Art, I could only assume, was the one who kept calling me on the pay phone in the hallway. I was being watched carefully by both my parents. They seemed to have conspired to trade off shifts so I wouldn’t be alone. I sat there on my bed, a Sears Roebuck catalogue on my lap, listening to the telephone ringing and ringing without anyone bothering to pick it up.
In two days, my eye had markedly improved. The bruise had turned from purple to green to now a putrid yellow. When I applied some makeup, you could hardly notice it, at least that’s what I told my mother. She still barred me from going to work for another day.
I was going stir-crazy. There was hardly anything to do in our apartment, and I ended up writing pages and pages in a makeshift journal I made by binding together leftover paper from the funeral thank-you notes with some red thread. Pop brought in a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune each day and I read every inch of it. In today’s issue, there was a front-page story, complete with photos, about the cadet nurses at a local hospital. I studied the featured photo and the names of the women in the caption. They were all hakujin, but could I be one of them someday?
Only smears of Mom’s okazu, fatty pork boiled with potato, remained on our dinner plates when somebody knocked on our door. We all exchanged looks. We never had visitors.
Pop went to the door. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Art. Art Nakasone. I’m Aki’s friend.”
I felt like dying.
Pop looked back at me and I nodded that I indeed knew him. Pop opened the door and there was Art, looking even taller than usual, in his crisp white shirt and khaki pants.
“Are you Mr. Ito? It’s such a pleasure to meet you.” He shook my father’s hand with enthusiasm before handing him a thin package. “Here’s some dried ika. My father has a grocery delivery service on the South Side.”
Pop, I know, was at a loss on how to respond. Art was so clean cut, humble and affable. And dried squid was one of Pop’s favorite snacks to eat while washing down a glass of beer.
Mom pushed down her cowlick and got to her feet. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
“I was worried about Aki. Your co-workers at the Newberry told me that you were sick.”
“I’m fine now. Almost good as new.” I angled my head so a strand of hair covered my left eye. I was relieved that I had applied makeup to my face this morning.
“Well, you talk,” Mom said, shuffling Pop out of the dining room into the bedroom. I knew that the two of them would have their ears pressed against the door.
I offered Art a seat and began to clear the table of our dinner dishes.
“So sorry to barge in like this. But I called you and nobody picked up. Some girls on the steps told me what floor you were living on.”
“No, I’m glad you are here.” I began to brew a fresh pot of coffee on our hot plate. “I wasn’t feeling well enough to even answer the phone. I’m a lot better now.”
Once the coffee was ready, I got out our good cup and saucer—the one without any chips—and poured Art some coffee. We were low on our sugar rations, but luckily Art preferred his coffee black.
We first talked of little, everyday things. How he was doing in his summer editorial-writing class. How his sister was hoping to try out for the cheer squad when school started in the fall.
“I want to invite you to my parents’ house for dinner next Friday,” he announced.
“Oh—” I said, a bit startled. A formal dinner invitation to the parents’ house sounded so serious. Were we serious? I was inexperienced about such things and had virtually no one to talk to about it.
“It’s nothing fancy. I think Mom has been saving our ration stamps for beef stroganoff.”
I had never had stroganoff before; it sounded extravagant to me.
“Do you think you can come?” Art leaned forward in his chair. His face was only a few inches from mine, and I wanted to touch his cheeks and kiss him. I knew that he was feeling the same way about me because he started to gently stroke the back of my hand with his right index finger.
“Ah, yeah, I think I can.”
Art grinned and rose. I felt giddy that saying yes made him so happy.
After he left, I heard the bedroom door slowly open into the hallway.
Mom emerged into our living area with a new bounce in her step. I realized then that she feared the incident at Aloha had ruined my future marital prospects. But then who should appear at the door but the handsome and polite Art Nakasone. All was not lost.
“His father owns a grocery store,” she said to my father.
“It’s actually a delivery service,” I corrected my mother. He was preparing to open up his own grocery store, eventually. In my phone conversations with Art, I’d learned that his father had been a local truck driver before being diagnosed with debilitating arthritis. Before his physical limitation completely overwhelmed him, he was now attempting to launch his own business.
I appreciated Mr. Nakasone’s openness to trying something new. Pop wasn’t as flexible. Come to think of it, maybe all three of us were set in our ways. There had been no reason to change when we lived in Tropico.
Friday came before I knew it. I had wanted to stop by the Beauty Box for Peggy to set my hair, but there was no time for that. I needed to bring some kind of omiyage for the Nakasones, and Mom and I had spent many hours contemplating what would make the most appropriate impression. Chocolates would melt in this heat; besides, they were expensive during the war. Mr. Nakasone, being in the grocery business, would already have access to choice produce. We finally decided on a set of doilies that Mom had crocheted in the evenings. I had even tried making one myself, but it was subpar and I discarded it. I wrapped the doilies Mom made in a blue handkerchief and tied a red ribbon around it.
I also wasn’t sure what I should wear—I didn’t want to seem too eager and wear my fanciest dress, a black one I had worn to Rose’s funeral. Signaling that she meant business, Mom pulled Rose’s suitcase out from underneath their bed. She unlatched it to display the riches of my older sister’s wardrobe. I had returned the crane dress—albeit a bit soiled. But there were many other dresses that were less flashy that I could wear. By this time, Roy had delivered a used dresser to our apartment building—oh, what an ordeal it had been for him and Pop to haul it up to the fourth floor. Mom had assigned the second drawer to me. As a sign that I was taking my sister’s place, Mom started moving the dresses to my second drawer as we went through Rose’s clothing in the suitcase.
I chose a gray one with a zipper on the back. It was demure but there was something in the cut that also made it alluring. I wanted to impress his family, yes, but Art was going to be at that dinner, too, and I didn’t want to look like a nun.
Art picked me up promptly at six. This time he brought some fresh flowers for my mother, and she nearly melted onto the floor. It was quite embarrassing how she carried on about some simple posies in tissue paper. He also brought another package of dried ika for my father, which would no doubt completely win him over once he returned from work.
Lodged between two brick buildings on a street of the brownstones that were all over Chicago, the Nakasone home was a wood-framed two-story building, a little worn. I noticed that there was no sense of open space like there was in Los Angeles. If you looked through your window in Chicago, your view was most likely either your neighbor’s wall or right into their window.
Art parked the truck in the driveway and we walked up to a screened porch. As soon as he opened the front door, it was pandemonium. A mutt, which must have been at least one hundred pounds, leapt on top of him and then moved over to me, furiously licking my face. “Down, Duke,” Art called out, pulling at his collar, which only made the giant dog more determined to welcome me. I couldn’t help but collapse in laughter. A few seconds later, a tiny white poodle, apparently not wanting to miss out on the excitement,
came bounding toward us. In the background, I could hear the twittering of a bird.
A girl with the same open face as Art walked in carrying a kitten on her shoulder like it was a newborn baby. “Hello, I’m Lois,” Art’s sister introduced herself. “Ah, this is Crockett.”
“Awww—” As I stroked his back, the black-and-white kitten mewed and greeted me with a swat of his paw.
The Nakasone house was large and comfortably cluttered, with bright colors everywhere. Whereas our apartment seemed so drab and dreary, Art’s house was full of life. This was a reminder of what we had in Tropico.
Art’s mother, wiping her hands on a full-length flowered apron, came out to the front room to greet me. Her wavy salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back from her face. She wore glasses and when she smiled, deep dimples cut into her cheeks. “Oh, so nice to finally meet you,” she said with no detectible accent—maybe because the Nakasones were surrounded by hakujin and blacks? “All Art talks about is Aki, Aki, Aki.”
“He does?”
Art’s face was visibly flushed; even the tops of his ears were turning red.
“Thank you for having me. Here’s a little something.” I handed the wrapped doilies to her.
She thanked me for the gift and then ushered me into the long dining room, which was separated from the sitting room by a paneled wall. In the sitting room were stacks of foodstuffs, boxes with print identifying their contents—dried noodles, rice crackers, and dried squid. Somewhere in there was a couch, where an older man with a bald pate and tufts of white hair sat with a clipboard and abacus in his lap.
“Dad, say hi to Art’s friend,” Mrs. Nakasone said, before disappearing into the far room, probably the kitchen.
“Oh, hallo.” He looked at me above his reading glasses.
I smiled and waved. It was obvious that he was in the middle of his work.
Art had me sit at the dining-room table, which was set for six. The tablecloth reminded me of Thanksgiving, as it sported orange pumpkins, green squash and maple leaves. There was a white plate at each of the settings, along with a crystal glass. It felt luxurious to use matching dishes.
“Dad, dinner!” Mrs. Nakasone called out to her husband.
Art poured water in my glass, then gestured to someone behind me.
“This is my Aunt Eunice.”
I turned and was surprised to see a wrinkled old white woman.
“Aki—” Standing up, I introduced myself and extended my hand. She disregarded my hand and gave me a quick hug. “You are so beautiful,” she said to me, and I was speechless for a moment.
Mrs. Nakasone brought rolls in a ceramic bowl to the table. “Eunice, you are embarrassing her. But she is pretty darn cute.”
Beautiful and cute. I had never heard anyone describe me like that.
Dinner was a mishmash of stroganoff—delicious—and Japanese foods like rice and even tsukemono—pickled cabbage. This generous offering of food reminded me of my Tropico days when the table was covered with endless dishes created from the freshest produce and fish from the market. The evening was filled with flashbacks of my old life. Could we ever return to that way of existence? Would we ever have a meal with our own matching china on a table that was not a hand-me-down?
“Does the stroganoff not agree with you?” Mrs. Nakasone broke my reverie.
Sure enough, half of my dinner was still on my plate, while Mr. Nakasone was scooping another serving of noodles.
“Oh, no, it’s quite wonderful. It just made me think of home. Home home, Los Angeles.”
“You must have had beautiful produce in California,” Mrs. Nakasone commented.
To prove that I was enjoying dinner, I shoveled an extra-large portion of the stroganoff into my mouth.
“The Japanese dominated farming on the West Coast. It’s no wonder that the government wanted to take that from them.” Art had never been that political around me, but I was grateful to hear that he was sympathetic to our position.
The military exclusion line did seem most arbitrary, going down the Pacific Coast and even splitting cities like Phoenix, Arizona, in half. What made an Issei or Nisei more loyal on one side of that line than the other? Pop would often say that it was no coincidence that we who had developed bountiful farm and fishing operations would be the ones forced to leave behind our lucrative businesses.
Aunt Eunice placed some of the tsukemono on her plate.
“You can use chopsticks?” I didn’t mean to sound so rude, but I was honestly amazed.
“Because I’m a hakujin?” she said and laughed, the mushed-up cabbage visible in her mouth.
She told me a condensed version of her life. Aunt Eunice was born in America to Greek immigrants. Because she had married an Issei man, Mr. Nakasone’s brother, Ren, she’d lost her American citizenship for several years.
“I can’t believe it,” I said.
Eunice nodded. “We fought for women’s suffrage but I couldn’t even vote. It took a special act and some amendments until I finally got my citizenship back earlier this year. I wish Ren was alive to have seen it.”
As I accepted another helping of the stroganoff, I felt something press down on my foot. It was the white poodle, begging for a handout.
“Polly, bad girl! I’m so sorry,” said Lois, who was seated to my right.
“Oh, I like animals,” I told her. “We even had some pets in camp. The guards weren’t going to do anything about it because they liked them, too.”
“What did your father do in California?” Mrs. Nakasone asked.
“He managed a produce market in Los Angeles. One of the biggest ones in the city.” I immediately felt embarrassed because my parents told me not to ebaru in front of strangers, although Mom did it quite often within the confines of our house. “But that was before. He’s not doing anything like that now.”
The Nakasones were sensitive enough not to ask me for more details. “I suppose we do what we have to during these times,” Mrs. Nakasone commented.
“Shikataganai,” added Art’s father, who up to now had said nothing.
“Aki works at the Newberry Library.” Art smiled at me from across the table.
“Yes, we heard.” Mrs. Nakasone put a scoopful of peas on her plate. “What a marvelous place.”
“I can’t believe my luck.”
“Do you think that’s what you might want to do, be a librarian?”
“I want to go to nursing school.” I startled myself by saying it out loud. Once I did, I realized that it had been on my mind.
“I didn’t know that.” Art creased his brow.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it.”
“That’s wonderful,” Mrs. Nakasone said. “Mr. Yoshizaki’s niece is going to Mother Cabrini Hospital School of Nursing in Little Italy. It’s even all paid for by the cadet nursing program.”
“Really.” I felt a pang of hope, such a rare, desperate feeling that I was almost afraid to entertain it.
Eunice swallowed a bite of food and asked, “So, what was it like in those camps?”
“Auntie!” Lois cried out, her fork of carefully wrapped noodles a couple of inches from her mouth.
Eunice seemed impervious to her niece’s protests. “I’m curious. I mean, Betty across the street helps Kiichiro organize his foodstuffs, but she’s too young to know anything. And the government puts out this propaganda where everyone is smiling.”
A dull pain began to weigh on my chest.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Art said.
“No, it’s all right. It was really bad in the beginning,” I said. “The barracks were just built. Nothing in them. We had to stuff our own mattresses with straw.”
“And no privacy in the lavatories, I heard,” Eunice added.
I shook my head. “But over time, we could order things from Sears Roebuck. Or
some friends and old neighbors would bring up our things from storage.” I didn’t say what a poor imitation of our former life it had been. The outdoor basketball courts and the gardens were supposed to make our captivity as normal as possible, but in some ways, they made me more acutely aware that we were all locked up.
“The worst was not knowing what was going to happen. We were separated from our homes, taken away from everything we knew before. It was hard to adjust. I mean, I’ve seen those WRA photos—my sister was even in one of them. They don’t show how we felt inside. We didn’t even know how we felt most of the time.”
None of us were going to give other Americans the satisfaction of seeing us look miserable. We were going to look our best, with our lipstick freshly applied, our hair styled and our clothing neat and unstained.
Rose had been photographed outside after lunch in the mess hall. The wind of the Owens Valley was blowing through her hair, revealing her long forehead and well-shaped eyebrows.
“We heard about your sister. I’m so sorry, dear,” Mrs. Nakasone said as Lois rose to help her clear the table.
I swallowed hard. I’m not going to cry, I told myself.
Art looked distressed that his mother had referred to Rose’s demise in front of his family. I didn’t mind, however. It was a relief that her death was out in the open. I was tired of pretending it had never happened.
After dinner, Mrs. Nakasone suggested that we “young people” sit out on the porch with some fresh-squeezed lemonade.
The porch was screened, barring the bugs from invading our space. I already had plenty of marks on my legs from random insect bites. I wasn’t that self-conscious, because every Nisei with bare legs seemed to be similarly branded.
“Your mother seems so young. A lot younger than my mother,” I said. Art and I both sat on a rattan love seat while Lois made herself comfortable in a chair with the cat on her lap.
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