Under the Silk Hibiscus

by Alice J. Wisler

  “Nathan?”

  Suddenly, I was brought back to reality. Mrs. Kanagawa was looking at me, a ruler in her left hand, a stern expression covering her usually placid face.

  The rest of the class had their eyes fixed on me as well.

  I bit back embarrassment. “Uh . . .”

  “Pay attention, Nathan. It will serve you well.”

  “Yes. Yes, ma’am.”

  Snickers followed, and soon it seemed that everyone was laughing at me.

  Mrs. Kanagawa turned to Lenny. “What do you think that Emerson meant by his poem?” she asked.

  “I think Emerson was trying to say that he thought it happier to be dead, and that’s what he meant when he wrote, ‘to die for beauty, than live for bread.’”

  “Very good.”

  I sighed. I could have answered that question. Had I heard it.

  When the school day ended, I ambled toward our barracks, following others who were headed home. I should have listened to Aunt Kazuko and worn a heavier coat. The wind whipped through my jacket. The peak of Heart Mountain was sprinkled with snow.

  Seated in their watch stations, the guards were covered in caps and coats, even gloves. Their steely rifles glistened underneath a winter sun.

  “We keep you safe,” one said to me when I was getting water for our bucket after first arriving at the camp.

  Safe?

  Charles said that his father told him there was no more safety for the Japanese in this country.

  As I neared our barracks, I heard voices escalating. Huddled in a cluster was a handful of teen-aged boys. Half of them had burlap bands around their heads.

  I sensed what was about to happen and, sure enough, someone swung his fist, and then it was like in the movies. Right before us was a real live gang fight between the San Jose kids and the L.A. kids.

  Punches were thrown, and I had to run to the side of the path. But Tom was not as quick. He was caught between the gangs, and before I could rush in to pull him out of the crossfire, he fell.

  “Tom!” I screamed.

  Charles also saw Tom fall and rushed to us.

  “Are you hurt?” Charles asked.

  I knelt beside my brother. There was no blood that I could see.

  Tom let out a faint moan. “Help me up.”

  Together, Charles and I helped Tom to his feet. It was then that I saw the dark bruise on my brother’s forehead. I wanted to scoop him into my arms and carry him. I would have done just that, but Tom insisted that he could walk.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” he repeated as I put my arm around his waist.

  The three of us made our way toward our home and when we got there, Charles opened the door.

  I hoped Aunt Kazuko wouldn’t bark at us when she saw Tom’s bruised forehead. But of course, she was known for speaking her mind, and so, of course, she did.

  Inside our barracks, we laid Tom on his cot as Aunt Kazuko cried, “What on this earth happened?”

  When we told her, she muttered about boys being too eager to show off their muscles. “These gangs are of the Devil.” She removed a pillow from Mama’s bed to prop Tom’s leg. “Those boys need spankings.”

  Tom kicked off his left shoe and then I untied his right one and unlatched his brace. I helped him slip his leg out from it and then positioned the pillow under the back of his kneecap.

  “Ouch,” said Tom.

  “What hurts?” I asked.

  “My mouth feels bloody.”

  Aunt Kazuko poured him a glass of water and handed it to him. He drank all of it, not even pausing to breathe.

  “That better?” I asked. I pulled up his pant leg and studied his leg. A purple mound had formed on his shin.

  When the ruckus outside calmed down, Ken entered. “Is he all right?”

  “A bit late, aren’t you?” I wanted to say so much more, but stopped there.

  “Hey, don’t get huffy.” Ken tried to soothe me like he often did, but this time, I didn’t give in. I kept the frown plastered on my face as I refilled Tom’s glass of water.

  Ken attempted to tease Tom, and once Tom laughed, Ken must have felt he’d accomplished his mission. He left; the door banged behind him.

  I was ready to yell out at him, but noticed Tom’s smile in the darkening room. “You take good care of us, Nathan.”

  The light bulb produced a sizzling noise.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.” I moved next to him so that he could lean against me; he rested his head on my shoulder.

  “Remember that day when we went swimming?”

  “In that pond?”

  “Yeah. Ken found it. Remember how he came home to tell us about it?”

  It was funny that Tom would choose to recall that day at this moment. Ken had been excited to tell Tom and me about a place he was sure no one else knew about. Reluctantly, Mama had given us permission to go.

  We’d all put on old T-shirts and shorts and made the trek to it. We’d complained that it was too far to walk, and what about Tom and his leg? But Ken just urged us to keep walking.

  “This had better be worth it,” I’d said. I recalled how many times Ken got us anticipating something spectacular only to be let down. Once he’d told us the circus was coming to town. But it hadn’t been a real circus at all, but rather two old men with an unsteady horse, an overweight woman in a clown costume who claimed she could read palms, and a magician that wore a wool beret. The performance had been held on a sidewalk on Main Street with a sparse crowd that left after twenty minutes when the magician’s tricks were exposed as phony.

  I’d been disappointed; Tom, a mere five-year-old, had cried. Some of his tears probably had to do with fatigue; he’d been up nearly all night the night before, too excited to sleep, because as Ken had said, “The circus is coming to town, and you’re gonna have fun.”

  The swimming hole had actually been fun. All three of us had splashed in the water and later had stretched out on the tops of three old logs as the sun baked our backs. Ken had packed ham and cheese sandwiches for us and a thermos of chicken soup.

  I wondered if we would ever see that side of Ken again, the side that spent time with his siblings, the big brother who cared about us and wanted to be part of our lives.

  As I continued to question my older brother’s current lifestyle and motives, Tom patted my arm and closed his eyes. “I think I can sleep now.”

  “Don’t you want to lie down?” Before he could respond, I helped him slide into a horizontal position, careful to adjust the pillow so that it continued to fit under his leg. I thought about the day we found out that Tom’s leg was permanently paralyzed and recalled Papa’s words, “He’ll learn to walk with a limp. He’ll even play baseball.” Papa was a baseball enthusiast. Little did he know that his son would have little interest in baseball; dreaming and writing would be his choices.

  Aunt Kazuko warmed a bottle for Emi, and we listened to my sister guzzle the milk from it. My aunt broke the near silence when she confessed, “I have been hungry all day. It should be almost time for dinner.”

  Tom opened his eyes. “Oh, when you go to dinner, can you bring me back something to eat?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Something like a steak and a huge slice of chocolate pie, okay?”

  I was amazed that even in pain, he was able to tease. “Want your steak well done or rare?” I asked.

  “You know I like steaks well-done. With a side of mashed potatoes.”

  It seemed that, while the rest of us took to complaining, Tom faced each day as though he had no worries. He had never let his lifeless leg become a threat to his happiness.

  “Does it hurt?” I once asked him.

  “Nah,” he’d said. “It’s got no feeling. But sometimes in my dreams, when I’m climbing a tree or riding a bicycle, I fall and then it hurts. Only in my dreams does it feel any pain.”

  Aunt Kazuko told me to go on to dinner. “I stay here,” she said. “I can go to dining ha
ll when you get back.”

  Dinner was a solemn event that night as members of the San Jose gang sat together in the far corner, talking in low, but angry whispers. I looked for Lucy, but didn’t see her.

  Perhaps tonight she’d sing something to bring some peace to my troubled mind.

  I waited to hear her voice float over the dusty terrain, but when it got to be after nine, I was too restless to stay put in the billet with Tom, Emi, and Aunt Kazuko. Tom said the moon was full, so I went outside to see it, and sure enough, it was like a ball of fire above Heart Mountain. Tom thought it looked like a spaceship, and he was certain Martians had landed. I’d wished him luck with finding them and followed some activity near the rec hall, hoping I could find Lucy.

  As I drew closer to the rec hall, I saw that the activity in the middle of the road was a fight between a Los Angeles boy and a San Jose boy. Wasn’t the fight that happened earlier enough for one day? I didn’t want to get caught up in it, so watched from the sidelines. The L.A. boy was taller, but the San Jose boy was better with his fists.

  I wondered where Mekley was. He would have put an end to the fight.

  The cheers from the growing crowd of high school kids sounded like we were at a football game back in California. I spotted Lucy, and when she looked at me, I smiled.

  The soldier that came by to reprimand the boys was short with a bored expression. “Knock it off,” he said. “Go back to your barracks.”

  The crowd dispersed; the boys from L.A. threatened to get us next time. Once they had disappeared, a group of girls quickly made their way toward Ken. I stood in the shadows. No one rushed over to me.

  “Ken, look at the moon,” said Suzanne, a girl with a squeaky voice. “It looks like it’s glowing.”

  Ken said he thought it looked wild, full of life.

  The girls giggled. No one smiled at me or asked what I thought of the way the moon shone over the top of Heart Mountain.

  “Wild like you?” asked one. “You are pretty wild.”

  I searched for Lucy, but she, like much of the crowd, had left. She was usually with Ken; perhaps tonight she was finally tired of him and his Clark Gable ways.

  “Ken, are you going to the dance on Friday?” Suzanne asked.

  “Only if you’ll be there.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. “Ken,” I called out to him and stepped from the shadows. “I need to talk with you.”

  “What’s up?”

  “What about the watch?”

  “I told you not to worry.” He spat the words out as though they were bullets.

  What was wrong with Ken? Why did he always have to be in control? When would he realize that the whole earth didn’t revolve around him?

  Just because the girls liked him didn’t mean he was perfect. Yet I could tell by the way he smiled at a group of them or ran his hand through his hair, he thought that he was indeed created to charm, to enlighten, and to make them smile.

  He went on to talk about the gang activity, how his group would put the gang from L.A. in their place.

  Who cares about the gangs here? It wasn’t like that by fighting, anything was going to be accomplished. We were all the same here. No one was better than anyone else. Behind those jagged fences, we were all considered dirty.

  Ken held the gathered group’s attention as he talked of how there would be a meeting to discuss plans tomorrow evening after dinner. “We’ll set those L.A. wimps straight,” he said. “We’ll get our revenge.”

  He was crazy. The more he talked, the more irritated I grew. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. No one noticed when I walked off toward our barracks. No one asked where I was going or called me to come back.

  I stormed into our barracks, purposely letting the door slam against its frame.

  “What is wrong with you?” my aunt immediately wanted to know.

  “He thinks the whole world worships him,” I cried.

  “The whole world?”

  “Yes!”

  She put Emi in her crib and came over to where I slouched down on the floor, my back against the wall. Standing over me, she said, “First of all, whisper. Tom is asleep already.” She motioned to his cot. “Next, you need to stop complaining about Ken. The watch is gone. He told you he doesn’t know where it is. You have to let it go.”

  Let it go? She might be able to do that. She hadn’t had both Papa and Mama tell her how valuable it was and the story around it. How could she think that losing it didn’t matter? The watch was history, the Mori history that proved we were courageous, valued, and strong. Ken was the eldest, how come he didn’t seem to care that this heirloom was gone? Someone had taken it, and he was doing nothing about it!

  I bet we weren’t even related. I bet Ken was found under a tree or in a strawberry patch. Perhaps Papa had pulled him in from the ocean on a fishing excursion. He was not a real Mori; he was adopted by Papa and Mama.

  Yet it was I who felt alone—the person nobody wanted to be around.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Saturday morning, I was the last one to get on the bus. The driver frowned at me in between taking puffs on his cigar, and said, “Well, it’s about time, boy.”

  I offered a muffled apology and went to sit by Charles.

  Charles took one look at me and said, “Rough night?”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out, so I merely nodded.

  The ride to the Towson Farm seemed to take longer than usual. My mind kept debating about what I should do about the stolen watch. I thought of telling Charles what had happened, but decided against it.

  We got to help out with the sheep shearing that day. After the mounds of wool were shorn from their animal bodies, we collected it, shoveling the white and grey fluff into the bed of a truck. My back ached, and my fingers were sore from the way the handle of the shovel pinched my flesh.

  When we were given a break for lunch, I drank water from an outdoor spigot before stepping into the kitchen. I wiped my face with Papa’s handkerchief, and then shoved it back into the back pocket of my dungarees.

  Mrs. Towson served us a vegetable stew for lunch with a loaf of crusty bread and fresh butter made from the milk of one of their cows. Her son Henry sat at the nearby table, coloring on a piece of paper.

  I thought about what Charles said about the bedrooms in the back of the house and how Henry’s artwork hung on the walls. Curiosity nudged at me, and I cleared my bowl and then went to use the bathroom. I had been to the bathroom only once before. Farmhands were supposed to use the outhouse behind the barn. As I made my way from the bathroom back to the kitchen, I let my desire to see the rest of the house take me further down the hallway. The hallway was long; the walls held framed family photographs. There were stern looking men standing beside a tractor and women holding babies. A bedroom caught my attention. The door was partially opened. I’ll just slip in the room to see what it looks like, I thought, as inquisitiveness got the best of me.

  Once in the room, I felt like I’d stepped into a storybook. This room was inviting, warm; the curtains dotted with yellow flowers; the matching bedspread draped evenly over the double bed. I ached to be in our house in San Jose with real furniture and curtains and a warm security that I had not experienced since we’d left. Sure enough, on one of the walls was a framed picture drawn with crayons that looked like it could be one of Henry’s.

  “Nathan?” Charles called out to me, and right then, I knew I was where I didn’t belong.

  On the floor by a chair adorned in a cream and marigold quilt sat a fat duffle bag. Not just any bag, but a military bag with white lettering on it.

  “Nathan, where’d you go?”

  Turning to leave the room, I saw the dresser. It was then that my heart skipped at least five beats. On the dresser, right on top of a lacy doily beside a brass lamp with a blue lampshade, laid our gold watch.

  This watch, this heirloom didn’t belong here.

  “Nathan? Where’d you go?” Charles called from the hal
lway. His voice was getting closer and time was running out.

  I knew what I had to do, and without another moment’s hesitation, I did it.

  The rest of the afternoon, Charles and I cleaned sheep pens as I tried to act myself and not let on what I had seen in that bedroom. It is hard to pretend all is fine when it’s not. Charles asked me once if I was all right, and I covered by saying that I was just tired from little sleep the night before. When the bus returned us to the camp, I knew I needed to shower, or Aunt Kazuko wouldn’t let me into our barracks for long. She wasn’t inside, nor were Tom and Emi, but a note on the table informed me that they were having tea with Mrs. Kubo.

  I gathered my towel and clean clothes off the clothesline, picked up a bar of soap from off the shelf where we kept toiletries, and headed to the communal washroom.

  In the washroom, I was grateful to be alone. Carefully, I peeled off my smelly clothes, laying my dungarees gently on a stool outside the shower. I felt one of the pockets for the watch. The watch had been taken once. I couldn’t let it out of my sight and go missing again, but I couldn’t take it into the shower with me. As the water and soap washed the dirt and stench from my body, I closed my eyes and listened over the sound of the water. I heard voices outside, but no one entered the washroom.

  When my shower ended, I toweled off, and got dressed. Carefully, placing the watch in my pocket, I picked up my soiled clothes, and then rushed to our unit. Just as I got inside, Ken arrived.

  I debated whether or not to tell him about my day. He was kin; he should know.

  “Ken,” I said as I dried my hair with a towel that held a faint aroma of sour milk, “I found it.”

  From one of the pegs on the wall, he picked up an army green jacket Aunt Kazuko had bought for him at the co-op. “Good for you.”

  It was as though he hadn’t really heard me.

  “I found our watch.” This time I said it louder. “I found it.”

  He said nothing, just headed outside.

  “What is wrong with you?” I called after him, and then I saw her. Lucy, dressed in a pink sweater that brought out the muted rose of her lips, was standing in front of our barracks. My anger softened, and I smiled at her.