I turned away. I could not believe the woman. What did she mean? Mitsu couldn’t be gone. Her family couldn’t be gone. I left the porch and rushed around to the side of the house. I stood on tiptoe to peer into the living-room window. The curtains were drawn, and I couldn’t see anything. Mitsu’s mother always kept her curtains open in the day. Something twisted in my stomach. Panic tightened my chest. I ran around the back to Mitsu’s bedroom window. The curtains were open. I stretched to look inside and pressed my face close to the window glass. I could see the inside of the room. There was Mitsu’s bed and her dresser, but the bed was bare. So was the dresser. There was no sign of Mitsu anywhere.
I ran the rest of the way to school. Maybe Mitsu would be there. Maybe she’d just left for school early that morning. I would walk into the classroom, and Mitsu would be at her desk. But she wasn’t. Half the classroom was empty. All the Japanese kids were gone.
I sat through the school day in a daze. I heard the teacher’s explanation, but I still couldn’t believe it. The war had seemed so far away. I’d thought it could never touch me. I’d thought I had all the time I needed to say sorry to Mitsu.
After school, I walked past the other kids, not stopping to talk to anyone. The words “gone” and “taken away” floated out at me from the static of voices. I ran, trying to block out the sounds. By the time I reached my house, tears were streaming down my face. I stomped up the back stairs and ran through the kitchen past my mother and little Nanjo. They stared after me.
“Jasminder—” my mother began.
But I didn’t stop to listen. I went straight to my bedroom, flung myself onto my bed and buried my face in the pillow. I heard a sound behind me and knew my mom had come into the room. She was probably going to get mad at me for not taking off my shoes, for running in the house, for not stopping to listen . . . for everything. I kept my face in the pillow and braced myself for my mother’s angry words. They didn’t come. Instead, I felt a gentle touch on my head.
“Jasminder.” My mother spoke softly as she sat down on the edge of the bed. Her hand patted my head.
“Audhas nah ho,” she said. “Don’t be sad.”
The unexpected comfort in my mother’s voice broke through the wall around me. I felt a twist of pain deep inside, and a loud sob escaped from my throat. How could I not be sad? I rolled over and reached out to my mother — just as I’d done when I was a little girl Nanjo’s age. My mother pulled me close and wrapped her arms around me.
As I felt the comfort of my mother’s closeness, I promised myself that when Mitsu came back, nothing would stop me from apologizing and making things right between us again.
Chapter Eleven
Repairs
“But Mitsu never came back,” said Rina’s grandma, ending her story. “I never saw her again.”
Shannon and Rina sat stunned and silent for a moment. Then Rina spoke.
“I don’t get it? Where did they go?”
Rina’s grandma sighed.
“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I still find it hard to believe it happened.”
She leaned toward the coffee table and pushed aside some photographs, revealing an old, yellowed newspaper clipping. She picked it up and read it out loud.
“April 21, 1942. On Tuesday morning shortly before 10 o’clock all remaining Japanese residents of Cowichan District — 470 of them — left Chemainus on the Princess Adelaide for Vancouver. Of the total, 119 were from Duncan, 104 from Mayo camp and 40 from Hillcrest. Mayo camp is Paldi,” Rina’s grandma explained. “They were bussed to Chemainus. Then they had to go on an old boat over to Vancouver. Then they were taken to Hastings Park, where the Pacific National Exhibition is now.”
“The PNE?” Rina asked. “You mean the fairgrounds? What did they have to go there for?”
“Well,” Rina’s grandma said slowly. “I guess you could say it was kind of like a prison. Mr. Mayo went to visit the Japanese people from Paldi while they were there. He said there were guards and a fence. All the Japanese people had to live squished into the animal barns. Mitsu’s mother wrote to my mother after they left there, but she didn’t say much about it.”
“Maybe it was too awful,” Shannon suggested, her voice small.
“Yeah,” Rina agreed, her own voice quieter than usual.
“After Hastings Park they had to go live somewhere in the interior of the province,” Rina’s grandma continued. “I think it was pretty bad there, too. Then, when the war was over, Mitsu’s family moved to Toronto.”
“Did you write to Mitsu?” Shannon asked.
“No.” Rina’s grandma shook her head. “I was never much of a writer.”
“Maybe Mitsu will be at the reunion,” Rina suggested.
“Maybe,” said Rina’s grandma. “But if she still lives back east, it would be a long way for her to come.”
She stood up slowly.
“Well, I better finish getting ready,” she announced. She walked out of the room, leaving Rina and Shannon sitting on the couch with a space between them.
“Wow,” Rina said, looking sideways at Shannon. “I never knew any of that stuff.”
“Yeah,” Shannon agreed.
An awkward silence fell. Roller blades, striped socks or whatever it was that they’d been fighting about suddenly seemed awfully insignificant. What if something had split them up before they’d had a chance to make up?
Shannon looked over at Rina, and their eyes met.
“I’m sorry!” they both said at once. Then they laughed.
“I didn’t mean what I said about wishing I’d never come here,” Shannon said.
“I know,” said Rina, twisting toward Shannon. “I didn’t mean what I said either.”
“I guess I was acting weird because I was feeling sort of homesick,” Shannon admitted.
“I should have thought of that,” Rina said. “I should have been nicer.”
“Me, too,” Shannon said.
“Maybe even best friends need a break from each other sometimes,” Rina suggested.
“I guess so,” Shannon agreed.
“But not too big of one!” Rina added with a laugh. Then she jumped up from the couch.
“Hey, maybe we should put this stuff away for my grandma,” she suggested.
“Sure,” Shannon said, leaning forward to push the photos into a pile.
Her eyes were caught by the class photograph with Rina’s grandma and Mitsu. Jas and Mitsu. She wished their story hadn’t had such a sad ending. She picked up the pile of photos and bent down to place them in the cardboard box. Then she froze.
In the bottom of the box was a red bead.
“Look!” Shannon said. “Do you think that’s one of the beads from the broken bracelet?”
Rina dropped to her knees to peer into the box. She plucked out the bead and held it up to the light. An orange flame flickered at its center.
“It must be!” she said.
Rina grabbed the box and set it on the table. She pulled out the few photos and mementos left in the bottom of the box and placed them out of the way.
“There’s another one!” she cried, her fingers diving into a corner of the box.
Shannon knelt beside Rina.
“I think there’s one stuck under that edge,” she said, reaching in.
Together, they pulled out a handful of the small red beads. Then they looked at each other.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Rina asked, her eyes shining.
Shannon nodded. “Do you have any string?”
“In my room!” Rina jumped to her feet, and the two girls hurried to the bedroom.
Rina pulled a plastic box out from the bottom of her closet, rummaged through it and took out a small pair of scissors, a wound-up length of beading string and a tiny plastic envelope of gold-colored clasps.
“Hey,” Shannon said, “I bought you that stuff for your birthday. Haven’t you used it yet?”
“No,” Rina admitted. “I’m not go
od at this kind of stuff.” She held out the supplies to Shannon. “Maybe you should do it.”
“Okay. If you’re sure,” Shannon said. She was eager to string the beads and see if there were enough to make a bracelet again, but she didn’t want to take the job away from Rina if Rina really wanted to do it. After all, they belonged to her grandmother.
“Go ahead,” Rina said. “You can do a better job than I can.”
Shannon smiled and settled herself on Rina’s bed. She placed the beads in a small pile on the bedspread and set to work. Both girls watched as the beads slid one after the other down the string. Would there be enough?
Finally, Shannon held up the completed length of beads. It dangled from her fingers, looking very short.
“Hold out your wrist,” she suggested to Rina. “I’ll see if it fits before I tie on the clasp.”
Rina held out her arm, and Shannon measured the beads around her wrist.
“It fits!” Shannon announced. Her eyes met Rina’s, and Rina let out a long breath. Then Rina frowned slightly. “Now what?” she said.
Shannon shrugged. She’d only thought as far as fixing the bracelet. It had seemed the right thing to do. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens at the reunion,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
The Reunion
They found Rina’s grandma in the kitchen, sprinkling a last touch of paprika on top of an egg salad Rina’s mom was bringing to the reunion. Through the kitchen window they could see Rina’s brothers doing bike tricks in the driveway as they waited for everyone else to come out. Julie had already claimed the best seat in Rina’s parents’ van.
“Grandma,” Rina said.
“Yes, dear?” Rina’s grandma asked, as she stretched plastic wrap over the salad bowl.
Rina held out the bracelet. Rina’s grandma looked up, and the bowl clunked onto the table. Her eyebrows rose and her mouth opened.
“Mitsu’s bracelet,” she said softly. “After all these years . . .”
She took the bracelet in one hand and held it up to the light. Her eyes got a faraway look. Then they focused again, and she smiled at Rina and Shannon.
“Aren’t you sweet. Did you two fix it for me?”
“It was mostly Shannon,” Rina said.
“We did it together,” Shannon added.
“Well,” Rina’s grandma said, handing the bracelet back to Rina, “maybe you’d like to keep it now. You could share it.”
“But—” Rina began.
Shannon didn’t know what to say either. Neither of them had expected Rina’s grandma to offer them the bracelet. That wasn’t what they’d planned at all.
“Don’t you want to give it to Mitsu?” Shannon blurted.
“To Mitsu?” Rina’s grandma asked.
“She might be at the reunion,” Rina said.
“Ah,” Rina’s grandma said. “So that’s what this is about.”
She looked at the girls, her face serious. “I don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said. “But I don’t think Mitsu is going to be there, and even if she is, a lot of years have passed. We may not have anything to say to each other.”
She looked at Shannon and Rina’s fallen faces and closed her hand over the bracelet again.
“I’ll hold onto it for now,” she said. “We’ll see . . .”
Soon, they were all piling into Rina’s parents’ van.
When they got to the Forest Museum, they climbed onto one of the open train cars behind a shiny, black, old-fashioned steam engine.
“I think this is the locie that used to come through Paldi when I was a girl,” Rina’s grandma told them as they settled into their seats.
“What’s a locie?” Julie asked.
“It’s short for locomotive,” Rina answered.
Rina’s grandma smiled. “It used to come through Paldi twice a day. The little kids used to run out and wave every time it went by. When I was older, I hitched a ride on it sometimes.”
“You hitched a ride?” Julie repeated. “That’s funny!”
Shannon and Rina looked at each other. They were remembering the story of how Jas and Mitsu had gotten a ride on the locie when they went to pick berries.
“All aboard!” the conductor called from the platform.
He climbed onto the train, the engineer blew the whistle, and the train headed out of the station. They passed a row of old buildings that had once been used in a logging camp, turned a corner by a wooden lookout tower, then chugged through the center of the museum grounds into the cool shade of trees. They emerged into sunlight again, and the train took them onto a wooden trestle out over the edge of a lake, then back onto land, past an old wooden water tower, and finally to a stop at the station by the picnic area.
As they climbed off the train, they could see a crowd of people already setting out picnic supplies and greeting each other. Draped from the top of the wooden picnic shelter was a banner that read, Welcome to the Paldi Reunion!
Julie headed at once for the playground, while Rina’s brothers ran to check out some old logging machinery that was on display near the train tracks. Rina and Shannon followed the older people to the picnic area. Rina’s mother passed her a red-and-white-checked tablecloth to spread out on an empty picnic table, while she and Rina’s grandma began unpacking bags and setting out containers of food.
“Jas Mohan!” Someone came from behind them to greet Rina’s grandma. Shannon and Rina turned hopefully. A tall woman with graying blond hair was beaming at Rina’s grandma.
“So this is your brood?” she said, sweeping her arms out to indicate all of them.
She was not Mitsu.
People were waving and hugging, laughing and talking all over the picnic area, while kids were running in and out. Some of the people looked East Indian, some looked Japanese, some looked English or European, some looked a mix of everything.
Rina’s grandma moved around, greeting and talking to different people, but she spoke to each in much the same way. None of them was Mitsu.
“Well, we might as well go and check out the play area,” Rina said with a sigh.
They walked away from the picnic area across the grass.
“What’s that?” Shannon asked, pointing to a large yellow metal hulk parked on the grass near the play equipment.
“I think it’s a caboose,” Rina said. “Do you want to see if we can climb onto the top?”
Shannon shrugged and laughed. “All right,” she said. “Why not?”
Rina led the way up the caboose steps, then climbed through a wide empty window. She stood outside on the window ledge, reached up and pulled herself onto the roof of the caboose.
“Be careful,” Shannon called as she struggled to climb to the window.
A few minutes later, Shannon was sprawled breathless on the caboose roof next to Rina.
“Yuck! It’s rusty up here,” she said.
Rina laughed. “At least we’re away from all the little kids,” she said.
Shannon shifted into a sitting position beside her friend.
“Look!” Rina said.
Shannon followed Rina’s gaze back to the picnic area.
A new group of people had arrived. Rina’s grandma was talking to an older Japanese-looking woman. The woman was small with a round face and short dark hair softened by gray.
Shannon and Rina looked at each other.
“Do you think it’s her?” Shannon whispered.
“I don’t know.”
The two women stood with a slight distance between them. They looked stiff, uncertain.
“I wish we could hear what they’re saying,” Shannon said, gripping Rina’s arm.
“Yeah,” Rina said. “Maybe we should go back there.”
She twisted her body to begin backing off the caboose.
“Wait!” Shannon said, reaching out to grab Rina. “Look.”
Rina stopped and turned back to the picnic area. Her grandma was holding something out to the other woman.
“The bracelet!” Rina hissed.
The woman took the bracelet in her hand. From their distance, it was hard for Shannon and Rina to see her expression at first. Her mouth seemed to drop open slightly as she held the bracelet up to the light. Then, her face broke into the biggest smile Shannon and Rina had ever seen.
It was Mitsu.
The two women embraced. For a moment, Shannon saw the two young girls from the past, Jas and Mitsu — together again, at last.
Quickly, Shannon and Rina climbed down from the caboose and started back across the grass.
“Race you!” Rina challenged, starting to run.
Shannon watched Rina moving easily ahead and away from her. For a moment, she felt a sharp pang in her stomach. Memories of the bad feelings that had passed between her and Rina fluttered back. Then Rina looked back at Shannon, smiled and slowed down. Shannon caught up to her friend, and they jogged up to the picnic site side by side, arm in arm.
Reunion Page 4
