The Little Exile

by Jeanette Arakawa

  When I got home, I told Mama about my visit with Mrs. Pringle and her offer.

  “The sofa is fine just the way it is,” Mama said, “And I don’t want you going in the back of their store like that anymore.”

  “Why not? Mrs. Pringle invited me . . .”

  “It’s just not a place for little girls.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just do what I say!”

  * * *

  The rings at Helen Wills Playground were my favorite. There was a ramp for little people like me who couldn’t reach them from the ground. I would make my way around the circle of rings, which dangled like limp branches on a metal tree. My goal was to be able to skip the closest ring and lunge for the second one.

  Although I rubbed tan bark on my hands, I developed blisters, which soon became hard yellow ridges on my palms at the roots of my fingers. I was proud of them. That’s how you could tell who played on the rings. I liked to compare mine with Beverly’s.

  On Saturday mornings at Helen Wills, there was an amateur hour contest at the clubhouse, and kids of all ages entered. Beverly played her violin, and I sang, though not together. I often forgot the words and had to make them up as I went along. I guess that’s what Beverly meant when she said I needed to practice more. But I had a lot of fun and a lot of fans. Since the one who got the most applause won, I won often. The playground director would pin a short piece of colored satin ribbon on my dress with a tiny brass safety pin.

  * * *

  Mr. Goldberg, a short, stout, Jewish man from Russia with reddish hair combed straight back, ran the coffee shop next door to our cleaners. He was also a fan of mine. He had no children and no family except for a sister who lived far away. He had large, droopy brown eyes on a sad face, which brightened whenever he saw me at the door.

  One foggy Monday morning in July, I went to watch the doughnut machine.

  “Good morning, Marie,” he said as I entered his shop.

  “Good morning, Mr. Goldberg. Do you notice something different about me today?” I asked as I climbed up on the stool.

  “Umm. Let me see now. New sweater?”

  “No.”

  “New shoes?” he asked peering over the counter and down at my feet.

  “No. I’ll give you a hint. It’s not new clothes.”

  “Hmm. Is that a new blue ribbon that is shining so brightly I can hardly see?” He said shielding his eyes with his arm.

  “Yes! You’re so . . . good!”

  “Observant?”

  “So observant!”

  “You won again at the playground amateur hour! Maybe, one day you can sing on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you sing a Japanese song again?”

  “This time I sang a song Stella taught me. I’m sure you know it. It’s on the radio all the time. ‘El Rancho Grande.’”

  “It’s one of my favorites. Are you going to sing it for me?”

  “Well, not right now. I’m anxious to watch the doughnuts.”

  “Okay.”

  The doughnut machine occupied most of the show-window area and could be viewed from the outside.

  “I feel so . . . good to be sitting inside,” I said looking at the little boy standing on the other side of the window with his mother.

  “Privileged?”

  “Yes.”

  The oil was hot and ready to go. He pressed some buttons and pulled some levers, and the chugging and churning started. A thick blob began oozing out of the doughnut shaper thing and finally dropped a well-formed blob into the hot oil. It sizzled as it fell to the bottom of the vat. Then it slowly rose to the top, brown and crisp, releasing its delicious aroma. Every so often a new blob fell into the oil and up rose a beautifully formed doughnut.

  “Mr. Goldberg! One doughnut done. Two doughnuts done . . . ,” I said, and continued until he came over and scooped them out with a wire basket.

  “I wish I could give you free samples, but business is bad . . .” The sadness returned to his face. “We have to wait until business gets better.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Goldberg. I don’t need a sample. It was a priblege just watching them cook.”

  I was there when the utility company turned off Mr. Goldberg’s electricity because he couldn’t pay his bill. Mr. Goldberg watched as the electricity man climbed up the pole and did something. His doughnut machine stopped and his lights went out.

  After the man left, Mr. Goldberg took a ladder outside and leaned it against the pole. Still in his apron, he climbed up the ladder and stretched for the foot rests mounted barely within his reach and pulled and shinnied his short, stout body up the pole. He did something up by the wires and the lights went back on in the store and the doughnut machine began to chug.

  “Without electricity I can’t run my restaurant and I won’t be able to pay my bills,” he said. “Including the electricity bill.”

  * * *

  When I was five and a half, I started kindergarten at Spring Valley School on Jackson Street. Papa took me the first day. The teacher, Miss Czenchowski, looked at my name, Shizuye, on my birth certificate and said that it was too difficult to pronounce.

  “She’ll have an easier time in school if her friends don’t have to struggle with her name,” she said. “I think you should give her an English name.”

  Mary Pickford was one of Papa’s favorite actresses, so he said, “Mary is good name.” My father had a heavy Japanese accent. The teacher thought he said “Marie.” And that’s what she wrote on my records. That’s how I came to be called “Marie.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “When You Wish Upon a Star”

  JIMINY CRICKET, FROM PINOCCHIO

  I loved going to the movies. Occasionally we went as a family and it was then we saw pictures like Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Wizard of Oz. My father also took us to see another kind of movie. The one I remember most clearly was The Eagle and the Hawk. It was playing at the Temple Theater on Fillmore Street. It was named after Shirley Temple. But the movie turned out not to be about birds or anything cute like Shirley Temple. It was about war and a crazy man. Halfway through, I insisted on going home because the movie was too scary. I made such a fuss, the usher shined his flashlight in my face and told me to be quiet. Papa had no choice but to take us home. This made him very angry, and Papa didn’t take us to the movies for a long time after that.

  Those were special movies. The ones we saw as a family. They were more expensive, and we saw them at night. On Saturdays, Brian and I went to matinees by ourselves. Mama would give us each a dime from the cash register, and we would spend the afternoon at the Alhambra Theater, three blocks down Polk Street. For ten cents, we were treated to the news, cartoons, two features and a serial—and more.

  When I stepped into the lobby of the theater, it was as though I had entered a different world. Ticket takers and ushers were dressed in dark red uniforms and hats trimmed with gold string and brass buttons, much like the costume the organ grinder’s monkey wore. They looked as silly as the monkey. At the same time, they looked important. The ticket taker welcomed me as he tore my ticket in half and motioned me in. I stepped onto the beautiful maroon-patterned carpet with my shoes on. Our family friends, the Nakatas, had floors that weren’t nearly as nice, and they made us all—Papa and Mama included—remove our shoes before setting foot in their house. So I felt a little guilty walking on the Alhambra’s carpet. My feet sank deep into what felt like a bed of marshmallows as I moved uphill toward the auditorium. The walls soared up to a place I couldn’t see without throwing my head way back. The ceiling was covered with windows that allowed sunlight to pour down on me. The lower part of the walls was covered with beautiful designs and decorated with posters of coming attractions. These were placed in deep, wide, gold frames with swirls like so much gold whipped cream. That was just the lobby.

  The auditorium was even more wonderful. The plush carpet now sloped downhill into the en
ormous half-darkened room. If we were late and the room was in total darkness, the usher lit a path for us with his flashlight. When I unfolded a seat, I sank into the soft, padded, mohair seats that matched the maroon carpet. Even sitting on the edge of the thick spring-filled folded seat was comfortable. I often did that when a large person sat in front of me. The stage was draped in heavy maroon velvet and was outlined with an arch of fancy gold shapes. Overhead were millions of pieces of colored glass glued together like a kaleidoscope in a giant upside-down cup. There were fake sitting areas, too small for anyone to sit, along the wall covered in wallpaper speckled with gold designs.

  I could raise my voice at Brian in the theater, but the sound would be sucked out of the air by some mysterious force. The voices of other children, shouting as they entered the theater, were also no more than muffled mumbles.

  At exactly one o’clock, the theater lights dimmed. The thick curtains were suddenly covered by a picture projected on its folds. Then they slowly parted, and the wavy image was transformed into a perfect, flat picture. It was “coming attractions,” a preview of next week’s features.

  Then—“Tan-ta-ra-ran . . . ta-ta-ta-ta-ran . . .” The familiar sound of the musical theme introduced the newsreel.

  “This is Movietone news . . . ,” a man announced in a rather frantic voice. He always sounded like he was on the edge of tears. Every week there was ordinary news, and then there was news of the war in Europe. We saw pictures of small children and their mothers with head scarves tied under their chins framing thin faces with large frightened eyes waiting to board trains. German soldiers kick-marched across the screen, accompanied by reports that they were invading different countries in Europe. I was glad I was safe in a theater and not there.

  A short feature of some sort and a cartoon like “Porky Pig” followed that. The main feature was next and finally the serial, my favorite. There were different feature films and cartoons every week, but the serial was always the same. They were short, action-packed episodes about a superhero.

  “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows . . . he, he, he, ha, Ha, HA!”

  The Shadow was my very favorite. He was an enemy of evil. In everyday life, he was Lamont Cranston. When he was a young man living in the Orient, he had acquired the ability to cloud people’s minds so they couldn’t see him. I felt a connection with him, because my parents were also from the Orient. The Shadow was in constant pursuit of the Black Tiger, also invisible. He spoke through the head of a shiny black cat surrounded by a wispy mist and with eyes that flashed green with each word he spoke. Every episode would end with the Shadow about to be captured or killed. I could hardly wait from one Saturday to the next to see how the Shadow would get out of his predicaments. They were cliffhangers.

  Brian and I also listened to cliffhangers on the radio every weekday evening at six. The deep, round tone of an enormous bell sounded, followed by the roar of a diving plane. “Captain Midnight . . .” shouted the announcer. “Brought to you by Ovaltine . . .”

  Captain Midnight was all about an airplane pilot and his sidekick, Chuck Ramsey, who were in endless pursuit of the evil Ivan Shark.

  Brian and I had a collection of decoder badges, rings, and mugs, all through the courtesy of Ovaltine. We carefully removed the freshness-seal foil from new cans of Ovaltine and sent them along with nickels for a decoder ring, or whatever else they were selling. At the end of each episode the announcer read us a scramble of letters and numbers. It was a message in secret code. This we deciphered with our decoder. It was hints about what lay ahead for our heroes in the next episode.

  Sometimes we dropped by the playground on our way home from the movies. One such afternoon, Brian decided he wanted to practice a little handball. Brian’s pocket always bulged with the tennis ball he kept stuffed in it. When his friends came over, he greeted them by squeezing the bottom of his pocket so the tennis ball squirted out. He would snatch it in midair.

  “Wanna play catch?’ he’d ask.

  “Not in the store,” Mama would say.

  At Helen Wills Playground there was a wall that kept the hill above it from sliding into the tennis court. On this wall, about the level of Brian’s chest, there was a broad white line. Brian’s goal was to hit his tennis ball above the line with his open hand. He had to keep the ball in motion when it bounced back. When he played with his friends, they would take turns hitting the ball. Most often, he played against David.

  “Haven’t been able to beat David, huh? Is that why you want to go in?” I asked.

  “You wanna go in or not?” he asked. “If you don’t, you can just go home by yourself. Mrs. Pringle can help you cross.” I shouldn’t have made the remark about David. Actually, since I had just learned to jump to the second ring, I wanted to see if I could still do it.

  “I want to go in,” I said.

  “Okay, then. Let’s go,” said Brian.

  All too soon the sun was dropping behind the clubhouse.

  “It’s getting dark. Take one more turn. Then we have to go,” Brian said looking up at me as I swung past him. “Mama will be worried if we aren’t home soon.”

  The sand crackled under our feet as we hurried down the sandy stone steps into the short tunnel to the exit of the playground. It was always dark and damp in the passage to the door and had the sweet smell of wet dirt. Our footsteps and voices echoed on the concrete that surrounded us. I loved this part of the playground. I imagined I was leaving a castle. When we reached the door, Brian slipped his hand through the metal handle and pressed his thumb on the latch. He tugged at the heavy wooden door made of thick planks. Its hinges creaked and the bottom scraped the sandy concrete.

  As the door opened, bright daylight bounced off the sidewalk flooding the “castle.” I closed my eyes against the brilliance. I gradually opened them a slit at a time. When they adjusted, I was surprised to see a girl, around twelve or maybe even sixteen years old, next to a car parked at the sidewalk. Her dark wavy hair dripped water on her otherwise dry wrinkled plaid shirt and overalls. She had a large spoon in her hand. The car door was open and there was a dented pail, bruised with rust, next to it on the ground.

  “Let’s see what she’s doing,” I said.

  “It’s late, Marie, I think we should head home.”

  “I just wanna see what she’s doing,” I insisted.

  “Okay. But just for a minute.”

  I walked over, squatted next to her, and peered into the water-filled bucket. She used her elbow to gently move my face, so she could reach into the water. She came up with slimy, slithering jellyfish that kept gliding over her spoon.

  “What d’ya gonna do with that?” I asked.

  “Just watch,” she said. After another unsuccessful attempt to scoop up the slippery creatures, she tipped the bucket so that most of the water escaped. Then she carefully poured the drained jellyfish onto the seat of the car! The furry mohair upholstery slurped the remaining water like a thirsty sponge. Sandy mounds of live jellyfish remained. I was amazed at how calmly and deliberately she did it. Like placing a cushion on the seat. It was as though she thought there was nothing wrong with what she was doing.

  But it was definitely wrong. We’d heard about kids getting into mischief at the playground but had never seen it ourselves. And Brian and I soon discovered that we were wrong just being there. The playground director happened by at just the right moment. Or wrong moment. It was her car and she thought we were helping the girl!

  Papa thought the worst.

  “You’ve ruined the director’s car seat and disgraced the family!” he said.

  “But we were just watching,” I said.

  “You should have tried to stop her or told someone what was going on!” Papa said, glaring at Brian.

  “Well, I tried to make Marie go, but she wouldn’t listen!” Brian said.

  “You’re her older brother. It was your responsibility!” I had never seen Papa so an
gry.

  CHAPTER 3

  “The Way You Look Tonight”

  THEME FROM MR. AND MRS. NORTH

  Soon after the jellyfish incident my parents announced we were moving. That was in the summer of 1940. I was almost eight and Brian, almost ten. My best friend Beverly Jensen had moved earlier when her parents bought a house in Millbrae. I had asked Mama then what “moving” meant, because I couldn’t understand. How is that done, I had wondered. If we were to move, how could the Murphy bed, stuck on the dark, shiny, revolving door, and the beige walls with tiny yellow and blue flowers move with us? Would our upstairs bedroom that looked out onto the store move with us? And my favorite front door. And the streetcars. How would we be able to move them? What about my friends?

  “Only the furniture and things like that can be moved,” Mama had said. How awful that must be, I thought. Poor Beverly. I watched as the Jensens’ shelves were stripped bare and curtains came down and boxes were packed. Then they were loaded along with tables and chairs into a large truck until all that was left was naked rooms.

  “I wish we could take you with us,” Beverly sobbed as she climbed into her packed car after the moving van had left. Tears streaming down her face, she waved to me. I hope it never happens to me, I had thought. But, now it was happening to me. And I was older now, so it was easier for me to understand what could and could not be moved. I still cried when I thought about it.

  * * *

  It was the fall of 1940. Papa found a place on Lawton Street in the Sunset district and took all of us to see it. I guess he thought it would be easier for us to move if we were involved in the decision. The empty store was located near the corner of a one-block shopping area in the middle of a quiet neighborhood of houses. They were all the same size and stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, with large windows that stared out at the street. Unlike the Polk district, there were no apartments or flats.

  All my friends in the Polk district had lived in apartments. We would play “secret passage.” From Maria’s apartment on the third floor, we would skip down the stairs that zigzagged the back to a small yard. Dodging sheets, shirts, and socks flapping on clotheslines, we climbed the fences that had ledges we could walk on. We followed the fence trail to Theresa’s apartment that faced the next street. From there we would drop into her yard, go up her zigzag back stairs to her apartment on the top floor. We’d enter her kitchen and stop for a snack her mother prepared for us. Then it was out her front door, down the stairs, and out to the street. It was my “long-cut,” home.