Cherry Blossom Winter

by Jennifer Maruno

  Michiko sliced two pieces of bread and clamped them into the wire rack on the burner.

  “Who was the lady that answered the door?” Kiko asked returning to the kitchen.

  Michiko frowned at her impertinence.

  “That’s Mabel, Bert’s wife,” Edna explained removing her apron. “She helps me with my dusting and cleaning.”

  “Why can’t she help you hang your curtains?” Kiko asked.

  Michiko rolled her eyes. How many times had her mother told her not to ask questions about other people’s business? But then, Kiko didn’t have a mother.

  “Same reason we no longer pick our own apples,” Mrs. Morrison replied, after a hearty laugh. “Neither of us can get up a ladder.”

  By the time the old curtains had come down and the new ones were up, it had gotten dark.

  The feast of pork chops, peas, turnip, mashed potatoes, and gravy stuffed them beyond belief. Michiko gave a huge groan. Kiko rubbed her stomach and rolled her eyes.

  Mrs. Morrison looked at her wrist to check the time. “I forgot, I took off my watch,” she admitted. But no sooner than she had spoken the tall clock in the hall chimed seven.

  “Get your coat girls,” their hostess directed. “Your ride will be here any minute.”

  There was a knock on the door just as the girls picked up the bundles of old curtains. “That’ll be Bert,” Mrs. Morrison said. “He’s driving you both home.” She turned to each of the girls and gave them a warm hug.

  But it wasn’t Bert at the door.

  A man in a brown uniform with khaki puttees topping his highly polished boots waited in the yellow porch light. Under his large peaked cap a pencil stuck out from behind his ear. He held out a flimsy yellow envelope with the words Western Union.

  Mrs. Morrison stopped in the hallway and put her hands to her chest.

  “Edna Morrison?” the man asked, looking past the girls.

  Michiko and Kiko swerved their heads to see the woman in the foyer shake her head. She didn’t put out her hand to take it.

  Kiko snatched it from the man’s hand. “I’ll give it to her,” she said.

  The man looked down at her in surprise. Then he looked at Mrs. Morrison frozen in the doorway and tipped his hat. “Good night,” he said and closed the door behind him.

  “I knew it would happen. I’ve been right about everything that has to do with this war,” she said in a dull voice. “Just when I finally stopped worrying,” she whispered, “I get a telegram.”

  Michiko led the frightened woman to the living room and eased her on to the couch.

  Kiko brought the envelope.

  “But you don’t know what it says,” Michiko told her gently. “You have to open it.”

  “I know what it says,” she murmured, taking the telegram. She turned it over and over.

  “Stop talking,” Kiko interrupted. “Open the telegram.”

  Michiko’s head jerked up in surprise. But Kiko’s rudeness seemed to get through to Mrs. Morrison. She tore open the envelope.

  It seemed to take forever to remove the thin piece of paper with funny typing from its envelope. But Mrs. Morrison couldn’t seem to read it. She just held it in front of her and stared.

  “Read it,” Michiko urged.

  The two of them watched the pair of gold-spectacled blue eyes finally travel back and forth across the print. Then, with a sigh, Edna Morrison folded it and stuffed it back into the envelope. She held it to her chest and breathed in deeply.

  “A torpedo hit his ship,” she said.

  Michiko and Kiko gasped and looked at each other with wide eyes.

  “It sank,” she continued.

  The room was silent but for the tick of the clock.

  “They are searching for survivors,” she finally added. “Ralph Morrison is missing in action.” Edna Morrison searched Michiko’s face.

  “I’m not even able to cry,” she said in surprise.

  There was a second knock on the front door. This time it was Bert, in his red plaid coat and denim overalls.

  “Mr. Morrison’s ship sank,” Kiko blurted out as she yanked open the door.

  “He’s missing in action,” Michiko added.

  Bert removed his cap, rushed inside, and kneeled at Mrs. Morrison’s side. “He’ll be fine,” he said. “Remember the time he lost his oars fishing? He knows how to keep afloat.”

  “I don’t think we should go home,” Michiko said, taking the woman’s hand in hers. “Mrs. Morrison shouldn’t be left alone at a time like this.”

  Bert looked at her in surprise. “I’ll go get Mabel,” he said.

  Michiko tossed the bundle of old curtains into the back of the pickup truck and lifted her knee to crawl up on top. Bert removed the pipe from between his brown stained teeth and held it in his hand. “No need to ride in the back,” he said. “There’s room for the two of you up front.”

  No one spoke as they followed the glare of truck beams along the dark road. At the laneway to the orchard, the truck slowed down.

  “Which place is yours?” he asked.

  “Follow the road to 8th Street,” Kiko told him. “I’m in the first house.”

  Kiko hopped out, stopped in front of the truck, and waved goodbye. The headlight caught something on her wrist, making a flash. Michiko wondered what it was.

  Within minutes the green truck pulled up the back lane of the drugstore. Michiko paused with her hand on the handle. “That was nice of you to take Kiko right to her door,” she said.

  Bert nodded and then spoke. “How’s your grandfather doing?”

  Michiko smiled briefly. Her grandfather looked so tired and his memory was not quite right. He kept calling her Eiko and asked her all kinds of thing about people she never knew. “The doctor told him he’ll be fine if he takes it easy and stops running around coaching baseball,” she said.

  For the first time, Michiko saw the tall, solemn farmer grin.

  “Tell him from me,” he said, “that’s good news for the farmers’ team. He’s much too good a coach.”

  Michiko placed the first bundle of curtains inside the door at the foot of the stairs. When she went back for the second, she smiled. She had just realized her grandfather would like very much like to hear what Bert just said.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE DATE

  “Eat something.” Michiko heard her mother tell Sadie in the kitchen. “You shouldn’t go anywhere on an empty stomach. It might rumble.”

  “When this war is over,” Sadie said, “I’m going to eat cake every day.”

  Eiko laughed. “If you eat cake every day,” she replied, “you will be fat, like me.”

  Michiko put down her book and smiled. Even if Sadie ate cake every night, she knew it would only be a very small piece. She was proud of her slim figure. Sadie wore dresses with belts so tight it was a wonder she could breathe. But her mother wasn’t as slim as she used to be, which was strange because none of them were eating cake. Her mother seemed to have gotten thicker about the waist.

  Michiko went into the kitchen. “Do you want me to bake a cake tonight?” she teased.

  “I’m too nervous to eat anything,” her aunt replied. Sadie picked an invisible piece of lint from her shoulder. “I’ve got a date,” she murmured.

  “A date?” Michiko and her mother repeated at the same time.

  “Where did you meet him?” her mother wanted to know.

  “Where else would I meet him?” Sadie responded with a laugh. “It’s not as if we get to travel anywhere outside of this town.”

  Michiko was not surprised that Sadie had a date. She was so beautiful that the farmhouse could have been full of men wanting to take her out. But this was the first time since they left Vancouver she even used the word.

  “Is he handsome?” Michiko asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sadie said in a whisper.

  “You don’t know what he looks like?” Michiko asked in awe. “Why not?”

  “It’s a blind date,�
� Sadie told them. Then she lowered her voice. “And neither of you are to say anything about this to Geechan.”

  Michiko glanced at the closed door of her grandfather’s bedroom.

  “Sadie,” her mother began, but Sadie put up her hand to stop her.

  “I’m not going to discuss it with him,” she said. “I live outside the home, and I’m old enough to know what I am doing. You know how old-fashioned he is. He’ll expect me to have a chaperon.”

  “Or at least a go-between,” Eiko said with a smile.

  “What’s a go-between?” Michiko wanted to know.

  “A go-between is a person who arranges for you to meet the man you will marry.”

  Michiko looked at her mother. Her flowered pinafore stretched across her front as if it had shrunk in the wash. “Did you have a go-between?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A go-between put your father and me together.”

  “I suggested the match,” Sadie said. “Can you just imagine if they had picked someone like Mr. Yama?”

  Michiko’s mouth dropped. Sadie burst into laughter at the sight.

  “Stop teasing, Sadie,” Eiko said. “You’ll have Michiko believing the strangest things.”

  “What are you going to wear?” Michiko asked. She loved it when her aunt used to visit them right after her day in the dress shop. She had so many beautiful outfits. Her shoes always matched her purse. Once she wore a veiled hat made completely of red feathers.

  “I don’t know,” her aunt responded. For a moment she stared off into space. “I think I’ll start out wearing grey. I don’t want to waste a good outfit on someone who might be boring.” She smoothed out her skirt as she talked. “I wish I had enough money to make a new dress.” She lifted her tea cup to her lips, and then paused. “And what about you, Eiko?” she said. “What are you going to do about a new wardrobe?”

  Eiko put one finger to her lips and gave Sadie a wide stare. “Mrs. Morrison has offered me a few of the dresses she no longer wears.”

  “Mrs. Morrison,” shrieked Michiko. “Her dresses would be way too big for you.”

  “Your mother has a sewing machine, doesn’t she?” Sadie responded.

  Sadie wasn’t coming for lunch the following Sunday because she had a second date with the-man-no-one-knew. They planned to spend the day in the mountains. Eiko was making them a picnic.

  “Do you think Auntie Sadie will get married?” Michiko asked her mother as they wrapped rice balls in wax paper.

  “In Japan, girls get married at seventeen,” her mother said. “Some would say Sadie was past the age for getting married.”

  “But what would we do for a wedding?” Michiko felt saddened. There would be no beautiful lace for a gown, she thought. There would be no yellow silk for bridesmaids.

  “I think we should just wait and see,” her mother advised her. “So many things can happen.”

  “So many things can happen,” Michiko repeated as she turned to the stove.

  “It has to be someone from the Bachelor House,” Kiko decided when Michiko told her about the picnic. “We should find out.”

  “How would we do that?” Michiko asked.

  “We can follow her when she has another date and see who she meets.”

  “You mean spy on her?” Michiko looked at Kiko and blinked.

  “Everyone thinks we are spies anyway.”

  “I don’t know,” said Michiko. “What if we get caught?”

  “I never get caught at anything,” Kiko said. As she said it a look of sly confidence darted across her eyes. Michiko was not sure why.

  When Michiko came home from school there were clothes covering her mother’s bed.

  “It doesn’t matter what you wear,” Eiko was saying to Sadie.

  “What do you think, Michiko?” Sadie asked when she walked into the room.

  She held up her worn suit in front of her. “This makes me look like I am going to church.” She flung it back on the bed, and picked up a pair of navy slacks. “If I wear these, I look like I work in a factory.” Then she lifted the pale green outfit she wore the day they left Vancouver. “This used to be my best outfit, but it’s so worn.”

  Michiko had never seen her aunt so worried. She didn’t say it out loud, but Sadie would look good in a rice bag. Instead she asked, “Where are you going?”

  Sadie slumped on top of the bed. “It’s nowhere that special,” she said. “How can it be? We aren’t allowed to leave the area, no one has a car, and it’s just …” her voice trailed off.

  “It’s just that you want to look special for the man-with-no-name,” Eiko guessed. “Why don’t you wear something of mine? My clothes haven’t had an outing for a while.”

  “Could I?” Sadie said leaping up. “I’ll take good care of whatever you lend me. I just need to wear something different.”

  Michiko looked through the doorway at her grandfather. Since his heart attack he spent his days sitting beside the window, gazing down at the garden. Once in a while, Mrs. Morrison would take him for a walk up to her house and give him a bowl of homemade soup.

  “Why don’t you tell Geechan?” Michiko asked. “Maybe it would cheer him up.”

  “Father wouldn’t understand,” Sadie said, lifting a brown-and-white-polka-dot dress with a matching jacket from a hanger. “When we were growing up we weren’t even allowed to listen to a record player.”

  Michiko remembered the black leather box with shining handles that she got to open from time to time. When Sadie came to visit, the first thing she did was slide a vinyl disk from its brown paper sleeve and put it on the turntable. Sadie and her mother danced as they sang along with Bing Crosby. Michiko waltzed about with her baby brother in her arms. It all stopped when Geechan came to live with them. Or did it stop because the record player disappeared? She couldn’t remember.

  “Mr. Katsumoto loves to sing,” Michiko told her.

  “He does?” Sadie said in surprise.

  “We sing ‘Red River Valley’ and ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’ during music time,” Michiko told her. “He’s got a really good voice.”

  Sadie looked at Michiko and smiled. But this was a smile Michiko hadn’t seen on her aunt’s face in a very long time. It was the kind of smile made her eyes shine just like melting chocolate.

  She must really like those songs too, Michiko thought.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE HOSPITAL

  The fallen maple leaves had blown all the way down to the lake. There was the kind of chill in the air that only comes when snow is right around the corner. Michiko didn’t like hearing harsh cries of the geese as they passed across the sky.

  Michiko’s father had one arm in his coat when the knock sounded. He yanked the door open.

  “I thought I’d check on the old fella,” the doctor said, “on my way home.”

  “Please come in,” her father choked out. “I was just heading up to your place.”

  The tall, heavy-boned, grey-haired man headed upstairs and into the kitchen. He pulled off his coat and placed it over the chair. The scrape of the chair across the floor woke Michiko’s mother, who was sleeping at the kitchen table. She lifted her head from her arms.

  Michiko looked at his black bag, thinking of all the horrible-tasting medicines that were inside. She followed the doctor to the doorway of the Geechan’s bedroom, but he put his arm out to stop her from coming inside.

  “A hot drink would be nice,” he said.

  Michiko returned to the kitchen and lifted the kettle from the back burner to the front. She waited for the kettle to sing, and then sprinkled a handful of black leaves into the pot. Their supply of green tea was so low that they saved it for Geechan.

  Her mother and father sat with the cups in front of them, waiting.

  Finally the doctor lowered himself into the round-backed wooden chair. Michiko pushed a steaming cup of dark tea toward him. He laced it with milk from the can with a white carnation on the front, took a sip, closed his eyes, and savou
red it.

  Michiko pried open the lid of the cookie tin and held it out to him. The doctor put his enormous paw inside and took out a small lump of oatmeal.

  “I made them,” Michiko bragged.

  The doctor took a bite. “Delicious,” he said.

  “Well?” Michiko’s mother asked in a hushed voice.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Your father needs to be in the hospital,” he said. “The sooner the better. Not just for him but for you too, by the looks of it.”

  “The hospital,” Michiko repeated. A lump the size of a rice ball came into her throat.

  “I’ll take him in my car,” the doctor said, “if Sam will come with me.”

  Michiko’s father helped Geechan get dressed. Around his frail, thin body, Eiko draped the quilt that he’d carried all the way from Vancouver.

  Despite the cold, Michiko stood with her mother on the front porch to wave goodbye.

  The next two days passed by quickly. Her mother performed her household tasks in silence. Mrs. Morrison visited every day, enveloping Eiko in her soft, warm arms. When she pressed her warm cheek against Michiko’s face, Michiko closed her eyes and fell into the smell of lavender shampoo.

  After school on the third day, Michiko visited the small white hospital. Outside it was almost dark, but you couldn’t tell in the hospital. The bright lights reflecting off the pale green walls made her feel like she was underwater. Noises of squeaking metal cart wheels, quiet conversations, footsteps on linoleum floors, and coughs surrounded her.

  Her grandfather’s thin parchment hands lay motionless across his chest on top of the sheets. “Geechan,” she said, but he did not waken. Michiko shook him gently, but he did not respond. She took his hand, sending all of her love through a squeeze. Maybe this time he would turn his head to her and open his eyes. But he didn’t. In frustration, she pinched his hand. He didn’t even flinch.

  At the sound of the train going by, Michiko looked up. For certain he would say, “Choo-choo,” the way he always did to Hiro. But he didn’t move or speak.