Requiem

by Frances Itani

  CHAPTER 24

  1946

  Summer was almost over when Okuma-san made plans for the two of us to travel to a town in southern British Columbia. We were among the last few families to leave the camp. A friend he had in Vancouver, a Caucasian, had written to say that he had heard from a cousin, a Mr. Boyd, who lived south of the Okanagan Valley and needed someone to do odd jobs related to his business. He was willing to hire Okuma-san. The job had nothing to do with music, but it might be a way of biding time until more freedom of movement was allowed and until communities were more welcoming.

  The cousin, as it turned out, owned a market garden that had grown too large for him to handle. His property was located on ten acres at the edge of a small town and there was a building where we could live on the property itself. Okuma-san was warned that the building would need some attention. In the letter, his friend also said that a school would be within walking distance for the child.

  We travelled by bus, which really meant three buses, as we had to change twice along the way. Because there was a two-hour wait between the first and second buses, we sat on a bench outside a garage in the first town and kept to ourselves. At the entrance to the town we had both seen the sign welcoming visitors, posted by the roadside. Directly below the welcome sign, a second sign had been nailed to the post: JAPS NOT WELCOME. I had no difficulty reading this and did so, silently, to myself.

  Okuma-san bought two more tickets when it was time to change buses again. There was another wait and again we stayed outside, sitting on a low wall at the back of the station parking lot. Okuma-san dipped into the food basket he’d packed for our journey, and gave me a rice ball that had almost dried out, some strips of omelette and an apple. He had made lemonade before we left the camp and we drank from a jar with a tight-fitting lid.

  It quickly became clear that people did not like the look of us sitting there. Okuma-san spoke to me in a low voice. “Look straight ahead,” he said. “People are sometimes afraid. Maybe of themselves, maybe because the war ended only a year ago and they want to blame someone who is nearby. Don’t be ashamed. We have done nothing wrong and we still have a long way to go.”

  No one spoke to us, and eventually, the final bus arrived. After we boarded and took our seats near the back, I closed my eyes and wished for nothing but sleep.

  I HAD NEVER BEEN to a hakujin school with all Caucasian children. It was early September and Okuma-san and I had been trying to fix up an old chicken coop on the property owned by Mr. and Mrs. Boyd, Okuma-san’s new employers. The Boyd house was at the front of the property and the gardens lay beyond—acre after acre of rich, dark soil where vegetables, tomatoes and strawberries were grown. At the far end, there were more than a dozen apple trees. Off in the distance I could see a range of dry, golden hills.

  Although the Boyds had not raised chickens for half a dozen years, they had never torn down the chicken coop on the property, and this was now put to use to house us. It had been swept out and modified before we arrived. A door had been put in, and the wire fencing surrounding the chicken run had been ripped out. The rest was up to us.

  This required days of scrubbing, getting rid of feathers and dust and insects. Okuma-san painted the inside with white paint. Two metal cots were provided. The rest, Okuma-san bought secondhand when Mr. Boyd drove him to a junk store on a back street of the town. We had a kitchen table and bookshelves made from apple boxes and a counter that contained a dry sink and a low cupboard. A room at the back of the chicken coop was the bedroom. Okuma-san bought a small table so that I would have a place to do my homework, and this was put along the wall in the main room, which served as kitchen and living area. The place was smaller than the shack we had just left, and not as clean. There was a pump in the backyard, and the pump handle croaked up cold, clear water for drinking. Water for bathing was heated on a wood stove. The toilet was an outhouse near the fenced edge of the property. It had not been used for years, because the Boyds now had indoor plumbing in their own home. Mr. Boyd had hooked up a power line to the chicken coop, and this meant that for the first time since 1942, we had electricity. Okuma-san walked back to the junk shop and purchased a brass desk lamp and set this on my homework table, which wobbled unevenly and had to be levelled from below with a thin wedge of wood.

  At the beginning, Okuma-san worked both outside and in. Not only did he help with gardening, but he was also asked to keep track of invoices that were impaled on a sharp spike on a desk in the enclosed back porch of the main house. Mrs. Boyd had been looking after this task until we arrived, entering the figures in a black ledger. She showed Okuma-san what was expected, and he spent long hours over the invoices every week. Old furniture had been stacked up and pushed together at one end of the porch so there would be room at the other end for the office desk and the shelf above it.

  Two local men worked in the gardens, and these men lived within walking distance in the town. Their jobs were to weed and harvest and look after the sprinkling system during the evening hours. One man was responsible for pruning the apple trees. He showed me how he had made inroad paths that allowed for both harvesting the apples and the reach of the sun. He showed me, too, the place where asparagus plants pushed up next to the trees, and he told me that in the spring, he tended them and kept them healthy. At night when I went to bed, there were new sounds and I could hear the rhythmic swish-tick of irrigating, the hum of water as it paused in the air before it fell to the parched rows all around.

  Okuma-san pitched in outside wherever help was needed, and I helped, as well. All of this meant that there was little time for any other activity. The plank keyboard had followed us by bus to the Boyds’ address, and had arrived at our chicken coop one hot, dry afternoon. So far, it had not been touched. Nor had I opened the sketch pad that was tucked into the shallow drawer of my homework table.

  Okuma-san did take an hour off work, however, to accompany me to school on my first day. We walked from the Boyd place at our end of the town, crossed a short field to reach Main Street and continued to the other end, where the school was located. It was a large two-storey building and contained classrooms for primary, middle and high school combined. High school students used the upper floor, all other grades the lower. I was to be in grade four.

  Several laughing, playing children were standing around the entrance for the younger grades on that first day. Some of the smallest students were accompanied by their mothers, but most children were on their own. They were talking excitedly in raised voices, darting in and out of small groups and calling to one another. As we approached, everyone became silent and the crowd stood back to let us through. Most of the mothers looked at the ground when we passed, but the children stared at me and I had an uneasy feeling at the pit of my belly. I wondered if I might be getting sick. If so, that would mean I wouldn’t have to attend school after all.

  Okuma-san ignored the stares and the averted eyes and walked into the building as if he knew exactly what to do and where to go. He led me down a long hall and around a corner to a second, shorter hall. He stopped outside a classroom that had a brass number four nailed above its doorway. The door was open, and I followed him into the room. We had not spoken since entering the school, and this made me uneasy because I wondered if he had been guessing the location of my classroom.

  A young woman was standing behind the teacher’s desk and she looked at us and said her name was Miss Paxton. She seemed to be expecting us, and this surprised me. Her cheeks flushed as Okuma-san bowed slightly and presented her with an envelope that contained my report cards from the camp. The contents were supposed to be proof that I belonged in her class, though from the look on her face, I thought she was on the verge of denying this.

  “This is my son, Bin,” said Okuma-san. “He has completed grade three, but he has also done much of the grade four work because he was in a mixed class last year.”

  Miss Paxton looked at the envelope that had been deposited in her hand, but she did not open it
. Instead, she pointed to a row of desks and told me to take a seat at the back. The other desks were spoken for, she assured Okuma-san, though he had not commented on this. He bowed his head slightly as he departed, and when he reached the doorway, he half-turned in my direction and nodded, making certain that I looked him in the eye before he left.

  There was no time to think about my abandonment in this large, strange place because a bell rang out loudly and the building expanded like a bellows in response to the sudden noise. Children came from every direction, through the doorway and into the classroom, but they slowed when they saw Miss Paxton. They became completely silent when they saw that I was already in my seat at the back of the room. After one quick glance around, I knew that there was no one like me in the class—no other child with a Japanese face.

  Every child seemed to know exactly where to sit. Perhaps some order had existed before school began. All I knew was that within seconds, every desk was filled. Order prevailed until a girl in my row held up a note and said she had to be near the blackboard because she couldn’t see properly. Miss Paxton nodded while she read the note, and had the girl exchange seats with a boy in the front row.

  Miss Paxton then called for complete silence. We stood, sang “God Save the King” and recited the Lord’s Prayer, and the school year began.

  To start off the day, Miss Paxton said, “Let’s take turns, class. As you all know, on the first day of school, we stand beside our desks, one at a time, and say our names out loud. Both names,” she reminded. “Last and first. I’ll begin. My name is Miss Paxton.” She said this as if Miss was her first name, and then she printed MISS PAXTON on the board.

  As I was in the last seat of the farthest row, my turn came after everyone else had finished. I stood, pressed a hand to the back of my desk and said, “Okuma, Binosuke,” putting my last name first, because I was not certain what I should do. I sat down quickly.

  The children laughed so loudly, I became confused and wondered if, instead, I should have given the surname of my first, and not my second, father. I stood again and the room went silent. I blurted out, “Oda, Binosuke,” and my cheeks felt as if they had been slapped.

  “Did you just say two different names?” said Miss Paxton. She looked down at her attendance sheet and then back to me.

  I nodded and sat in my seat.

  “And how do you come to have two sets of names?” she said.

  I told her I had two because I had once lived in the family of my first father.

  “Stand up again,” she said. “How many fathers have you had?”

  “Two,” I said, and quickly sat down again. All of this sitting and standing made the class laugh even harder.

  “What kind of names are those, anyway?” Miss Paxton said. “What kind of names, class? Shall we hear them again? Stand up and tell us, so that we can understand.”

  “My name is Bin,” I said, thinking that if I gave only my shortest name, no one would laugh.

  “Bin,” said Miss Paxton. She printed B-I-N on the board in giant letters with white chalk, and she drew an even bigger X through my name.

  “Bin is not a name we use for children in this country,” she said.

  “We say bin for dustbin or garbage bin, but it is not a name we give a child. We’ll assign a name that we can remember, an English name. We will call you Ben. Can you remember that?”

  “Yes,” I said. And I wanted to leave this room and never come back, even knowing that Okuma-san would not let me stay home from school.

  Miss Paxton printed B-E-N on the board and erased my crossed-out Japanese name.

  When the day was finished, I walked out the school door alone. Behind me, I heard a boy’s voice mutter: “So long, rice paddy. Don’t bother coming back.”

  Okuma-san was waiting for me at the end of Main Street as he had promised. When he asked how the day had gone, I said, “Fine.” I told him nothing about Miss Paxton, nor did I tell him that my name had been changed back to an English name again.

  But that was only the beginning. On my second morning, Miss Paxton said, “Stand up, Ben. Stand beside your desk and tell the class your mother’s name.”

  I had only one mother, but I wasn’t certain if Miss Paxton was laying a trap. I did not want the class to know anything more about my family, so I stood and spoke quickly. “My mother’s name is Oda, Reiko.”

  And the entire class, as well as Miss Paxton, laughed as if they would never stop.

  Every morning, for the rest of the week, Miss Paxton made me stand and say the name of my mother aloud so that the class could start off the day with a good laugh.

  Miss Paxton was my Sensei, my teacher, and I knew that I had to show respect and do what she told me to do.

  No one else in the class was asked to stand and say the name of a parent.

  Miss Paxton was not able to make me cry.

  That was my first week in my new school.

  CHAPTER 25

  1950–51

  I had never had a school art lesson until the year I was in grade eight. It was 1950, and an announcement was made at the beginning of the year that art classes were to start on Friday afternoons in late November. When I heard this, I felt an excitement that was physical, an excitement I had not known before.

  On that first Friday morning, my heart beat faster. I raced through morning lessons. The clock slowed, intentionally. No one in our class knew who would be giving the lessons, but it was rumoured to be one or the other of two veterans, each of whom had fought overseas during the war and had returned to take up teaching again.

  I had already had an encounter with one of the veterans, Mr. Abbott, and I was hoping he would not be the one to teach art. His regular class was geography, and he was also responsible for physical education. After gym class one day the previous June, a boy complained that his wallet had been stolen from a bench in the locker room on the main floor. I was accused of the theft. Mr. Abbott believed the boy and, despite my protests, took me to the principal’s office, where both he and the principal tried to force me to admit my guilt. But I would not; I was innocent. My pockets were turned inside out and my desk was searched, but the wallet was not found. “I’ve dealt with these Japs before,” Mr. Abbott told the principal. “I’ll get it out of him yet.”

  While I was being threatened that a letter would be sent home to my father and that I would be expelled, an older boy came running into the office and said the wallet had been found in another boy’s locker. Mr. Abbott turned and left the office. No apology was made. The principal sent me back to my classroom. I never learned if the real thief was punished. I do know that for several days, in the schoolyard outside, the boys chanted, “Stealer! He’s a stealer!” when I came near.

  I recounted none of these events to Okuma-san. Nor did I tell him that the covers of war comics occasionally turned up in my desk drawer in the classroom. There was always a Japanese soldier depicted on these covers. A soldier with an ugly yellow face, large buck teeth, eyes squinting behind thick glasses. I ripped up the covers and learned not to react. If someone started a fight outside, I did not run away. I did have a few friends, boys my age, and though they did not join the taunting, they did not come to my defence. It was too risky for them.

  Occasionally, letters arrived from Mother. Keiko wrote, as well. She and Hiroshi were both in high school and doing well. Our camp school had not let us down. I had kept up my own marks, and was at the top of my class every year. When Mother wrote and asked about my grades, I reported back. But whenever a letter came from her, I fell into a dark mood and brooded for days. Our old lives were far away. I had not seen my first family since 1946. No one had the money to travel.

  Okuma-san was saving money to move us to Ontario the following year and had been promised work in Ottawa as a music teacher. Letters had been coming and going. The job was at a small college, teaching music to students of high school age. He would be giving both group and individual lessons. One of his conditions was that I would be a
ble take my high school studies at the same college. Of course, a piano would be available to him. Okuma-san had always kept up his practice on the plank keyboard, which had a permanent place against one wall of our chicken coop. After years of listening to Beethoven rapped out on ponderosa pine, I could tell almost as soon as he began which piece he was playing.

  One day in the early fall, when I came home from school scuffed from fighting, I walked into the chicken coop and saw a small refrigerator tucked in behind the door and plugged in overhead. Okuma-san had purchased it secondhand. Mr. Boyd had picked it up in his truck and had helped to carry it in and set it up.

  We had nothing to keep cold in the refrigerator that afternoon, except for one egg. We set the egg on a shelf by itself and laughed as if it were the funniest thing we’d ever seen. The refrigerator rattled and buzzed every time we opened the door. Okuma-san said he would buy cold food the next day, milk and butter and meat. He did not comment on my appearance, though it was obvious that I’d been in a fight. The two of us kept opening the door to look at the egg. During the night, I was wakened by the rattle and I heard Okuma-san in the kitchen, opening the fridge door again. I pictured the lone egg in that cool and empty space.

  Another afternoon, Okuma-san had a secondhand turntable to show me when I came in from school. He had bought it that day, along with a great find, a record of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto that someone no longer wanted, though it was almost new. Okuma-san prepared our supper and I set the table, and the two of us sat in silence while the music surrounded us. Okuma-san could not keep his fingers still. Every inch of space in the room was filled with glorious and noble sounds. Hands and fingers played real keys. The second movement was so beautiful it seemed to float into the walls of the chicken coop. When it was over, we listened again as if for the first time. Had we been seated in one of the grand concert halls of Europe, we could not have enjoyed it more.