He laughed with delight. “You very smart girl! I quite proud of your smartness!”
Then Baachan stood up, clapping her hands three times in slow-motion applause. “Time for your surprise, smart girl!”
Hanako stood up with anticipation as Baachan went to the big basket in the corner, lifting a few items up and then pulling out the plaid skirt!
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” Hanako shouted, running over and reaching for it. “It’s gorgeous!”
And it was too; she wasn’t lying. She felt shy for the first time in years and ran into the bathtub room to change. The skirt fit perfectly—snug but not tight, and right where she liked skirts to fall, in the middle of her knees. She half ran back to the living room.
Everybody exclaimed about how perfectly it fit and how beautiful it was and how beautiful she was. Her grandparents didn’t have a mirror, but she was absolutely positive the skirt made her look like a girl in a Sears catalog, if they ever had a Japanese girl in the catalog. She had a moment of regret that she couldn’t see herself, but then it didn’t matter. She could just feel how perfect this skirt was; she didn’t have to see it.
Baachan said shyly, “I work a long time at night, hardly sleep, but next day I don’t feel tired.” She was happily bobbing her head up and down, up and down. “I had to finish your surprise. I wanted to. It look very nice. I wish I had more money, I make you many skirt. More skirt than you can wear.”
“Then it wouldn’t be special like this one is!” Hanako exclaimed. “This is the best skirt that was ever made since the beginning of time!” And she was pretty sure that this was true.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning, when Hanako woke up, Mama was singing with Akira like he was a baby. “Up, up, up goes the little red bird.” He watched her, his eyes strangely reflective instead of deep. It was Saturday, a workday for Baachan and Jiichan. They had already left for the wheat field, while Papa had gone to his new job. After Hanako ate rice and carrots and had cleaned the kitchen, Mama left Akira and called her to the table. “We need to talk,” she said.
Hanako didn’t like the sound of that. She sat down. Mama touched her face, then said, “There’s a school only twenty minutes away. Hanako, we’re going to start you in sixth grade, and you’ll be in seventh when the new school year starts in April.”
Hanako was stunned. A school? She had to go to school already?
“My Japanese isn’t good enough for school here!” she said. “I can’t read and write well! Will there be a bus? Or do I have to walk by myself? Will the other kids like me? Are they mad at America for bombing them? What are the teachers like?” She took a breath. She didn’t know anything about Japan!
“Baachan will go with you the first day to show you the way. She says it’s very easy.”
“But I’ll be different from them. They won’t be nice!”
“Hanako. Hanako . . . ,” Mama said. “This is where we are, and we just have to accept that. There is nothing for you to do all day, and anyway, Baachan says there is a rumor that the Americans will be insisting on compulsory school at least until after ninth grade.”
“Why do we always have to do what the Americans want?”
“They’re in charge now. That’s the way of the world. Somebody is always in charge.”
Hanako tried doing what Akira sometimes did when he was mad: She turned around so that her back was facing Mama. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. “When do I have to start?” she said into the air.
“Well, Monday. Baachan especially would like you to go to school and study hard. That way . . .”
“That way what?”
“Well . . . one day you will have to return to America, and we want you to have an education.”
She whipped around to face Mama. “I thought I was Japanese now!”
“Hana, we haven’t thought everything through yet. But we have nothing now—we own nothing. I think . . . I think your father felt that since we had nothing, and since Roosevelt took us prisoners of war, since our friends were beaten in camp, and other reasons, he wanted to renounce America when the goverment pressed him about it. It wasn’t his idea, but when the government came to him, he realized he wasn’t sure if we would be safe in America. So your father and I did give up our citizenship when they brought it up. But even on the ship, he was changing his mind—because of you and Akira.” Mama leaned in so suddenly that she almost knocked heads with Hanako. “Do you understand?” she asked loudly, as if Hanako were hard of hearing. “Your grandparents are tenant farmers. They will never own land. Nobody will have anything to leave you, so you will have to make your own future. Making your own future will be easier in America. That was why Papa originally left his parents. But for a girl in Japan . . . and from tenant farmers . . . tenant farmers are peasants here. They have little to no future, because they pay so much to rent their land, it’s impossible to get ahead. Oftentimes you not only don’t get ahead, you begin to owe your landlord more and more money. And then you have a bad crop one year, and suddenly you owe your landlord your entire future. There is no escape at that point. You know, it’s similar to the way it is in the United States for tenant farmers. The landowners make the money, the tenants struggle to feed their families. Like the Dust Bowl people I had pictures of.” She paused. Then she gave her head a shake, stood up, and hovered directly over Hanako. “Do you understand?”
Hanako hung her head, then asked, “I thought those people owned their land?”
“They were tenant farmers. Your papa didn’t want his children to have that life. That’s why he worked so hard at the restaurant. And now he has brought you back here, so . . .”
“But why can’t I go to college here and then open up a restaurant?”
“It’s not the same for girls here as it is in America.”
“But I don’t know if you want me to be American or Japanese. Mama, I don’t understand!” Hanako felt very small as Mama hovered over her. She felt like an ant.
“Papa is trying to figure out in his head what your future should look like. He’s concentrating very hard on it. He is in charge of your future. I am in charge of your life now. And I say you are going to school Monday.”
Hanako squeezed her knees with her arms. “Then I guess I’m going to school Monday.” Her voice sounded as small as Akira’s.
Mama sat down in front of Hanako and squeezed her own knees. Hanako didn’t look up, but she could feel her mother staring at her in that intense way she had, trying to claw her way into Hanako’s brain. “Hana . . . your father told me a long time ago about your baachan’s back. Sometimes you can slightly fracture your back, if you bend over wrong in the field, or anywhere, really. So there was a day that Baachan suddenly had pain in the field, but she kept working, day after day and year after year. And her back kept bending worse and worse. Papa figured this out.”
“That’s not true! She said she didn’t even notice it happening!”
“It is true. She knows the day it happened, but she ignored it and didn’t tell anyone.”
“Does her back hurt her?”
“Yes, I asked. It hurts her very much sometimes. Sometimes if she sneezes it hurts. She hates to sneeze. But it mostly bothers her, not hurts. It feels very, very, very stiff and uncomfortable. I’m not saying this will happen to you if you’re a tenant farmer someday, but I’m saying tenant farming is not like owning your own land. It’s a very difficult life. Owning your own land can be a difficult life too, but you have a better chance. And you have something to leave your children. You’ll see someday. Having something to leave your children will be so important to you. Your father was obsessed with that, but he understands it will no longer happen.”
Hanako could not imagine spending her life bent over, always looking down unless you made an effort to raise your eyes. She had noticed that Baachan often stood just staring down at the floor, as if that was a more comfortable position for her.
But Mama needed to
return to Akira, so Hanako got to work draining the tub water, cleaning the tub, refilling it with the pump, and starting the fire beneath it. The pump was in the kitchen, with a rubber hose attached. The hose went into the kitchen sink or the bathtub as needed. There was a small window between the kitchen and tub room to put the hose through. The whole time she worked, she thought of school. In truth, many kids at Tule Lake didn’t take school very seriously. It wasn’t really like school was before camps. It was more casual, and the children didn’t behave as well.
Shortly before dark, Jiichan and Baachan came in from the wheat field. Baachan was holding a cabbage. “I pulling weed, and I thinking, my grandchildren need cabbage be healthy. Come. We cook soup.”
Hanako followed her into the kitchen. “You sit,” Baachan said. “I make soup.”
“Oh, I’ll help you!” Hanako said.
“No worry about me. I don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Hanako replied.
“I do it every day. It nothing.”
“But I want to help you.” And she did.
“I do it. You go to kotatsu if you not feel like talk to me.”
“No, I want to talk to you,” Hanako said. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
“No, I want, but only if you want.”
Baachan filled the pot with water and put it on the burner, then turned to Hanako.
“Why your forehead wrinkled?”
“I’m worried about school,” Hanako blurted out.
“You go to school important,” she said. Then, all in a rush, she went on: “I never go, I not rich enough to go, and look at me. Your back straight; you don’t go to school, maybe you end up like me. You get it from me.” She looked like she wanted to cry. “It my fault you might be like me!”
“But, Baachan! I’m me!”
Baachan studied her. “You don’t look so much like Aki. He look like his jiichan. Maybe you are more like other grandparent. But we must be careful with your back. We will fight to stop this.” She patted her own back. “Who know, maybe if I go to school, my back never bend. Maybe I be smart enough to work as maid for rich person. If world perfect, I can even be tailor. I not complain, I just telling you.” She shyly touched Hanako’s face. “I know, I know it different from America here. That why you worry?”
Hanako dipped her head. “I don’t read and write well in Japanese,” she admitted. “I have nice handwriting, but I don’t know many kanji.”
Baachan looked truly concerned. Hanako studied her grandmother. She was beautiful, not beautiful like “pretty,” but beautiful like “good.” She took Hanako’s hand and set it on her back. “You feel my back.” Hanako wasn’t sure why Baachan wanted this, but she swept her palm up and down her grandmother’s curved back. Her spine felt like gnarled wood. Bumpy. “We must fight so this is not your future,” Baachan said. “Don’t forget that. That all I say.”
Hanako glanced at her bare feet, then looked up at her tiny, hopeful grandmother. “All right,” she said.
“Good!”
Then Hanako stared at Baachan’s back and asked, “Mama says it hurts sometimes?”
Baachan nodded slowly. “Yes, sometime it hurt.” She swatted at the air like she did earlier. “Believe me, you don’t want. I don’t complain, I just want you know. So you see?”
Hanako nodded.
“Good, then I cook now!”
Baachan placed the cabbage into a pot. She looked fondly at the pot. “I receive this pot when I get marry. It gift from my mother. It only gift I get when marry.” She smiled at Hanako. “When you get marry, you will have many present. I will get you myself! I will sew you hundred skirt. Somehow I will find money for cloth.”
“Did you wear a kimono at your wedding?”
“Hai, of course! I wear purple kimono my mother make.”
“I love purple! Where is it now?”
“Oh, I sell many year ago, a few year after marry. Then, when my aunt die with no children, she leave me her kimono, and I want to give to you, but needed to sell instead. But I have something I can give you. It is purple silk wedding flower I put in my hair.” She looked extremely shy as she continued. “I want to ask you, will you wear these flower when you get marry?”
“Of course I will! It’s my favorite color!”
Baachan bowed her head a few times. “Mine too.”
While the cabbage and rice cooked, Hanako and Baachan perched on stools to wait. Baachan said thoughtfully, “You get slowly from old place to new place. You accept now. It funny, even my back. It sound crazy, but I accept it as it happen. Nothing I can do, so I accept. That Japanese way.”
“People never complain in Japan?”
This time Baachan swatted the air with both hands. Then she did it again. “Oh, many people complain. Oh, yes, we complain. But we accept, too. At least, that my way. Then war come and people think about how survive. So hard for many people to survive. Think about survive, not complain.”
“So what did you feel like when the war started? Did you vote for the war?”
“We no have vote in Japan,” Baachan said. “We still no vote. We just try to recover from war.”
“So do people . . . do they have dreams? Do they think about the future?”
“Oh, yes, think about future! All I want every day is see my son, meet his children. I want to meet his wife to make sure she good enough.”
“Do you think Mama is good enough?” Hanako asked, curious.
“Hai. You are my granddaughter, so that mean she is my daughter. So I work in field every day, whole time I imagine see my son. Rice grow, we harvest, we plant wheat, wheat grow, we harvest. We grow vegetable, we pick weed, we destroy bug. This my life. We pay many money for fertilizer is one of my biggest worry. So fertilizer, vegetable, weed, bug, this my think about future. Many time I dream we have good crop. What you dream?”
“I used to dream exactly the same dream as Papa. I dreamed we would work all the time, and then we would own three restaurants. And then he would send you a million dollars! That was my dream!” That wasn’t true; she had never dreamed that. But if she had ever met her grandparents before, she surely would have dreamed that!
Baachan laughed. “What I do with million dollar? I make you many skirt, that what. You may as well keep money and buy skirt. That save me some time.” But she suddenly turned sad. “Your father miss us, but he have to go to America.” Her eyes went far away. “It very hard to be in different country from your child. I never tell him this when he leave, so he don’t feel guilty.” Her eyes came back to the kitchen, and she beamed at Hanako. “Someday you do like your father. You go make new life, like American way.”
Hanako watched her grandmother stir the soup, then remove the pot from the stove, her thin arms sticking out from beneath her rolled-up sleeves. Those were old arms, wrinkly and spotted—arms that had worked hard for decades.
“Baachan . . . may I ask? What was the war like here? Did you ever get bombed here in the country, even once?”
“No bomb in farm country,” Baachan said. “But war is here. Everybody get poorer and poorer, and more boy get sent to fight. My neighbor boy hide. He don’t report for war. The police come for him, and he hide in our closet. We very surprise when he run into our house so fast, but we see his face very scared, and we hide him without ask question. As soon as he run in, my husband say, ‘Hide in closet!’ We don’t even know what we hide him from, but we can see he need to hide.”
“What happened to him?”
“He don’t leave our house until night. Then we never see again. We don’t talk about to neighbor. It better not to know.”
“In America we don’t really understand why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.”
“Ahh. No free press in Japan. We don’t know many thing. I know long time leading to war, there many assassinate in Japan. Military want big Japanese empire, like country in West have big empire. We have only one leader, Takahashi Korekiyo, who many people have told me don’t want this. He want
rich country, prosperous people, but many other leader want rich country, strong army. He want cooperation, not empire. But Takahashi got assassinate. So many assassinate in Japan. Can’t keep track who is in charge.”
“Papa says the history of the world is a lot of people fighting for power, within each country, plus between countries.”
“If your father says, then is true. But too complicated for me and your jiichan. We are tenant farmer. I can see right or wrong in my house and in my field, but for country is very hard.”
“Baachan, were you sad to leave America? That was 1919, right? Papa told me.”
“I worry when I return, but we have duty. My mother-in-law old and sick. But 1918 many problem in Japan. They have kome sōdō. Many big sōdō.”
Sōdō was “riot,” and kome was “uncooked rice.” So many big riots over rice.
“I hear many city in chaos. Also many people die from flu in 1918. And then when we come back to Japan, country have powerful people who want military state and powerful people who want socialist state. Even though my country may have many hard time, these year with coup and assassinate is very unusually bad time for my country. If people kill for socialist or if people kill for military, result is same. Then all the war. People kill and fight and kill and fight, and I work in field, and my back bend more every year. This is my life after your father left, until now.” She gazed lovingly at Hanako. “So I thank you for come back. I thank you very much.”
Hanako blushed. “I wish you had just stayed in America! Couldn’t someone else have taken care of your mother-in-law?”
“Oh! Hana-chan, you don’t mean what you ask!” Baachan looked quite taken aback. “Jiichan has duty to his mother. More important than stay in America.”
This, Hanako knew, was true. Then she had a happy thought. “But then all the chaos ends, and it gets better.”
Baachan seemed to be thinking this over. “Many people die first. See . . . people who make decision never think it will end the way it end. People think everyone else is wrong. Maybe almost everybody is wrong. Maybe you have only one person who is right, and then he is assassinate because nobody realize he is right.” Then suddenly she cheered up. “But I think more than one right person in world, neh? World to get better. Yes, I believe world to get better.” She looked at her hands, her knobby knuckles. “My life is work. I work if war, I work if no war. I kill someone if he try to hurt you, but I don’t kill anyone else. My husband and I have no want to kill. Our whole life is work. But now we work for you, so is very different.” Hanako was surprised how vicious Baachan momentarily sounded when she said, “I kill someone if he try to hurt you.” But now she was back to her peaceful self.
A Place to Belong Page 13