‘She did go to New York.’ Ann could smell the anger in her sweat. ‘And it was very hard for her.’ She struggled to hold back the tears.
Wanda wished she hadn’t asked.
‘Too hard,’ Ann blurted. ‘They found her in a bathtub, with her wrists slit.’
‘How tragic for you.’ Wanda reached for her hand.
Ann looked up, startled. No one had really consoled her in the year since Carol’s death. ‘Such a waste.’ ‘So sad for her family.’ ‘If we had only known, we might have been able to help her.’ But no one had acknowledged Ann’s feelings. She was only a friend.
Wanda watched Ann carefully.
‘Yes.’ Ann’s voice was steady.
‘I remember how close you were.’ Wanda forced a smile. ‘I always envied your friendship. The two of you going to football games together. And didn’t you have the same coats — dark brown with black collars?’
‘Yes.’ Ann smiled, herself. ‘Yes, she was a good friend and I miss her.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Wanda pulled back her hand. ‘And I’m sorry I brought it up.’
‘No, no,’ Ann began, ‘it’s fine. You didn’t know …’
A buzzer rang. The two looked at each other. ‘Like being back at Lowell,’ they said in unison and laughed.
‘Except that we have the same teacher all day.’ Wanda shook her head. ‘What a Lulu.’
Upstairs, they parted for their desks. ‘Lunch tomorrow?’ Wanda asked boldly.
‘It’s a date if I can bring another girl, Moira.’ Ann was cheerful. She had no good reason to refuse — only a nagging sadness about Carol. Well, best to get her mind off that. They would talk about other things tomorrow. Ann had hardly asked about Wanda.
Wanda walked back to her desk grinning. She was in the same class with the famous Ann Rose. Howard would be pleased. And Mama would be very impressed. Perhaps this would stop her questions about whether Tracey was the right place. Wanda could hardly believe it. Throughout high school she had wanted to be Ann Rose: the beautiful, brilliant girl who didn’t know she was the awe of teachers and students alike.
‘Asdfghjkl;qwertyuiop’. What would Mrs Longnecker say when she found out her star writer was taking secretarial lessons? Of course journalists had to learn to type. Wanda felt another pang; how could she tell Mrs Longnecker she was still working at the cannery? She thought she would get a job on a newspaper any day. But one look at her Asian face and editors said, ‘No, that position was filled yesterday … an hour ago … in the last five minutes.’ Sometimes the rejection panicked her. Maybe she was crazy — there were few enough women and no other Nisei she knew — who became reporters on the mainstream papers. Sometimes the rebuff focused her. She would show them. She would go to college. Meanwhile, the first step was getting out of the cannery and a decent secretarial wage.
Wanda listened to Miss Fargo’s slow, precise instructions which made her feel as if she were in the first grade. Had she been especially slow and simple with Wanda?
Relax, Wanda. Tonight you can tell Mama about your suspicions and Papa about the day’s adventures. The difference between her parents’ temperaments always amazed Wanda — Papa so optimistic and energetic about American possibility and Mama low key, resentful about the broken promises. Maybe it was because Papa, coming from a poor Yokohama family, was used to hardship, while Mama left her middle-class comforts out of love for Papa and hopes of starting a new life. Wanda considered how they had met in a small socialist circle in Japan and carried their ideals across the Pacific. Surely they would never breach their class difference in Yokohama. First in Seattle and now in San Francisco, they held to their beliefs about a workers’ state and shared wealth, but they found few Issei following such politics. Thus they had made more white friends than many Japanese–American families. They lived inside and outside the Nihonjin community. The Nakatanis, Wanda shook her head, were always iconoclasts. Maybe the distinction between her parents was that Mama was more conscious of her children’s sacrifices. She had no tolerance for bigotry, yet as a Japanese lady she hadn’t built up adequate defenses. Papa saw himself as a pioneer and was prepared for hardship.
Wanda thought about the time Howard came home crying because he couldn’t join the same Cub Scout troop as his Caucasian friends. Mama was so furious Howard feared he had done something wrong. ‘What kind of democracy is this, Yas, where children are not equal?’ Wanda still wondered if Mama would have been exercised about the Brownies. Well, the boy was most important, that was that.
‘What would you have us do, Miné?’ Papa addressed Mama in Japanese. ‘Return to Japan before our dreams are realized?’
‘Our dreams? You are welcome to them. Yes, sometimes I think it would be better to return to Yokohama. At least we would only suffer poverty — and not this mad bigotry.’
Papa shook his head again. ‘Wait, Miné, you’ll see. Our people will become great Americans — scientists, writers, doctors — our own son.’
Mama pursed her lips and returned to the kitchen. She was a dutiful, if sometimes irritated, wife who allowed Papa the last word.
Traditions, it was hard to follow which traditions they would keep. Wanda: her very name was atypical. Most of her Nisei friends had Japanese names or at least more sedate Anglo names. But Mama insisted on naming her daughter after a favorite English teacher in Japan. ‘Wanda Nakatani’ — sometimes Wanda thought there were too many ‘a’s’ in the name, that it left her too exposed; sometimes she liked the name’s distinctiveness, which camouflaged her own bashfulness.
Wanda marvelled at the way Mama — who thought religion was a wasteful, deluded indulgence — put flowers by her parents’ photographs on the anniversary of their deaths. A few Buddhist practices were all right, Mama finally decided; at least she hadn’t converted to Christianity like Uncle Fumio. And if English was spoken when Caucasian guests were present, Japanese was the main language between Mama and Papa. Wanda grew up speaking English with Howard and Betty and her friends and almost understanding her parents’ Japanese. Her life, like her name, was half Japanese and half American. Half not Japanese and half not American. She was an amphibian, her mobility versatile to compensate for the lack of belonging. All the legacies were contradictory. She inherited from her parents a deep idealism about achievement as well as a grave fear of failure.
Papa had not quite fulfilled the prediction about himself — not yet, he was always quick to say. While most Issei in California farmed or fished, Papa still loved lumbering. He loved the sharp scent of evergreen forests and the independent life and the possibilities of fortune. Not until he was forty did he join his brother Fumio at the fish cannery.
Wanda admired Mama. Where would the family be without her? While she wished Mama were softer, she was grateful Mama hadn’t imprisoned her in origami and Buddhist practices and a marriage arranged by the Baishakunin. Mama had cleared a way for Wanda to have more freedom than she had. She insisted her daughter make a variety of friends. Sometimes Wanda felt as if she were standing on Mama’s shoulders, as if each generation of women in her family were supposed to stretch further. Mama’s contribution had been immigration to this strange country. Now Wanda was supposed to make an independent life. But if you led an independent life for your parents, you were not independent. At times Wanda envied cousin Keiko who, although she might feel suffocated by convention, was spared Wanda’s own confusion.
‘“As we, as we, as we … ” You should have that down, ladies. Shall we try a longer word? Put your right index finger on the “h”, now the fourth finger of that hand on the “o”, now the pinky on the “p”. That’s it. Try “hop hop hop hop”. Then put it together. “As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.”’
Wanda suppressed a smile. Really, if she thought this was embarrassing, how must stern Miss Fargo feel up there dictating to all of them? She didn’t look like she had had a good hop in forty years.
She would record this in her diary tonight. Wanda found that as soon as she told her family stories, they lost flavor. The diary was Mrs Longnecker’s greatest gift. Wanda had filled the fancy, engraved green book years ago. Now she was on her fourth volume, making sense of things in her own words — her crush on Martin Kogowa; her ideas about Roosevelt. In addition to testing out emotions and opinions, the diary was a good place to meditate. When she was sitting alone in her room with a cup of tea writing, she seemed to leave her body. She lived on the page. Wanda was afraid to feel too good while she was writing, afraid that she didn’t deserve the happiness. She told herself she wanted to be a writer because so many social issues needed to be addressed. This was true, but there was also the sheer satisfaction of writing.
Miss Fargo was just two girls behind her now. Wanda tried to relax. She would forget Miss Fargo’s original coldness to her. Probably everyone found her too formal. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’ She continued typing at the same, even pace. Miss Fargo stood over each girl and pointed out errors. But, Wanda noted proudly, many of them couldn’t get the letters straight while she hadn’t made a single error since the ‘Aw we hop.’ on the first line. Maybe Miss Fargo would overlook that when she saw the rest of the sheet. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’ Wanda continued. She could smell Miss Fargo’s carbolic soap now. Of course she wouldn’t wear perfume and she would need something strong to remove ink from her fingers. Maybe after class Wanda should inquire about the correct brand of soap. She grimaced at her own eagerness to impress.
‘Miss Nakatani,’ Miss Fargo stood over her.
Wanda looked up, absurdly wondering for a moment, whether it was correct military procedure to keep on typing and talk at the same time. Maybe she should type out her response?
‘Your work is indeed very neat. And save for that unfortunate mistake on the very first line, you seem to be doing fine. However,’ Miss Fargo bent lower, as if she were being confidential, ‘I wouldn’t wear such bright colors if I were you. They create a distraction in an office. I rather suspect you’ll want to blend in as much as possible.’
Wanda’s cheeks turned the color of her suit. Blend in? Would she say this to any of them or was she saying that, as an Oriental, Wanda should try to be inconspicuous? How should she respond? ‘Yes, Mam’? ‘Thank you’? Her fingers took over typing. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’
It was so ironic — she had started wearing red because it did make her stand out, because it countered her preternatural shyness. At the mirror this morning, she worried about how unJapanese she looked. Was it her? Well, she wasn’t going to dress for the sake of cliché. Yet every time she wandered from the norm, she fretted the balance between stereotype and authenticity.
Miss Fargo criticized the next girl for several spacing errors. See, Wanda, she’s critical of everyone. But she hadn’t commented on anyone else’s clothes. Wanda wanted to scream and cry at the same time. It made her angry to be angry like this. She really hated to believe that people disliked her for race reasons. Her first instinct was to give the benefit of the doubt. Then she was surrounded by an immobilizing depression, a cloud of similar memories. Now her fingers grew stiff; she was furious at this silly exercise. Angry at all the white girls in the room obediently typing, ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’ How could she go on? The diary. She would write about it in the diary. Yes. She would write about distraction. ‘Blend in. Blend in.’ Wanda regarded her sheet now. ‘As we blend in, blend in, bland in.’
Wanda leaned against the streetlamp at the bus stop. Closing her eyes, she pretended to store all her worries in a high cupboard. If she still hated Tracey Business School by the end of the week, she could quit. She imagined shutting the door to the cupboard. She let a long breath run through her body.
‘Hi.’
Wanda didn’t want to be sociable. The voice was from a tall woman. Wanda tried to guess who it was.
‘Say, aren’t you from the business school?’ the voice added quickly.
A slight drawl, were there any Southerners in the class? Wanda opened her eyes and registered a thin, blond woman wearing a faded flowered blouse and a blue skirt. She didn’t remember her at all. Embarrassed by her reverie, she stood straighter and extended her hand. ‘Yes, I’m Wanda Nakatani.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Teddy Fielding.’
Teddy’s large hand was roughly textured. Wanda considered the woman’s kind, open face. Any other time she would have been pleased to meet her. Could they postpone this until tomorrow?
Teddy, too, seemed embarrassed after the enthusiasm of her own initial greeting. ‘I don’t know, I don’t have much to say, except I thought it would be good to talk to someone from class. I was too shy at lunchtime.’
Wanda smiled, here was someone more scared than she. ‘Where are you from, Teddy?’
‘Oh, Renfrew Street.’
‘I meant, where are you from originally? I noticed your accent.’
‘Oh, yeah, some time ago, seven years or so, my family came out from Oklahoma.’ She held herself tighter.
‘The Dustbowl?’ Wanda asked, trying to temper her amazement. She had never met an Okie before.
‘That’s what they call it. That’s what it was like — all the dust you could eat.’
Wanda laughed with her. She felt her resistance lift. ‘I’ve read a lot of articles about people from the Dustbowl. I wonder how genuine they are?’
‘I don’t tend to read much. Once you’ve been through it, you don’t want to read about it. I have some nice memories of the country between here and there, but the leaving was hard and the travelling was tough and I’d as soon read a good mystery story.’
‘I guess you don’t know Dorothea Lange either?’
‘No, there were a lot of people who came out from Oklahoma. Thousands.’
‘Five hundred thousand.’ Wanda hated herself for correcting Teddy. ‘And Dorothea Lange, she’s a photographer, oh, well, forget it …’
‘Now hold on, I have seen some of her pictures, in magazines. Very dramatic.’
Wanda smiled gratefully. ‘What did you think of Miss Fargo?’ So much for the cupboard.
‘She’s an unpredictable one. Seemed nice enough at the beginning, calling us all girls and saying she would help us find jobs. But then she seemed unnecessarily strict and said hurtful things. Like,’ Teddy blushed, ‘well, I guess the reason I spoke up in the first place was that I wanted to say you looked snazzy in your red suit. I admired it when I walked in and I was surprised when Miss Fargo was mean about it. I think she did it out of ignorance.’ Teddy swallowed hard.
‘Ignorance?’
‘Because you’re Oriental. I think she’s prejudiced. Hope this doesn’t make you feel bad. Probably shoulda kept my mouth shut.’
‘Not at all.’ Wanda watched her closely. ‘It makes me feel good. I thought the same thing. And I’m glad you liked the suit. I stayed up until 2 a.m. finishing it.’
‘I figured you sewed it. Looks nicer than what you see in the stores. My Mom sews all our clothes too.’
‘All your clothes? How many are there?’
‘Ten kids including me. Of course she’s not the only one who sews. Jolene learned and Amanda is taking lessons from Jolene.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me, no, I’m all thumbs around tiny things like stitches. That’s why I’m surprised I could type. But then I’m OK at the piano too.’ She shrugged.
Wanda laughed and noticed Teddy watching her closely. ‘Are you the oldest?’
‘No, two older brothers. But I’m the top girl. So it amounts to the same thing. And you? Your family?’
‘I have an older brother and a younger sister.’
A bus approached and they both squinted after the number. Sixteen. Wanda and Teddy stepped back slightly and the bus rattled past them.
‘Why
are you at Tracey?’ Wanda asked. ‘What’s your secret ambition?’
Teddy looked puzzled. ‘Guess I just want to be a secretary. Always been keen on an office job. And you?’
‘Some day I hope to be a writer,’ Wanda answered, and tried again. ‘What I meant was what do you imagine yourself doing in ten years — if there are no obstacles?’
‘No obstacles.’ Teddy smiled. ‘Can’t hardly imagine. Let me see, yes, I’d be working in a company, with lots of people around.’
Wanda tried not to look disappointed. She cringed at her own snobbishness.
‘Say, do you guess the other girls in class will be as friendly as you?’
Wanda laughed. ‘I hope they’ll be friendlier.’
‘I guess when we break through the ice everyone will be pretty easy. But, I wonder about Miss Fargo. It could be a cool spring in that room.’
Wanda smiled. ‘I think we’re going to be friends, Teddy. At least we worry about the same things.’
Teddy looked embarrassed and agreed. ‘How about coffee before school tomorrow? That is if you like to get up early.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Wanda. ‘I got here at 7.15 today.’
‘I got here at 7.0,’ grinned Teddy.
Wanda waved to the approaching bus. She boarded, got a window seat and waved to Teddy.
Teddy waved back, smiling and wondering how long she would have to wait for another number sixteen.
Chapter Three
Spring 1939, San Francisco
SPANISH CIVIL WAR ENDS
The Grapes of Wrath PUBLISHED
NYLON STOCKINGS APPEAR
‘NOW IS THE TIME FOR all …’ The words clapped steadily from Teddy’s typewriter. She enjoyed this instrument as much as the piano, even with this familiar exercise Miss Fargo assigned to show how much progress had been made in one year. ‘Now is the time for all …’ She sat tall in her chair and brushed the light brown curls from her high forehead. A vague discomfort settled as she recalled the player piano plonking on Market Street last night. Would typewriters ever do this? Just press a button and the words would tap honky-tonk or ragtime or swing? She hoped not because she liked the sensation in her long fingers and the rapid configuration of words against the page. Miss Fargo always praised her typing accuracy and neatness. The teacher encouraged her to speed up if she wanted a ‘decent job’. ‘You could get a plum,’ the woman advised almost warmly. Teddy appreciated the encouragement although she didn’t want to work for one of those fancy lawyers. She had more in mind a lively business or maybe a department store.
All Good Women Page 3