Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

  flicker of a chance in their eyes. Just a chance. Then he watched it slip away. They would go. Like the rest. They would go.

  "You just gave me hope, Henry." Mr. Okabe shook Henry's small hand and looked him in the eye. "And sometimes hope is enough to get you through anything."

  Henry let out a deep breath, his shoulders drooping as he gave up trying to remove his button.

  "Your cheek?" Keiko's mother asked.

  "It's nothing," Henry said, remembering the scrapes and bruises from his scuffle.

  Mr. Okabe touched the hangtag dangling from his coat. "No matter what happens to us, Henry, we're still Americans. And we need to be together--wherever they take us.

  But I'm proud of you. And I know your parents must be too."

  Henry choked on the thought and looked at Keiko, who had slipped her hand into his. It felt softer and warmer than he'd ever imagined. She touched Henry's shirt, where his button was, the space above his heart. She smiled, with a sparkle in her eye. "Thank you. Can I keep this anyway?" she asked, holding up the button he had given her.

  Henry nodded. "Where are they taking you?"

  Keiko's father looked at the train that was nearly full. "We only know they're taking us to a temporary relocation center--called Camp Harmony. It's at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, about two hours to the south. From there ... we don't know, we haven't been told. But the war can't last forever."

  Henry wasn't so sure. It was all he'd known growing up.

  Keiko wrapped her arms around him and whispered in his ear, "I won't forget you." She pinned the button reading "I am Chinese" to the inside cover of her diary, holding it close.

  "I'll be here."

  Henry watched them board the train, herded in with dozens of other families.

  Soldiers with white gloves, batons in hand, blew whistles and pointed as the doors closed.

  Henry lingered at the edge of the boarding area, waving good-bye as they pulled away from the station, disappearing from sight. He wiped warm tears from his cheeks, his sadness diluted by the sea of families waiting for the next train. Hundreds of families.

  Thousands.

  He avoided eye contact with the soldiers as he walked away, thinking about what he'd say to his parents, and which language to say it in. Maybe if he spoke his American, he wouldn't have to say anything at all.

  Empty Streets

  (1942)

  Henry walked upstream against the current of Japanese families that continued flowing toward Union Station. Almost everyone was on foot, some pushing handcarts or wheelbarrows weighed down with luggage. A few cars and trucks crept by with suitcases and bags tied to the hoods, the grilles, the roofs--any flat surface became ample cargo space as families loaded up their relatives and their belongings and drove off toward the army's relocation center-- Camp Harmony, Mr. Okabe had called it.

  Henry looked out at the endless ribbon of people. He didn't know where else to go. He just wanted to walk away, wherever that was.

  School was out of the question for the day. The thought of being tardy and facing the ridicule of his classmates was almost as horrible as the thought of enduring their happiness--their joy and satisfaction at knowing that Keiko's family, and her whole neighborhood, were being taken away. All smiles. Victorious in their home-front battle with a hated enemy. Even if that enemy spoke the same language and had said the Pledge of Allegiance alongside them since kindergarten.

  Of course, deep down, Henry didn't know if schools were open at the moment.

  The commotion downtown seemed to have created a holiday atmosphere--a monstrous, carnival-like celebration. A record player somewhere blared "Stars and Stripes Forever"--a harsh contrast to the Japanese melancholy and quiet sadness.

  As Henry slipped away from the train station, the possibility of being caught by truant officers looking for schoolchildren cutting class seemed very small. There was too much going on, too many people crowding the streets. Businesses closed as office workers downtown stopped everything to watch the commotion. Those leaving. Those watching. And the soldiers on the streets all seemed to be consumed with the task at hand-- herding groups of people with tags hanging from their coats. They barked commands for people to stay lined up, blew the occasional whistle to catch the attention of those who spoke little or no English.

  Henry wandered away, finding himself drawn down Maynard Avenue to the edge of Nihonmachi. There he found Sheldon sitting on a bus bench, sipping black coffee from a thermos cup, his sax case tucked between his feet. He looked up at Henry, shaking his head as the remaining residents of Nihonmachi drifted away.

  "I'm sorry, Henry," Sheldon said, as he blew on his coffee to cool it down.

  "Not your fault," Henry offered, sitting next to his friend.

  "Sorry all the same. There was nothing you could've done. Nothing anyone could've done. They'll be okay. The war will be over soon, they'll be coming back, you wait."

  Henry couldn't even bring himself to nod in agreement. "What if they send them back to Japan? Keiko doesn't even speak Japanese. What'll happen to her then? She's more of an enemy there than she is here."

  Sheldon offered his coffee to Henry, who shook his head no. "I don't know about all that, Henry. I can't say. All I know is, all wars end. This'll end. Then everything will be made right." Sheldon put the cap back on his thermos. "You want me to walk you to school?"

  Henry stared at nothing.

  "Going

  home?"

  "I'll go home later," Henry said, shaking his head.

  Sheldon looked up the street, as if waiting for a bus that was late and might never arrive. "Then come with me."

  Henry didn't even ask. He followed Sheldon down the center of Maynard Avenue, walking along the dotted white line into the heart of Japantown, a street littered with copies of Public Proclamation 1 and small paper American flags that stuck to the wet pavement. The streets were barren of people, the sidewalks too. Henry looked up and down the avenue--no cars or trucks anywhere. No bicycles. No paperboys. No fruit sellers or fish buyers. No flower carts or noodle stands. The streets were vacant, empty--

  the way he felt inside. There was no one left.

  The army had removed the barricades from the streets, except those flowing in the direction of the train station. All the buildings were boarded up. The windows were covered with plywood slabs, as if the residents had been waiting for a typhoon that had never arrived. Banners that read "I am an American" still hung over the Sakoda Barber Shop and the Oriental Trading Company. Along with signs that read "Out of Business."

  The streets were so quiet Henry could hear the squawking seagulls flying overhead. He could hear the porters' whistling from the train station, several blocks to the south. He could even hear his shoes squishing on the damp Seattle pavement, quickly drowned out by the rattle of an army jeep as it turned onto Maynard. He and Sheldon hopped to the sidewalk, looking at the soldiers as they drove by, staring back. For a moment Henry thought he might be rounded up, like the rest of Seattle's Japanese citizens. He looked down and touched the button on his coat. It wouldn't be so bad, would it? He might be sent to the same camp as Keiko and her family. His mother would miss him, though, maybe even his father. The jeep drove past. The soldiers didn't stop. Maybe they knew he was Chinese. Maybe they had more important things to do than round up a lost little kid and a black out-of-work sax player from South Jackson.

  He and Sheldon walked all the way to the steps of the Nippon Kan Theater, across from Kobe Park and in the shadow of the Japanese-owned Astor Hotel, which stood silent like an empty coffin. The prettiest part of Japantown, even vacant as it was, looked beautiful in the afternoon. Cherry blossoms covered the sidewalks, and the streets smelled alive.

  "What are we doing here?" Henry asked, as he watched Sheldon open his case and take out his saxophone.

  Sheldon slipped his reed into the mouthpiece. "We're living."

  Henry looked around the deserted streets, remembering the people, the actors, the dancer
s, the old men gossiping and playing cards. Children running and playing. Keiko sitting on the hillside drawing in her sketchbook. Laughing at Henry. Teasing him. The memories warmed him, just a little. Maybe there was life to be lived.

  His ears perked up as Sheldon drew a deep breath, then began a slow wailing on his sax. A sad, melancholy affair, the kind Henry had never heard him play on the street or in the clubs. It was heartbreaking, but only for a moment. Then he slipped into something festive--something up-tempo, with a soul and a heartbeat. He played for no one, but at the same time Henry realized he was playing for everyone.

  Henry waved good-bye, Sheldon still playing in the distance. Halfway home, he entered Chinatown. He was far from the soldiers at the train station, so he removed his button and put it in his pocket, not wanting to think about it.

  Then he stopped and bought his mother another starfire lily.

  Sketchbook

  (1986)

  In the dimly lit basement of the Panama Hotel, Samantha drew a deep breath and blew the dust off the cover of a small book. "Look at this!" she said.

  She and Marty hadn't been as much help as Henry had hoped. They were caught up in the detail of each item they found, trying to interpret some meaning--to place historical value, or at least appreciate why such an item would be stored here, whether it be an important-looking document or a simple bundle of dried flowers.

  Henry had explained that much of what many families had treasured was sold for pennies on the dollar in the hastened days before the army arrived to take everyone away.

  Storage space was hard to come by, and no one was sure of the safety of anything left behind. After all, no one knew when they might be coming back. Still, a lot of what Henry, Marty, and Samantha found was obviously of high personal value--photo albums, birth and wedding certificates, carbon copies of immigration and naturalization papers.

  Even neatly framed diplomas from the University of Washington, including a handful of doctorates.

  Henry had paused the first day to look at some of the photo albums, but the sheer volume of belongings kept him focused on what he was really looking for. If he didn't breeze past all else, he'd be here for weeks.

  "This is incredible! Look at these books," Marty said from across the dusty basement. "Pops, come look at these things."

  Henry and his makeshift crew had been mining the luggage for old disk records for two hours. In that time Henry had been called over to ooh and aah over piles of costume jewelry, a Japanese sword that had miraculously avoided confiscation, and a case of old brass surgical instruments. He was growing weary of the novelty of the hour.

  "Is it a record?" he mumbled.

  "Sort of, it's a record of something--it's a sketchbook. A whole box of sketchbooks in fact. Come check 'em out."

  Henry dropped the bamboo steamer he had been taking out of an old shipping trunk and shuffled over boxes and suitcases as quickly as he could.

  "Let me see, let me see ..."

  "Easy now, there's plenty to share," Marty said.

  Henry held the tiny sketchbook in his hand--the dusty black cover was old and brittle. Inside were sketches of Chinatown and Japantown. Of the piers jutting out to Elliott Bay. And of cannery workers, ferryboats, and flowers in the marketplace.

  The sketches looked rough and imperfect, occasionally dotted with little notations of time or place. No name was written in them, none that he could find anyway.

  Marty and Samantha sat on suitcases beneath the spotlight of a single hanging bulb, paging through the sketchbooks. Henry couldn't sit. He couldn't stand still either.

  "Where did you find these? Which pile?"

  Marty pointed, and Henry began digging through a crate of old maps, half-painted canvases, and jars of ancient art supplies.

  "Pops?"

  Henry turned around and saw a bewildered look in his son's eyes. He looked to the page in front of him, then up at his father and back again. Samantha just looked confused.

  "Dad?" Marty stared at his father in the dim light. "Is this you?"

  Marty held out an open, dog-eared page. It was a pencil drawing of a young boy sitting on the steps of a building. Looking somewhat sad and alone.

  Henry felt like he was looking at a ghost. He stood staring at the image.

  Marty turned the page. There were two more drawings, less detailed but obviously

  of the same boy. The last one was a close-up of a young, handsome face. Beneath it was the word "Henry."

  "It's you, isn't it? I recognize it from pictures and photos of you as a kid growing up."

  Henry swallowed hard and caught his breath, no longer aware of the dust from the basement tickling his nose or making him want to scratch his eyes. He didn't feel the dryness anymore. He touched the lines on the page, feeling the pencil marks, the texture of the graphite smoothed out to define shadow and light. He took the small sketchbook from his son and turned the page. Pressed in it were cherry blossoms, old and dried, brown and brittle. Pieces of something that had once been so completely alive.

  The years had been unkind.

  Henry closed the sketchbook and looked at his son, nodding.

  "I found something!" Samantha had gone back to work in the boxes where the sketchbooks had been found. "It's a record!" She pulled out a dingy white record sleeve; its size was odd by contemporary standards. It was an old 78. Samantha handed it to him.

  It was twice as heavy as today's records; still, he felt it give. He didn't even have to take the old record out to know it was broken in half Henry opened the sleeve and saw the two halves bend, held together by the record label. A few splintered pieces settled in the bottom of the sleeve. He carefully slipped out the record, which otherwise looked shiny and brand-new. No scratches on the surface, and the thick grooves were free from dust.

  He rested it, slightly bent, in his palm. As it reflected in the light, he could make out fingerprints at the edges of the vinyl. Small fingerprints. Henry placed his fingers over them, sizing them up; then his hand drifted across the label, which read "Oscar Holden & the Midnight Blue, The Alley Cat Strut."

  Henry breathed a sigh of quiet relief and sat down on an old milk crate. Like so many things Henry had wanted in life--like his father, his marriage, his life--it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn't care, this was all he'd wanted. Something to hope for, and he'd found it. It didn't matter what condition it was in.

  Uwajimaya

  (1986)

  Henry and Marty leaned against the hood of his son's Honda in the parking lot of the Uwajimaya grocery store. Samantha had gone inside to pick up a few things--she insisted on making dinner for all of them, a Chinese dinner. Why, or what she might be trying to prove, Henry couldn't ascertain, and honestly, he didn't care. She could have made huevos rancheros or coq au vin and he'd have been fine with it. He had been so anxious about what might be found in the basement of the Panama Hotel that he'd skipped lunch completely. Now it was nearing dinnertime and he was excited, emotionally exhausted ... and famished.

  "I'm sorry you found your Holy Grail and it was all damaged like that." Marty tried his best to console his father, who was actually in terrific spirits, despite his son's perceptions of the day.

  "I found it, that was all that mattered. I don't care what condition--"

  "Yeah, but you can't play it," Marty interrupted. "And in that condition it's not worth anything, the collectible value is nil."

  Henry thought about it for a moment, casually looking at his watch as they waited for Samantha to return. "Worth is determined only by the market, and the market will never determine that--because I would never sell it, even if it were in mint condition. This is something I've wanted to find off and on for years. Decades. Now I have it. I'd rather have found something broken than have it lost to me forever."

  Marty screwed a smile on his face. "Sort of like, 'Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved--' "

  " 'At all,' " Henry finished. "Something like that. Not quite
as much of a Hallmark moment as how you put it, but you're in the same zip code."

  He and Marty had searched through the rest of the trunks and boxes near where they had found the sketchbooks and the old record, but none were clearly marked. He did find several loose name tags, including one that read "Okabe," but it had settled atop a pile of magazines. A mouse or rat had probably confiscated the twine from the hangtags long ago. Most of the nearby cases contained art supplies. Most likely Keiko's or her mother's. When he had more time, Henry planned to go back and see what else he could find. But for now, he had found exactly what he wanted.

  "So are you going to explain that box in the backseat then?" Marty asked, pointing to the small wooden crate of sketchbooks in the back of his Honda Accord.

  Ms. Pettison had let Henry take the collection of Keiko's sketchbooks and drawings, temporarily, after he showed her the illustrations with his name inside. She asked only that he bring them back later to be cataloged with the rest of the belongings and allow a historian to photograph them. Oscar Holden's old vinyl 78 managed to find its way into the box as well, somewhat unnoticed. But the old jazz record was broken and not worth anything anyway, right? Henry felt guilty nonetheless, though Marty convinced him that some rules were worth bending.