Those days of evacuation played across my mind like a movie stuck in a reel of disbelief. Had we really been away this long, first in an assembly center, and then years inside an internment camp? Did anybody care what we had been through? Was anyone going to help us?
I thought of how Mama had played “Rocks of Ages” that night before we had to take the train to the Santa Anita assembly center. She’d asked me to join her and together we sat, trying to play for Tom and Ken, each of us trying to be brave. She said her baby inside her kicked a few times as we played. She told me that meant we had played well.
The next day, neighbors said they’d take care of the piano for us. Other belongings were placed in the middle of our living room floor, and we were told that a truck would pick them up and get them to us. The day we left our home, the piano was still in the living room, and I knew that Mama was trying to get us to believe that she was not worried about it or about what would happen to us. She pasted on her brave face, the same one she had worn ever since Papa had been forced to leave us.
As I looked at her, all I could think of were the words to “Rock of Ages.” The lines kept running through my mind over and over as though I was trying to gain strength from their meaning. Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling. Helpless, look to Thee for grace.
Helpless! That had been us. And now? We were free, but the helplessness prevailed.
On my walks, I wanted to find a place to rent for a shop. But I also wanted to find our piano. On two occasions I’d gone to our old house and peered inside the windows until the poodle yipped so loudly that I was afraid I’d be arrested for causing a disturbance. When I’d inquired about the neighbors, the ones who were going to care for our piano, I was told that they’d moved to San Francisco.
I continued to walk down East Taylor Street, made a right onto Seventh Street and a left onto Empire Street. It was quite clear that while we’d been nestled away in Wyoming, life had gone on here in San Jose. We were just a nuisance. We were not wanted.
A shop that sold men’s clothing got my attention, and I slowed to window shop. A mannequin in a black fedora, just like Papa used to wear, caught my eye. If he were here, I’d buy it for him. Afterward we’d find a coffee shop and sit and talk about the war and laugh at as many jokes as we knew the punch lines for.
Weary, I decided to go home. Home, the word sounded strange as I repeated it in my head. It was as though home was not an English word, as though it was a word I no longer knew the meaning of. But for now it was a tiny apartment on the second floor, a place that the landlord said we could rent as long as we didn’t do anything illegal.
“Are you all Issei?” the landlord asked the day we inquired about the apartment. He pronounced the word with a strong emphasis on the last two syllables, dragging them out so that they sounded like say-eeeee.
“We were born here,” I said. “We’re Americans.”
Frowning, he looked the four of us over.
I hoped that he couldn’t tell that we’d been sleeping on the floor of a Sunday school room at our old church, because upon our return to San Jose, finding a place to rent had been nearly impossible. I hoped he could tell that we were clean, even though our bathing took place in the church’s restrooms. I stood tall and gave my best smile.
Pointing at Tom’s right leg, the man said, “I see you got one of those.”
Tom’s trouser legs were short, shorter than they should be, and his brace showed.
I felt my heart sink. The landlord was going to refuse us a place to live, not only because we were Japanese, but because Tom was a polio victim. I wanted to say something—anything to change the outcome of this conversation. But before I could speak, Tom said, “Our former president and I have polio in common, sir.”
The man nodded. “Not only you and FDR, but my daughter, also. She’s about your age.”
“I wish her the best,” said Tom with sincerity.
Emi peeked out from behind Aunt Kazuko and took her thumb out of her mouth. “I wish her the very best,” she said.
And then without further ado, the man handed me a key. “You pay me every third of the month, all right? Pay me. Not my wife. She’ll spend the money on a new dress or hat.”
We moved in with our sparse belongings; we had no furniture until later when we were given beds, chairs, a sofa, and other furnishings. We slept on the floor during the first nights, just as we had slept in the church, but something about sleeping on our own floor felt better than sleeping on a floor that did not belong to us.
The apartment was tiny, but it was ours. The front door led into a narrow hallway and off of that were two bedrooms and a bathroom to the right, and the living room and kitchen to the left. Tom and I shared a bedroom and Emi and my aunt squeezed into another.
“When Papa comes back,” I said, “Where will he sleep?”
But Aunt Kazuko pulled me aside, away from my siblings. “We don’t worry about that now. We just be grateful. We learn the art of grateful.”
We wrote to Papa to tell him where we were. Ever since the war ended, we weren’t sure where he’d gone, but I addressed the letter to Lake Tule, as it was the only address we had for him. I prayed that someone there would make sure he got it, even if it meant forwarding it to him.
I pictured Papa finding us, running into our arms as he had in all my dreams. “Nobu,” he’d say, “You did a good job taking care of everyone while I was away. I’m proud of you.” Then he’d laugh in his jovial way, even offer me a cigarette because I was now a man. Together, we’d head out to look for a place to rent for a new fish market.
When I entered our apartment that afternoon after my walk, I sensed that something was different. Sure enough, before I could remove my shoes, I heard Tom call out to me from the living room. “Nathan! You’re back!” In a softer voice, yet still equally excited, he said, “Nathan’s home!” as though he was talking to someone in the other room. Hobbling into the hallway, he said, “Look who’s here!”
I took two steps to where he was leading me, and there in the living room on the couch sat a man with a grey fedora.
My feet couldn’t carry me to him fast enough. With tears welling in my eyes, I fell into the arms of Papa, knocking the hat from his head onto the floor. At first, I couldn’t say anything, but then I got my voice back. “You’re here! You’re really here. I can’t believe it!”
He nodded and reached for my hand. His grip was weak, but I didn’t care; my papa was back with us!
“When did you get here? Where have you been? Did you get our letters?”
Suddenly, I realized he had not said a word. One tear trickled down his cheek.
“Let’s have some ocha (green tea),” said my aunt. She stood and headed toward the kitchen. “Tom, you can help me.”
Reluctant to leave, Tom lingered.
“Tom,” Aunt Kazuko called, urgency in her voice.
I knew he’d better hurry before Papa scolded him.
But the living room was silent. There was no scolding.
Papa was staring over our heads out the window. His face was solemn, his mouth taut, the tear was gone. And right then and there, I knew something else was gone as well. He was not the Papa from before the war. He might have looked like the old Papa, but he certainly wasn’t acting like him.
Of course, I thought. It’s because Mama is dead.
When my aunt called out for Tom’s help, I jumped up and rushed to the kitchen. Let Tom stay with Papa, I would get the tea ready with my aunt.
Inside the kitchen, my aunt had not even prepared anything for the tea. Disgusted with her for sitting on the stool by the refrigerator, I lifted the empty kettle and ran water into it from the faucet as my aunt wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.
“I’ll go get Emi,” I said, remembering that when I’d set out today she was next door at the Kondo’s.
Emi would bring a smile to Papa’s face.
My aunt touched my arm. “No. Nobu, not yet.”
> “Why not?”
“Can’t you see he is confused?”
“What? Why?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled with her head toward the ceiling, the leaky ceiling. “War does that to some.”
Yes, I knew this. War made some soldiers mean, like Mekley. War had brought bitterness to the hearts of so many I knew at Heart Mountain. Why would Papa be exempt?
“The camp where he was . . . it was worse.”
“Worse.” I repeated the word as I tried to think of how a camp could be worse. I thought of my jail cell and how I’d thought that I’d go crazy. Perhaps that was what Papa had experienced.
Aunt Kazuko wiped her eyes again and put the handkerchief into her apron pocket. “Help me,” she said. Her voice was soft, soft like when she talked with Emi.
Part of me wanted to collapse in her arms, let my own tears flow; the other part of me knew I could not let myself have that luxury.
Turning from her to the stove, I placed the kettle on a burner and turned the knob under it, watching for a gas flame. “Get the tea canister,” I said.
She opened the cupboard and removed the light rose canister, the one we stored green tea in.
Strangeness, like a blanket, pulled over me. I thought that this was the first time she had followed a command I had given. As I reached for saucers and cups from inside the cabinet, I wondered what this meant.
Life was changing.
Again.
Chapter Twenty-two
Papa said that he didn’t need a bed. He would sleep on the couch.
“No, you can have my bed,” I insisted. We had four, a twin bed for each of us, but there was no way I was going to let Papa spend his nights on the couch. It was a lumpy couch with rickety arms. Aunt Kazuko was active again at Second Street, our old church, and some of the members had donated furniture to us.
Papa stared out the living room window and said, “I can sleep here.”
“You can have the other bed in the room with Tom,” I said. It was my bed, but I figured that if I didn’t call it mine, he might agree to sleep in it.
Papa shook his head. He lifted a hand and gave the couch a light tap. “Fine here.”
My aunt told me not to fight him; that sometimes you just had to let people do what they needed to do. That evening she scurried about, got a set of sheets, a quilt, and a pillow, and made the couch to look like a bed.
“Thank you, Kazuko,” Papa said in such a way that his voice didn’t even sound like the voice I remembered. “Thank you.”
While the others kissed him good-night, I sat in the living room on a kitchen chair, another piece of donated furniture.
Papa stripped down to his underwear and got under the top sheet. He lay flat on his back, arms at his sides.
“Do you need anything?” I asked.
“No. I am fine.”
I watched him fidget for a few minutes. “What was it like at Lake Tule?” I asked.
“Dark.”
“Did you get enough to eat?” He looked thin.
“It was food.”
“Did you get our letters? Did you hear that Ken enlisted?”
He waited before replying. I thought that perhaps he was gathering his thoughts. But all he said was, “Darkness, so much of it.”
“Did you not have lights?”
He lay still, then turned to his side. “Man cannot understand the plight of another.”
I gave up after that; perhaps he was too tired to carry on a conversation.
When he coughed, I prayed that he didn’t have pneumonia. At last, I heard a snore from his lips; groggy, I left for my own bed.
Once in my room behind the closed door, removed from Papa, I gave myself permission to think. What had happened to him? Perhaps someone else had come and taken over his body.
Tom slept in the bed adjacent to mine, and I envied him for being able to sleep. I thought of all the dreams I’d had of Papa, all the pictures I’d painted in my mind of our reunion. Tonight had been nothing like I had imagined. Where was that lively, strong, and healthy man? I slipped under the covers. I felt I had found him, but only to lose him again.
I was nearly asleep when I heard screams. The piercing sound woke us and within seconds, we were all in the living room.
Papa was shaking, his face contorted with agony. Aunt Kazuko switched on the overhead light. She stood back from him; I expected her to be rushing about to see what was wrong.
Tom spoke first. “What happened? Are you all right? Are you sick?”
Emi repeated, “Are you sick? Are you sick?”
Papa fumbled with his shirt that was in a heap on the floor. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a matchbox from the breast pocket. We watched as he lit a cigarette. “I am fine,” he said. “Go on back to sleep.”
We exchanged worried looks and then followed his instructions.
The next day I expected someone to ask Papa about his screams from what had possibly been a nightmare, but no one spoke of it. Everyone acted like nothing had happened.
After breakfast, Aunt Kazuko put on some lipstick, combed her hair, and went off to work.
For a month, she’d been employed by a wealthy family. They paid her five dollars a week to clean their home and do their laundry. She said it wasn’t bad work, and sometimes they even gave her chocolate cookies which she managed to eat most of during the cab ride home.
When Aunt Kazuko left, I cleared off the kitchen table and washed the dishes while Tom dried. He headed for school, his book bag lopsided against his back.
Papa sat hunched over on the couch and watched Emi play with her doll. She wrapped the doll in a blanket, pretended to feed it some carrots and then placed it in Papa’s hands. He held it for a moment and then returned it to her. As I watched him, I noted how far away he seemed, even though he was in the same room. It was as though he didn’t really see us, as though he was looking right through us.
Emi didn’t seem to mind that her father had few words for her. She cuddled her doll, smoothed out its matted blond hair, gave it a kiss, and then sang a few lines of “Away in a Manger.” It was not Christmas time at all, but I figured she had learned the art of singing Christmas songs off-season from Tom.
Suddenly, she paused from her song, looked up, and said, “Papa.”
I watched to see if Papa would give in to emotion, but he only patted her head and then dozed, his head heavy on the pillow.
Chapter Twenty-three
Walking became my respite here just as it had been at camp. Since I was no longer confined to a barbed wire existence, I took advantage of freedom. Walking not only gave me exercise, it also cleared my mind. It provided me with a chance to get my thoughts off my struggles and seek God. I wanted to focus on Him, on who He was, but that was not always easy to do when there was so much else vying for my attention.
“God, where are you?” I cried. I paced down Empire Street. “I trusted you to help us. Now Papa is back and not able to do anything.” And since I was complaining, I thought of all the other things that were causing me worry. “God,” I said, “What about Ken? What is he doing, and why won’t he come home?” The war was over and other people’s older brothers had returned to their families. That’s what soldiers were supposed to do.
To make matters worse, we were running out of money. All the money I’d saved in camp seemed to disappear faster than it had in Wyoming. Every third day of the month, our landlord knocked on our door to collect the rent. I hated having to pinch together the twenty-two dollars he expected us to pay for a flat that had a leaky ceiling in the kitchen. Aunt Kazuko’s money from her job, plus the money we had stashed away from the measly amounts we’d been given when we had to sell our furniture and kitchen appliances back in 1942, barely covered our weekly expenses.
“God, you know our needs.” And with that I started to list them. We needed a bigger place to rent. We needed more employment. I’d been looking for a place for a new business. One place on West Saint James had s
eemed ideal; the Caucasian landlord took one look at me and said he had just signed a lease to rent it to another tenant. But when I walked past the storefront three weeks later, it was not occupied; the For Rent sign still hung in the window. Looking into the sky, I begged, “Help me. Help us.”
We were cramped; we were used to being cramped. But I didn’t want to have to live as we had at Heart Mountain. I wanted space.
One evening at the end of September, Aunt Kazuko and I spread our money out on the kitchen table. Tom helped us count it while Papa stared out the window, and Emi ate a bowl of grapes.
“We have all of seventy-nine dollars and twenty-nine cents,” I said.
“I get paid Friday,” said Aunt Kazuko. “I also hear at church that there is a house that the landlord will rent to Japanese.” Lately it seemed that my aunt was hearing a lot of things at church. She kept encouraging me to attend more frequently with her, Tom, and Emi, but I said I had things to do. Most of the time, my things to do were stretching out my legs and enjoying the quiet of an apartment that was empty except for me while Papa slept and the others sang hymns.
“Do you know how much this house will cost?” I asked.
“It’s forty-two dollars each month. That includes everything. Water, gas, electric.”
I looked at the money on the table—all those crumpled bills my aunt kept smoothing out as though ironing them with her palm would make them magically morph into more. For a second, I was tempted to take the money to the landlord and beg him to let us rent the house my aunt mentioned. What had I become? I had no idea what this house looked like. It could leak worse than this apartment.
“Have you seen the house?” I asked.
“No, but it has four bedrooms,” said my aunt.
“Four,” said Tom, a dreamy look to his face. “Four.”
“They rent to Japanese,” my aunt reassured me, when I wasn’t sure whether I should trust her. “As long as there is an American citizen in family. That’s what Mrs. Jericho says.”
Under the Silk Hibiscus Page 13
