by Kirby Larson
The girls fell against each other giggling. “Thank goodness for his diapers,” Debbie said. That got them laughing all over again.
After his walk, they took him home, getting him cleaned up and turned back into a boy before Mrs. Tokuda returned. She brought a copy of the latest newsletter. Debbie leaned over Mitsi’s shoulder as they skimmed the front page.
“Hey, there might be movies next month,” Debbie said.
“Did you see this?” Mitsi pointed to an article near the bottom of the page. “It says that two skunks were sighted and killed in Block 41.”
“Pee-uw!” Debbie held her nose. “Thank goodness it wasn’t in our block.”
Mrs. Tokuda paid them each a dime. “Next week, same time?” she asked.
The girls nodded. Mitsi thought about the icy Popsicle she would buy with her share. Banana. She could almost feel the lovely cold in her mouth, dripping down her throat.
Debbie flipped her coin. “Next stop, the canteen!” She must have been thinking the same thing. They walked toward Block 6 as fast as they could manage in the heat; Mitsi felt twin trickles from her armpits to her waist.
“What’s going on over there?” Debbie slowed down. “Look at all those people.”
A crowd had gathered outside the canteen, and the manager was waving his arms and shouting at one of the camp security guards.
Debbie tugged Mitsi forward and they wiggled around bystanders to get close enough to hear. It didn’t take long to figure out there’d been a burglary.
“Not much cash missing,” the manager said. “But I’d say they got about fifty bucks’ worth of merchandise. Candy bars, playing cards, but mostly cigarettes.”
Mitsi couldn’t breathe. Candy bars. And cigarettes.
“Canteen’s closed, folks,” the security guard called out. “Why don’t you all head on home.”
Debbie groaned. “I really wanted a Creamsicle!”
Mitsi had a bad feeling. “I better see if Pop needs any help,” she said.
“Wait up!” Debbie trotted after her.
Mitsi hadn’t gone far when someone yanked her pigtails.
“Ouch!” She whipped around.
“You’ve got a piece of tumbleweed in your hair.” Ted held up the evidence.
“Where have you been?”
“Playing ball.”
“With Lefty?” Mitsi braced herself for the answer.
“Naw. He’s not much for baseball.” Ted shrugged. “I’ve got papers to deliver.” He jogged away.
“Were you at the field by the store?” Mitsi called after him.
But he didn’t answer.
“Your brother is so nice.” Debbie leaned against Mitsi, shaking a rock out of her shoe. “You’re lucky.”
Mitsi didn’t say anything. She didn’t feel very lucky right now. She felt worried.
When they reached their barracks, Debbie skipped up the steps to her apartment. “See you at supper!”
Mitsi nodded, then opened her own door, taking a deep breath before stepping inside. Ted was playing baseball. Ted was playing baseball. Ted was playing baseball. If she said it enough times, it might be true.
The camp superintendent stopped by their dining hall at lunchtime a few days later. “I want to update you on the recent burglary case,” he said. “We think we’ll have it wrapped up in no time. And we don’t anticipate any further problems,” he added.
Mitsi shot a glance at Ted. He dug into his food as if nothing was wrong. Maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe she’d been worried over nothing. She felt herself relax for the first time in days.
After lunch, Mom took her shopping at the camp store. “I thought we could get you something new for school,” Mom said. Mitsi picked out a wool skirt with a matching bolero and some new anklets. Not white, however. Too much mud. She also got a new binder. For a moment, it felt like before the camps, when she and Mom would go school shopping at J.C. Penney.
“Let’s check for the mail before we head back,” Mom suggested. They waited in line at the window. A lady with a big smile was filling in for Sourpuss Johnson. “Anything for Kashino?” Mom asked when it was their turn.
“Let me see.” The lady looked around. “I’m new, so it might take me a minute.”
“We’re in no hurry.” Mom shifted her packages around, before wandering over to the magazine rack. She flipped through a Ladies’ Home Journal.
“I found a couple of letters for Kashino.” The lady handed them over the counter. “Do you think there might be anything else?”
Mom shook her head. “I’m not expecting anything.” She put the magazine back on the rack. “Oh, I did order some slacks for my son.”
“May I go buy a licorice rope?” Mitsi asked.
Mom opened her pocketbook. “Get a few butterscotch drops for Obaachan, too.”
Was she hungry for a licorice rope? Or an Abba-Zaba? What about a Baby Ruth? Abba-Zaba, Mitsi decided. It would last longer. She paid for the candy. Mom was still chatting with the mail lady.
“Look what she found. For you!” Mom took the bag of candy from Mitsi and handed her a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.
Mitsi untied the string and ripped off the paper to reveal a small blue box. Mitsi took off the lid. “My locket!” It was even prettier than the one she’d seen in the Sears catalog.
“What a lovely gift,” Mom said.
“It’s not a gift.” Mitsi quickly explained. “And now I can keep Dash with me all the time.” She handed Mom the wrappings and opened the locket.
There were already two photos inside. One of Mitsi and one of Dash. “I wonder how Mrs. Bowker got a picture of me,” Mitsi said. “She already sent me the photo she took that last day.”
“I have no idea.” Mom shook her head. “Maybe from the school?”
Mitsi circled her neck with the chain, and secured the clasp. It felt as cool and light as she’d imagined. “How does it look?”
“Lovely,” said Mom.
“Very grown up,” added the mail lady.
Mom started to toss the wrappings in the trash. “Oh, it looks like there’s something else in here,” she said. “A note.”
“From Mrs. Bowker.” Mitsi grinned. “Or Dash.” She flipped it open. But she’d guessed wrong. This note was written in a familiar loopy hand.
Mitsi was so surprised that she couldn’t help reading it right there.
Dear Mitsi,
First, I want to say I’m sorry. I wish I had never gone along with Patty. And not just because she and Judy are now thick as thieves. The way she treated you was awful. Well, I treated you pretty bad, too. You might not believe me, but I never put any notes in your desk. That was Patty. But I did take some out. As many as I could.
I wanted to write you when you left, but was pretty sure you’d throw away any letter I sent. (Not that I would’ve blamed you.) So when I saw Mrs. Bowker out walking Dash one day, I got an idea. And she thought it was a good one. (She’s a very nice lady, but I didn’t tell her the whole story. At least not at first.) She even let me use her typewriter so you wouldn’t recognize my handwriting.
We picked out the locket together. I thought this one would be the one you’d want. And I cut your picture out of one of our old peek-a-boo cards to put inside.
Anyway, I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to be my friend anymore. But, no matter what, I will always be yours.
Love,
Mags
Mitsi could not believe it. Mags took notes out of her desk! She didn’t put them in. And she was writing for Dash. Not Mrs. Bowker.
Wait until Debbie heard the good news! Mitsi watched for her in the dining room, but she never came down for supper. And there was no reply when Mitsi pushed a note through their knothole at bedtime.
She ran over to the Miyakes’ apartment before breakfast the next morning.
Debbie opened the door, still in her nightgown. “It’s awfully early,” she said. “Mom’s not feeling very good.”
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nbsp; “I’m sorry.” Mitsi touched her new locket. “I just wanted to show you something.”
“I don’t feel like playing today.” Debbie started to close the door.
“Wait!” Mitsi put her hand out. “Are you mad at me?”
Debbie leaned hard against the door as if she couldn’t hold herself up. She brushed her eyes and looked at Mitsi. “It didn’t work.” She choked out the words. “Not even with God on our side.” The door closed between them.
Mitsi was going to have to babysit Davy by herself. “He’s a lot for one person to handle,” she hinted to Ted.
“I’m busy.” He tucked his shirttail into his new corduroys.
“You look pretty spiffy,” Mitsi said. “How come?”
Ted ran a comb through his hair. “None of your beeswax.”
“Does it have anything to do with Karen Suda?” she teased.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Ted slid his comb into his back pocket. “Anyway, you know how to entertain Davy,” he said.
“How? I can’t do any tricks.”
Ted reached under her cot and pulled out Mitsi’s sketch pad and pencils. “You can with these.” He tossed them onto the blanket.
Mitsi didn’t think it would do any good, but she took her pad and pencils. And Davy loved it. “Draw a kitty,” he ordered. “A cow. A bear.” He actually sat still, watching animals emerge from the tips of her pencils. Mitsi drew until her hand was tired. “Here.” She gave him a piece of paper and one of her old crayons. “Your turn.”
Mrs. Tokuda couldn’t believe it when she came home and found Davy happily scribbling away. “You’re a magician!” she said as she paid Mitsi. Mitsi remembered that Mrs. Bowker had said the same thing. It did seem to work on Davy. She thought about drawing something for Debbie. Something that might cheer her up. But she didn’t think any picture she drew could do that.
Mom and Pop were talking about Mr. Miyake when Mitsi got home. She plopped on her cot, opened her sketch pad, and began to doodle while she listened. Pop had come back from another meeting with the camp superintendent. “He doesn’t like this situation any more than we do. He said he’d look into it. And the other cases, too.”
Mom had reached over and squeezed Pop’s hand. “Thank you.” Her eyes glistened. “I can’t imagine how I would manage here without you. Those poor women.”
Obaachan looked up from her knitting. “What’s that?” she asked Mitsi.
“Oh, I’m just goofing around.”
“Show me.” Obaachan put down her needles to look at the drawing. “Ah, Mr. Hirai’s garden. That’s nice.”
After making such a hit with Davy, Mitsi got the idea to draw a picture for Mr. Hirai, as a thank-you for the getas. “I think the tumbleweed looks like a Brillo pad,” Mitsi said. “Not like tumbleweed.”
“My grandfather was a painter.” Obaachan picked up her needles again. “Very famous in Japan. He said good art comes from seeing with heart.”
Mitsi bent over her drawing again. She wasn’t quite sure what her grandmother meant by “seeing with heart.” She closed her eyes, thinking about watching Mr. Hirai’s garden take shape. And about how she and Debbie had helped him. And that got her thinking about Debbie again. And Mr. Miyake. And how much Debbie missed him. Mitsi understood that, missing Dash the way she did. But missing a dog was nothing like missing a father.
Her eyes popped open.
She’d been feeling bad because she wasn’t able to do anything for Debbie. But there was something she could do.
Mrs. Miyake answered the door this time.
Mitsi saw Debbie lying facedown on her cot. “May I come in?”
“Please, yes.” Mrs. Miyake stepped aside.
Mitsi moved toward Debbie’s cot. “I’m really sorry about your dad,” she said.
“Me, too.” Debbie sniffled. “I don’t feel like company right now.” She shifted under the covers.
“You said you had a photo of him, right?” Mitsi moved closer, setting a small blue box on the bedspread. “Maybe this would help you keep him close. Until you’re all together again.” She headed back to the door.
“I’ll see you later.” Mitsi let herself out.
That night, Mitsi crawled under the covers. Even though she hadn’t had it very long, her neck felt bare without the locket. She glanced over at the photo of her and Dash, sitting in its Popsicle-stick frame on her nightstand. With that as a model, she’d started a sketch of Dash that was already even better than the one she’d torn up. Mom said it looked so real, she could almost smell his doggy breath.
She thought about drawing something for Mrs. Bowker and Mags. And Miss Wyatt, too. She rolled over on her side, yawning, ready for sleep.
Something scrabbled around under her cot. Mitsi rolled to the edge and looked underneath. A note slipped through the knothole. Mitsi opened it up and read two wonderful words.
Thank you.
They went through three teachers in the first three weeks of sixth grade. The first one went into hysterics over the rattler under the steps, even though one of the boys clomped it with his baseball bat before anyone got hurt. The second teacher didn’t make it until first recess. When she found out there wasn’t even a blackboard in the room, she walked out.
“My mother always said make do or go without,” the third teacher announced from behind an enormous stack of books she’d lugged into the classroom. She wrote her name, Miss Pellegrino, in perfect Palmer penmanship on a math worksheet and thumbtacked it to the wall behind her scrap-lumber desk. “We will make do.” She handed Mitsi a roll of butcher paper. “Get a friend to help hang this up for our blackboard.
“Apply copious amounts of elbow grease,” she ordered the boys as she distributed sheets of sandpaper to knock the splinters out of the rough-hewn benches that were both chairs and desks. “If you don’t have a job yet, find one,” she commanded the rest of the class. “Together we will turn this humble space into a hallowed palace of learning.”
Recess was a “field trip” to gather tumbleweed, greasewood, and stones for a “natural sciences corner.” Everyone came back to the classroom dusty and triumphant with their finds, even Miss Pellegrino. Debbie showed off the scorpion she’d captured in a tin cup. “Marvelous!” Their teacher promptly assigned reports on desert wildlife. With that mole on her cheek and hair so thin you could see her scalp, Miss Pellegrino was a bit odd-looking, but Mitsi felt pretty sure she would stick it out. At least, she hoped she would.
After lunch, Miss Pellegrino discovered a box of donated books under a pile of scrap lumber, and nearly swooned. “First thing tomorrow, we will set up a class library. Who can tell me about the Dewey Decimal system?” There were twenty-seven kids in the sixth grade and twenty-seven kids hung around at the end of the school day, afraid they might miss something.
At four o’clock, Miss Pellegrino shooed them all home. “I’ll be here tomorrow,” she said. “Will you?” Mitsi certainly would. One of the books on Miss Pellegrino’s desk was The Boys and Girls Beginning Book of Drawing; Mitsi couldn’t wait to get a good look at that. So far, school was the best thing about Minidoka.
Debbie loaned Mitsi the “O” encyclopedia so she could read about the animal she’d chosen for her report, the burrowing owl. “I’m doing my report on Scorpy,” Debbie said. She’d scavenged a mayonnaise jar from the dining hall for the scorpion’s home. “I might have to catch him a mouse.” She shivered.
Mitsi read over her shoulder. “It says they also eat insects. Maybe he’ll be happy with bugs.”
Debbie made a face. “I hope so.”
Back in her own apartment, Mitsi stretched out on her cot with a pillow propped behind her back, and Chubby Bear at her side, reading about burrowing owls. It was another one of those rare nights when baby Louise next door was quiet and the rest of her family was busy. Mom and Pop were at another meeting about the coal situation and she was pretty sure Obaachan was knitting with the dried-plum ladies. And Ted was AWOL.
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nbsp; Mitsi turned the page. There was a picture of a burrowing owl in flight. It was as real as a photo, but someone had drawn it. She’d like to be able to draw like that, too, someday. She thought about what Eddie Sato had told her before he left Camp Harmony. “I’m not any more talented than the next guy. It’s like anything else. Practice makes perfect.” Mitsi studied the picture, then reached for her pad and began to draw. The page was covered with erasures as she tried to get the feathers right.
She nearly jumped off her cot when the door slammed open.
Ted sauntered into the room, tugging his baseball cap over his left eye.
“You about gave me a heart attack.” Mitsi picked up the pencil she’d dropped.
“I thought you’d be over at Debbie’s.”
“We have homework.”
Ted shot her a glance. “Homework? For that Mickey Mouse school?”
“It’s not — hey.” The sketch pad fell to her lap. “What happened to you?”
Ted turned away from her, trying to hide his black eye. “I misjudged a fly.”
“You were playing baseball? In the dark?” Mitsi got up from the cot. “Let me see.”
“Drop it, Mits.” Ted brushed her away. “I’ll put a cold cloth on it. It’ll be fine.” He stomped back out of the apartment.
Mitsi would not call a black eye fine. She knew one thing for sure: When she was a mom, she wasn’t going to believe one word her kids told her. She tugged on her Keds and stomped out after her brother.
He’d disappeared into the latrines. She waited. Ted was right. The men’s really did stink. She pinched her nose, breathing through her mouth.
Ted stopped when he came out and saw her. “What is your problem?”
“My problem?” Mitsi blinked back tears. “You.”