Weedflower

by Kadohata, Cynthia

  “I came with my uncle. He delivers supplies.”

  “Do you have an icebox?” said Tak-Tak suddenly.

  Frank blew another bubble and popped it. “Yes, but there’s no ice in it at the moment.”

  “How come?” said Tak-Tak.

  Frank ignored him and stretched his back.

  “Are you poor?” said Tak-Tak.

  “Takao!” said Sumiko. “That’s rude!”

  But instead of turning on Tak-Tak, Frank snapped at Sumiko. “They take our land and put you on it. They give you electricity. They give you ice. I found a sandwich one of you threw on the road.” He glared at her.

  Sumiko felt anger rise in herself. “We didn’t ask to be here. It wasn’t my sandwich!”

  Frank’s eyes cooled off a bit. But he pushed through the bean plants, and Sumiko watched him run off.

  “He liked me,” said Tak-Tak. “But not you. Doesn’t he have electricity?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not.” Sumiko watched as Frank disappeared in the distance. Her family was poor, but they had electricity. “He must have electricity,” she finally declared. “We have it, and we’re practically in jail.”

  18

  BACK AT THE BARRACK THAT EVENING AS SUMIKO lounged around inside, Mr. Moto called out to her. “I have an announcement, Sumiko!”

  She rushed out—anything was more exciting than lying around the barrack fending off the ultimate boredom. He stood by his plot of land holding a handful of droopy bean cuttings as if he were holding gold.

  “Shouldn’t those be in water?” she asked.

  “That’s why I need your help! You know all about farming!”

  “You want me to help?” Sumiko’s heart actually pounded, kind of like when she had gotten that birthday party invitation.

  He handed her half the cuttings. “I’ll tell you what. You plant these, and I’ll plant the rest, and we’ll have a contest to see who can grow the most beans! I’ll do the hardest labor, and you provide the expertise. And you can plant all the flowers you have room for.” A section of dirt just for herself! Mr. Moto’s face lit up as he continued. “A nursery owner from outside camp donated some trees to the camp. I’m going to try to get one of those for our garden.”

  Mr. Moto had gathered rocks and more hardened wood from the mountains. He planned to use the wood to carve a statue of a samurai. That evening Sumiko drew diagrams planning her section of garden. She drew and drew. Meanwhile, Mr. Moto moved the rocks from here to there and there to here, trying to decide where they looked best. Then Sumiko threw away the diagrams and decided just to plant a profusion of flowers. She lugged bucket after bucket of water from the latrine to make it easier for Mr. Moto to dig into the hard ground.

  As they worked, though, something started to bother her. Maybe she should politely tell him that the desert sun might kill their cuttings. But he must know that. Anybody would know a thing like that! Wouldn’t they? She didn’t want to embarrass him by telling him something he should have known already. But the more she didn’t speak, the more she wanted to speak. Finally she told Mr. Moto, “It’ll be too sunny for the plants! We need to cover them with cheesecloth.”

  Mr. Moto looked up in surprise. “Nobody else is using cheesecloth.” He quickly added, “I just mention that for conversation. You’re probably right.”

  Sumiko ignored the part about nobody else using cheesecloth. “I could make you a cover. Maybe Auntie will let me order cheesecloth from Sears.” Everybody in camp ordered from Sears; the deliveries were a great excitement. She stepped forward so Auntie wouldn’t hear. “In the meantime, I could use a piece of my sheet. My sheet’s too long for the cot anyway.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy your cheesecloth.” It always amazed Sumiko that no matter how poor grown-ups were, they all seemed to have enough money for gum or cheesecloth or whatever else a kid might want.

  “We’ll have to use some sheet in the meanwhile,” she said. “I’m going to plant stock, and they usually like to germinate in cooler conditions.”

  “Of course, stock—those are …”

  “They’re beautiful flowers!”

  Sumiko hurried into her home and pounced on her sheet, ripping a section off with her teeth. Auntie would kill her if she ever found out. Mr. Moto hid the sheet in his house—what a wonderful man he was!— while Sumiko brought Tak-Tak to the big pile of scrap wood that had been left over from building the camp. The pile was where everybody got wood for building tables and chairs. Sumiko and Tak-Tak searched for wood to use for stakes to hold up the sheet.

  Tak-Tak seemed happy as he searched the pile. She felt strangely happy too, though she couldn’t imagine why climbing around in the moonlight on a pile of wood should make her happy.

  Finally they found ten stakes, more than they needed for the moment. But eventually, if she got her cheesecloth from Sears, she’d need all ten. Night had fallen. The air was cool, and Sumiko was happy. The ultimate boredom seemed far, far away.

  The next day when Auntie had gone to her sewing club, Sumiko erected a cover for the seeds and cuttings. The sun seemed to be frying the top of her head, but she felt she needed to get the cover up as quickly as possible. When she finished, she stepped back and admired her work.

  Tak-Tak called from the barrack. “Are you finished?”

  “Yes!”

  “I think we should take ice to the Indian boy,” he said.

  She turned her attention away from the garden. “He doesn’t live in the bean field.”

  “Maybe he’s there. Please?”

  Sumiko thought it over. “I don’t even like that boy,” she said. But Tak-Tak’s face fell, and she was in a good mood. And she certainly deserved some ice. “All right, let’s go, then.”

  They got ice and walked to their tunnel in the bean field. Tak-Tak quickly ate his ice, but Sumiko ate hers slowly, so she’d have some left in case the rude boy showed up. But finally all her ice had melted, and she drank down the cool water.

  19

  ONCE, IN THIRD GRADE, SUMIKO’S TEACHER HAD ASKED everybody in class to write a paragraph about their favorite thing. She had titled her paper “Dirt.” Some of the other girls had made fun of her for that, and when she read her paper, they giggled and laughed at her. The other girls liked dancing and music and dolls. One girl even liked cars. But not dirt. Sumiko loved dolls, but she loved dirt more.

  Sumiko still loved dirt. It smelled really good. The problem with the dirt in Poston was that it didn’t smell good to her. In fact, it hardly smelled at all. So one morning when Bull was getting ready to leave for work, Sumiko sat up.

  “Bull?”

  “Awake already?” he said.

  “Mr. Moto let me plant some seeds in the garden out front. They were Uncle’s special stock seeds. But I’m worried because they haven’t sprouted yet. The dirt doesn’t smell right.”

  “You need organic matter.”

  “You mean like Baba’s manure? Where will I get it?”

  He leaned over, pinched her nose, and said, “Everywhere. It doesn’t have to be Baba’s manure.” He rushed out the door, leaving her pondering the word everywhere.

  Later she got some old cans from the mess hall kitchen and looked around. Sachi and some other kids passed by. “What are you doing?” Sachi asked.

  “Gathering organic matter.”

  The kids all just gave her a funny look and walked on. Maybe she would never fit in with most kids!. But the funny thing was, she didn’t care, because she was too excited.

  First she gathered some leaves from the surrounding area. She crumpled up the leaves. Then she went to the Camp Three chicken coop and used a piece of wood to scoop chicken droppings into a can. Then she mixed the droppings with the leaves and some dirt. Then she mixed it all into the soil in the garden.

  When the sun got too hot to continue working, she went inside and lay down and thought about how healthy she was making the dirt.

  Every morning, if she’d slept inside, she would
open her eyes and run outside to check her seeds. If she’d slept outside, she would just jump off her cot and be right there at her garden. But inside or out, every day she saw the same thing: nothing. She didn’t think Uncle’s Sumiko Strain could possibly be a failure, so she must have done something wrong. She was surprised at how bitter that made her feel. It made her feel useless. Even some of the beans hardly seemed to be growing.

  One morning when Bull had already left, she stopped Ichiro just as he was rushing off for work. “Ich!”

  “I’m late, Sumiko, what is it?”

  “I planted some flower seeds, and they haven’t bloomed yet. They were a new strain of stock that Uncle was developing in the shed.”

  “Sumiko, you know it’s too hot now for stock to germinate. They need colder weather.”

  “But these are special seeds!”

  He just shook his head and hurried off.

  Later she tried digging up a seed and saw that it hadn’t changed a bit since she’d planted it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe she had lost the knack for farming since she’d been in camp. She dug up another seed, and her jaw dropped as she saw the tiny white beginnings of a sprout.

  “It’s growing!” she cried out. She looked around; she was alone. It was growing! She gently covered up both seeds again.

  She made sure to sleep outside that night, and when she woke up the next morning, she fell immediately upon the garden. Three gorgeous tendrils of green poked out from the dirt. She felt a wave of paranoia and looked around. What if a bug ate some of her sprouts? Maybe sprouts like this were a treasure trove to a desert bug! So she spent the next hour constructing a tiny dome out of a piece of sheet. She would lay the dome over the seedlings in case any bugs struck in the night.

  Every evening she would place a tiny dome she made over each of her new sprouts. This took a long time. Once, just before sunset, she heard Bull and Ichiro talking behind her. She could tell they wanted her to hear.

  “What do you think, Bull, is she losing her mind?”

  “Could be, could be. The sun may have gone to her head.”

  “Yep, I hear that happens sometimes.”

  She just ignored them.

  As the weeks passed the gardens and fields of Poston grew more and more lush. Sumiko was shocked when her flowers bloomed. She’d expected them to be peach, but instead they were the colors of the rainbow. And there was plenty of organic matter for everyone. Camps One, Two, and Three each had started a poultry farm and a hog farm. The plan was to make the whole camp self-sustaining as quickly as possible. Supposedly, the people of Poston weren’t in jail; they were doing their patriotic duty, supporting the war by staying in this camp. Anyway, that’s what some people said. Of course, Ichiro thought some of the people were inu.

  Sumiko’s flowers quickly grew so profuse that Sumiko thought she and Mr. Moto ought to enter their garden in the Camp Three gardening competition. He didn’t want to. “We won’t win,” he insisted. He was riled because he hadn’t gotten any of the free trees from the nursery. “Did you see the Kadokawa garden? They got two trees.”

  Still, Sumiko thought their garden was getting more beautiful every day. The flower stalks grew two and a half feet high, and every morning the flowers filled the air near the barrack with the scent of cloves. It was like a flower forest.

  And the flowers were bigger than the ones they used to grow on the farm. The purple ones looked like grapes growing from trees. Each time Sumiko saw her garden, she thought of Uncle and how much he had loved to work in his shed. She wrote to Jiichan and Uncle telling them about her garden.

  Dear Jiichan,

  I am growing a new garden using Uncle’s special stock seeds I got from his shed. The seeds are called Sumiko Strain. They are growing very well. The garden is very beautiful.

  I am staying busy, as you would want me to do. I am writing on a blank sheet of paper!

  Love,

  Sumiko

  Jiichan, being Jiichan, wrote back and didn’t even mention the garden or the blank paper. In fact, his whole letter was about food. He just talked about all the foods he used to eat in their old life and how much he missed all that.

  Every morning before the day grew too hot, Sumiko checked for weeds and bugs in her garden. And once a week she went to the chicken coop and filled a can with chicken droppings. Tak-Tak, naturally, liked to help her with that chore. Nobody else could smell the dirt beneath the scent of the flowers, but Sumiko could smell it. It smelled good.

  The camp paper still carried story after story about the loss of discipline among the children, and Sumiko knew the grown-ups talked about that a lot. But when the adults talked about her, they just joked, “All Sumiko cares about is dirt.”

  20

  THE CRAZIEST THING HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER. THE Poston Chronicle reported that now that the government had gotten them all in here, it was trying to get them all out. There was a severe labor shortage in America, and even Nikkei were in demand as workers, especially for picking crops. As long as Nikkei didn’t work on the coast, and as long as their off-camp jobs were approved, they could resettle outside camp.

  None of the people Sumiko or her family knew took the idea of leaving seriously. First of all, even families who had lost thousands of dollars were being offered a resettlement fee of just one hundred dollars from the government to set up their new homes.

  Ichiro and Bull scoffed at the idea of leaving. Ichiro was especially furious. “I lose everything I’ve worked for, my father and grandfather are arrested, and they want me to pick crops to help a white man make money?”

  “It would be like being on parole,” agreed Bull.

  Auntie didn’t want the family to leave either. She worried about Sumiko and Tak-Tak. “Would they be safe outside camp?” she asked anxiously. “The ladies in my sewing group say a Japanese got shot at in the Midwest.”

  Sumiko agreed with Ichiro. They hadn’t owned their farm, but those flowers were theirs. Those flowers might as well have been set on fire by the government. And she liked how in camp she was treated as an equal, even if she didn’t fit in. Nobody had held a birthday party yet, but she knew if they did, she would be invited just like everybody else.

  A few people who’d already left camp to pick crops had already written back to say that conditions were difficult and even dangerous for Nikkei outside of camp. And the new rules about resettlement didn’t include people like Uncle and Jiichan who were imprisoned by the Department of Justice.

  “Look,” said Ichiro, “if we go out, we’ll have to cower to hakujin night and day. We won’t be able to walk down the street holding our heads high.”

  Personally, Sumiko didn’t want to leave camp and go someplace completely unknown where someone might shoot at her and Tak-Tak. Tak-Tak was safest right here. Sumiko had even started to think she could open a little flower store right here in Poston.

  While she and Mr. Moto picked at weeds in the garden later, he told her his nephews were leaving camp to work on a farm picking crops. “They used to own their own farm,” he said. “I wish they would stay here.” He looked thoughtful. “But I wish my son would leave. All he does is gamble or lie in bed.”

  “Are you thinking about leaving?” Sumiko asked.

  “I’m too old to start over under those circumstances,” he said. “I’ll wait until they let us out with all our civil rights.” Sumiko wasn’t even sure what civil rights were, but the grown-ups talked about them all the time. Mr. Moto looked very sad then, and Sumiko figured he was thinking about his civil rights. Instead, he said, “Did you notice a few of my bean plants died?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. Every so often you lose a plant. That’s part of farming.”

  Mr. Moto actually looked as if he were about to cry. “I lost seven. Maybe I’m not meant to be a farmer.”

  He hung his head low and trudged into his barrack. What an emotional man! Sumiko felt responsible somehow, felt she’d let him down. After all, there was a man on the next block whose
bean plants were thriving. She had seen Mr. Moto eye the man’s garden competitively, even jealously. So she prepared all of Mr. Moto’s area with extra organic matter and took a can of water to gather more cuttings for him at the bean tunnels.

  She also brought two cups of ice. In case that Frank boy was there, it would be rude to bring just one cup.

  She knew Frank was there before she saw him. He wasn’t even hiding, just examining the beans. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she called out.

  He glanced mildly at her, as if she were a fly and he were considering swatting her. “This is our land.”

  “It’s ours for now. Anyway, you weren’t using it.”

  “What is it with you? You think you have to be using land for it to be worth something?”

  She decided right then not to offer him any ice. She felt satisfied when he couldn’t help but glance at the two cups. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Just seeing what you people are doing. What are you doing here?” He glanced again at the cups of ice.

  “I hope you don’t think I brought this for you,” she said.

  They glared at each other. Then he tilted his head the way he had done the first time she saw him. He smiled and took a cup from her. “You’re a bad liar,” he said.

  “Well, at least you could say thank you.”

  He said it with a mouth full of ice. They saw some white men walking toward the field, so they slipped into a bean tunnel. They sucked on their ice as the men approached and walked by. Sumiko thought of whites as people you had to be quiet around, and Frank seemed to feel the same way.

  Sumiko and Frank didn’t talk, just greedily ate their ice and then drank the cool water from the ice that had melted. When they finished, Frank looked surprised, as if he’d forgotten she was even there. “So they’re keeping you here until the end of the war?” he said.

  “I don’t know. It’s kind of confusing. Now the government wants us to leave. They want us working outside to support the war effort. One family who left camp wrote back to their relatives and said they had to drive ten miles to find a grocery store that would serve them.”