Eventually, the blood results came back. Human. Type O.
Chapter Five
Violet
The next day at school passed without incident, and Violet met Ella at her class. They stopped at home for a quick snack of chocolate pudding, then continued across the worm-eaten bridge over the ravine and up the hill to the small building where Japanese school was held. They passed clumps of ginger, a thick stand of guava clouded with fruit flies and a dilapidated chicken coop with rusted wires, full of vines instead of chickens. Ella held her hand like she was trying to strangle it.
Before Pearl Harbor happened, students learned to speak the Japanese language, practiced calligraphy, and were schooled in common traditions like ikebana and yukata. Violet guarded her opinions, but she thought it a miracle the school had been allowed to keep on. The military had ordered Takeo to stick to arts and crafts. None of the kids minded.
Please, God, let this work out. Umi and Hiro already knew about Ella coming, but there was concern over how her presence would go over with the other students. Takeo had said, “Do not worry.” But worry was everywhere, as plentiful as the stalks of sugarcane in the fields. The elongated one-room building contained two sections, and Ella would be with the six-to twelve-year-olds.
When they approached the school, Ella stopped. “Do you think they will like me?”
“You already know most of the kids.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
The words tugged at Violet’s heart. “The sensei is like your uncle, so no one will dare bother you.”
Even before Herman’s disappearance, Ella had been shy and considered different by the kids. Partly because of her skin color, but more than that, she was the kid in the group who chose green when everyone else chose blue. She picked animals over people, and once punched Robbie Iwase in the nose when he tried to torture the class rabbit. From then on, kids steered clear.
They stood there, staring at the whitewashed wooden house. Two mynah birds chattered on the road in front of them. Ella looked around, and Violet followed her gaze.
In front of the schoolhouse, a row of garden boxes overflowed with lettuce, kale, plump tomatoes and eggplant. Off to the side a large square patch of sweet potato crawled through the grass. The students had painted VICTORY in red, white and blue on the boxes, which might have helped their cause. Several fat hens scratched about, reminding Violet of home. Leaving her hens had been one of the hardest parts about leaving Minnesota. On the sagging plank porch, two girls played jacks, too engrossed to notice them.
Ella tugged at her hand, and together they crossed the yard and entered the building. There were no desks, no tables and chairs, only tatami mats spread out across the floors. The walls were lined with shelves and everything had a place. The sills were painted a deep red and several bonsai plants caught sun through the mottled glass. Violet felt a stab of envy. Her classroom had never looked so tidy.
The chatter of young voices filled the room, and Takeo stood near the front. In the other half of the house, Setsuko taught the teenagers. After the war broke out, the school lost many students, parents fearing to seem overly Japanese. Though how could you be anything other than Japanese, if you were Japanese? She had yet to determine exactly what constituted one’s Japanese-ness, but being born in Japan was at the top of the list. Takeo and Setsuko had destroyed, or possibly hidden, all photos of their family back in Japan, some of whom had been members of the Imperial Navy. The predicament caused an ache in the middle of Violet’s chest.
Little by little, voices quieted. Heads turned. Ella’s fingers curled around her hand more tightly, and Violet squeezed back. Takeo spotted them and hurried over. “Violet and Ella, welcome.”
“Thank you, Sensei,” Violet said, feeling safe to address him here, but certainly no place else.
“Are you going to stay?” he asked her.
“Should I?”
They both looked down at Ella, who was staring at the back corner of the room. Giant origami butterflies and cranes, fish and frogs hung from the ceiling. “Sweet pea, would you like me to stay?”
At that very moment, Umi marched up and grabbed Ella’s hand, leading her to the back of the room. She pointed at the folded paper creatures, while her two long braids twisted down her back like origami snakes. Violet had been looking for some kind of sign. To tell her that life was ready to flip-flop. Maybe this was it. She took a chance and slipped out the side door.
* * *
The house felt strange without Ella, almost soulless. Violet had grown used to her always being underfoot, filling the cracks with her presence. Strange how you noticed something more once it was not there. In the kitchen, Jean was listening to the radio and grading math worksheets. She looked up and her lashes fluttered when Violet walked in.
“Don’t tell me she let you leave her there,” Jean said.
Violet had spent the half mile home wondering if she should go back. “I sneaked away while she was distracted.”
“Baby doll, that is wonderful!”
The throbbing in her feet from standing all day prompted her to sit. “Ella wishes she was Japanese, so it couldn’t be more perfect.”
Jean smiled. “I’m feeling hopeful. For Ella. For me. Even for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that Zach is here. More than anyone alive, he will take my mind off Bud. And things are now looking up for Ella, in which case you won’t be able to help but be happy.”
Jean and Bud met a month before the first batch of soldiers left town. He had ridden the school bus into Honoka’a with her students one morning and asked for directions to the theater as he climbed out. When the bell rang, she found him hovering outside her room. That was it for both of them. All his liberty time was spent holding tightly to Jean’s hand. Aside from being a marine, Bud was a grass-chewing, rough-riding Texan. He also liked to spit. Violet had put up with him for Jean’s sake.
If someone could stop Jean from ruminating about Bud, Violet would be eternally grateful. That kind of pining was not helpful. Sewing, movies, trips to the beach, nothing worked. She’d even involved Jean in their victory garden up the hill. And Jean had gotten her hands dirty for possibly the first time ever. But in the midst of harvesting, Jean said the cucumbers reminded her of Bud and alternated between sniffling and sobbing the whole time. Violet had her own thoughts about Bud but she kept them to herself. Mainly that he seemed interested in only one thing. She didn’t quite trust the man.
Violet reached across the table and squeezed Jean’s hand. “I hope you’re right.”
Happy was a word out of another lifetime. Sure, she no longer felt like she was living underwater with the whole ocean pressing down on her. Life had become tolerable.
“Even if I’m wrong, you still better love me forever,” Jean said.
Thank goodness Jean’s moods were catching. “You? Wrong?”
“Oh, by the way, Zach called and said he might come out this weekend. They’ll be on liberty. That fine with you?”
“You don’t need to ask. Just keep him away from Irene Ferreira or he’s a goner.”
Jean winked and stood up to check on the meat loaf in the oven. By now, the entire kitchen smelled like tangy sauce and sage. Wednesday was Jean’s night to cook, and she commandeered the kitchen. With rations, they’d had to get creative. Packing sardines into sushi or fashioning Spam into casserole.
Jean poured Violet a tall glass of passion orange juice. “In high school, he was a goofball with the ladies. Sweet as can be, but his tongue tied up in knots.”
“Just warn him,” Violet said.
Chapter Six
Ella
Why don’t they have us make origami animals in regular school? Instead, Mrs. Hicks forces us to make cardboard slippers and painted egg crates for the wounded soldiers. Everything is ab
out the soldiers. Sometimes I wish they would just go away, even though we need them for protection. I wish we could just erase the war and erase the fact that now Japanese people are bad. Maybe the ones in Japan are different, but I like most of the ones here.
At home, Umi always folds miniature origami animals, and she tries to teach me, but mine come out ugly and smooshed. I thought it was because my fingertips are too big, but Umi says I need proper lessons and lots of practice. Any paper Umi gets her hands on ends up a tiny perfect creature. Now was my chance.
These origami in the classroom were huge enough to breathe on their own or fly away. I couldn’t wait to make Snowflake into a folded paper cat the first chance I got. Big fingertips wouldn’t matter with these.
When I finally remembered where I was and looked for Mama, she was gone. I felt the usual pinch of fear, but instead of rising into a panic, I got drawn into the singing at the start of class. Sensei, as he told me to call him, hit a small gong that made my teeth ring. Everyone was singing with their full hearts. They all knew the words. I had no choice but to sit with Umi, feeling dumb since I didn’t know the songs. Some of the other kids gave me weird looks and scooted away. But kids don’t worry me too much, especially singing ones.
I knew I might be lost learning a new language, but Japanese words seem easy to me. I already know some. Sensei, obake, satoimo and arigato were just some. We have an obake living in our house. It might even be Papa. The words have trickled down to Umi and Hiro from their parents. Sometimes I feel jealous, because they have a whole family. At night, I imagine that Papa will be home in the morning, cooking coffee and waiting to pick me up and kiss the ribbons in my hair. Whenever he hugged me, I ended up smelling like Old Spice afterward. I still have his bottle, and when I really miss him, I put a dab on my wrist before I go to bed.
Singing took up a lot of the time that day. And just when I thought we were finally going to stop, we started another song or sometimes repeated the same one forty-seven times. Itchi ni san shi. I was sneaking glances around me. The boy to the left had a string of snot dripping from his nose, but he kept singing. June Higa, right in front of me, swung her silky hair back and forth as she bobbed her head in time. All Japanese girls have nice hair. It must be a God-given right. And straight parts. I don’t even have a part.
After the singing, Mr. Hamasu, who no longer allows anyone to call him sensei, talked to us about plants, and how we were going to expand the victory garden to the other side of the building, which meant we would need to help clear the bushes away. Work clothes were required for next week. After that, we were going to grow our own bonsai plants! In honor of the soldiers, of course.
He told us, in his very even voice, “Bonsai plants are different than our garden plants because they’re for the mind, not the body. Caring for your own bonsai will teach you patience, ingenuity and focused effort. Some of them won’t survive, but that, too, is part of the process.”
He passed around several bonsai trees, which seemed old and wise. Hiro says that one at their house is over a hundred years old. He sometimes makes stuff up, or at least stretches out the truth, but this time I believed him.
By the time class ended, I knew I wanted to come back. Even if I heard one girl whisper to her friend, “What is Ella Iverson doing here? She’s haole.”
As if that were some kind of great revelation. Of course I was haole. I had always been haole. I would always be haole. “So, what’s the big deal?” I wanted to say.
It was easy to pretend they didn’t exist. I’d had practice.
Chapter Seven
Violet
When the shadows had lengthened and the thrushes broke into song, Setsuko and Umi showed up at the door with Ella. Violet had been checking the window every few minutes, watching for their arrival.
“Auntie Violet, your daughter is home!” they called.
She ran out to greet them. Ella walked straight to the coffee table and set down a folded red crane before coming back to hug her. The hug was double what she usually got.
“How did it go?” She eyed Setsuko, who smiled.
Waves of excitement were pouring off of Ella. “I’m going to make a bonsai, and help in the victory garden!”
Violet bent down, not wanting to tamper with her success by making too big a deal. “Well, that’s wonderful news. I’m sure they can use you with all of your gardening expertise.”
“They sing a lot, too. I don’t mind singing, but today I didn’t know the words.”
Setsuko risked a laugh. “The words will come.”
“Did you learn anything else?” Violet asked.
Ella thought about it for a while. “I learned that it’s a whole lot more fun than regular school.”
“Oh, honey, I’m happy you had a good time. You still have to go to regular school, but this will be something to look forward to.”
With Ella on the mend, their lives could take on a whole new orbit. She envisioned Ella plumping up, waking to dry sheets in the morning, not being terrified senseless by air-raid drills and letting her skin heal over. The hurts of her daughter commingled with her own, but instead of seeming double, they more than quadrupled. Certainly Violet missed Herman as a husband and the man she counted on in life, but more so she missed him as a father to Ella, as a fellow parent. Every now and then she felt guilty for having those feelings. That she should have loved him more passionately. But that was the truth, and lying to herself would serve no purpose.
* * *
On Thursday and Friday, Violet held her breath while Ella was at Japanese school, at any moment expecting to have her show up at the door. But on both days Ella returned with new stories and an extra spot of color on her cheeks.
“Today Sensei told us a story about Tanuki, and I want to get one,” Ella said, folding her hands on her chest like it had already been decided.
“A what?”
“Tah-noo-key.” Ella rolled her eyes and drew the word out as though speaking to a four-year-old. “A Japanese raccoon dog. He says they’re jolly and mischievous and some can even shape-shift into other animals.”
If Ella had it her way, they’d be collecting animals like most people collected stamps or coins. “Ask Umi to help you make an origami one for now. That’s about the best I can do.”
Their meager food rations and low wages were just enough to feed their own mouths, let alone a zoo. Sugar had been the first to be rationed and then came milk, butter, oil, meat, coffee, and other canned and processed foods. Thank goodness for their garden and those of nearby folks, with whom they often traded. Gasoline was another story. It wasn’t something you could grow. Most civilians got an A sticker, which entitled them to only three to four gallons a week, which couldn’t get you very far. Everyone stayed close to home.
* * *
When Saturday dawned a honey-colored sky, they piled into the Ford and drove up to their garden plot above town, in a place called Ahualoa. The road was steep in some places, rolling in others. Thickets of koa and smaller clusters of ohia attracted bees, and even native honeycreepers. Ella kept her eyes glued to the window, waiting to spot the tiny red birds darting from tree to tree like forest sprites.
“Honey, I’ve got a feeling we aren’t in Minnesota anymore,” Jean said.
Ella giggled. Jean wished she was Judy Garland and was the first to admit it. Ella had joined her on the bandwagon.
“You’ve never even been to Minnesota,” Violet said.
“California, then.”
On a small patch of land at the two-thousand-foot elevation, Herman had planted potato, corn, peas, cucumber and watermelon. At first Violet had shied away from anything to do with farming, after the disintegration of her family farm in Minnesota and the unraveling of her father. But here in Hawaii, there was no dust or frozen winters and everything grew with a vengeance. Over and over, in a silent mantra, Violet had remind
ed herself that Herman was not her father.
Violet renewed the lease after Herman’s disappearance. Some weeks, there was enough overflow that she and Jean brought bushels into town to sell.
Not only that, but Violet swore that the minute Ella stuck her hands in the dirt, whatever gave life to those plants gave life to Ella. Just add water and a touch of sun.
They rode in silence for a while, which meant Jean was stewing over something. “I want to fix those boys something special tonight. Fatten them up and keep them coming back for more,” Jean said.
Violet had to keep her eyes on the rutted road. “Even if you served Spam, they’d want to come back.”
After Zach’s call, Jean had flown around the house in a flurry, dusting cobwebs and wiping down lizard poop. Violet was more reserved about having a house full of soldiers, but maybe they would bring some cheer. It sure seemed that this group of marines was more prone to smile than the last. There had been piles of them spilling out of buses and into the bars in town. The military had made an arrangement to let them hitch rides on the school buses. Many of them looked no older than her own students, and when they stepped onto the street in their uniforms, some of them could have been playing dress-up. But these boys were about to step into the blood-seeped battlefield of the Pacific. Her heart stung for them, and their mothers back home, who no doubt had a love-hate relationship with the telephone and the mailman.
Jean slipped on her purple gardening gloves and busied herself singing “Mairzy Doats.” When the song had first come out, Violet had wondered what kind of nonsense they were singing.
“What on earth is a Mairzy Doat?” she had asked Jean.
Jean quickly set her straight. “He’s saying mares eat oats. Listen carefully.”
Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers Page 4