Clark and Division

by Naomi Hirahara

  “Mr. Jackson said it would be okay and that he and the Quaker women would cover for us,” Harriet explained. I had heard that this Mr. Jackson was the man who ran the War Relocation Authority office.

  Mr. Tamura introduced me to the minister, who was in charge of a small Japanese congregation at the Moody Bible Institute on LaSalle and Chicago. With thinning hair that looked like it was raked into place, the Reverend Suzuki had a long face and square jaw; I wondered if he could have been half hakujin. “I meant to meet with you and your parents this week,” he said. “We were surprised that you had planned the funeral so soon.”

  I refrained from saying that we wanted to get the funeral over with, because that would sound callous. But more time would have forced us to consider protocol for informing our relatives in other camps, and so on. I had no idea if I would even let Hisako know; our camp exit was supposed to give the imprisoned hope. By having the funeral so quickly, we could dispense with such decisions and considerations, at least for right now—as long as Mr. Tamura succeeded in keeping our tragedy out of the Manzanar Free Press.

  “I didn’t know your sister,” the Reverend Suzuki said apologetically. “May I get some quick biographical information for my eulogy?”

  We took a few steps back in the hallway and I told him the first things that came to my mind. That Rose was always the first to try something new, whether it be the Lindy Hop, a new type of chewing gum or spaghetti in a can. That she never seemed scared even when she might have been deep inside. That her favorite color was orange, even though she was careful to never wear it because she claimed that it looked awful against her skin. And that she was my older and only sister.

  “Where was she born?”

  “Tropico. California.” I told him her birthdate and repeated my parents’ names, Gitaro and Yuri Ito.

  The organist started playing, a cue for us to get situated for the service. As we passed through the velvet curtains, two zoot suiters entered behind us. “This funeral is for Rose Ito,” I told them. Roy immediately came to my side, as if he were expecting the two Nisei men.

  “We know,” one of them said, and I remembered him—the one who’d approached me outside Rose’s old apartment. This time, instead of averting my gaze, I took him all in. His skin was dark, as if he had spent a lot of time in the sun. There was a crescent scar by his eye. Could it have been from chicken pox, or something more nefarious?

  “We want to pay respects,” he said. “More than you ever did, Tonai.” The scarred man’s companion was much larger, with a doughy face. He said nothing but nodded in agreement. They brushed against Roy as they found seats in the back row.

  When they were out of earshot, I whispered to Roy. “What did he mean by that?” More than you ever did.

  “Those guys are trouble.”

  “How did they know Rose?”

  “Maybe she took pity on them.”

  I made a slight face. We both knew that Rose didn’t pity anyone.

  Placing the small bundle of koden envelopes collected by the mortuary worker in my handbag, I took my seat beside my parents, while Roy planted himself a couple of rows back with his roommate.

  The organ music stopped and then the minister began talking. I couldn’t pay enough attention to absorb what he was saying. I heard words—Tropical, not Tropico—and something about how Rose liked to dance and eat spaghetti. It all didn’t make any sense and I felt my mother’s body stiffen next to me.

  Finally the attendees made their way to pay respects to Rose’s ashes and offer their condolences to my parents and me. Besides Roy and the Tamuras, there was really nobody who knew us. Their words of sympathy seemed especially hollow. Did they realize what we had really lost?

  A heavy mustached man who resembled Teddy Roosevelt bent down to address Mom and Pop. He said that he had been Rose’s supervisor at the candy company. “She was such a good worker. A fine human being.” He spoke slowly and enunciated each word as if my parents wouldn’t be able to understand him.

  Louise and Chiyo were next in line. I introduced them to my parents, who bowed their heads to their chests. “We are indebted for all you have done for our daughter,” my mother said in Japanese.

  “So Tomi didn’t come,” I said. I was deeply disappointed as I wanted to meet the girl that Rose had been the closest to in Chicago. In a note I had slid underneath the door of their apartment the day before, I had asked them to somehow let Tomi know about the funeral as well.

  “It’s the end of the school year, so I think she has a lot of responsibilities around the house for the professor and his wife,” Louise said.

  We’ll see about that, I thought to myself, already planning a trip to Evanston.

  The line moved quickly. Soon most of the attendees, including Roy and his roommate, left to return to work.

  A bespectacled hakujin man stood in the back with a small notebook the size policemen use. He jotted notes with the stub of a pencil. He was thin and wore wire-rim glasses that made him almost look owl-like. He was the type of man who could look handsome in one instance and decrepit in another.

  He didn’t bother to offer any condolences and I was suspicious of why he was here. If Roy had been there still, I would have asked if he knew the man. I took a deep breath and headed across the room toward him. Just as I reached him, he turned and exited the building.

  “The minister screwed up the funeral.”

  Realizing the comment was directed to me, I turned, seeking the speaker. Almost hidden by the red velvet curtain was the zoot suiter with the scar.

  A part of me thought he was right, but it hadn’t been Reverend Suzuki’s fault. I straightened up and looked the boy in the eye. “What is your name?”

  “Hammer.”

  Given the tragic circumstances, I tried not to smile. The Nisei had all sorts of funny nicknames like Bacon and Nails, so why not Hammer?

  “My real name is Hajimu,” Hammer said sheepishly. He seemed more embarrassed by his given Japanese name than his informal moniker.

  “I’m Aki. Thank you for coming and thank you for helping me with the door the other day.”

  My calm demeanor seemed to throw him off for a moment because he couldn’t offer a response. He was wearing a mustard-color zoot suit with a cigarette behind his ear. His friend, who I learned was called Manju, shifted his massive weight from one leg to another in a plaid suit that seemed a bit too small for him.

  “How did you know Rose?” I finally asked.

  “From the neighborhood.”

  “Rose was very friendly,” Manju said.

  I frowned. I didn’t like what he seemed to be insinuating.

  Hammer could tell that I had taken offense. He excused himself and practically pushed Manju out the door.

  My mother had finished settling the mortuary bill and drew near me.

  “Why were you talking to those boys?”

  “They knew Rose. They were paying their respects.”

  Mom didn’t seem to believe me. “Never shame us. All we have is our reputations.”

  Outside the sidewalks were wet, but the sun was out as if the sudden late morning downpour had been the universe’s joke on us humans. Nothing could be trusted in Chicago, especially the weather.

  Back in our apartment, I opened the death certificate, which included the basic details of Rose’s life.

  Name: Rose Mutsuko Ito. Birthdate: July 3, 1920.

  Under cause of death it stated, Cardiac arrest from torn brachial artery in subway collision. From my nurse’s aide training, I knew that the brachial artery was the major blood vessel in the upper arm.

  Below that, Suicide.

  There was nothing about the abortion, but I felt like I had to say something. Reveal what I had heard about Rose.

  I gave the koden envelopes to my father. Now it was our job to compile a list of people who had
attended and given us money. We couldn’t wait until morning; this was a duty that needed our attention now. It was imperative that we do okaeshi, return the money that was bestowed to us when the giver’s time of loss came.

  Pop had filled our newly cold icebox with cans of beer and grabbed one to help tackle our task. I went and got one for myself. I’d had a beer only once in my life before. After being released with a church key, the fizz of beer punctuated the quiet of our apartment. My parents were too distracted to comment.

  We’d often taken care of the funerals for Pop’s bachelor employees, so we already had a system in place to count koden. Pop counted the bills and wrote down the sum on the outside of the envelope. Mom wrote down the sum and the person’s names, both Japanese and English, on a piece of notebook paper. It used to be Rose’s job to check the names against the list from the funeral, to make sure that no envelopes were missing. I sat in Rose’s place, drinking the beer right from the can, feeling its bitterness catch in my throat.

  No revelation came out of my mouth that night, but in the morning at breakfast, over bread and strawberry jam, I blurted it out. “The coroner says Rose recently had an abortion.”

  Pop froze, some jam hanging down his chin, while Mom blinked as her mind adjusted to the information I had shared. “Shikataganai, desho,” she said. “Rose is gone and there’s nothing we can do about it. She’ll want us to carry on. And we will. We won’t talk about this ever again.”

  Chapter 7

  The WRA office is in a very grand building, with many floors and fancy doodads around its windows. I would have loved to report to such an office every day. The War Production Board is also in there, so the elevators are full of men, high-tone types in suits, but also soldiers and workmen in overalls and boots. They have all kinds here.

  Since I was planning to go to the WRA resettlement office later that day, my mother made me bring hastily written thank-you notes for Mr. and Mrs. Tamura as well as Harriet Saito. Neither of my parents had secured work yet, but they wanted to spend the rest of the day completing their letters on lined paper. With the koden monies we received, we could pay Mr. Tamura back for the mortuary fee as well as sundries like envelopes for our notes. Postage would be an additional cost; we decided to hand-deliver as many of the thank-you notes as possible.

  The office was about a mile and a half away at 226 West Jackson. My parents had walked there—my mother said that spending money on a subway ride was mottainai, wasteful, but I suspected that it was more because they didn’t want to imagine Rose dead on the tracks. My shoes were scuffed and dirty with hardly any tread, but I decided to walk, too, to get fresh air and escape the stifling mood of our apartment.

  It felt so good to be ignored. Nothing you did went unnoticed in Manzanar. But now nobody from Block Twenty-Nine was going to call out and wonder if I was going to the mess hall or, God forbid, the lavatory. There were no guard towers or barbed wire. I could step lively on the concrete sidewalk, my purse underneath my arm, a young career woman reporting for a very important assignment.

  My destination, the Chicago and North Western Office Building, loomed at least thirteen stories high. Everything that I had known in Los Angeles up to that time, in contrast, was spread out like a reclining fat man who didn’t care how much space he was taking up.

  I’d brought one of Pop’s handkerchiefs and blotted the perspiration on my forehead and underneath my nose. I always sweated buckets, at least on my face, and often when I pulled out a compact to check myself, I’d see an unattractive red bloom on my cheeks. “Aki, why are you always a mess?” Rose would tease me, nary a blemish on her countenance except for that single beauty mark, no matter how stressed or tired she was. These were moments when I’d wondered if we truly were related.

  Out in the hallway were folding chairs which were all occupied by Issei and Nisei newcomers seeking work or lodging. A hakujin woman came through with a tray of water and paper cups, offering everyone refreshments for the long wait. The woman wore a full-sized apron with a tiny flower pattern over her plain kelly-green dress. Other hakujin women milling around the office wore the same apron, a sign that they came to serve. They were most likely Quakers, I figured—Friends, as they called themselves.

  I had first heard of the Friends back in Los Angeles. I’d thought they were simply friendly hakujin people, but my sister quickly corrected me. “It’s a religion where they sit in a circle and don’t even have a minister or anything,” Rose said. She had gone to a Friends meeting in Pasadena with a classmate and found the experience quite uncomfortable. People silently waited for the Spirit to visit the room and Rose had no idea of who or what to expect.

  The Friends seemed to help anyone in trouble. Some of the Friends drove on dusty roads for four hours to visit the detainees in Manzanar, bringing fresh pies or personal items found in storage. Their sense of charity and compassion overwhelmed me. I know that I should have felt appreciative, but instead I felt shame that we were in that kind of position in the first place.

  But here in Chicago, I accepted the cup of water from the Quaker woman. In hindsight, it was probably the start of my soul’s demise: the fact that I’d accept anything to help me and my family’s survival here in Chicago.

  I sat in the last folding chair, holding that paper cup, which was becoming soggier and more formless by the minute. I finally gulped down its contents like a cowboy taking a final swig of whiskey. That was when I noticed a familiar person standing in front of me.

  “Aki, I didn’t know that you’d be here today.” Harriet, who was wearing an A-line dress that camouflaged her thick waist, grabbed ahold of my elbow and practically lifted me onto my feet. For a woman my size, she was surprisingly strong. She led me to the front of the line.

  This favored treatment did not go unnoticed.

  “Hey, what gives?”

  “What’s so special about her?”

  “Yeah, she the queen of Spain or something?”

  Worse were the silent, disapproving frowns of men and women of my parents’ generation, some of them toothless, their cheeks pulled in like decaying jack-o’-lanterns.

  As we finally entered the office, I practically had to climb over people seated in wooden chairs. I almost ended up in the lap of an Issei couple when I tried to allow room for two Nisei women to pass by on their way out.

  My face reddened. I appreciated Harriet’s kindness, but I really didn’t want to stick out in any way.

  A whisper rolled down the line, gathering volume. “She’s the one whose sister died? Really?” I heard one Issei woman say to her friend as we moved to the head of the line. The same people who had glanced at me with such disdain bowed their heads.

  “You didn’t have to, Harriet,” I told her as she plopped me in a chair at a desk in front of Mr. Jackson, the head honcho of the WRA office.

  Grabbing the wet ball of the water cup from my hands, Harriet shook her head, signaling me to accept her favor, and left me with Mr. Jackson. In back of me was a young Nisei man with long hair that drooped over his eyes as he perused a magazine. He didn’t even seem to notice that I was being helped before him.

  Mr. Jackson wore glasses and had a mustache of brown and gray, which seemed to include remnants of his morning breakfast—toast and eggs. At another desk was Ed Tamura, talking in broken Japanese with an Issei couple.

  Harriet had already given Mr. Jackson some forms she had filled out for me. I felt grateful for that. From the time we entered camp, we were always filling out forms with questions that sometimes didn’t make any sense.

  Mr. Jackson rolled my form into his typewriter. “What kind of work have you done?”

  “Well, I worked in the produce market for about a year.”

  He began typing. “What were your responsibilities?”

  “I answered the phone and took messages. And then in camp I worked in the Supply Department. I had to keep an inventory
of items. I also went through training as a nurse’s aide.” We had left, however, before I was able to work at the Manzanar hospital.

  “Excellent. And I suspect that you have good penmanship and can type.”

  Actually my handwriting was lousy and my father often had to lecture me because somebody misread my order. And my typing? It was henpecking at best. Mr. Jackson looked pretty deliberate with his keystrokes. I didn’t say anything to contradict him, though.

  Mr. Jackson glanced at a list of openings on a mimeographed piece of paper, then handed it to me.

  I read the list. Almost all of the job descriptions called for an English-speaking Nisei, except the ones that involved janitorial work. “What is the Newberry Library?”

  “It’s right down the street from where you are living. They need another reference assistant.”

  The Nisei man in back of me broke his silence. “It’s right next to Bughouse Square.”

  “Are there a lot of pests there?”

  “No, they call it that because of the wackos who stand on soap boxes.” The man pushed his hair back from his eyes. He looked familiar and I wondered if he had been in Manzanar.

  Harriet had returned to my side. “Don’t listen to him. It’s a nice park with benches. You can bring your sack lunch and eat it there.”

  “So yes, you’re interested in the job?” Mr. Jackson seemed eager to move me along.

  I glanced at Harriet, who was vigorously nodding.

  “I’ll take it.”

  As Mr. Jackson got on the phone to communicate with my future employer, I felt a pang of guilt. Being the younger sister of a dead Nisei woman gave me an advantage over all these other people. I didn’t want any special consideration, but I had my parents’ well-being to protect. I had to accept.

  I was to submit my paperwork to the head of the library’s public service department. Harriet had drawn me a map, which was totally unnecessary. Walking north on Clark Street, I couldn’t help but run into the Newberry. It dominated the block, a palatial four-story building that demanded respect. As I walked through the doors, I feared that either the structure or its keepers might spit me out.