Weedflower

by Cynthia Kadohata

  The boy raised his hand again, but she ignored him. Nobody else raised a hand. For a second Miss Kelly looked like she might cry. Sumiko felt sorry for her.

  A boy called out, “Will you marry me?” Everybody laughed. Then Miss Kelly passed around a novel called The King of the Island. It was an old beat-up book that nobody had ever heard of. Miss Kelly said each teacher had been given exactly one book for class. Miss Kelly made everybody in class read a page out loud and then pass it on to the next person.

  After that it was lunchtime, and after lunch Miss Kelly let them leave early, partly because it was the first day and partly because none of the boys had returned from lunch.

  In Camp Three there were Caucasian teachers, Nisei teachers, and one Negro teacher. Nisei were the second generation of Nikkei, but the first generation born in America. For most of the Nisei teachers, this was their first teaching job. Though they’d graduated college with teaching degrees, before camp they hadn’t been able to find jobs because of their race.

  At one time Sumiko had been looking forward to school, but now that she had her garden, school seemed kind of useless. The only people who seemed to take it seriously were the teachers.

  One of the Caucasian teachers didn’t last long. Turnover was high from the start, but this woman suffered an actual nervous breakdown and had to leave. Sumiko thought maybe it was the dust that drove teachers away. You couldn’t escape it. Sometimes you could ignore it, but when you had nothing to do, you were aware of dirt grains on your scalp and up your nose and in your eyes, and no matter if you closed your door, you found it all over your sheets and your floors. Some of the Christians in camp said God was testing them with this dust. TakTak said, “What happens if you fail the dust test?” Sumiko didn’t know.

  Though she knew it was wrong, Sumiko couldn’t help feeling kind of satisfied when the teachers left. White people had put them in this camp, and yet they couldn’t take it. She remembered how a few months ago one of the planes that buzzed camp just to harass them had crashed. And several Nikkei had applauded. “It serves them right!” people had said.

  Sumiko figured that hakujin thought they were better than the Japanese and the Indians; the Indians didn’t seem to particularly like whites or Japanese; and Japanese didn’t want to socialize with the Indians and resented the whites. So nobody liked anybody much. She told this to Ichiro; and he said, “That’s why we have laws.” She told this to Bull, and he said, “Well, remember the Quakers.” Sumiko had forgotten all about them and about the woman who’d taken care of Mrs. Ono’s dog, and she had even forgotten about Miss Kelly, who was nice enough to work here teaching them when she could have gotten a job outside instead.

  Ichiro and his friends liked to argue about laws, race, and camp. One night a friend of Ichiro’s who was visiting exclaimed that he was sick of camp and was going to look into finding work outside. He was one of Ichiro’s most outspoken friends. Before Pearl Harbor they used to double-date in their fancy clothes.

  “Camp is jail,” he told them. He and Ichiro were leaning against a wall smoking. Sumiko watched the smoke wind through the dim barrack.

  “We were put here to be safe,” Auntie said.

  “Mother, that is not why they put us in here,” Ichiro said.

  Ichiro’s friend muttered, “Your mother talks like an inu.” Sumiko stayed very still so nobody would notice her and make her leave.

  Ichiro said, “My mother is not an inu. She just doesn’t understand.”

  Auntie said, “I understand all I need to.”

  Then everybody started yelling about exactly why they were in camp. Tak-Tak ran to his bed and pulled the covers over his head.

  “We’re in camp because of prejudice, pure and simple,” shouted Ichiro’s friend.

  “We were put here for our own protection,” Auntie insisted again. “To protect us from all the people who hate us.”

  Ichiro said, “That’s ridiculous. If I hate someone, should the person I hate be put in jail to protect him? And now there are rumors that they’re going to start drafting us right out of this jail.”

  Bull was sitting at the table reading the day’s Chronicle and acting as if he couldn’t hear a thing.

  But for some reason Ichiro turned on him. “Are you going to be willing to fight if your family has no rights?”

  Sumiko was shocked. She knew that because of their ancestry, Nisei had been declared ineligible to join the military. And she’d heard that some Nisei were trying to get the government to make them eligible again. But she had assumed it would never happen. Yet Ichiro seemed to feel it would happen.

  “I’m going to be willing to fight because my family has no rights,’ Bull said.

  “Can’t you see that’s wrong?” Ichiro shouted.

  “Then let’s show them how wrong they are,’ Bull said quietly.

  “It’s their responsibility to learn to live by their own laws. Why do we have to teach them to follow their own laws?”

  Sumiko waited for Bull to answer. But Bull didn’t answer; Sumiko knew there was no answer. Ichiro and Bull glared at each other.

  “Nobody’s going to want to serve with us,’ Ichiro finally said. “Nobody’s going to want to command us. Nobody wants us, Bull.”

  Tak-Tak sat up and said, “Bull?”

  Bull whipped toward him. “Can’t you stupid kids—” He stopped. Tak-Tak looked mortified.

  Sumiko pulled Tak-Tak out of bed and took him outside to look at Mr. Moto’s snake, which was sleeping. Mr. Moto had kept this particular snake for a while and seemed to have grown fond of it. It was unusually long, and it even seemed a little fat. People on the block called it Snakie, as if it was a pet.

  She put her arms around Tak-Tak as they studied the snake. “Will you come to watch if I ever play in a marbles tournament?” he asked her.

  “Yes, if you want.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Snakie’s sleeping.”

  “His eyes are open.”

  “Mr. Moto says they sleep with their eyes open,” Tak-Tak said, clearly proud he knew something Sumiko didn’t.

  “Really? You’re so smart!”

  He beamed.

  “I like Snakie,” Tak-Tak said. “We could set him free before anyone eats him.”

  Sumiko considered the idea. But setting Snakie free would be like stealing him from Mr. Moto. She figured a lot of the kids stole things. But you couldn’t steal from a neighbor; you had to draw the line somewhere. She rested her chin on Tak-Tak’s head and said, “Don’t do anything with Mr. Moto’s snake. It belongs to him.”

  She gazed out at the dark forms of mesquite trees in the distance. Ichiro said the administration had decided Poston needed a barbed-wire fence, allegedly to keep the cattle owned by the Indians from wandering into camp. Indians were going to put up the fence. Since nobody had ever seen one of these cattle wandering into camp, that reasoning wasn’t going over very well, especially with people like Ichiro and his friends.

  Tak-Tak said, “Is Bull mad at me?”

  “Of course not.”

  Tak-Tak looked surprised. “He said ‘stupid.’”

  “He didn’t mean it.”

  Sumiko could smell cigarette smoke from inside. She could hear that the grown-ups seemed to have finished arguing. “Are you ready for bed?” she asked.

  “Can I say good night to Snakie?”

  “Okay.”

  Tak-Tak leaned forward until his glasses clinked against the cage. “Good night, Snakie.” Snakie didn’t react; his eyes just stared out into the night. “He’s sleeping,” Tak-Tak said again.

  Sumiko led him back inside. Ichiro went off with his friend as the rest of the family got ready for bed.

  When it was dark, Bull got out of bed and knelt by Tak-Tak’s bed. “Tak-chan,” he said, “I want to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I want to tell you a knock-knock joke.”

  Tak-Tak started laughing even before Bull told the joke.

 
; “Knock, knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Mesquite.”

  “Mesquite who? Whisper it! Whisper it!” He was giggling hard now.

  Bull leaned over and whispered something into the ear of Tak-Tak, who erupted into utter hysterics. What a nice sound that was!

  When he calmed down, Bull stroked Tak-Tak’s forehead and said quietly, “Good night, Tak-chan.”

  24

  DECEMBER WAS THE COLDEST MONTH OF THE YEAR IN THE desert. At first Sumiko had been thrilled at the cooling weather. But when the temperatures hit the thirties at night and nobody owned heaters, she sometimes lay in bed trying to convince herself that she didn’t have to go to the latrine. If she moved, cool air would slip in under the blankets. But her need to pee always won out, and she would rush to the latrine wrapped in a blanket. Still, the cold wasn’t as bad as the heat, because at least you could escape it. There was no escape at all from heat. After one frigid night Sumiko woke up to discover that Ichiro and Bull had given up their blankets to Sumiko and Tak-Tak. That made her feel safe—and guilty.

  The pile of scrap wood quickly grew smaller as people used the wood for bonfires. One day toward the end of December a group of Indians began erecting the barbed-wire fence around camp. Nikkei stood around the bonfires watching the fence go up. There was quiet talk against the Indians, complaints like, “Why must we be fenced in instead of their cows?” The fence depressed everybody. Sumiko felt angry seeing the barbed wire stretching past her home. Mr. Moto said the fence ruined the ambience of the garden. Miss Kelly told Sumiko that ambience meant “atmosphere.” Mr. Moto told her that atmosphere meant “the air in outer space.” The camp dictionary was missing. Anyway, the fence ruined everything.

  Not long before Christmas, Sumiko received a letter from Jiichan.

  Dear Sumiko,

  I decide to take up poetry. You speak good English. Correct poem and send back to me. I open to criticism.

  Christmas happy day

  But cold freeze my way

  Shikata ga nai

  Too much cloud in sky

  Please write back quickly with correction. I think my talent is very good, but let me know what you think.

  Love,

  Jiichan

  The letter made Sumiko feel even worse than the fence did. The Chronicle was trying to drum up spirit for the Christmas season. Some churches from outside had donated presents for the thousands of children of Poston. But for the second year in a row Sumiko wasn’t that interested in the holidays. A story in the paper said that all the blocks would be holding individual parties. But who cared? Christmas seemed like a family event, but Sumiko didn’t really feel they were like a family anymore—not exactly. Eating and working together used to keep them close. But in the camp she sometimes hardly even talked to Bull, Ichiro, or Auntie all day.

  When Christmas arrived, Mr. Moto roasted snake for everyone in the barrack. Snakie watched benignly from his cage as his fellow snakes went up in smoke.

  Mr. Moto wore paper tinsel in his hair all day— there was no real tinsel available because tinfoil was needed for the war effort. Mr. Moto put the snake pieces on a tray, and people used sticks to stab the meat.

  Sumiko felt lonely. She could have had a lot of friends, but the other kids who lived nearby just wanted to play poker and steal things. Sachi was so expert at stealing from the canteen that other kids actually paid her to steal for them. Mr. Moto told Sumiko that stealing was “endemic” among the children. Miss Kelly said endemic meant “everywhere.”

  Since Mr. Moto was a widower, Sumiko cleaned up his room for him as a Christmas gift. His son lay on his cot ignoring her. He was handsome but never went out anymore. She felt bad seeing him lying around like that. He was probably afflicted by the ultimate boredom.

  “Do you want me to get you some water or ice or anything?”

  He looked at her as if from a stupor. “Nuh.”

  Seeing Mr. Moto’s son always made Sumiko dejected.

  A couple of months ago he had stolen and lost the money his father had gotten from selling his property. Gambling was an ongoing problem at the camp. A couple of young Nisei men had lost the entire remaining savings of their families. Now Mr. Moto’s son was supposed to just stay home all the time. Mr. Moto didn’t care if his son worked or had friends; he only wanted him to stop gambling. Mr. Moto said that for the young men, there was no meaning in camp life. You couldn’t earn much money, you couldn’t create a future, you couldn’t join the army, you couldn’t do anything at all that was meaningful. Mr. Moto said, “What can you do when everything you want is out of reach? You become lazy.”

  Sumiko put on her increasingly frayed mint green dress and walked with Tak-Tak and Auntie to the party.

  The smaller children from her block were already milling about the presents, picking them up and shaking them excitedly. A donated tree rose in the center. The tree was laden with paper ornaments. Tags on the gifts read either BOY or GIRL.

  In a comer stood a group of boys who often stole items from the canteen. That very day the Poston Chronicle had run a story stating that “severe action” would be taken for anyone caught stealing at the canteen. Sumiko didn’t know what kind of severe action could result from stealing a candy bar or hairpins. They were all incarcerated anyway! What more could happen?

  She took Tak-Tak’s hand. “Come on, I’ll open your present with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you could get anything you wanted, what would it be?” she said.

  “Baba.”

  “Oh!” Sumiko said. She thought he’d forgotten Baba. He hardly ever mentioned her. It made her wish they’d gotten him a horse statue for Christmas.

  He opened one of the boys’ presents, a wooden car with moving wheels. Tak-Tak smiled almost shyly. “Is it mine?”

  “Yes. Do you like it?”

  “Yes.” He rolled it back and forth a few times. “It’s my favorite thing,” he said. He spoke with true satisfaction.

  For a family present they’d mail-ordered him a stuffed cricket. He’d carried it around all day and placed it carefully on his pillow before they left for the party. They’d considered getting him marbles, but he’d never entered any of the tournaments and, in truth, the other boys were right when they said he wasn’t very good at marbles.

  Sumiko had received a small lacquered mirror from her family. She’d looked in it in the sun and been kind of surprised at her appearance. Her family hadn’t brought a mirror because none of them cared what they looked like except Ichiro, who owned a private mirror. When Sumiko saw herself, she decided it was definitely time to start curling her hair like the older girls. But her skin gleamed and her lips were red, and overall she had to admit she was pleased. In fact, everybody started making fun of her because she’d smiled at herself in the mirror. They said she was conceited, which was one of the worst things a young lady could be.

  Tak-Tak played and played with his car. Sumiko sat with him on the floor while everybody else started dancing.

  After a while Auntie took Tak-Tak home to sleep.

  Sumiko opened one of the girls’ presents. It was a cute blond baby doll. She gave it to one of the younger girls. Then someone gave a speech about how great it was to be an American. A few people from the block sang songs.

  Sumiko stood around with some kids her age. One boy said, “Let’s steal a chicken!” His name was Joji, and he was one of the leaders of the troublemakers.

  “What’re we gonna do with a chicken?” said another boy.

  “Eat it,” Joji said.

  “But we had chicken for dinner!”

  “I’m still hungry.”

  “But there’s food on the table over there.”

  “Look, do you want to come or not?” Joji demanded.

  “All right, all right.”

  As someone gave another speech Sumiko and Sachi slipped out with the boys. The evening was cool and humid. Sumiko hesitated as the kids ran off. Tonight felt diffe
rent than usual. It was Christmas; they were locked up probably for the duration of the war; she had lost her dream of a flower shop; she didn’t feel like listening to speeches about being an American; and why shouldn’t she go with them to steal a chicken? She ran after them.

  The cool air gusted against her face as she chased after the boys. Sachi gleefully smiled at her as they all raced across camp. Here and there Sumiko heard the music and laughter of the other block parties.

  When they reached the chicken coop, they walked in, and Sumiko saw dozens of chickens fast asleep. “Grab the neck!” Joji said. “If you grab their neck at night, they don’t squawk.”

  Another boy grabbed a chicken around the neck, and they all ran like crazy straight out of camp through an area that hadn’t been fenced off. Sachi giggled hysterically as they ran. Sumiko hesitated at one point but then caught up. They walked quietly, the lights from the camp growing smaller behind them. “Let’s go to the river,” someone said.

  Sumiko had never been off camp this late. It was kind of thrilling. When they reached the river, she could still see the lights from camp. The boy with the chicken set it down. The chicken shook herself off and clucked a bit.

  “Anyone bring matches?” said Joji. Sumiko had once heard that before camp he had been a Goody Two-shoes, straight-A student.

  Everybody shook their heads no. “I’m thirsty,” said one boy.

  “We’ll drink chicken blood!” Joji said, but nobody seemed to like that idea.

  One of the boys was in the Camp Three Boy Scouts, so he got assigned the task of starting a fire from scratch. They made a pile of the driest sticks they could find and left him to his chore. The chicken just wandered around clucking. She walked right up to Sumiko and clucked and clucked. Sumiko reached down and petted her. The chicken seemed to like that.

  They waited and waited for the Boy Scout to start a fire. “I’m getting blisters,” he finally said.

  “Hurry up before it starts raining!” commanded Joji.

  “Well, who’s going to kill it even if I start a fire?”

  “I will,” Joji said. He stood up and grabbed the chicken. Sumiko had just managed to close her eyes when she heard the crack of the hen’s neck.