Zō-san

Zō-san is the song at the center of Bee Branch’s World Celebration Day performance: first sung by Galer Street School first graders in Japanese, then repeated in English with elephant movements choreographed by Bee. The performance’s simple image of an elephant calf loving its mother becomes inseparable from the moment Bee sees Bernadette Fox in the gym doorway, then looks up to find her gone. In retrospect, the song’s declaration of maternal love frames the last time Bee sees her mother.

The school performance

On the morning of the celebration, Bee hurries to school after waking late at Kennedy’s house. Kennedy stays behind eating cereal and watching television, while Bee runs down the hill and across the overpass. She reaches the equipment room, where Mr. Kangana and the first graders are holding their final rehearsal, and apologizes as she waves her shakuhachi. The children, dressed in Japanese kimonos, climb on her. These details make the performance feel at once prepared and hurried: Bee has a part to play, but arrives just before the school assembles to watch.

Gwen Goodyear announces the act to the parents gathered in the gym, many of them aiming video cameras at the performers. She introduces the first graders and identifies Bee as the eighth grader playing along. Mr. Kangana gives Bee a signal; she plays the opening notes, and the children begin singing. The arrangement puts Bee in a supporting role beside the younger children, but the music and choreography are also hers to help lead.

The first verse is presented in Japanese, in the text’s phonetic transcription: “Zousan, zousan,” “O-ha-na ga na-ga-I no ne,” “So-yo ka-a-san mo,” and “Na-ga-I no yo.” The children sing in unison, with one conspicuous interruption: Chloe has lost her first tooth that morning and stands frozen, pressing her tongue into the gap. The pause accommodates this small, bodily distraction in the middle of an otherwise coordinated group performance. Then the children move from the Japanese verse to the English version, for which Bee has devised the choreography.

The elephant song in English

The English lyrics preserve the song’s exchange between an elephant and a questioner. The children sing, “Little elephant, little elephant / You have a very long nose.” The answer links the calf to its mother: “Yes, sir, my mama has a long nose, too.” Bee’s choreography makes the comparison visible. The first graders clasp their hands and let their arms hang down like trunks, moving as elephants while they sing. Words, bodies, and Bee’s musical accompaniment combine in a performance built around resemblance between child and mother.

That resemblance gives the song’s later lines their force without changing the small scale of the school event. The children sing, “Little elephant, little elephant / Tell me who do you love,” and answer, “Oh, you know it’s my mama that I love.” The song’s affection is stated plainly, as part of a children’s performance before their parents. Bee laughs because she knows her mother would find it funny that Bee is now the one crying. The moment joins the song’s direct declaration of love to Bee’s own response, rather than making the lyrics a detached background to the scene.

Bernadette in the doorway

As the English verse continues, Bee has a sudden feeling and sees Bernadette standing in the doorway, wearing huge dark glasses. The appearance is brief and visually specific: Bernadette is at the edge of the gym, while the performance is underway before the gathered parents. The scene does not explain why she has come or what she thinks of the act. Bee’s understanding is limited to recognizing her mother and imagining that she would find the reversal in Bee’s tears funny.

The performance continues through its question and answer about whom the little elephant loves. That placement binds Bernadette’s appearance to the lyric’s maternal refrain, but the scene does not turn the song into a conversation between mother and daughter. Bernadette does not speak in the passage. Bee remains with the children and the performance; her attention to her mother is conveyed through the sudden recognition and the laugh that accompanies her tears.

The last sighting

Bee looks up again, and Bernadette is gone. The disappearance is stated without an explanation or an intervening exchange, and Bee identifies this as the last time she saw her mother. That outcome changes the weight of the celebration in retrospect: what had been a school performance of a familiar song becomes the setting for an encounter that ends before Bee can do more than see Bernadette in the doorway.

The passage makes the song memorable through its placement and contrast. Its repeated elephant image is playful and physical, carried by first graders whose arms swing like trunks; its central answer is an uncomplicated expression of love for a mother. Against that public, rehearsed performance, Bernadette’s appearance lasts only a moment, and the finality belongs not to the song but to Bee’s retrospective account of the sighting. Zō-san thus connects the ordinary work of a school celebration—rehearsal, announcement, music, choreography—to a private turning point in Bee’s life.