Under the Silk Hibiscus

by Alice J. Wisler

  That evening, although I wanted to join my brothers, I rushed into our barracks to check on Mama. Someone had to be responsible. I hoped that the bowl of rice I had for her was still warm enough for her to enjoy. I entered our living quarters and shut the front door.

  Seated next to Mama, Aunt Kazuko removed an object from her pocket. As I drew nearer to her and to Mama’s cot, I saw that it was a small sugar cookie. “I need a little pep,” my aunt confessed as she chewed. “Dinner was too small. A little pep for pep-me-up.”

  Mama groaned. “Kazuko, you will turn into a cookie.”

  I laughed. Ever since she’d been bedridden, Mama had been uncomfortable, but when her words showed that she still had her humor intact, I knew that she couldn’t be suffering too much. I handed her the bowl of rice as my aunt scurried around the barracks for a pair of chopsticks.

  Wanting to hear Lucy, I opened the wooden front door. Immediately, dust flew into our quarters, burning my eyes.

  “You always forget to open slow,” my aunt chided. “Slow is best way.”

  I knew that quiet was best way too and so didn't pick a fight with my aunt this time. I wanted to hear Lucy's songs.

  Aunt Kazuko complained about not having shampoo that she liked. “My hair is like dried shrimp when I use that green stuff.”

  “You should head over to the salon,” said Mama, referring to the hairdresser two barracks down who cut hair for fifteen cents. “She might have some better shampoo.”

  My aunt finished her cookie and wiped stray crumbs from her lap. “I need hair color, too,” she said and then explained in her native tongue about how her roots were looking grey.

  We were forbidden to speak Japanese inside the camp. All the signs reminded us of this. Yet, there was something comforting about hearing the language of my people spoken. There were words for which English had no equivalence like gambare and gaman, words of encouragement and endurance.

  Suddenly, my aunt stopped talking. From across the camp we heard the sweet voice of Lucy. Tonight she was singing about God watching over us.

  “Go on,” Mama said to me as my aunt lifted a bite of rice on wooden chopsticks to Mama’s mouth.

  “Go on what?”

  She chewed the rice, swallowed and then shifted in her bed, her large belly protruding underneath the sheet. With a weak gesture, she brushed back hair from her forehead. “Go over to her house.”

  My whole being lurched into one word: YES! Yes, I would head over there, yes, I had Mama’s blessing and yes, yes, again, yes, this would be my chance to get Fusou Lucy Yokota to notice me.

  Inside the Yokota’s living quarters, men, women, and children were seated on mats on the floor. To the left of the stove hung a rope with an assortment of garments on it—a man’s shirt, a woman’s skirt, a hand towel, and a blouse.

  Lucy stood near the table; cots had been pushed to the walls to make room for the crowd. I found a spot on the floor crammed between Tom and my classmate and friend from San Jose, Charles. Lucy had finished one song and was preparing to sing another. I was just in time! Charles’s elbow accidently jerked into my side, but I didn’t care. Pain didn’t matter, I was in the presence of Lucy!

  All conversation stopped as Lucy nodded at the gathered group, the cue that she was about to sing. Her song was one I had never heard before, something about a lost canary finding sanctuary in a hollow log.

  We were confined to a camp, away from all we knew, many of us separated from family members, but to hear her voice, that soprano timbre that was distinctly hers, made the smile stay on my face during her entire song.

  When she finished, we clapped. A man in the front, with a boy on his lap, asked if she could sing a song in Japanese for his son, one about the rain.

  Ken rose to his feet, stepped over seated bodies, and moved toward Lucy. He poured water into a cup from a metal bucket that sat on a birch table, a table identical to the one we had in our unit. Gently, he handed it to her.

  Why couldn’t I have done that? The answer was simple—that thought never crossed my mind. Whenever I saw Lucy, all I could think of was how pretty she was, how I couldn’t wait to hear her sing, and how I hoped that she’d look at me. I couldn’t think about actually doing something more.

  She thanked him, her lips then pressed into a tiny smile.

  Ken winked at her and then slipped back to where he had been seated.

  Why couldn’t I be more like my older brother? I’d prayed to be, feeling that it must be all right to ask God to make a person more suave. After all, the Bible said somewhere that God opens His hands and satisfies all his creation with their desires. Ever since we’d come to camp, Lucy had been my desire.

  When I drifted off to sleep that night, the sound of Aunt Kazuko’s snores penetrating my thoughts, I wondered how I could get Lucy to notice me. Dreaming about her was easy; it was the actual communicating that left me in a quandary.

  In August, after we first arrived at camp, I saw her walking on the road, the wind in her long hair, a pensive look on her face. I decided I could do it and summoned the courage to speak to her. I’d seen her at the assembly center in Santa Anita, but had never said a word to her during our months there. Here was my chance! Standing in her path, I waited for her to approach me. She stopped, cocked her head to the side and said, “Hello.”

  My throat was as dry as the summer air. “Uh . . .”

  She waited, a smile on her lips.

  I’d almost forgotten what I’d wanted to say.

  Looking me in the eyes, she asked, “You’re Ken’s brother, aren’t you?”

  Borrowing strength from somewhere, I blurted, “Why do you want to be called Lucy?”

  For a moment, her hand toyed with the silver barrette behind her ear. I was afraid that she wasn’t going to answer. “We are Americans,” she said at last. “Fusou is the old name for Japan. I can’t be associated with Japan now.”

  “But you can still use that name,” I protested. “Your mother and father gave it to you. It’s . . . It suits you.”

  The smile she flashed made my heart quiver. How could one person cause another to feel such . . . such tenderness toward her and affection? I swallowed and kicked a rock with my shoe, just for something to do, just because I didn’t want to be caught staring at her.

  Chapter Two

  Early the next morning before faint sunlight crept through our billet’s slats, Aunt Kazuko screamed. “The baby is coming! The baby! Somebody help us!”

  Ken wasn’t in our barracks. His cot was empty, untouched; in fact, both the pillow and wool army blankets were still in place as though he hadn’t slept there at all.

  As usual, it was going to be up to me. I scrambled out of my own cot as one of my blankets fell onto the floor. From the back of a wicker chair, I pulled off a checkered shirt and then grabbed a pair of trousers that were in a heap at the foot of my bed. Once dressed, I worked my feet into my shoes and looked for my jacket. I didn’t wait for Aunt Kazuko to tell me not to dilly-dally. Sprinting toward the clinic, the frosty autumn air didn’t bother me. By the time I reached the clinic, my face was damp from sweat. The main door was locked. I banged on it.

  Mekley, one of the uniformed soldiers assigned to the camp, appeared from the clinic’s vicinity. “What in tarnation are you doing?” he cried.

  “I need a doctor.”

  “Well, I need a million dollars.” He spoke with a drawl. Everybody told me it was Southern. I didn’t know for sure. I’d never heard a Southern accent before. I just knew that he was ornery. That characteristic had nothing to do with accents. “I need a good woman, too.” He winked, but it wasn’t a wink like Ken’s; it made me feel dirty to have witnessed it. “Know where I can find one?” he asked.

  Thirst cloaked my throat, and I tried to swallow to ease the dryness. Mama needed help and it was up to me. “Where’s the doctor? Where’s Doctor . . . ?” My mind suddenly became like a boarded-up window. What was the doctor’s name from San Jose? “Yamagata.”
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br />   “Ya-ma-ga-ta?” he said, drawing the surname out like it were a piece of taffy, the kind you got at the fair. “What happened that you need a doctor?”

  “My mother’s having a baby.”

  He grinned. “A baby, huh? Another one?”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. I knocked on the door again and then heard a strong and familiar voice from behind. “Are you looking for me?”

  Turning around, I tasted relief. Dr. Yamagata stood before me, a Dunlap hat on his head.

  “You have to come. My mother is in labor.”

  “Can’t she come to the hospital like all the other mamas?” asked Mekley.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t need to say anymore because I knew that Dr. Yamagata had said that when it was Mama’s time to give birth, he would come to us. He knew that Mama was too weak to get to the hospital on her own.

  “Go outside. Shoo, shoo.” No sooner had I rushed back to our barracks with the doctor when Aunt Kazuko commanded me and Tom to get out.

  Dr. Yamagata pulled the covers off of Mama and asked her a few questions.

  With brisk movements, a nurse entered our living quarters, her shoes stamping off the frost that clung to the heels. In her hands she carried towels and a basin of water. Over her shoulder, a bag swung. She placed the basin and towels on our table and from the bag pulled out a pair of gloves.

  My aunt muttered in Japanese that we needed to hurry and something about children needing to mind adults. She grabbed our coats off of pegs on the wall and flung them into my arms.

  Tom hobbled outside and I followed, purposely letting the door slam against the frame.

  Why did I have to be treated like a child?

  I was fifteen. Not a baby. Since our arrival at camp, I was the one who did all the work. I fanned Mama’s perspiring face, held her hand, got her water, and read to her. Why was I now told to shoo?

  Tom didn’t seem annoyed at all. And that annoyed me even more. He eased himself onto the top stair, his back against the door, his polio leg sticking straight out with the strap wrapped below his knee, causing his trousers to bunch out like balloons. “I hope it’s a girl,” he said with a smile. “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a sister?”

  A sister? I’d never thought that Mama could actually have a girl. What would it be like to have a sister? As Tom and I put on our coats, I thought of the words I’d overheard months ago before the train took us from the processing center to Heart Mountain. It had been a rainy evening in early February, and I’d woken to the sound of rain pattering against my bedroom’s windowpane. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and on the way back to my room, I heard my parents’ muffled voices across the hallway.

  Mama had said to Papa, “I know we don’t need another child.”

  Papa had said, “We’ll make do. The boys are older and can help out.”

  “I am too old to be having a baby.”

  “You are still that young girl I fell in love with the moment you stepped off that freighter in San Francisco.”

  Mama giggled, and her lightheartedness made me smile in the darkened hallway. “Really? All those years ago.”

  “All those many years ago, my sweet picture bride.”

  That was the first I knew that Mama was pregnant. Three weeks later Papa was taken from us. I only thought about Papa and saw her worry, all of which made me forget that she was going to have a baby in about eight months.

  It was not until we had to make our home in horse stalls at the Santa Anita assembly center that she told Tom, Ken, and me why she was feeling so sick. I acted like it was my first time hearing the news, letting my eyes grow wide and saying, “Really? Wow!” over and over until Ken told me to shut up.

  Now I watched the sun rise into the grey Wyoming sky and wondered what was happening back home, back in San Jose. What were the kids doing in my school? Did they miss me?

  Tom shivered, bringing me back to reality. “Let’s sit on the rock, Nathan,” he said.

  “What rock?”

  “My rock. I found it and put it there.” He pointed to the right of our unit’s entrance and, sure enough, there was a large, flat rock, about the width of two army helmets. He limped over and sat on it.

  I slipped down next to him. A wind whipped around us, making it colder than any wind I had ever felt in San Jose. Tom huddled against me, he rested his chin on my shoulder, a gesture he had done for as long as I could remember. I patted the top of his head, and we both smiled. I supposed I had been patting his head for as long as I could remember, too.

  From inside, the moans and cries increased. The nurse abruptly shut the door.

  Tom started to hum, perhaps to drown out the noises. He hummed “You Are My Sunshine,” a song Papa often sang to us. Then he hummed a few lines from “Away in the Manger.” It didn’t matter that it was only September; Tom loved Christmas songs anytime of the year.

  To further distract Tom from the painful sounds coming from our billet, I pointed toward Heart Mountain. Today, only the top of it could be seen, the base was covered in thick clouds. “I wonder what it feels like?”

  “I think it feels like cotton candy. The kind you get at the fair.”

  Cotton candy. I had never thought of that. I was thinking more like dirt or pebbles or maybe sand.

  “I wrote a story about a spaceship landing on the top of the mountain.”

  “Really? A spaceship, huh?”

  We stopped talking when suddenly there was a distinct cry, the sound of a young cat.

  Above the cry, we heard my aunt. “Oh, now, now. Yoshi, yoshi. You are here. It’s going to be all right. You are here at last.”

  “Get the children.” Mama’s strained voice made me jump. I pulled Tom to his feet.

  Dr. Yamagata opened the door to our billet. His smile assured me that everything was all right. “Go on inside,” he said. “You have a new family member.”

  Tom limped after me toward Mama who was seated in her bed, her face flushed, her hair matted. In her arms, she cradled a small life, swathed in blankets.

  I smiled into the face of my new sister. Her eyes were shut, her skin as smooth as the silk that was wrapped around our gold watch, hidden in Mama’s suitcase. And her fingers, they were barely fingers, just about the size of matchsticks.

  “She’s got fuzzy hair,” said Tom, edging his way around my shoulder to see the baby. “She’s the size of a turtle I saw on my way to school.”

  “Emiko,” said my mother. “That is her name.”

  I waited to hear more. After all, each of us sons had English first names as well as our Japanese given names. Mine was Nobu, although ever since I was five, I had opted to go by Nathan. Which American-sounding name had Mama given to her daughter? When Mama started to moan, I wiped her brow with a towel we’d brought from our home in San Jose. “Do you want some water?”

  She kissed the top of my sister’s head and closed her eyes. “No, not yet.”

  “What is her American name?”

  “Emi.”

  “Emi?”

  “Emi.” Mama sighed as though she was too exhausted to be bothered coming up with an English-sounding first name for her newborn.

  “Do you think she has piano playing fingers?” I asked, hoping to see a smile on my mother’s lips.

  But before she could reply, she clutched her neck and was taken over by a deep cough.

  Aunt Kazuko quickly gathered Emiko from Mama and said, “Boys, wash your hands.”

  I didn’t want to have to leave our billet yet again. I wanted to stay close to Mama.

  Mama took a few raspy breaths and then closed her eyes. Her voice was as soft as a distant train whistle, way in the distance. Just as I thought she hadn’t heard my question, Mama replied. “She does. You will teach her how to play, won’t you?”

  I wasn’t the best piano player, not at all like my mother, but I supposed I could teach my new sister a few songs.

  As my aunt once more told Tom and me to go wash our hands
, I wished that my father were here. If he were here, he’d be singing one of his favorite Bing Crosby songs. After he exhausted all he knew, then he’d hum a hymn or two from the Second Street Church’s hymnal. He would probably start with “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” and then let that one ease into “Blessed Assurance” and end with “Rock of Ages.”

  People would be sure to ask how he felt about having a girl now, and I imagined that his reaction would be something like, “Well, bless us all, a girl to add some class to this family. It’s about time, wouldn’t you agree?”

  With Papa on my mind, Tom and I trailed out of our unit for the latrine. If I closed my eyes and breathed in, I could almost smell the air that surrounded our fish market, that lovely salty aroma I had grown up with. Way back before Japan decided to change our lives and drop stupid bombs.

  Chapter Three

  Everyone wanted to see the new baby. The news of my sister’s birth spread across the camp. In the mess hall, women eagerly approached me, asking how my mother and the baby were doing. Small knitted socks and caps were handed to me for Baby Emiko.

  Women knocked on our door and then entered, congratulating Mama, who was usually asleep. They made their way over to Aunt Kazuko who proudly showed them my tiny sleeping sister, nestled against her, inside a flannel blanket. The women’s comments were endearing.

  “She is beautiful.”

  “A Heart Mountain baby.”

  “She’s so alert.”

  “Look at that smile. Did you see it?”