Under the Silk Hibiscus Read online

  “Tom,” I said, shaking him awake. “Tom, where’s the watch?”

  He had to have it. He probably unlatched Mama’s suitcase, opened the case and went rummaging through it, saw the watch, liked it, took it out to hold, or to sleep with. My reasoning made sense, and I resumed normal breathing once again.

  As Tom sat up in bed, I searched through his covers and pillow.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Hey, stop!”

  No watch. My stomach sank. “Sorry,” I muttered to Tom as he gave me an exasperated look.

  Ken! The wool blankets on Ken’s cot were rumpled, so maybe he had slept here last night and left early to go out to the dining hall for breakfast. What time was it? I opened the door to see if I could spot my brother walking over to our barracks from the dining hall. In the chill of a new day, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon.

  Aunt Kazuko, who had seemed concerned, suddenly went back to her business-as-usual manner. Using Mama’s cot, she placed Emi on her back to change her diaper. “We need water.” My aunt sounded like a soldier, one of the tower guards. Give her a rifle and she would have fit right in with them.

  I pulled on my shoes and without thinking, grabbed a container off the floor.

  “Wrong one,” said Aunt Kazuko.

  I looked down at it and saw two soiled diapers. The one to carry water from the washroom to our barracks was over by the table.

  Suddenly, Ken entered our living quarters. He was dressed in a wool cap and coat.

  I cornered him as he removed his cap. He reeked of alcohol and cigarettes. “Do you have our watch?”

  “What?” He slipped by my side and made his way over to his cot. From his shelf, he grabbed his mirror and studied his hair in it.

  “Do you have our watch?” I asked again.

  “No.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  My aunt carried Emi over to the table, sat on one of the chairs and from a tin can, pulled out half a cookie. “It has to be somewhere,” she said.

  How could she be eating at a time like this! This was no time for a “pep.” “Where?” I asked with force.

  “Calm down, little bro,” said Ken. “We’ll find it.” He walked over to the stove, opened the door and added coal from another bucket into it.

  My aunt said, “This camp is crazy, who knows who might steal it.”

  “Steal?” The word took my breath away. I slumped onto the foot of my cot.

  Aunt Kazuko said that she must go get breakfast, she was feeling faint, she had to eat something right now, and for me to join her.

  How could the watch be gone?

  “Get water,” she said, standing to warm her hands over the stove. “Then you must eat.”

  “Not feeling like it,” I muttered.

  A knock at our door brought Mrs. Kubo into our barracks. She greeted each of us and then joined my aunt to warm her hands over the stove. “Cold today,” she said. “End of April, but it’s still a frozen wasteland around here. I miss San Jose.”

  “I miss the flowers,” said my aunt. “I miss the red hibiscus.”

  Mrs. Kubo took Emi and cuddled her to her breast as she and my aunt conversed in Japanese. I figured Mrs. Kubo had come over to take Emi so that my aunt could eat breakfast in peace and then do the laundry.

  As my aunt dressed behind the long curtain at the back of the barracks, she said, “We need detergent. Who has some?”

  “Ask the Ohashi family,” said Mrs. Kubo. “They seem to have everything.”

  “They have pretty good prices,” my aunt said. “But I never got laundry detergent from them. How much you think it costs?”

  But Mrs. Kubo was too busy studying my face to respond. “You look pale,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  I was not sure how to phrase what was going on, but I didn’t want to be rude and not reply or my aunt would surely give me grief over that. “I’m just not feeling well,” I said, and as I said it, I realized that it was not at all a lie. My skin was clammy; my heart pounded.

  “You should eat something,” my aunt said from behind the dressing curtain—the name she had given the large piece of material.

  “It’s time for school,” I said.

  “Not yet,” said Tom as he attached his leg brace. “Breakfast first. I’m hungry.”

  “Go with him,” said my aunt, coming out from behind the curtain, now dressed in a skirt and blouse.

  Tom was dressed, too, having mastered the art of getting both undressed and dressed under the covers. He wiggled to the end of the bed and then rose.

  “Go with Tom,” Aunt Kazuko repeated.

  Didn’t she realize that I had to find out what happened to the watch?

  The door banged shut; Tom had left; he was always eager to get to the dining hall.

  Aunt Kazuko chatted with Mrs. Kubo as she buttoned her coat and fastened a scarf around her neck. Then, with a disdained look at me, my aunt headed outside.

  I watched Mrs. Kubo change Emi’s diaper. Only twenty minutes ago, my aunt had done the same thing. How many diapers did Emi go through in a day? How could something so small make so many messes? After school it would be my job to wash out every dirty diaper and hang each one up to dry.

  But before school, I needed to fetch water. This time I picked up the correct bucket.

  After school, I was at it again, asking if anyone knew where the watch was. Tom sat on his rock with a notebook and pencil, dreamily looking out over the mountain range. “I don’t know where it is,” he said as he scribbled a word and then resumed his stare ahead. “I hope you find it.”

  Inside our house, Aunt Kazuko fed Emi her bottle. “I know you are worried,” she said, as she turned from my sister to look at me. “Me, too. I don’t know why the watch would be gone. I am flabbergasted.”

  “You aren’t flabbergasted,” I said.

  “I am so.”

  “You aren’t. Flabbergasted means you are shocked or surprised. You act like you don’t care about the Mori watch.”

  “I am indeed shocked and surprised.”

  The way in which she enunciated made me want to applaud. Had I been in a different frame of mind, I would have.

  Ken entered the room, smelling clean, like he’d just showered. “How is everyone?”

  “You need to wash out the diapers,” my aunt said.

  He held his nose. “I’m busy.”

  “Too bad,” she said. Standing, she burped Emi and then laid her in her crib.

  Ken picked up his comb, added some hair grease to his thick locks and looked proudly into his mirror.

  With one quick motion, my aunt grabbed the comb from his hand. “Other boys help their family.”

  “I’m busy.”

  But our aunt would have none of his excuses this afternoon. “You must do more than run around like a crazy monkey with your gang.”

  We were silent. Had we had a wall clock, we would have been able to hear it tick.

  Ken glared at Aunt Kazuko, motioned for the comb, but she did not hand it back.

  I tasted fear. I’d never seen our aunt stand up to Ken like this. Unable to handle the silence any longer, I blurted, “Does anyone know where the watch is?” Ken acted as though he hadn’t heard me, and so I asked again.

  Lifting the metal diaper container over his shoulder, he said, “Be glad that I’m doing your job for you, Nathan.”

  “My job?” The words stuck, and I wasn’t able to say anymore. Weren’t we all supposed to be helping out? Isn’t that what Papa had written to tell us? Help each other. Take care of each other. But of course, no one knew what Papa had written because I had yet to show his letter to anyone.

  “Everybody works here,” said our aunt. As Ken left the apartment, she called after him. “Tomorrow you can get us coal and help the other families get their coal.” To me she muttered, “He’s a big strong boy, and old people here need his help
.” She puttered around the apartment, taking dried clothes off the overhead lines, folding them and mumbling words in Japanese I couldn’t fully understand.

  “English only!” I called out, to which she threw a sock at me.

  “Mother language is best for when complaining,” she retorted. Then she said something about needing a miracle.

  I tried to focus on my math homework, but after five minutes, I gave up.

  Outside, the wind from earlier in the day had died down, and the sun streamed across the camp.

  Tom was still seated on his rock, writing on one of the pages of his notebook. He looked up at me.

  I sat beside him, and it was then that I noticed he had a strange look in his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “What is it?”

  After a moment of deliberation, he asked, “What if an alien came into our house and took our watch from Mama’s suitcase?”

  Here I was worried sick, and he was talking about something from his active imagination. I moved closer to him and decided I’d let him engage me in one of his stories that he made up in his head. “So tell me what this alien did.”

  In a whisper, Tom said, “I was sleeping.”

  Was Tom going to tell me about a dream? Again? He recently told me in great detail his dream about a Martian and a classroom of toads.

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I was.” He bent toward me, his face just inches from mine. “I was thinking I needed to get up to go use the john.”

  “And?”

  He glared at me, clearly taking the role of a storyteller, one who needs to set his own pace and one who needs a cooperative audience.

  “So I was about to get out of bed to use the john.”

  Irritation grated at every nerve. “Just tell me what happened.”

  Tom gave me a bewildered look. “I am,” he said empathically.

  “All right then, go on.”

  “I turned over from my left side to my right side. But before I could sit up, I heard something. I listened over all the other usual noises and then I heard something different. I was sure that it was a noise beside Mama’s cot.”

  “A noise? What kind?”

  “The noise sounded like footsteps and then it stopped.” He paused and waited a few seconds before continuing. “The door opened, and I saw a person leave our house.”

  “A person?”

  “Yeah. He was short and slim and—”

  “He was leaving our house?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who was he? What was he wearing?”

  Tom paused. “I was getting to that. He had on dark clothes.”

  “Who was he?”

  Tom leaned back. “I don’t know. It was too dark to see.”

  I didn’t know what to believe.

  Why would someone come into our barracks to steal? We were all confined to this camp, all united, weren’t we? All of us brothers and sisters—alleged enemies of the United States, but never of each other.

  As Lucy sang that evening, I lay on my bed and recalled the story of the watch. In between her songs, I could hear my papa’s strong voice inside my head. “The gold watch was first crafted in Osaka, Japan, in 1888. It was gifted to the patriarch of the family for his act of nobility in saving a young girl from drowning in the river. With the family’s relocation to the United States in 1919, it was part of their belongings, safely tucked inside a suitcase in the folds of a scarlet silk kimono.”

  Along with bedtime stories of Peter Pan and biblical accounts of Joseph and his coat, I’d been well-versed in our family legacy of the watch. “Not everyone has such an heirloom,” Papa often said. “We have been given a story that will never be forgotten.”

  How could someone steal our history?

  In the night, I woke from a dream and tiptoed over to Mama’s suitcase. The silk that protected the watch was still inside, but the watch was still missing. Our prized treasure was gone.

  I must have been dreaming, I realized, as I slipped back into my warm cot. In my dream someone had put the watch back where it belonged.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was a dance three nights later. Posters were plastered around the camp to announce that the event would be held in the recreation room from eight to eleven p.m.

  My aunt informed me that we were out of evaporated milk and powdered milk. “You go get now,” she told me. Sometimes she gave my sister evaporated milk diluted with water, and other times she would feed Emi powdered milk.

  “But what about water? And cleaning out those diapers?” I opened the diaper pail and even though Ken had emptied it yesterday, today it was full again.

  “Never mind that,” she said. “Milk first. Food and drink always come first when you are in tough situation. Hurry. No dilly-dally.”

  The co-op on the premises was closed, but I knew that Mrs. Ohashi had items for sale, letting all of us know one night in the mess hall that she was open for business. When I stopped by the Ohashi apartment, sure enough, even though it was past seven, this shop was still open.

  She sold evaporated milk, throat lozenges, chewing gum, Kellogg’s cereal, stationery, candy bars, and antacid. Where she got those, I was not sure. The prices were less than at other places in the camp. I supposed what she was doing was legal as far as the block leaders were concerned; after all, Mr. Ohashi was our stern leader. I’d never seen a smile on his face.

  Tom’s theory was that they both were in on some highly-sensitive operative and every day had a secret package flown in from a spaceship.

  Of course, as she conversed with me to ask about my aunt and Emi, frustration and worry occupied my mind. Who took our watch? I started to suspect everybody. I bought two cans of evaporated milk. As I paid for them, my eyes roamed the Ohashi barracks. I noted their clothesline that held shirts and socks, focused on their floor, covered in throw rugs. The gaps in their walls were crammed with newspaper and wadded-up cereal boxes to keep out the cold; could one of those gaps be the hiding place for our watch?

  I felt like a detective, minus the trench coat.

  A woman in a jacket, hat, and a pair of knitted gloves, entered the barracks and greeted me with a pleasant smile, as though we were old friends. “I miss your mother,” she said. “She shouldn’t have died. My husband said that if the hospital had been one in San Jose, it would have been better supplied and would have saved her.”

  My face froze as though it had just been whipped by the Wyoming wind.

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Ohashi to the woman. She handed me two packs of spearmint gum. “Here, take these,” she said warmly and then casted a look of disapproval at the other shopper.

  With affirmation the woman said, “Well, my husband is a doctor.”

  “Yes, well, we all do the best we can.” Mrs. Ohashi gave me a forced smile. “You have a good day, Nathan.”

  Feeling she wanted to get rid of me, I wondered why. Was it something I said? Was it Mama? Or perhaps, she was the thief who had taken our watch?

  At school, I’d looked over at Charles and wondered if he had been the slim figure who’d come into our barracks. Lucy? Mr. Kubo? Mrs. Kubo? I thought of all the people who had come to our billet. All the women who helped take care of Emi. Would they steal?

  When I returned to our barracks, Ken acted frustrated, too. “I’ll kill the guy who took it,” he said, his tone biting with anger. “I’ll get the Samurai after him.” Ken flexed a muscular arm. I supposed his new task of lifting buckets of coal for our stove and for the stoves of other residents was paying off.

  Glad that he was showing some concern about our family heirloom, I said, “Do you have any idea who would have come inside to steal it?”

  “No,” he said. “But I will find out, you can count on me.”

  He left with great momentum; my aunt thought he’d knock the front door out of the frame. But later that night at the dance, when I approached him, he was nonchalant, unmoved by my a
nguish. Girls surrounded him, and he stood to dance with one. I waited till the music stopped, and when he stepped off the dance floor, I asked if he had found out anything. He acted as though he hadn’t heard me.

  He jumped up to ask another girl to dance; by this time I counted that he’d danced with ten different girls.

  As the lively music continued, couples sprang up to dance. I sat away from the crowd, on a hard birchwood chair, and thought of our traditions and our roots. Our ancestors had sat in tatami rooms watching Japanese dancers, which were nothing like American dances. Mama said that people didn’t dance like couples in her prefecture of Nagano, up in the northern mountains of Japan. There was dancing, but it was not with any romantic intentions. Farmers celebrated with folk dances at special festivals. She said she’d had professional dance lessons twice where the music had been played by a shakuhachi, which was a bamboo flute, and a horizontal stringed instrument known as a koto. Although she liked the music, unfortunately, she realized she was too clumsy to continue. Her teacher had even suggested she stop taking lessons, saying something about not every fish being able to swim—a comparison Mama never forgot.

  Papa used to swing her around the living room as the Glenn Miller orchestra played “In the Mood.” He would tell her that she was a good dancer, poised, and skilled. She’d giggle whenever he’d say that. “Oh, you wouldn’t know a good dancer from a fish,” she used to say. Actually, that was kind of funny because our father did know about fish. But dancing? Mama was right. Since he couldn’t follow any rhythm—although he tried—he probably knew nothing about what being good at dancing meant.

  Our English teacher introduced us to Emerson and Dickinson right before lunch. I listened for a few seconds, but then my mind wandered. I had more important things to do. I studied each kid and wondered if he or she fit the profile of what Tom saw two nights ago. Slim. That would rule out Lenny Tanaka. Short. Well, most of us here fitted that description. I was only five-nine, although if wishes came true, I would be over six feet. Tom said the thief was a boy, so I didn’t focus on any of the girls in the room.