“Evanston? That’s in the opposite direction of Clark and Division.”
“I know. I need to visit with someone there.”
“I can give you a ride. I have no plans this afternoon.”
“Oh, no, I can’t ask that of you.”
“I don’t know if your shoes are going to last that trip.”
I could feel the wad of butcher paper slipping inside of my shoes. I was on my way to getting some massive blisters. “Well, at least I need to know the name of the guy who will be driving me.”
The man cracked a smile and held out his right hand. “Art Nakasone.”
His hand was rough and callused. “Aki Ito.”
We didn’t say much during the drive to Evanston. Art wasn’t one for small talk and neither was I. I didn’t want to say anything about Rose because I didn’t want to be that tragic girl, the surviving sister. I wanted to be a normal girl—well, as normal as a Nisei woman could be under the circumstances.
I did find out that Art was attending the University of Chicago and planning to major in journalism. I thought that was interesting because he didn’t seem particularly chatty or nosy.
Being a native Chicagoan, he quickly figured out the route based on my maps and didn’t even look at them as we drove. After about thirty, forty minutes, he slowed in front of a beautiful dark brick house with a rounded archway that led to a door with black hinges. Two large bushes with pink flowers framed the archway.
He parked and turned the engine off. “This is it,” he said.
I checked the house number on my piece of paper. During the drive, I had mentioned a few things about Tomi, that she was a house girl for a professor here in Evanston.
“I wouldn’t go through the front door,” he said. “Try the back one.”
I appreciated his advice. It was obvious that I was a bit in the dark about rules that applied to domestics and their guests.
“I can drive you back to Clark and Division. I’ll wait for you here.”
Normally, I would have protested, but I had no other options and gratefully accepted his offer.
I jumped out of the truck and smoothed my wrinkled, moist skirt as much as possible. This humidity was really the death of me. As I neared the house, I heard the deep bellow of a dog—probably a big one—and then the sharp yaps of a smaller one.
I rapped on the side door a couple of times—first, tentatively, and then more insistent, causing the barks from within to increase in volume. “Quiet!” a female voice commanded, and the pets obeyed. A woman appeared, slim like Louise but shorter, with porcelain skin. Her delicate facial features looked like they had been applied with a paintbrush. She reminded me of the classic Japanese beauties my family saw on the screen of the Fuji-kan Theatre in Little Tokyo before the war.
“Are you Tomi Kawamura?” I heard the panting of animals, perhaps from another room.
“Yes.”
“I’m Aki Ito. Rose’s sister.”
As soon as I said Rose’s name, Tomi began to shut the door.
“Please, no—” I called out, but before I knew it, she had disappeared. “Please, I need to talk to you. For Rose’s sake.” I banged on the door with my open palm. The dogs resumed their barking rampage, disturbing the serenity of the tree-lined street.
The door opened, revealing the beauty of Tomi’s profile again. “Keep it down. Do you want me to get fired?”
“I’ll be quiet. Let me talk,” I begged.
“I can’t have guests without prior notice.”
“Five minutes. Give me five minutes.”
“Three.” Tomi folded her thin arms. She was obviously not going to let me inside.
I tried to make it fast. “You were my sister’s friend. Maybe her only one in Chicago, according to her diary.”
“Her diary?” Her cheeks flushed pink.
“She left it at the apartment. It was with your books.”
Tomi couldn’t speak for a moment. When she regained her voice, she said, “Why are you here?”
“To find out what happened to her before she died.”
“I had already moved out here—”
“You must have known her secrets. You know, the big one.” I swallowed. “That she was pregnant.”
“You’re insane.” She pulled at the door again, but this time my body was in the way.
“Meet me somewhere, away from here.” I was only a few inches from her face, so close that I could see her small nostrils flare out. “I work at the Newberry Library. It’s safe there.”
She yanked on the door again, crushing my left foot. I yelped in pain and fell forward into what looked like a mudroom. Two dog leashes and some raincoats hung on wall hooks, and rubber boots were lined up underneath a bench. Behind a set of French doors with paneled windows, a black Labrador and a white poodle leapt up, their nails making click-clack noises against the glass. Their tails were wagging.
“You can’t be in here,” Tomi said, attempting to both pull me up and toss me out.
Outside a car door slammed shut. Tomi turned to the street. “Who’s that?”
Art had gotten out of the truck, probably in response to our scuffle.
“Oh, he’s a fellow I ran into at the cemetery. He gave me a drive here.”
“A fellow? You mean you don’t know him?”
“He’s Art. Art Nakasone. He’s from Chicago. Lives on the South Side.”
“You got into a car with a stranger? And brought him here? Have you lost your mind?”
“His father is with the Mutual Aid Society. He’s a college boy.”
“You’re just like Rose. No common sense.” Her scolding caught me off guard, and Tomi used my loss of equilibrium to push me back outside, slamming the door behind me. The dogs bid their farewell with a burst of barks, which subsided only as I got into Art’s truck.
Chapter 10
The Nisei dances here in Chicago have been pitiful, maybe even worse than the ones in camp. At least in Manzanar we had the Jive Bombers and Mary Nomura. Nobody seems to be able to sing at these dances. The bands are so makeshift, as if the organizers found the musicians on the street. And at least two of the dances I’ve been to have ended in a brawl with men drunk out of their minds. Roy says that they are going to get more organized and better, but I’ll be the judge of that.
The drive back to Clark and Division was even quieter than the ride to Evanston. I didn’t mind because I wasn’t in the mood to make small talk with Art Nakasone. My mind was full of why Tomi had soundly rejected me. I was the little sister of her dead roommate. I hadn’t wronged her in any way; we were strangers. But something about Rose’s life in Chicago had frightened her. Maybe Rose had fallen into the wrong crowd, although I thought that would be highly unlikely. Roy hadn’t mentioned anything. But perhaps Tomi, a close female roommate, had been privy to information unavailable to anyone else.
By the time we reached Lake Shore Drive, I thought that I owed Art some kind of explanation. He had taken the time to drive me, after all. “You know back at the mausoleum,” I said. “I was there for my big sister. She was the one who got killed by the subway car. The girl in Evanston was her roommate.”
Art, his long fingers light on the steering wheel, nodded once. He turned to me when he stopped at a red light. “Sorry about your sister,” he said. “That’s really terrible.”
“Did you hear about it?”
Art nodded again. “It isn’t often that a Nisei girl is killed in Chicago.”
I don’t know if it was the gentle tone of his voice, but tears started to run down my face. I tried to contain my sadness, but the more I suppressed it, the more I cried. I was a mess.
“Do you need some water?” Before I could stop him, Art had pulled the truck over next to Oak Street Beach. He got out and hoisted himself onto the back of the truck. He returned to the cab with an old canteen t
hat looked like the ones cowboys carried on their saddles.
I really didn’t want to drink from that rusty canteen, but I didn’t want to offend him. I took a swig and it tasted surprisingly clean and refreshing.
“Thank you.” I took out a handkerchief and dabbed at my eyes. I would have taken out my compact and checked my face, but I figured that it was a lost cause. “I cry pretty easily. That’s one of my biggest weaknesses,” I told him.
“I don’t think that’s a weakness,” he said. “I’m close to my younger sister. If something happened to her, I don’t know what I would do.”
I took some deep breaths. Leaning my forehead on the passenger side window, I gazed at young people in their swimming gear, heading for Lake Michigan. Even though the war was going on, they seemed so carefree. I was envious of that ease, that lack of worry.
When he dropped me off in front of my apartment building, Art hesitated a moment, as if he was going to ask me something.
A group of Nisei women gathered at the stoop turned to shoot us looks and then whispered and laughed among themselves.
“Thanks for the ride,” I told him.
“Yeah, see you around.”
I pulled open the door and jumped out onto the curb. The toes on my left foot were still a bit tender, but luckily the pad of butcher paper had served as a layer of protection.
The girls parted like the Red Sea to let me through to the front door of the apartment. “Art Nakasone, huh?” one of them teased. I was surprised he was so well-known.
When I entered the apartment, I discovered that neither Mom nor Pop was there. I was thankful to be alone as I got ready for the dance. I found a few onigiri wrapped in wax paper in the icebox and ate the rice balls with a bit of cold chicken. Mom would have disapproved of me eating standing over the sink instead of sitting down with a plate and fork, but I was in a hurry.
After I took a quick shower, I examined my wardrobe. It was in such a sorry state. The dress I had worn that day was my favorite cotton one, but it was sticky with sweat. I had to go with a plain striped one. Something that I would have worn to a doctor’s appointment and not a social occasion.
As I tried to give my hair some kind of shape with bobby pins, I dropped one onto the bedroom floor and crouched to retrieve it. The wayward pin had landed right beside Rose’s tan suitcase, which my mother had placed under her bed next to a large dark-brown luggage case that had recently shipped from storage in California. There was a whole wardrobe in that tan suitcase—one that was much nicer than mine. I couldn’t. Wasn’t it disrespectful to my sister’s memory? But I could hear Rose: “Don’t be such a chicken. Those dresses aren’t helping anyone stuck in a suitcase.”
I pulled out the suitcase and undid the latch. Rose’s dresses were rolled in tight, neat bundles, my own handiwork. My eyes were drawn to the fabric of the white cranes on the teal-green background.
Since I had never seen that dress on Rose, I felt that I had permission to try it on.
The dress was a wraparound that tightened at the waist and had a flounce on the side. Since we didn’t have a full-length mirror, I used my compact to get a sense of how I looked. I barely recognized my body. I was no longer the girl who was overwhelmed and washed out by Rose’s high school ensembles. In this dress, I had curves in all the right places. Did I dare? I recalled the looks those girls outside had given me, nosy and judgmental but tinged with a little respect. I had never received that from my peers before. I kept the dress on, closed the suitcase, and placed it underneath my parents’ bed.
I checked myself again in the cracked mirror above the sink in the bathroom. It was almost time to meet Roy. Ready or not, here I come.
“Hey, Aki, over here!”
Roy was practically hanging out of the passenger side of a black Oldsmobile. The car was filled with people. Once I got closer, I recognized his roommate, Ike, in the driver’s seat. His fine hair was cut in an unfortunate way so that it stuck out like the bristles of a broom. In the back were Louise, Chiyo and their new roommate, Kathryn.
Roy got out and gestured for me to sit between him and Ike in the front seat. I was hoping for a quiet ride in which I could pepper him with more questions about Tomi, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen tonight.
I waved at the girls in back and squeezed myself into the front. It was a bit snug in between the two men, and I twisted my arms together so that I could make my body smaller.
“You remember Ike, right?” Roy said once we were back on the road.
“Yeah, is this your car?”
“My uncle’s. He’s in the import-export business.”
“In other words, okanemochi. At least before the war.” Roy made a circle with his index finger against his thumb, a Japanese hand gesture for money.
The three girls in back twittered.
“I told you to stop using those boochie words. We ’mericans have no idea what you are saying.”
“Ah, stop your highfalutin’ talk. You know the hakujins don’t see you as one of them. If they did, University of Chicago wouldn’t have a one-Nisei quota in your med school class.”
“Are you from Chicago?” I asked.
“Wisconsin. My father is an onion farmer.”
“My father worked for Roy’s family at the produce market in LA.”
“That’s what Roy was saying.”
Ike seemed sunny and agreeable. I could tell from the energy in the car that the women were more interested in Ike than Roy. A Nisei man who was on his way to becoming a doctor. Who wouldn’t be impressed?
Within minutes, we entered a familiar neighborhood bursting with lounges and clubs. This was Uptown, where I had been this morning to transfer from the train to the bus, only its character had completely transformed at night. Cars crowded the streets and men and women dressed in their Saturday finest sashayed on sidewalks. Everyone seemed to be making a statement.
Ike circled the block a couple of times before he found an empty parking spot next to a condemned building.
“I hope my uncle’s car is still here after the night ends,” Ike said as we piled out of the Oldsmobile. The last to emerge was Kathryn, who fluffed out her skirt and then took a long look at me underneath the lamppost.
“What a beautiful dress,” she commented, and everyone stared at my outfit without saying a word. They must have recognized the dress as Rose’s. I felt both embarrassed and curious. Maybe someone could tell me the story behind the dress because the fabric was certainly one of a kind.
Aragon was spelled out vertically in lights outside of a familiar grand building; I had first noticed it when I met Mr. Yoshizaki. I felt excited to be there. After Roy handled the payment for our tickets, I was shocked to see how crowded the ballroom was. Were there this many Nisei in Chicago? Other than the people in our small group, I didn’t recognize a soul at first. Then a few feet in, I spotted Harriet, whose face fell as soon as she saw my dress. “Oh, Aki,” she only managed to say.
“C’mon, let’s jive.” I felt someone pulling at my hand. It was Roy guiding me to the dance floor. I was a passable dancer, only because Rose would use me as her partner when she practiced the Lindy Hop in our house.
I hadn’t gone to many dances at Manzanar. Frankly, I hadn’t wanted Mom to be by herself as Pop cavorted with his bootleg friends into the wee hours. To now be engulfed by the music, hearing the trumpet screech and feeling the wooden floors jump with our footsteps, transported me. I was like those couples along the shore of Lake Michigan, not giving a damn about anything.
The song ended and Roy whooped, sweat falling down from his oiled head. “You can jive!” he called out to me. He said it like he was seeing me for the first time.
He went to get us something to drink. I tried to find a place to rest, but the ballroom was filled with bodies and no chairs. Ike was surrounded by the trio of Louise, Kathryn and Chiyo, who al
l seemed to hang on every word he said.
When I’d first met her, Chiyo mentioned that she didn’t frequent many dances, yet here she was, looking longingly at Ike. She seemed totally smitten and was asking him a question when I approached Louise, who was lagging toward the back of the group.
“I saw Tomi,” I told her.
Louise, fanning her face, gave me a blank stare. “Really? How did that happen?”
“I went to the house where she works.”
“How did she seem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did she seem well?”
I frowned. “What happened to Tomi?” When Louise started to purse her lips, I rushed in to say, “Tell me this one time and I promise that I won’t bother you again.”
Louise glanced back at the group—both Kathryn and Chiyo were too mesmerized by Ike’s account of his recent surgical rotation to pay us any mind. Maybe she was feeling too much like the fourth wheel, or thought this was the opportunity to get me off her back forever. For whatever reason, she pulled me a few yards away so that we could talk more freely. “She had a bit of a breakdown,” she said in a hushed tone. Her eyes remained on the trio whose company she had temporarily left.
“A nervous breakdown, you mean?”
Now that she had come this far, Louise had to offer more information. “She was afraid of everything. Staying alone in the apartment. Going out late at night. Rose knew what was going on with her. But they didn’t confide in me. I’m not sure what happened, but one night Rose and Tomi had a terrible argument—broken dishes and yelling. The next day Tomi had moved out. Rose didn’t mention her again. It was better when Chiyo moved in. Things got a lot simpler.”
A beanpole Nisei with a faint mustache tapped Louise’s puffy sleeve and asked her to dance, and Louise seemed relieved to be able to end our conversation. I, on the other hand, felt totally left out in the cold. What had Tomi argued about with Rose? Could it have had anything to do with Rose being pregnant? How could I get Tomi to talk to me?
Although I was in the presence of other young people like me, I was starting to feel alone again. Where was Roy? He probably was chasing another girl, forgetting about me and our drinks.
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