Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky

by Sandra Dallas

  The crowd of dancers loved her, and someone shouted, “More!”

  “You know ‘Slow Boat to China’?” Roy asked, and without having to be coaxed, Helen nodded. Roy started the music, and Helen sang again. People crowded around the dance stand to hear her. Tomi thought Helen sounded good enough to be in the movies.

  As Helen sang “Whatcha Know, Joe?” Tomi moved through the crowd to find Mom. “I bet Roy asks her to join the band,” Tomi said.

  “And I bet she does just that,” Mom replied.

  They were right. After that night, Helen became part of the band and sang at every dance. She was a big hit.

  Tomi thought singing would make Helen change her attitude, but it didn’t. Each morning when Tomi stopped to pick up Carl, Helen would complain about something at the camp. She complained about the apartments and the food and the government.

  “I don’t get it. Why isn’t she happy now?” Tomi asked Mom. Helen had just come into the barracks and slammed her door so hard that Tomi could feel the vibration all the way down the hall.

  Mom shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve done everything you could. Maybe now it’s up to Helen.”

  1943 | CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A CHRISTMAS TREE for CARL

  THE week before Christmas, snow fell at Tallgrass. The big flakes covered the ugly barracks and the streets. The snow-covered land looked like Christmas pictures Tomi had seen in magazines. This was her second winter at Tallgrass, and Tomi knew that when the snow stopped, the weather would turn cold and windy. Later, the snow would melt, and the streets would be muddy. But right now, as she stood at the window of the apartment watching the snow come down, she thought the scene was magical.

  “It won’t be like Christmas at home,” Mom sighed. “There won’t be a Christmas tree, and I can’t bake cookies. We don’t have much money for presents. And worst of all, Pop won’t be here. Remember how he loved Christmas? It makes me so sad I want to cry.”

  Tomi was surprised Mom said that, because she usually kept her sadness to herself.

  “Maybe he’ll be here for Christmas,” Tomi said. “Maybe.”

  Mom shook her head. “Why would the government have sent him to the camp in California if they were going to release him?” Tomi thought she saw tears in Mom’s eyes. But Mom smiled and said, “At least Santa Claus will come. Santa won’t forget the boys and girls in the camp.”

  Tomi turned back to the window and watched as Hiro and Wilson ran down the street. Hiro loved the snow, too. Roy had made him a sled from scraps in the workshop. Now, Hiro and Wilson took turns pulling each other on it. Sometimes they took Carl for rides, and Carl clapped his hands with excitement. Carl could play outside, because Mrs. Hayashi had knitted him a cap as well as mittens and bought him a pair of boots.

  Hiro and Wilson stopped to make snowballs. They threw them at three girls behind them, and in a minute there was a furious snowball fight. After the boys tired of snowballs, they lay down in the snow and moved their arms and legs to make snow angels.

  Then Hiro and Wilson disappeared, and in a minute, they burst through the door of the Itanos’ apartment. “We’re going to make a snowman,” Hiro said. “How do you make a snowman, Tomi?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “Well, come outside and help us figure it out,” Hiro insisted.

  “You have to come,” Wilson added.

  Tomi put on her coat and mittens. The boys ran down the hall ahead of her and out the door. She hurried after them, stepping outside. As Tomi stopped to see where the boys had gone, Hiro yelled, “Bombs away!” and the boys pelted her with snowballs.

  “That’s a dirty trick,” she yelled. But Hiro and Wilson laughed so hard that Tomi couldn’t be mad at them. Still, she could get even. Tomi grabbed Hiro and washed his face with snow.

  “Hey!” he said. “Why’d you do that?”

  “To teach you goofballs not to throw snowballs at me.”

  Wilson laughed and said, “She got you!”

  “And I’ll get you, too, if you hit me with another snowball,” Tomi said. “Now let’s see if we can make a snowman.”

  “We’ll put it by our window so that Carl can see it every morning when he wakes up,” Wilson said. “It will make him laugh.”

  The three of them started with a snowball, then rolled it back and forth in the snow. They patted snow on it until it was a huge snowball. They pushed it in front of the Wakasas’ window. They made a second snowball that was a little smaller than the first and placed it on top of the big one. Then they rolled a third ball and tried to lift it on top of the two others, but it fell off. They tried again, but it broke apart.

  “We’ll just have a short guy snowman,” Hiro said.

  “Short like Carl,” Tomi told him. She went inside and took several pieces of coal from the bucket beside the coal stove. Then she pushed them into the top ball to make eyes and a smile. “We need a carrot for the nose. In pictures of snowmen, they always have carrot noses.”

  “The only carrots at Tallgrass are cut up and come in cans,” Hiro told her. “I know. We can use a pickle.”

  At noon, Hiro took a pickle from the dining hall and shoved it into his jacket pocket. After lunch, the three returned to the snowman and used the pickle for his nose. “He looks like an old man,” Wilson said. “That was a good idea.”

  “Maybe not so good,” Hiro said. “Now my jacket smells like pickles.”

  “Carl’s going to love the snowman. It’ll make up a little bit for not having a Christmas tree. We always had one. My mother would put it up when Carl was in bed on Christmas Eve. He’d wake up in the morning, and there it would be, all decorated. We couldn’t afford a very big tree, but Carl didn’t care. It was having the tree that counted.”

  A few days later, Hiro said, “I wish there was a way we could get a Christmas tree for Carl. He’s a little boy. He doesn’t understand why Christmas is so different here.”

  Tomi thought that over. Hiro and Wilson weren’t such big boys either. A tree would make them all happy. She thought for a long time. Then she said, “What if we made a Christmas tree?”

  “Jeepers! You don’t make a tree. They grow,” Hiro said.

  “I know that. But what if we make a fake tree?”

  “Out of what?”

  “Roy could get some scraps of lumber from the workshop, and he could build the trunk and branches. Then we could cut out green paper and glue it to the wood for the needles.”

  “That would be an awful funny-looking tree.”

  “I didn’t say it would look like a real tree. But maybe that doesn’t matter. After all, Wilson said it was having a tree that mattered.”

  “How would we decorate it?” Hiro asked.

  “We could make paper chains and cut out snowflakes. I bet Mrs. Hayashi would make some origami birds.”

  “I don’t know how we’d sneak it into their apartment.”

  “We wouldn’t. We’d leave it outside their window, just like the snowman.” The sun had come out, and the snowman had already melted to half its size.

  When Mom and Roy heard Tomi’s idea, they were enthusiastic. Roy offered to make a skeleton tree with lots of branches. Mom said she would ask one of the cooks for flour to make flour-and-water paste. Hiro and Tomi could use paper to make paper needles and glue them to the branches.

  Each evening, they worked on the tree, cutting out snowflakes and making paper chains and hanging them from the branches. Mrs. Hayashi brought a dozen birds she had made from folding pieces of paper into shapes. Ruth even made a paper star for the top of the tree.

  Once Wilson knocked at the door, asking Hiro to come and play. But Hiro had to say he was sick. He couldn’t open the door for fear Wilson would see the tree. It was a surprise for Wilson, too.

  The Itanos waited until Christmas morning to set out the tree. They were afraid if they put the tree out earlier, it might snow, and the paper needles and decorations would get wet and fall off. But Christmas morning
was clear. Just as the sun came up, they carried the tree outside and placed it directly in front of the Wakasas’ window.

  “Carl might not see it, so we’ll have to tell him it’s there,” Tomi said.

  “Wait until they’re awake,” Mom told her.

  As they passed the Wakasas’ door, however, they heard Carl through the thin wall. “Is it Christmas yet, Helen?”

  Helen said something the Itanos couldn’t make out, and they heard her walk across the floor.

  “Can I open my present, Helen?” Carl asked. Wilson had told them that Helen had ordered a sweater from the catalogue for her brother.

  “They’re awake,” Hiro said, and before Mom could stop him, he knocked on the door.

  “Merry Christmas,” the Itanos shouted when Helen opened the door.

  “Not much to be merry about,” Helen complained.

  “Yes there is,” Hiro told her. “Look out the window.”

  Carl rushed to the window and pushed aside the curtain. Then he turned around, a look of joy on his face. Wilson was behind him. He stared out at the tree, then looked at the Itanos. “A tree? You made a Christmas tree for us?”

  Hiro nodded.

  “Look, Helen. We have a Christmas tree!” Carl shouted, his face beaming. “It’s the best Christmas tree in the camp. Heck, it’s the best Christmas tree in the whole world!” Helen slowly went to the window and put her face to the glass. She stared outside for a long time. When she turned around, tears were streaming down her face. “You made a Christmas tree? For Carl?”

  “For Carl,” Tomi said. “And for Wilson. And for you, too, Helen. We made it for all of you. To make you happy.”

  The Itanos left then, because they had their own presents to open. Roy closed the Wakasas’ door behind them, but seconds later, Helen opened it and called, “Wait.”

  Tomi had the awful feeling that Helen was going to tell them to take back the tree. She stopped and turned toward Helen.

  “Wait up,” Helen called, and hurried down the hall to the Itanos. “I just wanted to say …” She stopped a moment, then smiled. “I just wanted to say Merry Christmas.”

  1944 | CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE TALLGRASS SKY QUILT

  MOM’S quilting class worked almost every Saturday to complete their first squares. They sewed them together, then made a fabric sandwich of quilt top and back with a batting in between. The batting was fluffy cotton, which would make the quilt warm. The “sandwich” was tacked to an oblong wooden frame that hung from the ceiling of the craft room. The frame was lowered when the women worked on it, then raised to the ceiling for storage.

  They were just sitting down around the frame one Saturday in January, 1944, when Mrs. Hayashi rushed in. “I have received the cotton from San Francisco. It came this morning.” She untied the package and spread the pieces of fabric over the quilt in the frame. “It is only cotton, not very important,” she said. Like other Japanese women, she was modest and did not want the others to think her gift was valuable or that she was bragging. But she beamed as she ran her hands over the beautiful blue material.

  “Such lovely fabric,” Mom said, picking up a length of material and inspecting it. Even Tomi, who still didn’t care about sewing, held her breath as she looked at the beautiful pieces of cloth. Many were a bright indigo blue, but some were faded, others mended. Most were plain, but a few were woven with stripes or plaids. “I believe these were made by hand, not machine,” Mom said.

  The women took the cloth between their fingers and felt it. They talked about the colors and designs.

  “It is only for everyday clothes, mostly for people on farms or in the mountains. Nobody wants such plain stuff,” Mrs. Hayashi told them. “Not important,” she said again.

  “We want it,” Mom told her. “It will make a beautiful quilt, and because the cloth is heavy, it will be warm. A good thing for this camp.”

  “Why don’t you use the material for the ‘tank quilt,’ instead of the quilt you just made. Everyone will want to buy a raffle ticket to win such a beautiful quilt,” Tomi interrupted.

  “A fine idea,” a woman said. “The women in Ellis can make good quilts, maybe better than the one we just finished. But the tank quilt will be different, because women in Ellis have never seen this fabric. Maybe those women will buy our raffle tickets, and we can make even more money for our tank.”

  Mrs. Hayashi spoke out in her quiet voice. “Are we still hoping to buy a tank? Maybe our money should go to our own young men who are joining the army. They are very brave, and we must support them.” Although the government had forced them to relocate, the young Japanese men in the camps were now expected to join the army. They were forming a special unit—the 442nd Infantry. She thought a moment. “I know, we will buy them a tank.”

  “Such a good idea,” Mom said. Then she ran her hand over the pieces of blue again, thinking. “This fabric is too thick to be cut into tiny pieces. We must design a special quilt for it.”

  “We could use a Japanese design,” a woman suggested.

  “No, it must be an American quilt—American like us,” Mom told her, and the women nodded.

  The quilters discussed patterns but could not make up their minds. Finally, one said she knew a woman in the camp who was an artist. She would ask her to make a design. The women agreed that was a good idea.

  The following week, the artist, whose name was Ethel, came to the quilting class. She brought drawings for the quilt. Most American quilts were made up of squares and triangles and rectangles pieced together in a pattern. Ethel’s design was abstract, a series of strips of different sizes and shapes. The women smiled when they saw it.

  “The design is the sky over the camp late in the afternoon, when it turns so many shades of blue. See, one of the pieces of fabric had a bit of red in it, just the color of sunset.” Ethel said. “When it is finished, I will embroider it with lines of silver-white thread, like edges of clouds,” Ethel continued. “We will call it ‘Tallgrass Sky.’ ”

  “Oh,” the women said together, because they knew such thread was expensive and impossible to buy in the camp. Ethel must have brought it with her.

  “Such a quilt will be too pretty to put on a bed,” someone said.

  “Then it will be a wall hanging, a piece of art,” Mrs. Hayashi told her. “A very special piece, so we must announce the winner at a very special event.”

  “A Bon Odori,” one of the women said, and the others nodded their agreement. Bon Odori was a festival held in the summer. Women danced in their blue-and-white cotton yu kata, as summer kimonos were called, while girls wore colorful silk. Tomi remembered Mom saying once that immigrants brought their traditions with them when they came to the United States, that America was made up of cultures from all over the world. You could still be an American and celebrate Bon Odori.

  “But if it is to be a quilt for our American army, shouldn’t the winner be announced at an American event?” Mom asked.

  “Since it will have red, white, and blue in it, how about Fourth of July?” Tomi blurted out.

  “That would be perfect,” Mom said. “We will have almost six months until July 4, so there will be time to finish the quilt. And to sell the tickets. The camp newspaper has agreed to print tickets for us. We will each take a few and see if we can sell them.”

  Tomi and Ruth were the best ticket sellers that spring. Each day, they made the rounds of the tables in the mess halls, selling raffle tickets. They sold so many that people held up their hands or shook their heads when they saw the two girls approach. “I already bought one,” they’d say.

  “I guess we’re done,” Ruth told Tomi one evening after they had sold only two tickets at supper. “Everybody already has them.”

  Tomi thought that over. “Everyone in the camp has a ticket, but what about the people in Ellis? Remember what the lady said in the quilt class. People in Ellis don’t make quilts like ours. I bet we could sell a bunch of tickets in Ellis.”

  “I don
’t know. Do you think they would want to win a quilt made by ladies in the camp?”

  “Sure, since a ticket costs only a nickel.”

  Ruth wasn’t so confident, but she agreed to go into town with Tomi and find out.

  The following Saturday, the two girls got passes and walked out of the Tallgrass gate, past the guards, who waved at them, and down the dirt road to town. They had been to Ellis before. Sometimes they ran errands for their mothers, purchasing things that weren’t available in the camp store. At first, people hadn’t wanted the Japanese in town. There’d even been “No Japs” signs like the ones Tomi had seen in California. But they were taken down after Ellis residents got to know the evacuees. Some of the Tallgrass men worked on the sugar beet farms. Not many of the townspeople paid attention to the Japanese anymore. But a few still didn’t want them around.

  Tomi felt self-conscious as she reached Ellis. A woman standing on a porch with her hands on her hips stared at the two girls but didn’t say anything. A man drove his car too close to them, and they jumped. He laughed as he drove on. They stopped first at a hardware store, where a girl about their age smiled at them. Then she looked cautiously at the door to a back room. “You can’t come in here. I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “If my father sees you—”

  “We’re selling raffle tickets for a quilt, only five cents,” Tomi said. “It’s a beautiful quilt, made by the ladies at Tallgrass.”

  “You can’t stay,” the girl whispered.

  “Who’s out there, Betty Joyce? What are you whispering about?” came a man’s voice from the room.

  “Two girls. We don’t have what they want. They’re leaving,” she called, making scooting motions with her hands at Tomi and Ruth.

  “But—” Ruth began.

  Tomi took her friend’s hand and turned around. But she was not fast enough. A mean-looking man came through the doorway. His face turned red and he scowled when he saw the two girls. “Get!” he yelled at them. “We don’t allow your kind in here. Where’s that sign, Betty Joyce?”