Obasan Chapter 20 Summary

  • This whole time Naomi and Stephen have not gone to school. Some of the other kids go to Japanese classes, but Uncle Sam doesn't think it's a good idea to seem too foreign. Stephen and Naomi don't mind.
  • Stephen enjoys running around without his cast. It's springtime now and all of the nature in Slocan is bursting into life, a perfect time for Stephen and Naomi to play. They go out into the forest to find mountain vegetables for dinner.
  • By June they have been attending school for one month. It's a Japanese-only school, and they have made some friends. A boy named Kenji, and a girl named Miyuki. Miyuki is shy but Kenji seems aggressive because he takes a stone and throws it off of a cliff so that it will hit a chicken coop. Together, the four children make their way up to the highest lookout point in Slocan. From way up there the houses in the town look tiny.
  • They see a large object fall into the forest, and Kenji immediately says it has to be the Kingbird. What's the Kingbird? We don't know, but apparently it cuts off your tongue when you lie. This freaks Naomi out enough that she spends the afternoon thinking about it and even dreams of the Kingbird coming for her.