Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

  "I need your record."

  There was a moment of stunned silence. In the distance Henry heard drums from a rehearsal upstairs at one of the other clubs.

  "That's funny, that sounded a lot like 'I need your record,' " Sheldon said. "It sounded a lot like 'I need your last record.' The only record I own--of my own playing.

  The only record that was left at the music store since Oscar sold them out like hotcakes just last week."

  Henry looked at his friend, biting his lip.

  "Is that what I heard?" Sheldon asked, seemingly joking, but Henry wasn't entirely sure.

  "It's for Keiko. For her birthday ..."

  "Owwww" Sheldon looked like he'd been stabbed. His eyes closed and his mouth screwed up in a grimace of pain. "You got me. You got me right here." He patted his heart and cracked a toothy smile at Henry.

  "Does this mean I can have it? I can replace it. Keiko and I bought one together, but she wasn't allowed to bring it to the camp and now it's stored somewhere, I can't get to it--it's probably lost now."

  Sheldon put his hat back on and adjusted the reed on his sax. "You can have it.

  Only because it's for a higher power."

  Henry didn't pick up on Sheldon's gibe, otherwise he would have blushed horribly and denied that love was driving him in any way imaginable.

  "Thank you. I'll pay you back someday," he said.

  "You go play that thing. You go play that thing in that camp down there. You go.

  I kinda like the sound of that," Sheldon said. "It'd be the first time I ever played in a white establishment--even if it's for a bunch of Japanese folks, bit of a captive audience."

  Henry smiled and looked at Sheldon, who was obviously waiting for a reaction to this pun. Henry tucked the record under his coat and ran, yelling back, "Thank you, sir, and you have a fine day." Sheldon shook his head and smiled before warming up for another afternoon performance.

  Henry stopped by Woolworth's on the way home from school the next day. The old five-and-dime was unusually crowded--packed in fact. Henry counted twelve different booths, each selling war bond stamps. The Elks lodge had a booth. So did the Venture Club. Each group had a giant craft-paper thermometer showing how much they'd sold, each competing to outsell the others. One even had a life-size cutout of Bing Crosby wearing an army uniform. "Make every payday bond day!" a man yelled as he passed out slices of pie and cups of coffee.

  Henry waded through the crowd, past the bright red vinyl booths and spinning stools of the soda counter, heading for the back of the store. There he gathered writing paper, art supplies, fabric, and a sketchbook whose blank pages looked so promising, a future unwritten. He quickly paid a young woman who simply smiled when she saw his button, then ran the rest of the way home, arriving maybe ten minutes late. Nothing really. Not even enough time to give his mother pause. He stashed Keiko's things with the record in an old washtub beneath the stairs in the back alley, then bounded up the steps, two at a time, light on his feet.

  Things were looking up as word had already spread that Chaz and his friends had been picked up by the Seattle police for at least part of the damage they'd caused in Nihonmachi. Whether they'd actually received any punishment, no one could say. The Japanese citizens, even though they were Americans, were now considered enemy aliens-

  -did anyone care what happened to their homes? Still, Chaz's father would probably find out soon enough that his golden boy had a heart of coal, and that was punishment enough, Henry reasoned, feeling more relief than joy.

  Then there was Sheldon, who was finally enjoying the monetary fruits of his musical labors. He'd always drawn a crowd, but now it was a paying crowd, not just lookie-loos tossing in pennies.

  And along with the birthday gift, the last copy of Oscar Holden's 78 record would soon be on its way to Keiko. The song was something they could share, even if a barbed-wire fence kept them apart and a machine-gun tower kept watch from above.

  Despite the bitterness of all he'd seen, and the sadness of the forced exodus to Camp Harmony, things were manageable, and the war couldn't last forever. Eventually Keiko would come home, wouldn't she?

  Henry whistled as he opened the door to his little apartment and saw his parents.

  That was when his pursed lips fell silent and Henry lost his breath. Both of them sat at their tiny kitchen table. Spread across the table were Keiko's family albums. The ones he'd so carefully hidden beneath his dresser drawers. Hundreds of photos of Japanese families, some in traditional dress, others in military uniforms. Piles and piles of black-and-white images. Few of the people in them were smiling. But none looked as dour as his parents--their faces cemented in expressions of shock, shame, and betrayal.

  His mother muttered something in disgust, her voice cracking with emotion as she banged her way to the kitchen, shaking her head.

  Henry's eyes met his father's furious gaze. His father picked up a photo album, tore the spine in two, and threw it to the floor--yelling something in Cantonese. He seemed more angry at the photos themselves than at Henry. But his turn was coming.

  Henry knew it.

  Well, at least we're probably going to have a real conversation, Henry thought.

  And, Father, it's about time.

  Henry set his shopping items on the table by the front door, took off his coat, and sat down in the chair opposite his father, looking down at the scattered photos of Keiko and her family--her Japanese family. Her parents' wedding photos in kimonos. Images of picture brides. Photos of an old man, probably her grandfather, in the dress uniform of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Some Japanese families had burned these things. Other families hid their treasured memories of who they were and where they came from. Some even buried their photo albums. Buried treasure, Henry thought.

  It had been almost eight months since his father had insisted he only speak English. That was about to change.

  "What do you have to say? Speak up!" his father was snapping in Cantonese.

  Before Henry could answer, his father lashed out.

  "I send you to school. I negotiate your way--into a special school. I do this for you. A top white school. And what happens? Instead of studying, you're making eyes with this Japanese girl. Japanese! She's a daughter of the butchers of my people. Your people. Their blood is on her! She stinks of that blood!"

  "She's American," Henry protested, speaking softly in Cantonese. The words felt strange. Foreign. Like stepping onto a frozen lake, unsure if it would hold your weight or send you crashing through to the icy depths.

  "Look! Look with your own eyes." Henry's father held up a page from an album, practically shoving it in Henry's face. "This is not American!" He pointed at the image of a stately man in traditional Japanese dress. "If the FBI find this here--in our home, our Chinese American home--they can arrest us. Take everything. They can throw us in jail and fine us five thousand dollars for helping the enemy."

  "She's not the enemy," Henry said, speaking a little louder, his heart racing and his hands beginning to shake, trembling with frustration-- with anger he never allowed himself to feel. "You don't even know her. You've never met her." He clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth.

  "I don't need to--she's Japanese!"

  "She was born in the same hospital I was born in, the same year I was born. She's an American!" Henry shouted back, so loudly it frightened even himself. He'd never spoken that way to any grown-up, let alone his own father, whom he was taught to revere and respect.

  His mother had walked out of the kitchen for a moment to remove a flower vase from the table. He saw her, a look of shock and disappointment on her face that Henry would ever be so disobedient. The look quickly faded to a quiet acceptance, but with it, so much guilt settled on Henry's small shoulders. He rested his head in his hands, ashamed for speaking so loudly in front of his mother. She turned away, as if he hadn't said a thing. As if he weren't there. She swept back into the kitchen before Henry could say another word.

  When Henry turned back,
his father was already at the open window with an armload of Keiko's photos. He looked back at Henry, on his face a blank expression that was probably a mask of his disappointment. Then he dropped the photos, the albums, and boxes. They scattered to the ground, covering the the alley with white squares, lost faces staring back at no one.

  Henry bent down to pick up the torn album. His father snatched it from his hands and tossed it too. Henry heard the pieces hitting the pavement outside, wet slapping sounds.

  "She was born here. Her family was born here. You weren't even born here,"

  Henry whispered to his father, who looked away, oblivious to his son's words.

  He'd be thirteen in a few months; maybe this was what it meant to stop being a boy and start being something else, Henry thought as he put his coat back on and headed for the door. He couldn't leave the photos outside.

  He turned to his father. "I'm leaving to get her photos. I told her I'd keep them for her---just until she gets back. And I'm going to keep my promise."

  His father pointed at the door. "If you walk out that door--if you walk out that door now, you are no longer part of this family. You are no longer Chinese. You are not part of us anymore. Not a part of me."

  Henry didn't even hesitate. He touched the doorknob, feeling the brass cold and hard in his hand. He looked back, speaking his best Cantonese. "I am what you made me, Father." He opened the heavy door. "I ... am an American."

  Camp Anyway

  (1942)

  Henry had managed to save most of Keiko's photos. He'd wiped the mud and garbage off on his coat sleeve and stored them in the old washbasin beneath the stairs until he could give them to Sheldon for safekeeping. But from that moment on, he began to feel like a ghost in the little brick apartment he shared with his parents. They didn't speak to him; in fact, they barely acknowledged his presence. They'd speak to each other as if he weren't there, and when they looked his way, they'd each pretend to look right through him. He hoped they were pretending anyway.

  At first he'd talked to them regardless, in English---just table conversation--then later, pleading in Chinese. It didn't matter. Their great wall of silence was impervious to his best attempts to subvert it. So he too said nothing. And since his parents'

  conversations often had to do with Henry's schooling, Henry's grades, Henry's future, in Henry's absence, they said very little. The only sounds heard in their tiny home came from the rustling of the daily newspaper or the squelch and static of the wireless radio--playing news bulletins on the war and the latest local updates on rationing and drills of the Civil Air Defense. On the radio, nothing was ever mentioned of the Japanese who had been led out of Nihon-machi--it was as if they'd never existed.

  After a few days, his mother did acknowledge his existence, in her own way. She did his laundry and packed him a lunch. But she did it with little ceremony, presumably so as not to go against the wishes of Henry's father, who had followed up on his threat to disown him figuratively, if not literally.

  "Thank you," Henry said, as his mother set out a plate and rice bowl for him. But as she reached for another set of chopsticks--

  "Are you expecting a guest for dinner?" Henry's father interrupted in Chinese, setting down his newspaper. "Answer me," he demanded.

  She looked apologetically at her husband, then quietly removed the dish, avoiding eye contact with her son.

  Henry, not to be discouraged completely, brought his own plate and served himself from then on. Eating in all but silence, the only sounds those of chopsticks occasionally tinging the side of his half-empty rice bowl.

  The deafening silence continued at Rainier Elementary, even though Henry had thought about following his old friends to the Chinese school, or even up the hill to Bailey Gatzert Elementary, which was a mixed-race school that some of the older kids went to. But then again, he knew he'd have to register somehow, and without his parents'

  cooperation, it seemed impossible. Maybe when the school year was over, he'd convince his mother to switch him. No, his father was too proud of his son's scholarshipping. She would never go along with it.

  So Henry accepted the fact that he would finish out the next two weeks of the sixth grade right where he was. And he had to, didn't he? Mrs. Beatty was still taking him to Camp Harmony on the weekends, and if he didn't work in the grade-school kitchen all week, his weekend furloughs to see Keiko might be in jeopardy.

  By the time Saturday rolled around, Henry longed to talk to someone--anyone. He had tried to catch Sheldon during the week, but there was never any time before school.

  After school, Sheldon was always performing at the Black Elks Club, which had just reopened.

  When Mrs. Beatty rolled up, she seemed as good a conversationalist as Henry could hope for. She smoked while she drove, flicking her ashes out the window and blowing the smoke out the side of her mouth. It always caught the draft and billowed back in, settling on the two of them. Henry rolled his window down a few inches, trying to draw the smoke away from the presents that sat on his lap.

  In addition to a bag of sundries from Woolworth's, he had two boxes, each wrapped in lavender paper with white ribbon that he'd snuck from his mother's sewing box. One box contained a sketchbook, pencils, brushes, and a tin of watercolors. The other was the Oscar Holden record; the one Sheldon gave him. Henry had delicately wrapped it in tissue to keep it safe.

  "Little early for Christmas," Mrs. Beatty commented, flicking her butt out the window of the speeding truck.

  "It's Keiko's birthday tomorrow."

  "That

  so?"

  Henry nodded, waving the last of the smoke away.

  "Mighty thoughtful of you," Mrs. Beatty said. Just as Henry was about to speak, she interrupted. "You know they're not going to let you take those in looking like that? I mean, that could be a gun, a couple of hand grenades, who knows--all wrapped up with a pretty bow, special delivery."

  "But I thought I'd just have her open them at the fence ..."

  "Don't matter, dearie, all gifts are opened by the sentry on duty. Rules are rules."

  Henry shook the larger box on his lap, the one with the record, thinking that he might as well take the ribbon off and just get it over with.

  "Don't worry, I'll take care of it," Mrs. Beatty said. And she did.

  On the outskirts of Puyallup, Mrs. Beatty pulled over into the parking lot of a Shell Oil gas station. She pulled off to the side, near the back, avoiding the pumps and the service attendant, who watched them quizzically.

  "Grab those boxes and come with me," she barked, putting the truck in park before stepping out and walking to the rear of the still running vehicle.

  Henry followed, holding the presents as she climbed up into the back of the truck.

  Grunting as she bucked a fifty-pound sack, she pulled it toward Henry, then untied the knot, jerking it open. Inside, Henry could see it was filled with Calrose rice.

  "Gimme

  that."

  Henry handed her the presents and watched her stuff each one in a bag, then bury them with handfuls of rice before sealing the bags again. He looked at all the bags, wondering what else must be in there. He'd seen her trading tools with soldiers and occasionally camp residents. Things like files, small saws, and other woodworking tools.

  For an escape? Henry wondered. No, he'd seen old men working outside their shacks, building chairs, building shelves. That was probably where their tools came from. Mrs.

  Beatty's corner stand on the black market.

  "Hey, what're you doing with that Jap over there?" The gas station attendant had walked around the building and must have been curious about this old woman and this little Asian kid.

  "He ain't no Jap. He's a Chinaman--and the Chinese are our allies, so shove off, mister!" Mrs. Beatty hefted the last bag, the one with the record in it, and set it upright against the back of the cab with a heavy thud.

  The attendant backed off immediately, taking a few steps back to the service station, offering a
feeble wave. "Just trying to be helpful. That's my job, you know."

  Ignoring him, Henry and Mrs. Beatty climbed into the truck--and rolled on. "Not a word, you understand," she said.

  Henry nodded. And kept his mouth shut the rest of the drive, all the way to Camp Harmony and right through the main gates.

  In Area 4, Henry went about his normal routine of dishing up lunch. Gradually Mrs. Beatty had won over the local kitchen steward, who now ordered mealtime staples appreciated by the Japanese residents--namely rice, but also miso soup with tofu, which Henry thought smelled delicious.

  "Henry!"

  He looked up and saw Mrs. Okabe standing in line. She wore dusty trousers and a sweater-vest with a large O sewn on one side.

  "Are you responsible for putting an end to that awful potted meat? It suddenly changed to a steady flow of rice and fish--your doing?" she asked, smiling at him.

  "I can't take credit for it, but I'm happy to be serving something I'd actually eat too." Henry dished her up a plateful of rice and pork katsu. "I have a couple of birthday presents for Keiko. Would you give them to her for me?" Henry set his ladle down for a moment and turned to pick up the presents, which sat at his feet.