Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

  Henry's birthday came and went with little fanfare. His mother made gau, a favorite dessert cake of glutinous sticky rice she normally reserved for special holidays like the lunar new year. His extended family of aunties and cousins came over for a dinner of black bean chicken and choy sum with oyster sauce--also favorites of Henry's.

  His rich auntie King gave him a lai see envelope, filled with ten crisp one-dollar bills, more money than he'd ever received at one time. She gave Henry's mother one too; his mother gushed her appreciation but didn't open it. That was when Henry realized that Auntie King and her husband, Herb, were probably helping support Henry's family now that his father was bedridden.

  Henry's father was confined to his bed or a wheelchair that his mother pushed around the apartment, positioning him next to the radio, or the window so he could get some fresh air once in a while. He said nothing to Henry but would whisper words to Henry's mother, who doted on him as best she could.

  Occasionally, Henry would catch his father watching him, but when he'd make eye contact, his father would look away. He wanted to say something, feeling guilty for having disobeyed, for having caused his father's weakened condition. But in a way, he was his father's son, and he could be equally stubborn.

  Keiko had been gone more than a month. She'd left on August 11 with the last of the prisoners of Camp Harmony, bound for Minidoka. And she'd never once written. Of course, no one could be sure what that really meant. Maybe there wasn't mail service up there. Or maybe Henry had been too clear with his good-bye and she was moving on without him. Forgetting him once and for all. Either way, he missed her so much it hurt.

  Especially at school, when the fall semester started. Henry had two more years before he'd go to Garfield High, which he'd heard was far more integrated, and where most of the Chinese and black kids ended up going. A mixed-race class would be such a change from Rainier, where he was, once again, the only nonwhite student. He still worked in the kitchen at lunchtime with Mrs. Beatty, who never spoke of Keiko.

  Henry rarely saw Chaz anymore. Since getting caught vandalizing homes in Nihonmachi, he had been kicked out of Rainier. Rumor had it he was now bullying kids at Bailey Gatzert, where all the blue-collar kids went. Occasionally Henry would see him shadowing his father around town, but that was it. He'd grin at Henry, but Henry wasn't afraid of him anymore. Chaz looked the way he'd look for the rest of his life, Henry thought, bitter and defeated. Henry, on the other hand still felt like he hadn't learned his best trick yet.

  Still, Henry's work duties after school felt empty, and his walk home was a lonely affair. All he could do was think of Keiko, how happy he'd felt when she was around.

  And how numb and sad he'd felt watching her wipe the tears from her eyes when he'd said good-bye. He didn't regret watching her go as much as he regretted not telling her how much he cared. How much she meant. His father was a horrible communicator.

  After all the time he'd rebelled against his father's wishes and his father's ways, Henry hated the fact that he wasn't that different from him at all-- not where it mattered, anyway.

  Henry walked back to the black iron arches of Chinatown, alone again, following the unmistakable sound of Sheldon's sax and the roar of applause that always seemed to accompany his performances these days. Sheldon was playing in small clubs around South Jackson, but Oscar Holden was on a police watch list now, for speaking out against the treatment of the residents of Nihonmachi, and had a hard time getting gigs. The price you pay for speaking your mind--you lose the ability to have your singing voice heard. A tragedy, Henry thought. No, more than a tragedy, it was a crime, having that ability stolen from him. His record had sold out and became sort of a collectors' item, for a while anyway.

  "Hear anything from up yonder?" Sheldon saw Henry and pointed with his chin, eastward, in the direction of Idaho. In the direction of Minidoka.

  Henry shook his head no, trying not to look as down as he felt.

  "I've been to Idaho once, it's not that bad. I had a cousin that would run liquor across the border into Post Falls years ago, during Prohibition. It's pretty, all those mountains and such."

  Henry slouched on the curb. Sheldon handed him his empty lunch pail.

  "Oh, it's been a long time since I was what anyone might have called a 'young man,' but boy," he said, "I can see it in your eyes. I know you trying to put on your brave face--that face that even your mama might not see through. But me, Henry, I've seen enough hard luck in my lifetime. I know what you got, and you got it bad. "

  Henry stole a peek at Sheldon. "What? That obvious?"

  "We all felt it, boy. Watching everyone get rounded up like that. That's enough heartbreak to last a lifetime for some people. Down here, in the so-called International District--you, me, the Filipinos, them Koreans coming over, even some of the Jews and Italians, we all felt it. But you, it hurt you in a different way, watching her go."

  "I let her go."

  "Henry,

  she

  was

  going whether you let her go or not. It's not your fault."

  "No-- I let her go. I didn't even really say good-bye as much as I sent her away."

  There was a moment of silence as Sheldon fingered the keys on his sax. "Then you get yourself to some pen and paper and you write to her--"

  Henry interrupted. "I don't even know her address. I let her go, and she hasn't even written to me."

  Sheldon pursed his lips and let out a big sigh, closing his sax case and sitting on the cold cement curb next to Henry. "You know where Minidoka is, right?"

  "I can find it on a map ..."

  "Then let's go see her--they must have visiting hours up there just like down in Puyallup. Let's you and me jump in the belly of the big dog and go see her."

  "Big dog ..."

  "Greyhound, boy! I have to spell it all out for you? We catch a bus, I ain't got nothing but time right now anyway. We leave on a Friday, come back on a Sunday, you don't hardly miss no school or nothing."

  "I can't do that ..."

  "Why, you're thirteen now, ain't you? You're a man in your daddy's eyes. You can make a man's decision and do what you gotta do. That's what I'd do."

  "I can't just leave my mother, and what about my father?"

  "What about him?"

  "I can't just leave him. If he found out I'd gone all the way to Idaho to see a Japanese girl, his heart would give out completely ..."

  "Henry." Sheldon looked at him more seriously than he'd ever done before. "Your daddy having himself a heart fit, that ain't your fault either. He's been fighting the war in his head, in his heart, ever since he was your age back in China. You can't take credit for stuff that goes back to before you were even born. You understand me?"

  Henry stood up and brushed the dirt off the seat of his pants. "I gotta go. I'll see you around." He smiled, as much as he could, and walked off in the direction of home.

  Sheldon didn't argue.

  He's right, Henry thought. I am old enough to make my own decisions. But Idaho, that's too far, too dangerous. What business do I have running off like that, to a place I've never been? If something happened to me, who would take care of my mother? With my father bedridden, I'm the man now. I might even have to quit school and go to work to help pay bills. And besides, running off wasn't responsible. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that money wasn't an issue. The money from working at Camp Harmony was more than enough to pay his way, and the windfall from Auntie King would cover everything else.

  No, I can't do it. It just isn't practical right now.

  When Henry got home, his father was in bed, sound asleep. Since the stroke, he didn't even snore as loudly as he used to. Seemed like everything he did was a pale shadow of his former self. Except his spotlight of condemnation, which always seemed to shine on Henry. No matter where Henry was, he felt it.

  His mother came up the stairs behind him with a basket of laundry taken from the clothesline shared by others in the alley. "You ha
ve a birthday card," she said in Cantonese. She took it out of her apron pocket and handed it to him. It was a bright yellow envelope, slightly bent and dirty. Henry recognized the stamp.

  He knew who it was from just by the handwriting--it was from Minidoka. From Keiko. She hadn't forgotten him.

  He looked at his mother, a little bewildered but not apologizing.

  "It's okay" was all she said as she walked away with the basket of clean laundry.

  Henry didn't even go to his room to open it. He carefully peeled it open right there and read the letter inside. At the top of the page was a small pen-and-ink drawing of a birthday cake, colored with watercolor. It read "Happy Birthday, Henry! I didn't want you to go, but I knew I was going anyway, so what could you do? I don't want to trouble your family or make things worse between you and your dad. I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you. And miss you more than you'll know."

  The rest was about camp life. How they had a school there, and how her father was doing. His law degree wasn't much good to him when it came time to pick sugar beets every day.

  And the letter closed with, "I won't write you again, I don't want to bother you.

  Maybe your father is right. Keiko."

  Henry's fingers shook when he read the last line again and again. He looked at his mother, who was now in the kitchen and had been watching him from the corner of her eye. She held her hand to her lips, looking concerned.

  Henry half-smiled at her and found his way to his room, where he counted out the money he'd saved all summer and the lucky money from Auntie King. He then found an old suitcase at the top of his closet and filled it with enough clothes and clean underwear to last a few days.

  Walking out of his room, he felt like an entirely different person from the one who had walked in. His mother looked at him, blanketed in confusion.

  Suitcase in hand, he headed for the door. "I'm going to the bus station, I'll be back in a few days. Don't wait up for me."

  "I knew you'd do the right thing," Sheldon said, smiling from the aisle passenger seat of the Greyhound bus bound for Walla Walla. "I knew you had it in you--saw it in your eyes."

  Henry just looked out the window as the city streets of Seattle gave way to green hills up and toward the pass between western and eastern Washington. He'd found Sheldon, and his suitcase in hand was all the prompting his friend had needed. "Let me get my hat" was Sheldon's only response, and the two of them gathered their things and headed for the bus depot, where they bought two round-trip tickets to Jerome, Idaho, the closest town to Camp Minidoka. The tickets cost twelve dollars each--Henry offered to pay for Sheldon's out of the money he'd saved up from working that summer, but Sheldon declined.

  "Thanks for coming with me. You didn't have to pay, I had enough--"

  " 'Sokay Henry, I never get out of the city enough anyway."

  Henry was grateful. Deep down, he'd wanted to save enough money. At least enough for three return tickets. He was going to ask Keiko to leave with him. He would give her his button and try to sneak her out during a visit. Anything was worth trying at this point. She could stay at his auntie King's house on Beacon Hill, or so he thought.

  Unlike his father, Auntie King had no qualms about her Japanese neighbors. She had said so herself, one time, much to Henry's surprise--somehow, she was more forgiving, more accepting. It was a long shot, but it was his last, best hope in the current situation.

  "You know where this place is?" Sheldon asked.

  "I know how it was in Puyallup, at Camp Harmony. If we get close enough, we're gonna have a hard time not knowing where it is."

  "How can you be so certain--"

  Henry cut him off "There's supposed to be nine thousand people imprisoned there.

  That's like a small city. It's not going to be a problem finding the camp. The problem will be finding Keiko among all those people."

  Sheldon whistled, to the dismay of an elderly woman in a fur hat, who turned around and scowled at him.

  Henry didn't mind sitting in the back of the bus. But for some reason Sheldon seemed to resent it. Grousing once in a while about how this was the Northwest and not the Deep South and the bus driver had had no business jerking his thumb toward the back of the bus when he and Henry boarded. Still, they went. Going this far, to someplace unknown, was potential trouble enough. The good thing about sitting in the last row was not having anyone behind them to stare or ask questions. Henry pretty much disappeared into the rear corner of the bus, looking out the window, and those glaring back didn't even make eye contact with Sheldon.

  "What happens if we get there and no one rents us a place to lay our heads for the night?" Henry asked.

  "We'll manage. Not the first time I slept out-of-doors, you know."

  But despite Sheldon's optimistic attitude, Henry had a very real concern. Right before all the Japanese were evacuated from Bainbridge Island, Keiko's uncle and his family had tried to resettle somewhere farther inland--where the Japanese were scrutinized less. Some Japanese families were encouraged to leave voluntarily. Some even thought doing so would prevent incarceration. The problem was that no one would sell gasoline to those families fleeing the city, or rent them a room. Even places that were virtually vacant turned them away or put up their closed signs as the Japanese families got out of their cars. Keiko's uncle had made it as far as Wenatchee, Washington, before being forced to turn back because no one would sell him any gas. He turned back and was rounded up like the rest.

  Henry thought about sleeping outside and was grateful he had brought extra clothing. September brought rain and cold weather, at least in Seattle. Who knew what it would be like in Idaho this time of year? Six hours later they made it to Walla Walla, a small farming community known for its apple orchards. Henry and Sheldon had forty-five minutes for lunch, then they'd board again for Twin Falls--then on to Jerome, Idaho, which, they assumed, would lead to Camp Minidoka.

  As soon as he stepped out on the sidewalk, Henry immediately felt self-conscious.

  Like the eyes of the world were on him, and Sheldon too. There wasn't a person of color anywhere in sight. Not even an Indian, which Henry had expected to find in a town named after an Indian tribe. Instead, they were greeted with buttoned-up white folk, all of whom seemed to take notice. Despite that, no one appeared unfriendly. They simply regarded him and Sheldon and went about their business. Still, Henry fidgeted with his "I am Chinese" button, and Sheldon said, "Let's go find something to eat. Just don't make eye contact, you hear?"

  Henry knew that Sheldon wasn't originally from Seattle; he'd grown up in Tacoma but was born in Alabama. His parents had left the South when he was five or six, and evidently he'd seen enough to never want to return. He still called grown men and little boys "sir" and tipped his hat and said "ma'am," but aside from that, he wanted no part of the South. And judging by Sheldon's hurried reaction to the people on the streets of Walla Walla, this might as well have been Birmingham.

  "Where we gonna go?"

  Sheldon looked at the windows of stores and restaurants. "I don't know--maybe this isn't as bad as I'd thought."

  "What do you mean, bad?"

  "I mean, look and you see for yourself Ain't no one even really concerned with us.

  And I don't see any 'whites only' signs in the windows."

  They walked down the street past people who seemed to notice them, but instead of pulling their children to the far side of the road, they just waved. Which was all the more bewildering.

  He and Sheldon finally stopped at the grand entrance of what must have been the tallest building in town, the Marcus Whitman Hotel. Inside, a coffee shop could be plainly seen. "What do you think?" Henry asked.

  "This is as good as any. Let's go around back and order something to go."

  "Out back?" Henry asked.

  "Ain't no need to be taking chances, Henry, we've come this far--"

  "Can I help you two with something?" An older gentleman must have crossed the street behind them. H
is question made Sheldon bolt upright, and Henry stepped behind him. "You two aren't from around here are, you?"

  Henry swallowed hard.

  "No sir, we're just passing through. In fact, we're heading back to our bus right now ..."

  "Well, since you've come all the way down, might as well go on in and grab a cup of something warm." Henry watched the man crane his neck and look down the street to the bus depot. "Looks like you've got time. Welcome to Walla Walla, and I hope you come back and see us again." He handed Henry and Sheldon a small pamphlet and tipped his hat. "God bless."

  Henry watched him walk away, confused. What place is this, he wondered. Does he think I'm Japanese? He looked at his button, then up at Sheldon, who was skimming the brochure and scratching his head--a surprised yet relieved look on his face. The small pamphlet was from an Adventist church, a group Henry had known was lending charitable aid to imprisoned Japanese families. Volunteering as teachers and nurses. As it turned out, there was a large congregation, even a private church college, here.