“Oh!” said Marianne, the younger of the two Dashimori sisters. “You’ve seen for yourself. He’s done it again!” She pouted and banged her geta into the bridge, the sudden noise sending the koi below to scatter. “I’m telling John tonight to catch that old monster and serve him for sashimi.”
“I’m not eating that. Besides, Moby Dick is Harry’s favorite. FanFan will never allow it.”
But let us pause to explain this early example of sansei life, an idyll of small-town Japanese Americana ensconced and undisturbed in suburban sunshine. Dr. John Dashimori Senior had opened his optometry practice as soon as he could return to the West Coast in the postwar and, being the only optometrist in a town of Japanese Americans all genetically disposed to myopia, had quickly become prominent and prosperous. His son, John Junior, conveniently followed his father professionally, and eventually inherited the business. Early on, the first Mrs. Dashimori died, and in time Dr. John Senior married his secretary, added two daughters to his brood, and gradually left the clinic to his son, retiring to cultivate an expansive backyard Japanese garden with a teahouse attached to a seven-bedroom, five-bathroom ranch house with a pool, a dojo, and lots of sliding glass doors.
About the time of this opening scene, the second Mrs. Dashimori was still mourning the death of Dr. John Senior, who was discovered collapsed with his arms flung over the abundant garnet clusters of a massive rhododendron bush. And Dr. John Junior was in the kitchen nursing a Scotch, watching his kid, Harry, build a Tinkertoy castle, and listening to his wife, FanFan, discuss how it was time for him to ask her stepmother-inlaw and those two half sisters to find their own place to live.
“But,” said Dr. John Junior, “I promised my dad.”
“Promised?”
“O.K., it was a conversation. About, you know, being head of the family. He wasn’t about talking much. It musta meant something.”
“Something maybe, but no promises were in his will.” FanFan studied her pink nails and continued, “It’s your business that makes their way of life even possible.”
“Elinor and Marianne take turns at the desk. They’re good with the patients.”
“They don’t need to stop working. They just need to be,” FanFan paused, trying to find the right words and puckering the gloss over her lips, “more independent.”
Dr. John Junior took another swig of Scotch, watched the ice clunk and reposition in the amber glass, and changed the subject. “Did my shipment arrive?”
“I had them put it in the garage.” FanFan waved.
Dr. John Junior made a quick escape. In the safety of the garage, he pried open a large wooden crate and carefully pulled back the shredded paper to reveal a complete set of nineteenth-century samurai armor. He set the helmet to one side and pulled out the cuirass and the rest of the protective gear, as well as the shoulder pads and leggings, smelling and fondling the pieces and spreading them on a large blanket like a puzzle. All day he went back and forth from the garage to the teahouse, carting the armor, polishing and dusting, and arranging each piece on a lacquer armature. When the thing was complete, he went to find his son, Harry, who was tooling around on a tricycle. He had to pry the kid away from his playacting by promising a special treat, and even then, Harry dragged his sneakers unwillingly.
“See?” announced Dr. John Junior, pointing proudly at the seated warrior wearing a horrific grimacing mask, tall horns rising from its helmet.
Harry took one look and ran away, screaming hysterically.
Along the dirt path came FanFan’s younger brother, Eddie, with a friend. Harry tore by, stubbing his toe against an exposed tree root, and, tossed into flight, was caught by Eddie’s friend, who fell backward with the boy in his arms. Harry grappled with the young man, punching him as if fighting an imaginary enemy, both yelling, “Hey buddy! Hey buddy!”
Eddie bent over and pulled Harry’s flailing body away. “Harry! What the hell?”
By this time, Dr. John Junior and FanFan had both arrived, converging at the bridge. FanFan gave her husband the look and took Harry by the hand, escorting her crying child away to the house.
Eddie shrugged and pointed in the direction of FanFan. “That was my sister.” He looked at Dr. John Junior, who was pulling up the fallen man. “Willie, this is my brother-in-law.”
“Dr. John,” said Willie, rising and brushing off small pebbles and leaves. “Pleasure.”
After this, Eddie and Willie were at the Dashimoris’ every day in the afternoon, hanging out at the pool with Sapporo beers, in happi coats and hachimaki. FanFan would appear with bowls of sembei, plates of makizushi, or skewered chicken teriyaki. Initially, the guys were there to wait for and watch the two Dashimori sisters emerge from the glass doors and slip out of their kimono; Elinor, in dark shades and with a large bottle of Coppertone, would slather and sun herself and retreat into a book, and Marianne would dive into the blue waters without a splash and move across the pool like a sleek seal. As the days lingered on, there were pool games, pinball, miniature golf, and card games. Or the sisters would amuse themselves by attending a kendo or judo match in the dojo. Even though the guys spent a great deal of time working these matches into complicated performances, the sisters pretended to be impressed by the display of faux calisthenics. Elinor wondered to Marianne when they were going to start breaking two-by-fours and bricks. “Don’t you dare suggest it,” Marianne worried. “Willie has such beautiful hands.”
In the background, Mrs. John Senior came and went in her dieselfueled gold Mercedes to her widows’-club activities. The widows’ club had helped her tremendously, she said, to transition to a new life. And weekly, Baba-sensei arrived at the house to give Mrs. John Senior lessons in flower arrangement. She and Baba-sensei could be seen walking around the garden, making comments about or taking cuttings of flowers and plants, and eventually spending an hour in the teahouse arranging a stylized presentation. These arrangements were taken over to the optometry office and remade to grace the ocular frames in the street side window, or posed elegantly at the reception desk. Dr. John Junior said nothing, but FanFan reported that one receptionist was allergic to flowers, and clients couldn’t see the receptionist through what she called “all the bushes.”
One day, FanFan brought home two young women: Lucy, a Eurasian brunette, and Sophia, a strawberry blond, acquaintances who were traveling from far away, over there in the valley. FanFan introduced them to the household as if they were foreign-exchange students, which perhaps they were, but Dr. John Junior thought she must have some other plans in mind. Something about if a household were crowded, make it more crowded, then see if that wouldn’t make her stepmother-in-law and her daughters move out.
“You know, John,” said FanFan, “I see there’s a cute house for sale on Catalina, that quiet little cul-de-sac near the high school. It would be perfect.”
Dr. John Junior was carting another acquisition out to the teahouse, this time a samurai sword in a handsome scabbard. He would add it to his growing collection. “Right.” He nodded. “I’ll look into it.”
Eventually, with the daily visitations of Eddie and Willie, FanFan hosted a lively crowd of six teenagers, and the girls seemed to get along splendidly, eventually all camping out in the same room, watching The Twilight Zone in the dark and destroying pillows in the requisite fights of fluff. Lucy said, “Oh Elinor, it’s so darling that you eat rice with chopsticks and wear kimono.” And pretty soon, she and Sophia were traipsing around in zori and kimono too. And the guys were also traipsing after.
Marianne said to Elinor, “I have a funny feeling, Ellie. Willie has been acting strange. He won’t neck with me in the car anymore.”
“Ewww.”
But one day Lucy put her arms around Elinor as they walked to a bamboo seat near the koi pond. “I have a secret I want to tell you,” she confided. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Elinor blinked.
“It’s about me and Eddie. We met at Christian camp two years ago and pledged ourselv
es to each other under a rugged cross just behind the campfire. It was so meaningful and romantic. That’s why I’m here.”
“What?” Elinor’s throat constricted, and her heart fell into her stomach.
“You’re going to be, like, like, my sister,” Lucy exclaimed. “I’m so happy.”
Elinor lifted the edges of her lips with difficulty, a bad attempt at a smile, then hesitated. “Is there a similar arrangement with Willie and Sophia?”
“Oh no, but Sophia has got Willie to teach her judo. Haven’t you noticed? It’s a contact sport.”
“Right.”
Lucy chattered on, “I’m going to tell FanFan because I think she likes me even though I’m hapa. Eddie’s afraid, but with FanFan on our side … What do you think?”
“FanFan?” Elinor said nothing more, and when, the next morning, she heard screaming from the kitchen, she figured Lucy had tested her false assumptions on FanFan.
Elinor shook herself from sleep and wandered to the front door to see FanFan chasing after Lucy’s convertible red Mustang and aiming a teacup at the taillights. Bingo, a hit. The last thing she could see was Sophia trying to yank her yellow hair from the hastily shut car door, her screeches bouncing off the shiny metal of the chrome bumper, like a tin can tied to a wedding car. Of course, thought Elinor, FanFan wasn’t racist or anything, of course not.
That afternoon, Eddie came storming in to see FanFan. They yelled at each other for about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Marianne ran out and stood outside the passenger side of Eddie’s blue Datsun with her fingers straining blue and close to bleeding against the edge of the window, which Willie had tried to roll up. Elinor could see Marianne peering through the window slit and tearfully imploring Willie, who stared stoically forward, tapping his foot and drumming his fingers on the dash. “Come on, Eddie,” Willie mumbled impatiently.
“What did you say?” Marianne choked.
“About what?” he croaked back.
“About us.”
“What about us?” Willie tried to sound quizzical.
Marianne screamed and ran past Elinor into the house as Eddie came storming out. He paused next to Elinor. “Sorry, Ellie, it wasn’t going to work out.”
“What do you mean?” she asked placidly but not without pain.
“Well, you’re just too smart. Smarter than me. When I got an A-, you’d get an A. If I finally got an A, you’d get an A+. It just wasn’t going to work out, you know what I mean?” And he strode in mock confidence toward the blue Datsun, gunned the motor, and the guys were gone.
FanFan ran to find and wail at her husband. She found Dr. John Junior in the teahouse dressed in the full regalia of his samurai warrior getup and her son, Harry, in a mini version of the same armor. As she sprang onto the tatami mats, she found them sparring off with their swords. “Are you crazy?” she yelled.
“Mommy,” Harry yelled through his mask, “we’re samurai!”
Distracted, Dr. John Junior turned clumsily toward her while Harry plunged his sword into an opening in the armor near his thigh. “Call an ambulance!” the doctor cried.
For the next three days, Marianne shut herself in her room with the curtains drawn. Elinor came in regularly with a tray of food, which reappeared variously untouched or half-eaten in the hallway, as if they were running a hotel or something. On the fourth day, Elinor went into the room, flung open the curtains, and pulled wide the glass doors. All the soggy air in the room gushed out, and Marianne sat up with bloodshot eyes. “It’s over,” Elinor said. “Get over it. And by the way,” she stood outside the sliding door and looked out at the guy cleaning the pool, “John’s O.K. Cut through an artery and lost a lot of blood, but he’s home now.” As if to prove it, Dr. John Junior hobbled by on crutches. Elinor walked back in and handed Marianne a postcard. “It’s from Mom. She left.”
Marianne shuffled into the kitchen and rummaged in the freezer. FanFan was at the kitchen table leafing page by page through Life magazine and pretending to be oblivious. Marianne found a box of ice cream and scooped out two scoops into a glass bowl. FanFan looked up and said, “Someone is at the door. Can you get it?”
Marianne appeared at the door, disheveled and with the bowl of ice cream, and recognized Baba-sensei, who had a bucket of chrysanthemums and a basket of clipping tools, spiky pin frogs, and other flower-arranging accoutrements. She handed Baba-sensei the postcard from her mother. He turned it over and looked at the photograph of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Girls:
You won’t believe it, but Ich and I were married. We won’t be back for a while. Going to the Grand Canyon for our honeymoon. Don’t worry.
Love, Mom
“Well,” said Baba-sensei, “maybe nisei can learn to be spontaneous. Couldn’t hurt.”
“Do you want some ice cream?” she asked, spooning the melting stuff into her mouth.
“Sure.”
Baba-sensei picked up his stuff and followed her. They sat with their feet dangling over the side of the teahouse ledge, eating ice cream. “Mint chocolate chip. My favorite,” she said, pushing her finger into the bowl to scrape the green cream clean and licking it with satisfaction.
“Mine too. Have you been to 31 Flavors?”
Marianne shook her head. Glancing at Baba-sensei’s bowl, she asked, “Are you going to finish that?”
Elinor carted a plastic lounge chair from the swimming pool to a shady place near the koi pond. She could see Baba-sensei directing Marianne’s hands to correct the placement of each chrysanthemum. She settled into the lounge chair with a pocket book, something by an English writer named Ian Fleming. She’d just finished Doctor No, about some evil Fu Manchu character on a Caribbean island. She cracked open this new book, You Only Live Twice. James Bond was British, a secret agent, and a real man.
But before she could slip into Fleming’s first sentence, Elinor was distracted by a tiny frog leaping. She waited for it to plunk into the water, but instead Moby Dick rose to the surface, snatching the green thing into its pugnacious jaws and plunging into the dark, murky reaches of the old pond, effortlessly, silently, the slightest ripple hardly evidence.
Giri & Gaman
The truth of the matter is that despite what you may think, sansei do have a sense of humor. O.K., let’s not be grandiose about it, but we always see you in groups laughing about something. What are you laughing about? What is there to laugh about? As for nisei, they do have a sense of humor; they just never laugh. It’s hard to test this theory because most nisei these days are well over eighty, and after eighty, 1. You’ve pretty much heard all the jokes; 2. You can’t hear, or you hear what you want to hear; 3. Dementia screws with the funny bone; 4. If you laugh, you’ll pee; and 5. Nothing is funny. But, would you laugh if you found out life was some kind of endurance test for which you sacrificed yourself to an abstract idea of duty? And what if that abstract idea was based on the nostalgic idea about your people being samurai? Truth is that maybe that blood theory would account for one real drop; the rest of you are lousy peasantry or third-class merchants. That’s right, you’ve all been lying, because once you escaped from debt, drudgery, poverty, and the laws of primogeniture by crossing the Pacific, you too could become a born-again samurai. But let’s face it, all sansei have one drop; it could be one fake drop, but all we have to do is give you swords and hachimaki and watch the transformation. But enough pontificating. Back to storytelling.
Mukashi, mukashi, it was said that Darcy Kabuto II (the second) was God’s gift to sansei women. The thing about gifts from God is they’re complicated, because you’ve got to wonder if you deserve them, and anyway, what’s the catch? Well exactly: Darcy was the catch. To be simplistic, Darcy was the captain of the football team, class vice president, and voted best looking, which meant he looked like he was the son of Toshiro Mifune. To complicate matters, Darcy’s best friend, Benji Lee, walked to school in zori and a Mao jacket and looked like and pretended to be Bruce Lee. When young men of this caliber present thems
elves to the aching hormones of sansei girls, you’d think there’d be some commotion, but for the most part, no one seemed bothered. After all, this was a suburb gerrymandered by nisei real estate brokers turned politicians; it was, well, let’s say, postcamp, a safe place where sansei had the opportunity to grow up in camp without being in camp. Darcy and Benji were, though not a dime a dozen, nothing special. Benji was an accommodating kid who excelled in gymnastics since there was no kung fu team in those days. Other than pretending to be Bruce and excelling in gymnastics, he was mostly interested in getting straight As. And Darcy was so perfect, he was just plain boring.
The only women who were smitten by Darcy Kabuto and Benji Lee were the principal of the school, Miss Catherine Borg, and the president of the PTA, Mrs. Benihana. To be clear, neither of these older women had any romantic interest in the young men; their interests, however, were still selfish. In her other secret life, Miss Borg, writing under the pseudonym C. Borg, was a YA author doing what she thought was undercover research. The school library had a complete set of the C. Borg series, though no volumes were ever checked out. Mr. Collins, the school librarian, occasionally stamped the books with random dates in case Miss Borg came in to check, and no one was the wiser. As for Mrs. Benihana, she was the mother of five teenage daughters, and she remembered how much fun she had in camp at dances, and when, in her day, had there ever been such cute beaus? If she were blessed with five daughters, then she would live their youth vicariously. A second youth outside the barbed wire! Mrs. Benihana touched her hand to her heart and sighed. More importantly, no one in this new generation, Mrs. Benihana had said enthusiastically to her husband, would have to suffer the nisei consequences of sacrifice and spinsterhood, absolutely not.
The newest and most anticipated book by C. Borg was going to be set in Japan. Miss Borg was amazed that after all these years she had not thought of this. Not that she had ever traveled to Japan or anywhere in the Orient. She’d been right here in this little city dotted with gardens trimmed to perfection by dozens of Japanese gardeners, ensconced within its Japanese language school; its cultural center, complete with flower arranging, go, origami, and abacus clubs; its noodle restaurants; and its temple with summer festivals. And to complete the wonder of it all, most of her students were Japanese Americans. She had been the principal of a petri dish begging to be examined. At lunch, Miss Borg excitedly discussed her ideas with Mr. Collins, who was the only other person who knew anything about her other identity.
Sansei and Sensibility Page 12