Forgiveness

by Mark Sakamoto

  There was a cocktail lounge just off the lobby of the restaurant. It was aptly named Smokers and had stained glass windows with Picasso-like women smoking long cigarettes. They were the first stained-glass windows I’d ever seen outside a church. It always seemed to me kind of sacrilegious. When the lounge was closed, I’d scamper up onto a stool behind the bar to pour myself a Sprite out of the bar nozzle, adding the thick red grenadine nectar for an extra dose of sweetness.

  Running a restaurant is an incredibly tough gig. It forces you to be different people: a host charming the guests, but also, at times, a gruff taskmaster with the staff. One part quality control, one part bouncer. Throw in the books, the wholesale orders, the power-drunk safety inspectors, and the guy at the end of the bar who swears he’ll pay you next week—and it takes its toll. Also on my dad’s mind all the time, although he never spoke of it, was the high interest rates on commercial loans. Not to mention the hours: my dad would leave the house at 9 a.m. to make sure lunch preparations were well underway and would not return until after last-call. The late nights were hard.

  I would struggle to fend off sleep so that I could see my weary father as he wound down at the end of a long day. I’d hear him come in the front door and into the living room, switch on the television, and rustle about in the kitchen as he made popcorn. As soon as I heard “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” I’d creep out of bed. I would tuck myself under my dad’s arm and be asleep before the montage was over.

  I was a peculiar kid. I would wear goggles around the house for no apparent reason. We had a little green turtle pool that would provide relief from the hot summer afternoon. While I never dunked my head in the water, I wouldn’t go near it without my trusty goggles. Mom would even have to bring my goggles with us when we went to our favourite park—Central Park—just down the road from the duplex. That there was no pool, just an old swing set and a concrete slide in the shape of whale, seemed unimportant to me.

  My brother Daniel came along in the fall of 1980. He was a rugged-looking baby. “He’s my Eskimo-baby,” Mom would say proudly, if inappropriately. Daniel was born without fear of personal danger or potential harm.

  Mom called Daniel and me her “bookends.” The handle was well-earned. Most nights, while dad was still at work, we awoke and made our way down the hall, past the spare bedroom and the bathroom, to Mom. We’d scamper up into the bed and snuggle in tight. She’d shift a little, wrap an arm around each of us, and drift back to sleep. Sometimes Daniel and I would make the trek together, sometimes on our own. But every morning, there we were, on either side of her. Bookends.

  Diane MacLean with Daniel (left) and Mark Sakamoto in Medicine Hat, Spring 1983

  Dad was usually too bone-tired to lug both of us back to our respective beds at the other end of the hall. Instead he’d sleep in my single bed, feet hanging over the end. We’d wake up with Mom and she would give us each a big squeeze. Even at one hundred and fifteen pounds, she managed to give one hell of a squeeze. As with everything else she did, she threw herself into those moments. She’d draw us both close and embrace us, then push us out in front of her by our shoulders to look us square in the eye and say three dear words: I love you. What a way to start the day.

  After breakfast Daniel and I would walk through the tree-lined park, past the Mac’s convenience store and up the hill to Webster Niblock Elementary School, knowing exactly where we stood with our mom. Our town knew where it stood with our mom too. If there was something she didn’t quite like, she changed it. Like when she started the city S.P.C.A. to provide shelter for the animals she loved so much. Or when she established a private kindergarten when she deemed the city-run one not up to snuff.

  Morningtime was Dad-time. Living with him was like living with Buddha. I’ve seen him visibly upset only a handful of times. I’m sure he has, but I cannot recall him ever once raising his voice to me. He usually walked around with a knowing smile. He was calm, like a monk’s reflection pond. If you watched him closely, you’d see him inhale deeply, exhale deeply with each breath. He was in a state of perpetual meditation. He thought of time in decades.

  On mornings in the summer, Daniel and I would wait until after we had eaten our peanut butter toast and finished watching Mr. Rogers and then we’d pounce. We’d usually tiptoe down the hall and sneak into our bedroom—where Dad had crashed at 2 a.m. the night before.

  Light would be emerging through our baby blue A-Team drapes. We’d creep onto Daniel’s bed and from this vantage point leap on Dad in unison. We’d hit him right in the midsection. We were little boys, but our combined weight would have pained the unprepared and he’d wake with an “Ohhh.” He must have been playing along. He would have heard our clumsy little feet on the floor, the turn of the knob, our excited whispers. He’d wrestle us, smash us together in a brother pretzel, wrapping my arm over Daniel’s head, his leg around my waist. He’d do so using the same theatrics we would see in the bootlegged Japanese sumo tapes we’d watch with Grandpa Sakamoto. It was all bug eyes, fast hands, and wails of “yoooooush.” We’d pretend we couldn’t breathe, just so he’d let go and reconfigure our limbs all over again. He’d usually had about five hours of sleep.

  Dad would rise in his underwear and undershirt and flick on the Mr. Coffee Automatic in the kitchen. I remember him moving slowly, much more slowly than Mom in the morning. He was never a morning guy.

  He’d throw on jeans and a T-shirt. He was partial to the three-quarter-length-sleeved variety. His favourite at the time had black sleeves and the Rolling Stones bright red lips and tongue splashed across his chest. Mom hated it. She thought it was vulgar and she hated the colour red. She was funny that way. She hated the crinkling sound of potato chip bags, smacking lips while chewing gum, and the colour red. But with her at work and his suit neatly pressed in his office at the restaurant, Dad was free to wear what he liked. Mick Jagger it was.

  The three of us would pile into his beige 1974 Chevy halfton, equipped with an oversized white camper appointed with fake wood panelling and four windows. The camper was fastened to the truck’s cab by cables that hooked under the wheel wells. The thing never seemed to fit and we never once used it to camp. I suppose my dad kept it to use on the farm. The problem was, anytime we needed shelter from the scorching prairie sun, that aluminum box was a torturous sweatshop. In every picture I have ever seen of us on the farm we are outside—unsheltered—taking a break by the truck.

  Despite all that, Daniel and I loved driving in that truck, where we could be fairly mistaken for wolf pups. As soon as we hopped into the cab, we would open our mouths as wide as we could and bite into the padded dashboard. Our teeth imprints lined the dash from the eight-track player clear to the passenger side window. The cab of Dad’s truck looked like an orthodontist’s mould, though an orthodontist would have been appalled at the risk we were running. We were one quick brake away from losing every tooth in our heads.

  As we perched there with eyes peering just over the dashboard and drool coming out of our gaping mouths, Dad would shake his head, fire up the engine, and back out of the driveway. The drop from the sidewalk to the road would sink our teeth a little deeper into the dash padding. The next twenty-five seconds were the most important of the day—everything else hinged on them. We watched for any sign of what was to come next. Was Dad looking right or left? He never signalled as he approached the end of our street, a T intersection. A left turn led to Grandma Sakamoto’s, a right led to the babysitter’s. We would chant “left” which actually came out against the dashboard as “eff.”

  We went to bed hoping for a left turn. We woke up hoping for a left turn. A left meant Grandma’s. As we went through the motions of morning, we were envisioning the truck turning left, following the park to 12th Street, and winding down the hill into Riverside. We usually did turn left, which meant ice cream sandwiches, inari sushi, ginger ale, puzzles, plastic army men, senbei, Stampede wrestling on TV, hamburgers with home-cut fries, and ninja movies.

  By 4:15, M
om would be there to pick us up. If our shoes were muddy, she knew we had been down by the river. If we had the spears of prairie grass embedded in our corduroy pants, it was the tracks. She’d have none of our biting antics of the morning. We didn’t dare. Despite her slight build, she kept us in line with military precision. When she took us to her hair salon, she’d instruct the stylist to give us the RCMP cut. She did not suffer bad behaviour gladly; she didn’t suffer it at all. She rooted it out and exterminated it with extreme prejudice. What she believed in, more than anything, was love, but it was a tough love.

  At 5 p.m. when we walked into the house and into the kitchen, we always wished we were still at Grandma’s. Mom was a lot of things, but a great cook was not one of them. Lunches consisted of microwaved brown beans or boiled Ichiban. Snack time, morning or night, was always peanut butter on toast. By day’s end, dinner was usually a hill too high for Mom to climb. We often ended up at a restaurant. Sometimes it was Dad’s, sometimes it was the local pizza joint, Farroh’s, where pizza came with a round dough bun in the middle that Daniel and I would call dibs on. The Oriental was our other likely destination. Every prairie town has a Chinese restaurant just like it. Heaping plates of beef and broccoli, and chicken fried rice with frozen vegetables.

  The three of us would carefully count each shrimp on the oyster-sauce–laden platter. Mom made sure her two boys got their equal share of shrimp. An equal share of her attention. An equal share of her. Her bookends could have been scales. She did not play favourites. That’s not to say she treated us the same. She tailored her parenting for each of us. With me, she knew she just had to let it be known that she was disappointed in my behaviour. She would lightly slap the top of my hand if I touched a bottle of bleach or handled a steak knife. I would not do it again. Daniel she could have beaten black and blue to no avail. There was just no fear in that boy. He was always on the move. So she would take away his mobility. Daniel had a time-out seat in the corner of our room. It killed him to sit still for fifteen minutes. He’d do anything to avoid it. Mom knew her boys; she knew how to motivate, strike fear, cajole, and inspire.

  Once a month, we’d make our way up the Number One Highway to Grandpa MacLean’s house. Grandpa had built his home with his own hands. It was a large house, in impeccable shape. He had a flagpole in the front yard and the Canadian flag flew high. As soon as we went in the side door, we would run downstairs to the games room. It had 1950s tiling on the floor and Mom’s old novels on the shelves. At the far end of the room was an ornamental oak mantel that displayed black and white pictures of row after row of headstones. There was a commemorative plaque in English and Chinese. There were three medals affixed to a wooden board. Hung at the top of the wall was a map of my grandpa’s distant island home.

  Grandpa, Daniel, and I would spend all day playing chess. Daniel and I made a good team; he being brave, me being cautious. But we knew Grandpa was letting us win.

  I could have used some of Daniel’s bravery when the time came for me to head off to Grade 1. I was the one yellow kid in a sea of white kids. My mom walked me to school that first day. I wore blue jeans, a blue buttoned-up shirt, and a blue backpack. But I was yellow, a pale yellow. However, I was blissfully unaware of this. I loved Hubba Bubba, Star Wars, and 7-Eleven slushies like any other kid. I knew my brother and I were half Japanese and that made us a little different. But before school, I was always around kids like me. My brother, my cousins, the Hashizume kids, the Nishimotos, the Hashiguchis. I saw similarity on a daily basis. At Webster Niblock, I was all alone. There were twenty-four kids under that roof. I was the only kid who wasn’t white.

  Daniel (left), and Mark Sakamoto and Ralph MacLean playing chess in Medicine Hat, Summer 1985

  As we stood up for roll call, “Sakamoto” caused a few snickers. I looked different, but not that different. I was, after all, half Japanese, half Scottish. Most kids could not quite put their finger on it.

  Daniel and I were the youngest kids on our block and, not surprisingly, street hockey was the sport of choice. All the big kids would stake out their hero: “I’m Wayne!” “I’m Lanny!” I’d always be the last to yell: “I’m Matt!” Matt Kabayama never made it to the NHL, but he was one of the finest WHL players Medicine Hat ever produced. He was a slight Japanese kid living in a world of burly white farm kids. I related.

  The year I was in grade 1, my dad put me in hockey. At the beginning of the season, we went to Black’s Sports down on 2nd Street to get me suited up with size-six Braun skates, a helmet, and a wooden Koho stick that he cut down to size in the driveway as soon as we got home. He made sure that the helmet had a full mask. It was a white cage around my face. I was too excited to sit still long enough to bite the dashboard on the way home. Matt Kabayama, here I come!

  At my first practice, Dad suited me up. He hunched over and did my laces up. It felt like he tied them too tightly, but I didn’t say anything. I walked slowly down the padded aisle, holding the cinderblock wall to keep my balance. I was shaky hitting the ice. I tried to remember the drills Dad had run me through on the open Riverside rink. But my knees kept on folding in on themselves. I was up and I was down. I’d see ice and then I’d see the rink’s roof. I was glad for the helmet.

  At one point I was happy to be leaning my back against the boards by the penalty box. A boy skated in front of me and looked hard through my facemask. Even behind the white cage, I looked different from him. But like the kids at Webster Niblock, he couldn’t quite place me. He stared for a long moment, blinking, taking me in. Then, eureka!

  “You’re a nigger.”

  I’d never heard the word.

  “I don’t think I am.” This was a statement of fact.

  Then the whistle blew and we were off to do our drill. I felt as visible as the bright orange pylons I was unsuccessfully trying to navigate. I held my tears back as we drove the seven blocks home from the Crescent Heights rink. Dad did not press me.

  Back home, I threw my face into my pillow and cried. Mom let me cry for a few minutes to get it out. She wanted to be sure I would hear what she had to say.

  “Get up.”

  I did.

  “Look at me.” There was no softness. There was no pity.

  She was standing in the doorway. Her hands were on her hips. Her eyes were on fire.

  “It doesn’t matter what colour your skin is, so long as it’s thick.”

  That was that. She closed the door to let me ponder that, cry some more, whatever. She knew I had got the message.

  CHAPTER 12

  Breakup

  Mom did her best to instill in me a warm heart. Many mornings as I walked into the kitchen, she would beckon me over to her favourite spot at the table, the spot where the morning light shone through the window and warmed her morning tea. She’d tell me every morning that my heart was golden.

  She believed in her boys. It was contagious. We felt we could, we really could, do whatever we wanted. Our reach was only limited by our imagination.

  When Daniel turned three, Mom began working full time as a receptionist at City Hall. Her re-entry into the workforce called for a fashion makeover. She called in a heavy-hitter, her friend Donna Stetic; they had worked together at the Department of Community Services and Recreation.

  Donna seemed distinguished to me. She had no children. She was like the ladies of means I’d see on mom’s soap operas. She was in her early forties and she acted her age. Her husband owned a large cattle ranch forty miles east of the city. Mom came home from the fanciest store in town—Friday’s Image—with a purple satin blouse with shoulder pads, purple pleated slacks, a green jumpsuit, three pairs of high heels, one pearl necklace and a flower brooch. She was so excited she had worn the jumpsuit home.

  Strangely for a Canadian, I remember summers far more than winters. Every weekend, we would hop into our dad’s brown Chevy truck and make our way to the farm. It was just a few minutes south of town. The farm was sixty-two acres of cukes, tomatoes, potatoes, and corn.
The north side was lined with massive spruce trees, but to the south you could see until the end of time. Growing up under a wide-open sky profoundly affects your outlook. You feel boundless.

  Daniel and I, too young to be enlisted into hard labour like our older cousins, spent most of our days playing in the cornfields. The tall husks were perfect for hiding and seeking, attacking and retreating. We made good use of our time, knowing full well that the very corn that was our disguise would soon become our chore. In a few months, we would be sitting on Grandma and Grandpa Sakamoto’s driveway husking truckloads of corn that never seemed to end. We didn’t dare complain. We knew how hard everyone else was working.

  While my world was expanding, my parents’ marriage was diminishing. They were speaking less. Their conversations became mechanical, bureaucratic. Who is taking what, where? My dad had never been chatty, preferring to let his actions speak for him. He wrote his thoughts down in a three-ring binder that he stashed on the top shelf of our foyer. I knew this because I’d see my mom drag a kitchen chair into the front lobby and pull the binder down to read his thoughts. I would sneak peeks myself. Most of his entries were about his failing business: he was losing Maxwell’s.

  That September, when I was seven years old, I bought Dad a pen for his birthday, hoping to make him feel better.