Chapter 12
Chicago is a lot like camp in that rumors spread like wildfire.
The lights were on when I went into the apartment. Pop was locked in the bathroom with horrible food poisoning, and Mom was trying to provide some kind of relief with cool water and wet compresses.
Pop, Mom explained when the worst was over, had eaten dinner at Aloha: a frightening affair of soup made from unmentionable parts of a chicken or pig. Once he was finally able to leave the bathroom, he collapsed on their bed. We gave him some privacy and sipped weak black tea at the living-room table. Mom was truly exhausted because she didn’t even notice that I was wearing Rose’s dress.
“Oh, by the way, how was it?” she asked in Japanese about the dance at the Aragon. “Did you meet any good persons there?” By good persons, I knew that she meant eligible bachelors.
I shrugged. I was starting to understand how Rose had felt when she was being interrogated about her love life.
The next morning, my parents were still in bed when I woke up. Pop was hanging off one side of the bed, as if he were ready to retch into a basin on the floor. Poor Mom was flailed out as if she were floating on the deep sea, her cockatiel cowlick on display.
In spite of not getting much sleep, I was energized, adrenaline pumping through my body. I needed to locate Hammer and find out the truth about him and Rose.
I plucked my striped dress off the hanger, got dressed, and quietly left the apartment. It was Sunday morning, so the Christian church families, dressed in their finest, were on their way to worship. There had been talk of Buddhist priests coming to Chicago from a couple of concentration camps, but that hadn’t happened yet. Being a Buddhist was harder in America.
I felt like a bit of a heathen, but in a way, I reveled in it. I may not have looked it, but I prided myself on being a rebel, at least that day. I even tried to saunter, but I was handicapped by my worn shoes again.
I walked past Rose’s old apartment building, hoping not to run into the three girls from last night. There was only one person hunkered on the steps.
“Hey, Manju—” I said. A part of me felt a bit ridiculous calling a grown man by a nickname that meant “bean cake.” “Have you seen Hammer?”
Manju, who had ditched his plaid suit for a plain white T-shirt and jeans, shook his head. “After the tussle last night, he took off. Haven’t seen him since.” He spoke in a disjointed fashion, as if he needed to take breaths of air in between every few words.
“Where does he live, anyway?”
“Anywhere someone will have him. My roommates said he couldn’t stay with us anymore. This week I think he was staying with a girl in Chinatown.” It amazed me that for a Nisei with no prospects and a limited wardrobe, he seemed to be able to secure the affection of the opposite sex. My mother would say moteru, that Hammer could hold on to women, at least for a night. I couldn’t deny that he had something, but to me, he oozed a kind of unwanted stickiness, like chewed gum that you unwittingly stepped on.
We both stared at the street in silence. I mustered up some courage and asked straight out, “Do you know if he was seeing my sister?”
Manju slowly turned his head, squinting from the sun’s brightness. “You mean like dating?”
I nodded.
His body shook with laughter. “That’s a good one, Aki. You have some kind of imagination.”
I didn’t like being seen as a fool and abandoned the stoop without even saying goodbye. It was obvious that Manju would not be of any help. I wasn’t sure if he was being loyal to Hammer or really didn’t know of them having any type of relationship.
I passed the barbershop where my mother cleaned. The two brothers were devout Catholics and closed business on Sundays. With all the news about the awful things the Japanese military had been doing in the Philippines, I sometimes wondered if they held a grudge against us Issei and Nisei. But they were able to separate us from the enemy in the Pacific. It probably didn’t hurt that half of their customers were now Nisei either wanting buzz cuts to join the army or pompadours to complement their zoot suits.
After everything that had happened last night, I felt that I needed to treat myself and went into the diner and ice-cream parlor on Division Street. It must have been at least ninety degrees already, and the sun seemed to burn through my dress. I had been giving most of my paycheck to Mom, but she allowed me to keep a few dollars a week for incidentals. I should have been saving for a new pair of shoes, but the thought of ice cream was too enticing.
Ting-A-Ling was usually closed on Sundays, but for some reason, it was open today. The elderly Polish couple who operated the ice-cream shop and diner were absent; instead a pimply teenager sat me in one of the booths. Beside me in the next booth were other young heathens, high-school age. From the way the waiter was interacting with them, they were fellow classmates. The youths shared an easy camaraderie, teasing each other about incidents that had happened at school. The tone of their laughter was familiar, yet so distant.
A part of me wished that I was back in Manzanar, where at least I could spend time with Hisako. She had told me to write her as soon as we had settled, but I hadn’t had the heart to tell her all that had happened. And with the Nisei moving around so much, who knows where she was now?
The strawberry ice cream I ordered finally appeared on my table. It was a perfect and generous mound, which I stabbed with my pointed spoon. As I swallowed the frozen delight, I felt a rush hit the back of my head. I wished I could bottle up the coldness to use against the heat I was going to encounter once I left the ice-cream parlor.
When I returned to the apartment after my fruitless search for Hammer, Mom was at the table, darning one of Pop’s socks. “Your father is still under the weather. There’s no way he can go to work today. Use the pay phone and call Papa’s boss. Rocky Inukai.”
“I’ll go to the club and tell him.”
Mom hesitated. “It’s not a place for young women.”
“I know where it is. I’ve passed it many times. I’m going to be twenty-one in a couple of months.”
Mom examined her stitching on the heel of the sock. It was perfect as usual.
“That way I can make sure that he knows,” I said. The people who answered Aloha’s phone were not the most reliable, based on calls I’d attempted to make to Pop there in the past.
She couldn’t argue with that. “Come straight back home afterward.”
I nodded.
Aloha was on Clark Street, north of the subway station. It was a raucous neighborhood that I usually avoided. I occasionally saw fancy cars stopped at the curb with men dressed to the nines sitting in their back seats with well-endowed women. Drunks clutching cheap whiskey not quite hidden in paper bags staggered on the sidewalk. Prostitutes displayed their bare calves and thighs.
The club itself was in a nondescript three-story brownstone building next to a pawnshop. No sign outside identified the establishment. A big storefront window revealed men gathered around a large pool table. I took a deep breath and straightened my back. You can do this, Aki, I told myself.
I knew that Pop’s boss was a Nisei from Hawaii. I walked through the side door, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. It wouldn’t hurt if Aloha turned on a few more lights. It smelled as nasty as it looked, like raw chicken had been left out too long. A woman in a tight off-white dress revealing the outline of her chichis lounged in a chair beside a staircase that apparently led to a second floor.
“Looking for a job, honey?” she practically purred. “Playtime might be hiring.”
I frowned. Playtime was notorious for hiring both hakujin and Nisei prostitutes for the GIs who frequented the place.
I tried not to look at her chest. “I’m here to see Rocky,” I told her.
“Wait here.” She teetered onto her high heels, almost losing her balance, and headed for another set of stairs that seemed to go
down to a basement. I noticed that a lot of unsavory-looking men were going down those steps.
While she was fetching Pop’s boss, I approached a small bar in the back that could only accommodate six stools. Seated on one of them was the Nisei man who had been in line behind me at the WRA office, reading the same magazine. On the far left was the man I had been searching for all morning. Hammer wore the same mustard-colored pants but was missing his jacket, and sweat stains were visible on the underarms of his white shirt.
“It looks like you haven’t slept,” I said as I climbed onto the stool next to him.
Hammer didn’t acknowledge me. He attempted to finish his drink but the glass was empty.
I wasn’t sure if he was on drugs; he seemed completely different than when I’d seen him on the streets of Clark and Division. No swagger or confidence. Something about his facial appearance reminded me of the frightening horned oni demon masks on the walls of Issei homes. One version of the oni mask looked downright evil, but another, with its downturned mouth agape, seemed tortured. I had asked my mother about it, and she explained that the oni were good demons that were supposed to scare the bad demons away.
“Stay away from me, Tropico. I’m no good.” He banged his empty glass back onto the bar.
“I want to know why you were fighting with Roy.”
Hammer finally turned his head toward me. “Didn’t he tell you?” There were scratch marks on his cheek that I hadn’t noticed the night before.
“What happened to your face?”
Hammer fingered the scratches as if he were acquainting himself with his injury. My reminder did not sit well with him. “Aki, scram. This is no place for you.”
I cut to the chase. “Rose was my sister. I deserve to know what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything that she didn’t ask for.”
“What does that mean?” My voice sounded shrill and unfamiliar.
The Nisei with the magazine narrowed his eyes, as if my presence was disturbing him.
“I mean that Roy’s the one who should be explaining himself,” he said before clamming up. I felt like a nincompoop sitting at the bar in between two men who didn’t seem to want anything to do with me.
After a few minutes, Hammer broke his silence. “You’re lucky, you know. You have family.”
“I don’t know if I would call me lucky.”
“Well, Rose had a sister who cares about her. She was lucky, too.”
I was now convinced that Hammer was on some kind of drug. This kind of philosophizing from him seemed totally out of character.
A hefty man in a flowered shirt with a pencil behind his ear and cash in his hands came barreling up the basement stairs and headed straight to us. “You asked for me? I’m Rocky.”
I jumped down from the stool, and he gave me the once-over. “We only pay by the hour and you’ll have to doll yourself up. Wear some heels.”
“I’m not looking for a job.”
Rocky seemed relieved.
“I’m Gitaro Ito’s daughter.”
“Oh, Geet’s kid. What happened to him?”
“He’s under the weather.” From your rotten food, I didn’t mention out loud.
“Oh, it’s slow today, anyway. But we’ll need him tomorrow for sure.”
I nodded. His lack of compassion didn’t surprise me. As far as I could tell, the Aloha was all about business, both legal and not. I did wonder exactly what Pop, who had erratic hours, did at the bar, because there didn’t seem to be much to clean and what there was didn’t seem that clean at all.
Rocky went behind the bar and poured Hammer a fresh drink as I scurried to the door. The half-naked woman in the chair had left her post. I turned the corner and faced a large hakujin man who blocked the exit. “Hello, little geisha.”
I ignored him, looking down as I pressed forward. He didn’t budge. “It’s too early for you to leave,” he said, pushing me against the wall. He attempted to kiss me, but I dug my chin down. His cheek felt like sandpaper and he reeked of beer.
“Let me go,” I whispered. It was as if my voice were stuffed in my chest. Find your voice, Aki, I told myself. But the more I tried, the more futile it was. The fleshy man kept me trapped in the dingy corner of Aloha’s, delighting in my lack of audible response.
I squirmed and turned back to the bar. Rocky was gone. Hammer was still hunched over his glass. The boy with the overgrown hair was still obsessed with his magazine. There was no one to save me.
Taking a deep breath, I somehow was able to cross my arms over my chest and barrel forward into a crack of space between him and the door. Bursting out into the street, I knocked into the ample oshiri of the scantily clad woman who was now standing in front of the entrance, smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, watch it!” she reprimanded, as a line of cigarette ash fell and scattered on the concrete.
I didn’t make any excuses or apologies. All I knew was that I had to get out of there. I practically ran down Clark Street, leaping over trash on the sidewalk and almost crashing into a group of people walking in the opposite direction. In the center of the foursome was the tall man in the dress we had seen the night before. His friends were also garishly outfitted in tight, low-cut gowns. They were all laughing, not bothering to notice my wretched state. On Clark Street, it was every person for herself.
By Monday, all of us Itos had rebounded. I scrubbed my face extra hard until my skin glowed pink and tried to put the awful man at Aloha out of my mind. I couldn’t tell Mom or especially Pop what happened. Pop might attempt to right the wrong in his own way, which might land him in jail.
Pop, although weakened, woke up for a simple breakfast of dry toast and coffee and announced that he was strong enough to report to work that day. Mom had left for the barbershop. I was grateful to be escaping to the Newberry. The tomes, the maps and the documents had become so familiar to me—they were the spine that held my days together. All three of us assistants found refuge in the library’s holdings. Nancy, a shutterbug, was transfixed by the Newberry’s collection of photographs of American Indians from the 1800s. Phillis, the art historian, could be found wandering around the stacks devoted to Renaissance painters.
Later that day I was working the desk when I saw a familiar person standing in front of me. Art’s hair was combed to the side, making him look very collegiate and even more handsome than usual.
“Art—”
“I’m so glad that I was able to track you down.”
“I’ve already taken my afternoon break.”
“I had to see you.”
I looked for our supervisor’s gray head but she was nowhere to be found. Phillis, wearing a blue polka-dot dress, appeared from the stacks, her arms full of books.
“Have you seen Mrs. Cannon?” I asked her. “Art needs to talk to me about something and I wanted to get permission to take a small break.”
She elbowed my ribs. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll cover for you. But don’t take too long.”
I led Art behind a huge fern in the corner. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to tell you to be careful,” Art said.
“What are you talking about?” I felt my cheeks flush. Had he heard that I had gone over to Roy and Ike’s place? Was my reputation already tarnished?
“A Nisei girl was attacked yesterday. In her own apartment.” Art delivered the news with such solemnity that I knew I needed to take heed. And by the hushed tone of his voice, I suspected that she had been sexually assaulted.
“Where?”
“The South Side.”
“Did you know her?”
“I can’t say too much. Just be careful, okay?”
My mind raced. I found it difficult to process the shocking information. I could hardly say anything in response. Art said that he had to leave to meet his academic advisor, so we
returned to the front desk. Waiting for us was Phillis, who had a funny look on her face that I had never seen before. She directly addressed Art: “Did you go to Hyde Park High School?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
Art stood still for a moment, then pointed at her in recollection. “You’re Reggie’s little sister. Phillis, right? You live down the street from us.”
Phillis coyly smiled, shocking me. She had a slight overbite that I had never noticed before.
Art’s expression remained solemn. “I heard that Reggie is overseas.”
“He’s with the Ninety-third.”
“The Pacific?”
She nodded and the three of us stood in silence for a moment. Her answer confirmed my suspicions. Her brother was fighting the Japanese.
“The army kept them stateside for the longest time. Almost like they didn’t trust the Negro boys,” she said.
I had been so fixated on the Nisei soldiers that I hadn’t even considered the situation for black soldiers. They were also in segregated military units, and it seemed like they weren’t receiving any respect.
“If you write him, let him know I said hello,” Art told her.
“Oh, yes, yes. I will.” Was Phillis stammering?
Art said his goodbyes and I walked him out of the reading room. Before we reached the stairs, he stopped and shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “Do you think that I can get your phone number?”
A lovely warmth spilled over my body. Is this what it feels like to be desired and pursued? “Ah, we don’t have a phone. Except for the pay phone out in the hall. We’ve been using that one for now.” Unfortunately I couldn’t remember the number, but promised to relay it to him the next time I saw him. He said that he’d be in the area tomorrow around the same time.
“It’s a date,” I said and immediately blushed. I didn’t mean it to sound like that, but Art grinned in response and headed down the stairs.
“Wait,” I called after him. “What time did it happen?”
Clark and Division Page 12
