Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

  Henry leaned on the hood of the car, making sure it wouldn't dent or buckle, then got comfortable. "Those books belonged to my best friend--when I was just a boy during the war years. "

  "A Japanese friend, I take it?" Marty asked, but his question was more of a declarative.

  Henry raised his eyebrows and nodded, noticing the knowing look on his son's face. Marty's eyes glimmered with a hint of sadness and regret. Henry was unsure why that was.

  "Yay Yay must have flipped his lid when he found out," Marty said.

  Henry always marveled at how his son stood with his feet planted firmly in two worlds. One, traditional Chinese; the other, contemporary American. Modern even.

  Running a computer bulletin board for the chemistry program at Seattle University but still calling his grandfather by the traditional Chinese honorific Yay Yay (and Yin Yin for his grandmother). Then again, his grandmother had always sent Marty letters in college addressed to "Master Martin Lee;" the formalities seemed to work both ways.

  "Oh, your grandfather was busy at the time, fighting the war on two fronts, in America and back in China." But yes, you don't know the half of it.

  "What was he like--your friend? How did you meet?"

  "She."

  "Who?"

  "He was a she. Her name was Keiko. We met as the only two Asian children sent to an all-white prep school--this was during the height of the war, you know. Each of our parents wanting us to grow up American, and as quickly as possible."

  Henry smiled, on the inside anyway, as his son popped up off the hood, turned around, tried to speak--then turned around again. "Let me get this straight. Your best friend was a Japanese girl while you were living under Yay Yay's one-man Cultural Revolution at home? I mean--" Henry watched his son grasping for the words, stunned, gape-mouthed at his father's revelation. "Was she like ... a girlfriend? I mean, this is not the most comforting discussion to have with one's own father, but I have to know. I mean, weren't you practically in an arranged marriage? That's how you made it sound whenever you mentioned how you and mom met."

  Henry looked up and down South King. There were people of every walk of life strolling the boulevard--all kinds of races. Chinese and Japanese, but also Vietnamese, Laotian, Korean, and of course, plenty of Caucasian. As well as a mix of hapa, as they say in the Pacific Islands, meaning "half" People who were a little bit of everything. "We were very young," he said. "Dating was not like it is today."

  "So she was ... someone special ... "

  Henry didn't answer. So much time had passed, and he didn't know how to explain it in a way his son would understand. Especially now that he had met Samantha.

  In Henry's day, it was common to meet a girl's parents before you started dating her, rather than the other way around. And dating was more like courting, and courting leads to ...

  "Did Mom know about all this?"

  Henry felt the Ethel-shaped hole in his heart grow a little emptier, a little colder.

  He missed her terribly. "A little. But when I married your mother, I never looked back."

  "Pops, you've been full of surprises lately. I mean, big, perception-altering surprises. I'm stunned. I mean, this whole time--us looking for the record. Was it really about the record, or were you looking for memories of Keiko, of your long-lost friend?"

  Henry felt a little awkward as his son said the word friend in a way that insinuated more. But she was more than a friend, wasn't she?

  "It started with the record, the one I always wanted to find again," Henry said, not sure if that was entirely true. "I wanted it for someone. Sort of a dying wish for a long-lost brother. I vaguely remembered her stuff had been put there, but I'd just assumed it had been recovered or claimed decades earlier. I never dreamed it would still be there, right under my nose. I walked by that hotel off and on for years and years, never knowing. Then they start bringing up all that stuff--that bamboo parasol. All those things left behind. I had no idea what I'd find. But I'm grateful for the sketchbooks. The memories."

  "Wait a minute," Marty stopped him. "One, you're an only child, and two, you just said you'd never sell that record, no matter what shape it was in."

  "I didn't say I wouldn't give it away--especially to an old friend--"

  "I'm ba-ack" Samantha appeared, heavy plastic shopping bags dangling from each arm. Henry took a few, and Marty took the others. "You're in for a treat this evening. I'm making my special black-bean crab." She reached in and pulled out a wrapped bundle that looked from the size of it like fresh Dungeness crab. "I'm also making choy sum with spiced oyster sauce."

  Two of Henry's favorites. He was famished--now he was famished and impressed.

  "I even got a little green-tea ice cream for dessert."

  Marty's face was frozen in a polite grimace. Henry smiled and was grateful for such a kind and thoughtful future daughter-in-law, even if she didn't know the ice cream was Japanese. It didn't matter. He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.

  Camp Harmony

  (1942)

  Henry pretended he was sick the next day, even refusing to eat. But he knew he could fool his mother only so long, if he was fooling her at all. He probably wasn't; she was just kind enough to go along with his manufactured symptoms. As well as the excuse he'd employed to explain away his black eye and bruised cheek, courtesy of Chaz. Henry had told her they were from "bumping" into someone in the crowded streets.

  He hadn't elaborated further. The ruse was effective only if his mother was a willing accomplice, and he didn't want to push his luck.

  So on Thursday, Henry did what he'd been dreading all week. He started preparing to go back to school, back to Mrs. Walker's sixth-grade class. Alone.

  At the breakfast table, Henry's mother didn't ask if he was feeling better. She knew. His father ate a bowl of jook and read the newspaper, fretting over a string of Japanese victories at Bataan, Burma, and the Solomon Islands.

  Henry stared at him but didn't say a word. Even if he'd been allowed to speak to his father in Cantonese, he wouldn't have said a thing. He wanted to blame him for Keiko's family being taken away. To blame him for doing nothing. But in the end, he didn't know what to blame him for. For not caring? How could he blame his own father, when no one else seemed to care either?

  His father must have felt his stare. He set his newspaper down and looked at Henry, who stared back, not blinking.

  "I have something for you." His father reached in his shirt pocket and drew out a button. This one read "I'm an American," in red, white, and blue block lettering. He handed it to Henry, who glared and refused to take it. His father calmly set the new button on the table.

  "Your father wants you to wear this. Better now that the Japanese are being evacuated from Seattle," his mother said, dishing up a bowl of the sticky, plain-tasting rice soup, placing it hot and steaming in front of Henry.

  There was that word again. Evacuated. Even when his mother said it in Cantonese, it didn't make sense. Evacuated from what? Keiko had been taken from him.

  Henry snatched the button in his fist and grabbed his book bag, storming out the door. He left the steaming bowl of soup untouched. He didn't even say good-bye.

  On the way to school, the other kids heading to the Chinese school didn't tease him as they walked by. The look on his face must have carried a warning. Or maybe they too were shocked into silence by the empty, boarded-up buildings of Nihonmachi a few blocks over.

  A few blocks from home, Henry found the nearest trash can and threw his new button on the heap of overflowing garbage--broken bottles that couldn't be recycled for the war effort and hand-painted signs that forty-eight hours earlier were held up by cheering crowds in favor of the evacuation.

  At school that day, Mrs. Walker was absent, so they had a substitute, Mr.

  Deacons. The other kids seemed too preoccupied with how much they could get away with as the new teacher stumbled through the day's assignments and left Henry alone in the back of the class
room. He felt as if he might disappear. And maybe he had. No one called on him. No one said a word, and he was grateful.

  The cafeteria, though, was an entirely different affair. Mrs. Beatty seemed genuinely annoyed that Keiko was gone. Henry wasn't sure if her disappointment was because of the unjust circumstances of his friend's sudden departure or simply because the lunch lady had to help out more with the kitchen cleanup. She cursed under her breath as she brought out the last pan of the day's lunch meat, calling it "chicken katsu-retsu."

  Henry wasn't sure what that meant, but it looked like Japanese food. American Japanese food anyway. Breaded chicken cutlets in a brown gravy. Lunch actually looked good.

  Smelled good too. "Let 'em try that, see what they have to say about it" was all she grumbled before she wandered off with her cigarettes.

  If Henry's fellow grade-schoolers knew that the main course at lunch was Japanese food, they didn't notice and didn't seem to mind. But the irony hit Henry like a hammer. He smiled, realizing there was more to Mrs. Beatty than met the eye.

  The other kids, though, they weren't full of such surprises.

  "Look, they forgot one!" A group of fourth graders taunted as he dished their lunches. "Someone call the army; one got away!"

  Henry didn't have his button. Not the old one. Or the new one. Neither would have mattered. How many more days? he thought. Sheldon said the war wouldn't go on forever. How many more days of this do I have to put up with?

  Like a prayer being answered by a cruel and vengeful god, Chaz appeared, sliding his tray in front of Henry. "They take your girlfriend away, Henry? Maybe now you'll learn not to frater ... fraten ... not to hang out with the enemy. Dirty, backstabbing Jap--she probably was poisoning our food."

  Henry scooped up a heaping spoonful of chicken and gravy, cocking his arm, eyeing Chaz's bony, apelike forehead. That was when he felt thick, sausage fingers wrap around his forearm, holding him back. He looked up, and Mrs. Beatty was standing behind him. She took the serving spoon from his hand and eyeballed Chaz. "Beat it.

  There's not enough food left," she said.

  "What do you mean? There's plenty--"

  "Kitchen's closed to you today. Scram!"

  Henry looked up and saw what he could only describe as Mrs. Beatty's war face.

  A hard look, like the one you'd see in those Movietone newsreels of soldiers in training, that stony expression of someone whose occupation is killing and maiming.

  Chaz looked like a puppy that had been caught making a mess and had just had his nose rubbed in it--slinking off with an empty tray, shoving a little kid out of the way.

  "I never liked him anyways," Mrs. Beatty said as Henry went back to serving the last few kids in line, who looked delighted to see the school bully taken down a peg.

  "You want to make some money Saturday?" the stout lunch lady asked.

  "Who? Me?" Henry asked.

  "Yeah, you. You got other work you got to do on Saturday?"

  Henry shook his head no, partly confused and scared of the tanklike woman who had just left tread marks on the seat of Chaz's dungarees.

  "I've been asked to help set up a mess hall--as a civilian contractor for the army--and I could use someone that works hard and knows how I like things done." She looked at Henry, who wasn't sure what he was hearing. "You got a problem with that?"

  "No," he said. And he didn't. She cooked, Henry set up and served, he broke down and cleaned. It was hard work, but he was used to it. And as hard as she made him work here in the school kitchen, she had never said a mean word to Henry. Of course, she'd never said a kind word either.

  "Good. Meet me here at nine o'clock Saturday morning. And don't be late. I can pay you ten cents an hour."

  Money was money, Henry thought, still stunned from seeing Chaz walk away with his tail between his legs. "Where are we going to work?"

  "Camp Harmony--it's at the Puyallup Fairgrounds near Tacoma. I've got a feeling you've heard of it." She stared at Henry, her face as stonelike as ever.

  Henry knew exactly where it was. He'd gone home and found it on a map. I'll be there, Saturday morning, nine o'clock sharp, wouldn't miss it for the world, he wanted to say, but "Thank you" were the only words Henry could muster.

  If Mrs. Beatty knew how much this meant to him, she didn't let it show. "There they are ..." She grabbed a book of matches and headed out back again with her lunch.

  "Call me when you're all done in here."

  When Saturday came, Henry had one goal. One mission. Find Keiko. After that, who knew? He'd figure that out later.

  Henry wasn't quite sure what to make of Mrs. Beatty's offer, but he didn't dare to question it either. She was an intimidating mountain of a woman--and a person of few words. Still, he was grateful. He told his parents she was paying him to help out in the kitchen on Saturdays. His story wasn't quite the truth, but it wasn't a lie either. He would be helping her in the kitchen--at Camp Harmony, about forty miles to the south.

  Henry was sitting on the stoop outside the kitchen when Mrs. Beatty drove up in a red Plymouth pickup truck. It looked like the old rambler had been recently washed, but its enormous whitewall tires were splattered with mud from the wet streets.

  Mrs. Beatty threw a cigarette butt into the nearest puddle, watching it fizzle. "Get in," she snapped as she rolled the window up, the entire truck rocking with the motion of her meaty arm.

  Good morning to you too, Henry thought as he walked around the front of the truck, hoping she meant the passenger seat and not the back. When he peered into the bed of the pickup, all he could make out were boxlike shapes hidden beneath a canvas tarp and tied down with a heavy rope. Henry popped onto the seat. His parents didn't own a car, although they had finally saved up enough to buy one. With gasoline rationing, buying one now didn't make any sense, according to Henry's father anyway. Instead, they took the transit coach, or the bus. On rare occasions they would catch a ride with his auntie King, but that was usually if they were going to a family affair--a wedding, a funeral, or the golden birthday or anniversary of some old relative. Being in a car always felt so modern and exciting. It didn't even matter where they were going, or how long it took to get there--it always made his heart race, like today. Or was that just the thought of seeing Keiko?

  "I'm not paying you for travel time."

  Henry wasn't sure if that was a statement or a question. "That's fine," he answered. I'm happy just to go. I'd do it for free, in fact.

  "The army doesn't pay me for miles, just tops off my gas tank each way."

  Henry nodded as if this all somehow made sense. Mrs. Beatty was somehow employed in the mess hall, a part-time assignment as far as Henry could tell.

  "Were you in the army?" Henry asked.

  "Merchant Marines. Daddy was, anyway, even before it was officially called that by the Maritime Commission. He was head cook on the SS City of Flint--I'd help out whenever he was in port. Procurement lists, menu planning, prep and storage. I even spent two months onboard during a run to Hawaii. He used to call me his 'little shadow.' "

  Henry couldn't imagine Mrs. Beatty as a little anything.

  "I got so good at it, he'd call me to help out whenever his old ship was in port--put me to work for a few days here and there. His best friend, the ship's steward--he's practically my uncle, you'd like him--he's Chinese too. That's the way it is on those ships, all the cooks are either colored or Chinese, I suppose."

  That caught Henry's attention. "Do you see them much?"

  Mrs. Beatty chewed on her lip for a moment, staring ahead. "He used to send me postcards from Australia. New Guinea. Places like that. I don't get them anymore." There was a tremor of sadness in her voice. "Daddy's old ship was captured by the Germans two and a half years ago. Got a photo of him from the Red Cross in some POW camp, a few letters at first, but haven't heard from him in over a year."

  I'm so sorry, Henry thought but didn't say. Mrs. Beatty had a way of having one-sided conversations, and he was used to being on t
he quiet end.

  She cleared her throat, puffing out her cheeks. Then she tossed a half-smoked cigarette out the window and lit another. "Anyway, someone down here knew I was handy at cooking for a whole herd, and could portion-control for feeding kids too, so they gave me a call and I couldn't find it in me to say no." She looked at Henry like it somehow was his fault. "So, here we are."

  And there they were. In Mrs. Beatty's pickup, bouncing down the highway, past dusty miles of tilled farmland south of Tacoma. Henry wondered about Mrs. Beatty and her missing father as he stared at fields of cows and draft horses, larger and more muscular than he had ever seen. These were real working farms, not the victory gardens in front yards and corner lots of homes in Seattle.