel had said. "We're out of school for Christmas Break after tomorrow. They'll forget it by the time school starts again."
She was right. They did.
But Dipper still felt separated from everyone else, a loner, and different.
Not so much birth-marked as branded.
