Under the Silk Hibiscus

by Alice J. Wisler

  I played a few notes, and then she nodded. With her hands poised in her lap, she started to sing the lyrics to “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time.” It was a song I had practiced ever since she said she liked it when we’d talked on the phone one night. As she sang and I played, one thing became clear—her voice and my music belonged together.

  “Well, what do you know? He smiled at me in my dreams last night. My dreams are getting better all the time,” sang Lucy.

  When we finished, I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her to me. It felt like the most natural thing to do; gone was my clumsiness. The scared boy of yesterday had left me. “We make a good team,” I whispered.

  “I have missed you,” she said. Her breath caressed my neck. “I want us to be happy. Together.”

  “I want that, too.”

  “We should dance,” she said.

  Since the only records we had were hers and Bing Crosby’s, and since I had yet to get us a record player, I searched for a radio station that played danceable music. My mind tempted me to go back to camp days, those days when I so wanted her to like me, those days when I didn’t see what she saw in Ken. I tried to push those days away. I didn’t want Ken to once again interfere. Not with this dance.

  I turned to a station just as one song ended. We waited for the next song, and when the D.J. announced that it was going to be “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,” we laughed and then slipped our arms around each other.

  “It’s a sign,” she said. “We are meant to be.”

  But I didn’t need the coincidence of a song playing on the radio with the lovely Doris Day singing the lyrics to tell me that. I already knew it.

  Lucy helped me at the store, and as my aunt said, it certainly was a good thing, because the shop needed a woman’s touch. She suggested that we paint the walls a light blue. Jonathan Jones said it was fine with him as long as we supplied the paint. So one Sunday afternoon, we painted. Tom helped, and my aunt helped by keeping Emi occupied so that she wouldn’t get covered in paint. Papa stopped by and told us that we were doing a fine job.

  I asked him later how he asked Mama to marry him, and he reminded me that it was no Bacall and Bogart story; Mama had been a picture bride.

  “This process took some time,” he said. “I saw her picture and she was sent mine.”

  “And then?” I asked.

  “I said yes right away. She said yes after three months.”

  “And then she came over here by ship?” I wanted to hear him tell the story.

  “That was a beautiful day when she arrived. She was dressed in a Western dress so that she would look more American. Later we laughed about how her family had to rush around to find the perfect Western dress for her in their little town in Nagano.” Papa smiled, and I was glad to see that the memory was a pleasant one.

  It was indeed a beautiful story, but he still hadn’t answered my question. How did one go about asking a woman to marry him?

  I suppose I should have been listening better when the adults sat around the camp telling their stories about engagement. If I’d been more attentive, I would have heard how it had been done. I watched a few movies and saw how Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant wooed the ladies. They were dressed in suits and had hats. I had never liked the feel of a hat against my head and hair. Not even as a child when we would go up to San Francisco and Mama would insist that I wear a wool cap so that I wouldn’t get an earache from the wind. So without looking a thing like Humphrey, what was I to do?

  “Nobu, just be yourself.” Mama’s words spoke through all my confusion.

  One evening on my walk home from work, I tried to come up with the best way to ask a woman to marry you.

  As I neared our house, I looked around, and, seeing that I was alone on the sidewalk, I practiced. “Lucy, will you please marry me?” No, that sounded too formal.

  “Hey, baby, let’s get hitched.” Too much like a country boy.

  “May I have your hand in marriage?” I laughed aloud at that.

  “Why don’t we tie the knot?” That choice would never make the cut.

  When I reached home, I just wanted to take a shower. Get the stench of the shop off my skin. Stick my head under a rush of hot water and let the shampoo flow down my hair and over my shoulders. Lather up with some of that soap I’d bought and sold in the store. Ivory was the name of it; it was so good that it had been floating in America’s bath water since 1879, according to Business First magazine. Yet the Mori family had never washed with a bar until recently.

  Through the opened windows, I heard Lucy singing from inside the house and the steady flow of piano music. Her song was about God’s faithfulness. I recalled Him in the dusty camp, in the cold barracks, in the dining hall when food seemed bland, and in the jail. He had carried us through. He had never forsaken us, even when we had felt forsaken by our own nation.

  I hadn’t planned on Lucy being at our house. I had planned on getting cleaned up, putting on some aftershave and a change of clothes. Then I had planned on walking over to her parents’ house, knocking on the door and, on a bended knee, asking her to marry me. But it seemed that my plans were often skewed.

  Inside, Lucy hugged me and kissed my cheek.

  Immediately, fear set in. Why hadn’t she kissed my lips? What was up? Perhaps she didn’t care about me after all. I felt the familiar surge of fear creep into my veins. If she wouldn’t marry me, what would I do? I’d be forced to live the rest of my life as a hermit. I’d grow old and scaly, like the pet toad named Bogart. I’d be undesirable and would be reminded of my bad luck every night as I sat alone eating a bowl of cream of chicken soup.

  “Read to me! I said please!” Emi’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I realized that she was talking to Aunt Kazuko and to Tom in her bedroom. She didn’t want to go to bed and said she would go only if both of them read to her. “Two stories,” I heard her adamant voice through the walls. “I want two stories, and then I’ll go to sleep.”

  Lucy smiled. “At first she had no problem getting ready for bed, but then she overheard the three of us talking, and she didn’t want to miss out.”

  “That’s Emi. She doesn’t want to miss anything.”

  “I remember when she was born.”

  “You brought a blanket your mom knitted.”

  “It was yellow. Your mother was so pale and weak, but she thanked me for it. She was always so gracious.”

  I swallowed hard, and hoped that my eyes would stay dry.

  “How was your day at the store?” Lucy asked, pulling me from the past. “I was going to come over to see you, but I got a phone call from the minister of music at Second Street Church. Mr. Raymond is his name, yeah, I think that’s right. He wants me to sing on Sunday. So I came here to practice with the piano. Emi played while I sang. She really is doing well with those lessons you got for her.”

  I agreed and then said that I needed a shower.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just need to get clean.”

  “Before you take one, I wanted to ask you something.” She put her arms around my waist.

  I was so aware of my smell, the perspiration from a long day’s work. I didn’t want to get too close to Lucy. She always smelled so nice, like some sort of flower garden.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know Sadie and Harold got engaged last week.”

  “Oh, really?” I had no idea who they were.

  “And Bert and Maryanne are getting married in September. And Jennifer and Jeff. Do you know them?”

  The discomfort from my date with Jennifer filled my mind. That had been a waste of a night. Ever since my aunt had told me that the two were engaged, I had been glad that it was Jeff God had in mind for Jennifer and not me.

  “What about us?”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. What are we going to do?”

  “I . . . well . . .”

  “Yes?” She
gave me a sly smile.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. I had never been in such a situation. Yet, something told me that I was about to enter a very good situation. If I was hearing correctly, what Lucy was saying was actually exactly what I had in mind. “We should. Of course.” I mean, after all, I had been practicing how to ask her to marry me for several days.

  “Should what?” She was trying to coax it out of me, but what if . . .? What if she wasn’t thinking about marriage? What if she thought we needed to wait or that I was too young? Suddenly, all I could think of was how I needed warm water and soap. “I need a shower.”

  She stood right under my chin and looked up at me. Had there ever been such soulful eyes, such flawless skin, such—

  “So, Mr. Nobu Nathan Mori, will you ask me to marry you?”

  Did she say marry? Quickly, before she could take back her words, I stooped down on one bended knee. “Will you . . . ?” My mind was a nervous blank. This was not the man who had practiced what to say all the way home. I cleared my throat and in a bold tone said, “Will you, Fusou Lucy Yokota, never leave me again—”

  “Yes!” she interrupted.

  “You will never leave me again?”

  “Yes, and I’ll marry you, too.”

  Laughing, I stood. “You made that easy.”

  She wrapped her arms around me tightly and whispered, “See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

  “It went pretty good. I mean I got the answer I hoped for. That’s what matters in the end, right?”

  “I just want to be with you. We’ve been apart for much too long.” She lay her head against my chest and for a few minutes, we just held each other and breathed.

  And it didn’t matter that I needed a shower. This goes to prove that even a stinky man can get engaged.

  Then we smiled into each other’s eyes and kissed, just like they do in the movies.

  And I knew that this was how it would go down in the Mori family history. Our children would grow up hearing, “Mama proposed to Papa, and you know what he did after that? He took a shower.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  After church on the Sunday before our wedding, we were all gathered at our house for dinner. Aunt Kazuko made a roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. “I am becoming so American,” she said. “My friends in Nagano would be amazed at how I can cook.”

  The meal was certainly an improvement over when my aunt made a meatloaf that no one could eat. She’d misread the recipe and thought it said to bake for two hours when it had only needed to bake for one hour. That had been about a week before we were shipped off to the assembly center. Our lives had been turned upside down then. Aunt Kazuko had most likely been so distraught that she hadn’t even been able to read correctly. That’s what we’d said to console her. Now she had a cookbook, The Modern Family Cookbook, given to her by a woman at our church. My aunt had followed many of the recipes in the poultry section and last Thanksgiving had made a flavorful dressing by using slices of stale bread.

  “We have dessert,” said Emi. “It’s a cake I helped make.” Her smile was so wide that I thought it would stretch off her little face.

  Papa said he was sure that the cake would be delicious, but he wanted to slip out for a smoke first.

  Aunt Kazuko wanted to know what kind of flowers we wanted at our wedding. “My To the Table group wants to arrange the bouquets for you. What kind do you like?” she asked Lucy.

  “My favorites are hibiscus,” said Lucy. “But I think most people have roses.”

  “Roses,” said my aunt. “They are overrated. Hibiscus is good choice.”

  “Can we have dessert now? What is taking Papa so long?” Emi squirmed in her chair.

  “He probably fell asleep,” I said, because I couldn’t say the truth. The truth was that lately I’d found him holding thin sheets of paper in his hands and gazing out at nothing. Those pages were letters from relatives who gave horrible accounts of other relatives who were now dying from the radiation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had to take Papa’s word for them; they were written with many Chinese characters (Kanji) I had never learned. I stood to walk to the front door.

  Although Emi wanted to tag along, I told her to carry some plates into the kitchen. “You are such a big helper,” I said.

  “What would you do without me?” she said, her smile still playing across her face.

  “Stand up and carry,” said Aunt Kazuko. “But no dropping anything on the floor.”

  With Emi occupied, I made my way to the front of the house. I hoped Papa wouldn’t have tears on his cheeks. I hoped he wouldn’t want me to listen to him again tell how his cousin, whose wife had died immediately when the bomb exploded in Hiroshima in 1945, was now at the point where he couldn’t keep any food down and was throwing up every night, just a skeleton of a man. “At first, he had been okay. This radiation is a poison that doesn’t leave,” Papa had said, the pages of the recent letter rattling in his hand. It had been such a good lunch, and I was excited about Lucy and my wedding. I didn’t want sadness—just for once, I wanted to see Papa smile like he meant it, like he used to.

  As soon as I approached the door, I heard voices. When I looked out the screen door, I thought my heart would stop.

  Papa was hugging a tall man dressed in a pair of tan trousers and a navy shirt. His white hat covered his head, but that didn’t stop me at all from knowing who it was.

  “Ken! You’re here!” It’s amazing how quickly tears can fill your eyes. I rushed out the door to him.

  “Hey,” he said. “Just visiting for my brother’s wedding.” He smiled and then we were hugging each other in tight bear hugs as though we never wanted to let go.

  Inside, he hugged Tom first, then our aunt, and then Lucy.

  ““I am so flabbergasted,” Aunt Kazuko said. “Flabbergasted.” She laughed, and then repeated it again.

  Ken reached for Emi, picked her up in his arms and said, “And who is this big girl?”

  Emi squealed, gave him a kiss, and then pulled his hat off his head and scrambled out of his arms. Ken walked over to Lucy and gave her a hug.

  “You are taller,” observed Aunt Kazuko. “And you look thin. Too thin. Do you not get enough to eat?”

  “I eat,” Ken said. “I just work a lot.”

  I recalled in camp how frustrating it had been to get Ken to do any chore. Now he was responsible for a restaurant.

  “You need some dinner?” Aunt Kazuko asked. “I make plenty. Plenty for you.”

  Ken said, “Thanks, but I don’t need anything. Traveling always takes away my appetite.”

  “Did you ride a ship here?” Tom asked. He wanted to know what riding in a ship was like and as Ken shared, I sat back in my chair and noted how time had been kind to my brother, helping him to grow up and become more of a man.

  Aunt Kazuko brought in a carrot cake that she and Emi had made. It was covered in white frosting that had taken half an hour to beat into a creamy consistency.

  “I am so glad we made this cake,” said Emi. “Because today is a special day.”

  “It’s very special,” said Ken, and he went over to Papa and hugged him again and then pulled me into a hug.

  As we all sat down again, I looked around the table and thought, here we are, all of us together. Mama, it finally happened.

  Tom was eager to ask Ken questions about the war. “What kind of gun did you get to fire? Did you kill anyone?”

  Ken answered the question about the gun, but never expanded on the latter. From his eyes, I knew he had seen and experienced heartache. You can usually tell those who have suffered; they carry this look in their eyes that can’t be erased.

  After we ate cake, Ken even having a sliver, Emi wanted Ken to hear her play the piano. We crowded around the Gulbransen and listened to her play “Blessed Assurance” from the Second Street hymnal. Ken complimented her, and that gave Emi the courage she needed to play another song and another.

  “Sit down,”
Emi told us. “This is like a concert.”

  I knew that there were a bunch of dishes and pots that wouldn’t wash themselves. I headed into the kitchen and was surprised when Ken followed me and said, “You wash and I’ll dry.”

  As the sink filled with hot water, Ken gave me a wide smile. “You seem happy.”

  “I have a lot to be thankful for.”

  “I can tell that you and Lucy are good together.”

  “How about you? I heard you have a girlfriend. Or many of them, in fact.”

  He laughed, a laugh that I well-remembered. “Some things never change, huh? I can’t imagine settling down with just one. Not yet anyway.”

  ““I can’t imagine you ever settling on one girl either.” I scrubbed a plate, rinsed it, and handed it to him to dry.

  “You’ll have to come to London to see our restaurant.”

  “Do you really serve real Japanese food?” I asked. “How about natto, those nasty fermented soy beans Aunt Kazuko loves?”

  He grimaced. “No one would touch those. But the tempura and katsudon (pork over rice) people love. Next to fish and chips, of course.”

  The suds in the sink had disappeared; I squeezed more detergent into the water. A soap bubble rose in the space between my brother and me. When I looked to see where it was headed, my eyes met Ken’s.

  The smile was gone from his face. “Look at you,” he said, his voice breaking. “You are the real hero. You’ve held everything together.”

  I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. That it was only through God’s saving grace and mercy that I was able to do anything. Like Mekley, I was a wretch. I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. A tear formed instead, and seeing it, Ken drew me to his chest.

  “She’d be so proud of you,” he said, hugging my smaller frame close to him. “You were the one she could count on.”

  I was about to say something about her—our mama—but something told me not to interrupt this moment. This was the first time in my life that I felt Ken’s tears. As they dampened my hair, I thought, here we are, two Mori men, crying. Here we are, making our own history.

  We were back to washing and drying dishes when Lucy came into the kitchen. She put her arm around my waist and kissed my cheek. To Ken she said, “It’s good you’re here. Nathan has missed you.”