Under the Silk Hibiscus Read online

  As snowflakes fell, I wandered around the roads between the rows of barracks, passing a few people hurrying to get inside their apartments to warm their hands by their stoves. They acknowledged me with greetings, but I only nodded. I stopped at the edge of the camp, right by the long barbed fence that separated us from the rest of America and stared in the direction of Heart Mountain.

  She was draped with endless clouds, but every few minutes, I caught a glimpse of her rocky build. I thought of the verse from Psalms about looking to the hills for help and help coming from God. I wished God would come to my assistance, but I was probably beyond help. Buttoning my jacket up to my chin, I ambled away from the fence, my eyes on the ground.

  After about half an hour, I found myself in front of the hospital.

  A soldier, a toothpick hanging out of his mouth, was leaning against the wall; three girls were next to him. The girls laughed, and the soldier joined them.

  The laughter grated at my nerves, and I knew I had to get away from the scene. But before I walked away, I heard, “Hey, there!”

  Not to be impolite, I replied. “Hello.”

  Mekley, the solider, winked at me. “Look at me, Mori. I’m with three beautiful girls today.”

  I had no words for him. I cut away from him and the girls, away from the hospital where my mother had died, and, increasing my pace, I headed back to our barracks.

  Just before I stepped onto the stair leading up to our unit, a woman’s voice in the distance caused me to pause. Her voice sounded so much like my mother’s. If only. Inside, I flung myself onto my cot and heard Mama’s voice in my head say, “You are my favorite son named Nathan.”

  When the first sob came, I made no attempt to muffle it because I knew I was alone. I recalled my aunt saying earlier that she, Emi, and Tom were invited to tea at Mrs. Kubo’s. Who knew where Ken was. Probably with his gang members doing whatever worthless acts they did. Lenny Tanaka had begged to join the group, and I’d overheard Ken say that, in order to be a gang member, Lenny would have to be initiated first.

  A rap at the front door broke my thoughts. I hoped whoever it was would go away.

  The knocking continued.

  Finding my voice, I called out, “Come in.”

  The door opened, and there stood Lucy. “Hi, Nathan.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “I was actually looking for you.”

  I shot up then, ran a hand over my hair, smoothed out my cowlick. “Oh, come in.”

  She entered and sat on the cot beside me. She was so close, too close. I looked at her shoes, her bobby socks folded neatly around her ankles. Nervously, I shifted from her. Don’t do that, I told myself. Stop being so afraid of everything. With courage borrowed from somewhere, I looked into her eyes. Briefly. Those round and dark eyes, filled with specks of light.

  Quizzically, she studied my face. “What’s wrong?” Concern laced her voice, causing my heart to tear a little bit more.

  “What do you mean . . . ?”

  “Have you been—”

  “No,” I said forcefully. “I mean, no.” This time I removed the edge from my voice.

  “But . . .” Placing her fingers against my chin, she lifted my face. “Really?”

  “Dust,” I said and turned away. “That dust gets in my eyes every day.”

  “I hate the dust.” She placed her hands on her lap.

  I didn’t want her to leave; quickly, I thought of something to ask. “Are you going to church Sunday?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “I’m singing a solo.”

  I tried to smile. Mama sang a solo once, I recalled. I felt my lip quiver.

  “Nathan, are you all right?”

  “Oh . . . yeah . . .”

  I knew that I was not, and that she knew it, too.

  “Why?” The word echoed against the walls. “Why?” This was the question I wanted to ask, and for so long it had sat in my mind like a stone in a brook that could not move.

  Her face softened. “I don’t know. I don’t understand. All I can say is that God loves you, Nobu.”

  I didn’t realize that she knew my Japanese name. “I know He does.”

  “God is watching over us. Even here.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at me and started to say something and then looked deeper into my eyes. “I don’t know why,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know why your mother had to go.”

  Emotion clawed at my chest; I had to look away.

  “Nathan, she is in Heaven. That’s what my mother tells me. But you know what I tell her?”

  “Wh . . . what?” Why couldn’t I be more like Ken? He never stuttered and tears never plagued him.

  “Her being in Heaven now does your family no good, does Emi no good.”

  “What does your mother say after that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I thought adults were supposed to have all the answers. “Nothing to say?” I asked.

  “Once I overheard her say that we don’t understand God’s ways.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “I don’t understand any of what has happened lately. Your mother . . . this war . . . us being pulled away to live here.”

  I glanced around the walls and saw the opening between two slats of wood above Mama’s bed. Did the cold air blow in and kill her?

  Why?

  Lucy took my hand. My vision blurred and my face felt damp. From her jacket pocket, she handed me her handkerchief, but I pushed it away and wiped my cheeks with my shirt sleeve. “You are a good brother,” she said. “I see you with Tom and Emi. You are so strong for them.”

  But that night, as the wind howled like a roaming coyote, and Emi woke with a cry, I didn’t feel like a good brother at all. As I held my sister in my arms and wrapped an extra blanket around her small frame, soothing her until she settled, my thoughts were far from good.

  I wished that God had never let this baby steal Mama’s life. If Mama hadn’t been pregnant, she would have continued to be strong and healthy. The pneumonia wouldn’t have crept in. She would still be here with us, with no vision of Heaven’s perfect beauty. Emi wouldn’t have come into our lives, but Mama would be here.

  The thought was a terrible one, I knew. I would never confess it to anyone. When the wind blasted through the camp early the next morning, I felt it was the loud booming of God’s punishment to me for thinking such a horrible thing.

  Chapter Eight

  Bing Crosby sang, “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” but we saw no romanticizing of snow. Snow, along with the penetrating winds that brought it, made our hands and feet raw and feel like slabs of ice.

  Christmas arrived. Despite the wind, the tinsel we hung on the outside of our door didn’t blow away. Inside, we cut paper angels with scissors and taped them to the walls. We wrapped gifts in brown paper with strings. The gifts were meager, but I didn’t care. Christmas was just another day without my parents.

  What was Papa doing? Why couldn’t he come to see us?

  For nights after Christmas, I dreamed about him. In one dream, there was the sound of a horn and then the camp’s gates gently opened. Proudly, with his head held high, Papa walked through them. He smiled as his children and Aunt Kazuko ran out to meet him.

  The summer sun was hot against our skin, the air as dry as coal dust. And we were happy.

  Papa scooped us up in his arms, laughing. There was so much laughter.

  I handed his daughter to him, and he kissed her cheeks and drew her to his chest. She touched his face with a pudgy finger and nestled against him like she knew exactly who he was and that she belonged to him.

  As much happiness as I felt, I knew that something wasn’t right. Mama wasn’t in the dream. I so wanted her to be, and as the dream played out, I kept hoping to see her.

  Tom said, “Mama wanted to be here, but she’s with Jesus.”

  Papa seemed to understand. He told us he knew about the angels who had whisked her off
, and he was sure that Mama was playing the piano in Heaven right now.

  I said, “She’s coming back here, you know. She is, she is.”

  But they all looked at me like I was one of Tom’s imaginary aliens, and then the sun stopped shining and it started to snow. Without any warning, Papa was gone. One by one, the rest of us made our way back to our barracks through the snow, back to our home that was as cold as the day.

  As we anticipated a new year, we hoped it would bring the end of the war. In our confined humble surroundings, we did the best we could to get through the season. We listened to the radio every morning and evening. Ken and a few others said that they would like to join the military to fight against our enemies. I wanted to tell Ken that, while that was a noble thing to do for our country, once in the army, he would be far from any females. I doubted my older brother could function without an entourage of girls.

  By March, Emi was sitting in her crib, and when we moved her to the floor on a blanket, she was even able to sit on her own there. Tom often knelt down to be with her, a notebook and pen in his hands. The alien stories still prevailed in his mind. Sometimes he read portions of them aloud to Emi. Like Mama, she never laughed at them.

  My desire to get out of the camp to work was still with me as signs of spring showed in minute ways. I wanted to get out to see what was out there as well as earn some money for my family’s needs. I wanted a job, but it seemed that no one wanted to hire me. Every week I asked our project director, several block leaders, and even the women working at the salon when I went there to pick up bottles of shampoo for my aunt. Everybody just looked at me and said they were sorry that Mama had died.

  Some left camp. As long as you left for someplace away from the West Coast, you were free to go. The WRA even encouraged families to leave. Like the Kubos, those in our block had family elsewhere. But unlike Mr. and Mrs. Kubo, once in Chicago or Milwaukee, former internees got along with their daughters-in-laws.

  Perhaps we should move. But where would we go? We had no family anywhere else except for relatives in Papa’s town of Hiroshima, and Mama and Aunt Kazuko’s village in Nagano. We were stuck here. Papa was stuck in Tule Lake.

  I wanted to hear Papa’s voice. I wanted to hear him tell me the family story of the gold watch with the bamboo and crane etchings on the back. I wanted to see his eyes light up with the warmth of excitement as he shared the story. No matter how often he relayed to us how the Mori family was honored with this watch, I never grew weary of hearing it. It was our family’s story, and Papa said every family had one, but ours was the most special.

  After school one cloudy afternoon, Charles entered our apartment to tell me that a sheep farm needed help. “Their hired hand got sick so they need someone to replace him. I asked if they could use us both. Apparently, they want a few of us to work there.”

  “Great!” I said. It was as though sunshine had found its way into my day.

  “Do you know anything about sheep?”

  “No.” How hard could it be? I’d heard that sheep were dumb; I was pretty smart.

  “We have to feed them, take them out to graze, and then clean their pens.”

  “Do we get to shear them?”

  “I wasn’t told that.” He pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.

  “When do we start?”

  “Do you have a pair of boots?”

  “Like rain ones? Or cowboy?”

  “Probably ones that can get dirty.”

  Under my cot was a pair of rubber boots. They had leaked the last time I wore them, but what was a little water on my socks? I was going to work and earn money!

  Charles told me that a bus would come this Saturday morning to take us to the Towson Farm.

  “Only on the weekends?” I asked, making sure that I heard correctly.

  “They know we go to school.”

  “Forget school.” Really, was I learning anything? Ever since the school opened last October, classes had been only a shadow of what they had been like in San Jose. There weren’t enough text books or desks. The chalkboard was a piece of plywood painted with black paint.

  “The block leaders say we need to be in school. We can get plenty of hours in on the weekend. Saturday morning the bus comes at five a.m.”

  “Five?” I swallowed hard. That early? But I pretended that it was no big deal. “All right. How long do we work?”

  “Till about five.”

  I was glad that this was just going to be a one-day a week event.

  “In the summer when we have no school, we can work every day,” said Charles.

  Emi whimpered, and I went to her crib. The air around her was sour and stunk; I knew a diaper change was eminent, but I didn’t want to have to do the task in front of Charles.

  “Don’t you want to know how much we get paid?”

  I nodded and then tried to console my sister who was expanding her lungs. Her wail grew louder until finally Charles yelled, “I’m out of here!”

  He left, leaving me to wonder how much the pay was going to be for taking care of sheep.

  A rickety white bus, covered in dust, was at the camp entrance when I got there. Charles was already on the bus and waved to me from one of the windows. He seemed excited, and I could understand that; I was, too. Two men from another block boarded, and I followed.

  I sat in the seat next to Charles. Charles rubbed a gloved hand over his nose. “This farm is cool.”

  “Have you been to it before?”

  “No, but Mr. Yanagi has, and he said it was a good place to work. They pay every day after you work. We are going to get a whole dollar today.”

  The bus rattled, shook twice, and the driver announced that we were on our way.

  As we rumbled down the road, I shifted in my seat. The seat was lumpy and reminded me of our mattresses at camp, which were filled with hay.

  I hoped I was dressed right for the job and that no one would care that there was a hole in the knee of my dungarees. These were the only pair I had that fit me. A nicer pair I had passed down to Tom because they were too tight in the waist. As I studied Charles, I saw that he, too, had on a pair of blue dungarees, boots, and a cotton jacket. I supposed no one would mind if we both looked a bit worn, after all, we weren’t on our way to church.

  We rode in silence for miles, passing wide vacant spaces. Dawn was just about to break when the bus slowed at a stop sign.

  I turned to my left, and immediately my attention was grabbed by a sign on the front entrance of a women’s clothing shop. With the help of the street light, I was able to read: No Japs Allowed. The print was black, bold, and angry.

  Japs. Whether I read it in the newspaper or saw it on a sign or heard it spoken, it always cut at the core of my heart.

  “I bet they’ve never met a Jap,” Charles said over my shoulder. He pushed his glasses over the bridge of his nose and blinked. Apparently, he had seen the sign as well.

  Once we got through town, the bus picked up speed. Charles and I viewed miles of barren terrain. I wished that the bus would never stop, just continue on and on toward freedom. I wished that the driver would forget how to return to camp and take us on a journey where we could live as real Americans, in houses with white fences instead of in barracks surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers with rifles.

  A few lone farmhouses dotted the landscape like buttons on a shirt. I saw sheep grazing in the fields, the bodies round from their fluffy white and grey coats.

  When we pulled into a gravel driveway beside a milky-white house with green trim, the driver said, “This is it. The Towson Farm!”

  Chapter Nine

  A few hundred yards from the farmhouse sat a rust-colored barn with a silo, surrounded by acres of fields as far as the eye could see—some green, most the color of straw. Wooden fences zigzagged over the land. Horses grazed at the edges of the fences. The peaks of the mountain range beyond the farm were sprinkled with snow and cumulus clouds. It was a scene straight out of a Western; no w
onder this state’s nickname was The Cowboy State.

  Apparently, Charles had done farm work before, and I realized that it was because of his skill that we got the job in the first place. I didn’t know that he was a farm boy; his family had tended to a fifty-acre plum orchard in Vacaville, California. They’d grown a few rows of tomatoes and lettuce, too. Now I knew why Charles missed fresh produce so much in camp.

  Mr. Towson, a middle-aged man in a checkered shirt and baggy dungarees, greeted our group. He assigned Charles and me to feed hay to the horses and clean the sheep pens. I was glad I wore boots. The two other men that had been on the bus with us were told to assist with plowing the fields.

  Charles and I used rakes and shovels to clear out the sheep poop. We added new hay to the stalls and feed in the troughs. The stench was strong, but I suppose no worse than the odor from one of Emi’s diapers. “How much are we getting paid?” I asked, as a blister formed on my thumb.

  “Enough to add to my piggy bank,” said Charles. “I’m saving up for a ticket to San Antonio.”

  If I was correct, that was a city in Texas. “Why there?” I asked.

  “I want to own a cattle ranch,” he said. “I figure that I lease one at first and then buy one.”

  I looked at this squirrely boy with stiff hair and a rosy complexion. I pictured him in a cowboy hat, but the image seemed too far-fetched to believe. A professor at a university, yes, or perhaps a scientist finding the cure for polio, but certainly not a ranch owner.

  At noon, we were told to enter the farmhouse, where we were seated at a long wooden table in an alcove off the kitchen. A woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. Towson, placed bowls of hot chili in front of us, and we were told to take half an hour for lunch.

  I was excited to eat something other than camp food, and as I spooned the chili into my mouth, I was reminded of how real food tasted. Spoonful after spoonful, it was hard to slow down, but then I burned my tongue and stopped to guzzle a glass of water.