The Little Exile

by Jeanette Arakawa

  Since Maria and Theresa shared their secret passages, they, of course, wanted me to show them mine. But it didn’t work at my house, because if we went in through the front door of the store and out the back, we would end up trapped in our backyard. The fence was well guarded by petunias, stock, and morning glory.

  Then one day, I had a great idea! Beverly’s grandmother lived in the apartment house a couple of doors up the street. I played there often. I would often go with Beverly to visit her, because Grandma Jensen was sick with goldstones. I wasn’t sure what that meant. But I knew it was serious.

  My plan was to enter her building through the service alley, go up the back stairs, through her apartment, and come out front. That would work! I told Maria and Theresa my great plan. I hadn’t had a chance to discuss it with Beverly. But I was sure she wouldn’t mind, because we were best friends.

  Theresa came over one evening after dinner. Her black sausage curls were tied with ribbons and stayed rigid while she bounced like a spring as she ran toward me. I was with Red and Irene. They were brother and sister like Brian and me, except they were twins. Red had bright orange hair that was always combed neatly to one side, while Irene had short straight brown hair held away from her face with a small barrette. Brian had a look about him that seemed to say, “I’m smart.”

  “The look of intelligence,” was the way Mr. Goldberg described it.

  We had planned a game of hide-and-go-seek and were waiting for Brian. He had gone to get his friend David.

  “I wanted you to see my Shirley Temple doll!” Theresa said. Her broad smile glistened white against her dark skin. She held her doll out to me. It was a tall, rigid stand-up doll with flexible arms and legs and eyes that rolled shut when she lay down. Silky, yellow curls circled her dimpled smiling face. She was dressed in a thin, blue, ruffled dress and white lacedtrimmed socks with buttoned Mary Janes.

  “She’s beautiful!” I said as I took the doll from her. “Thank you for bringing her over so I could see her!”

  It was the first time I had seen Theresa on my street, although I had been over to her house many times.

  “Wanna play hide-and-go-seek with us?” I asked.

  “No, I better not. My mother said that I could come over to show you my new doll. Then I’m supposed to go home.”

  But I felt a need to do something for her to repay her for coming all the way over to share her doll . . .

  “Theresa!” I said. “Would you like to see my secret passage? It’ll only take a minute!”

  “Are we going through your cleaners? I thought that didn’t work,” said Theresa.

  “Don’t you remember? My friend Beverly Jensen’s grandmother’s apartment?”

  “Oh, yeah. Is that far?

  “We’re standing right in front of it!”

  “What about hide-and-go-seek?” Red asked.

  I had forgotten all about that. “You can just play without me. Theresa and I are going to my secret passage.”

  “I don’t think you should do that,” said Red. “It’s not right.”

  What’s not right about it, I thought. Beverly’s my best friend and I’m over there all the time.

  “He’s mad, because I won’t let him come with us,” I said to Theresa as I glared at Red.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s just jealous. Let’s go.”

  I opened the door to the service alley and led Theresa down the dark narrow passage past the garbage cans. Then we climbed up the zigzag stairs to Grandma Jensen’s kitchen door. It was unlocked. As we entered the empty, lightless kitchen, I felt a strange sense of relief. Grandma Jensen is out, I thought. Good. We continued through the apartment with the front door as our goal. I pushed through the swinging door into the living room. And there on the sofa lay Grandma Jensen, pale with sunken cheeks and half-closed eyes, encircled by Beverly and her parents! They all looked up at us with wide eyes and gaping mouths. No one said a word.

  Everything got a little blurry for a moment. Maybe I was becoming blurry to them as well, and maybe I would disappear, like the Shadow, I thought. But I wasn’t disappearing. Even through the blurriness I could still see those eyes fixed on me. Then I did the only thing I could do. Without saying a word, I grabbed Theresa’s arm and ran out the front door.

  When we got outside, Brian stood waiting for us, below the marble stairs on the sidewalk, surrounded by the others.

  “Boy, are you in trouble!” he said. “I’m telling!”

  Soon after that, Grandma Jensen died, and Beverly and her family moved away.

  * * *

  We were told that there was once a gas station on the empty corner lot on Lawton Street next to our new store. But all that remained were chunks of concrete scattered about, looking like toppled headstones in a messy cemetery. On the other side of the new store and across the street were a variety of shops. But there were no doughnut-cafes or upholsterers. Two blocks up the street was a huge sandbox with slides and swings without a clubhouse, pretending to be a playground. Lawton, the school we would be attending, was two blocks beyond that. Between the store and the playground lay sand dunes, like beaches that got lost on their way to the ocean. When the wind blew, loose sand escaped the embrace of the sidewalks and swirled onto the street.

  Papa’s store was a cavernous white room with the fresh smell of new paint and linoleum. There were show windows in the front and regular kitchen windows in the back. In the windowless area between, light streamed in through windows in the ceiling. The rear of the store narrowed a bit to accommodate storage rooms and the bathroom.

  The walls chattered with our footsteps as we walked the length of the building to the door leading outside. There lay sand that might have stretched out to the ocean, had it not been interrupted by a wooden fence, houses, and streets. Back inside, Papa’s eyes sparkled as they scanned the room. But I could not think of anything nice to say about the store. Mama and Brian were also quiet. Then I noticed the walls in the middle of the room were studded with a series of electrical outlets. There were ten of them placed about five feet apart on each side. I pointed to them.

  “Why are there so many?”

  “This was designed to be a beauty shop,” Papa said. He seemed pleased I’d asked. “That’s also why the store’s so deep. So there would be room for many chairs. But because it’s so big, I can make this into a cleaning shop and a place for us to live.” He made a wide circle with his arms. He paused as his eyes seemed to measure the room from corner to corner.

  “The kitchen will extend to here. And this is where our bedrooms will be, between the store and the kitchen.” he paced out the space with even strides. “Your bedroom,” he said looking at Brian and me, “will be to the left. We’ll build a wall here in the middle and Mama and I will sleep over there. What do you think?”

  We’re going to live back here? We lived in an apartment on Polk Street. It had the warmth of wood and windows and wallpaper. Here, I thought, the blank walls and high ceiling make me feel like I’m standing in the bottom of a deep well. It feels so cold.

  Then Brian asked, “Why don’t we just live somewhere else?”

  “Yes. Why not one of the houses around here?” I added.

  Papa’s face quickly tightened from a smile to a scowl that made the veins in his forehead bulge. Then words just exploded from his mouth.

  “The real estate man said that houses in this neighborhood have racial covenants!”

  “They have ‘what’?” Brian asked. I didn’t understand the words Papa spoke, but the message was clear enough to me. Those houses were not for us. But Brian’s desire to hear exactly what Papa said seemed to make him oblivious to the storm that was raging inside Papa. He glared at Brian. Now, fire seemed to shoot from his eyes. The storm could not be contained.

  “The houses have racial covenants!” his voice thundered. “That means we can‘t live in a house in this neighborhood!”

  The room became filled with his loud words as they crashed against th
e walls and floors and ceiling and bounced and bounced until the sound died. No one dared say a word. Not even Brian. Then Papa continued, barely a whisper.

  “That’s enough. We have to live here. That’s all there is to it. We’re just going to have to do the best we can.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Brian. “But is there really enough space for two beds and desks in our room?”

  “You’ll get bunk beds,” said Papa in a soft voice without looking at Brian. “Marie will get the top, because you’re a restless sleeper and you’ll probably fall off!”

  I turned away from Brian, so he wouldn’t see that I was pleased. I knew he would have liked the top. I felt so lucky I would get the best bed.

  * * *

  In December, the store was complete. The part I liked best was the customer area. It was beautiful. There was the show window. It was an alcove that started about two feet above the floor. On the window an electric neon sign, twisted glass tubing containing colored gas, formed the words “Safe Cleaners.” Stand-up advertisement posters were placed on the alcove, but there was room for me to sit in the sun or watch the rain. A waiting customer could also sit there, if the two chairs in the area next to the counter were occupied. The counter was a soft pink with a gleaming white top. It was flush with the wall on one end and nicely rounded at the opening on the other. A narrow strip of chrome traced a path about four inches below the top. It was matched by the same trim on the partition behind it, which separated the customer area from the work area in the back. But there was another partition four feet from the opening, which blocked the view of the work area behind it. It also blocked the view of customers entering the store. Fortunately, when customers stepped on the mat at the entrance, a bell rang in the back announcing their arrival.

  Papa’s pride and joy, the pressing machine at which he was so skilled, dominated the work area. I often sat on the floor just to watch him as he smoothed a pant leg and positioned it perfectly on the cloth-covered anvil and pressed the vacuum pedal with his left foot to hold it in place. Then he would pull down the matching pressing iron using his right leg on the broad pedal and his right arm on the iron handle. With his left hand he would smooth any ripples the vacuum may have created. Then, barely escaping the closing jaw of the descending iron, his hand would slip away. Just as the iron met the anvil, he would deftly slide his left foot to the steam pedal below and his index finger to the steam lever above, and the two bursts of steam collided on the pant leg. Sometimes he would stand on the pressing iron pedal and gently bounce up and down. Then he would step off and raise the iron. It was like watching an elegant dance.

  “The mark of a well-dressed man is the sharpness of his creases. A good presser can always press on the original crease. Some pressers create new ones, making double creases. “I never make double creases,” he said. I was very proud of Papa.

  Papa was also an actor and loved to sing. Although I had never seen him in a play, he was active in a Japanese theater group. My uncle Jiro was a very famous actor in Japan, so acting was in Papa’s blood. At least that was what Papa always said. Uncle Jiro came to the U.S. for a theater tour Papa had arranged for him about the time Brian was due to be born. Actually, Papa was on tour with Uncle Jiro when Brian was born. I knew this, because Mama mentioned it whenever she argued with Papa.

  Once Papa brought home a Japanese stage make-up kit to practice on Mama. He painted her face white and lined her eyes with black and red makeup. Then he had her press her upper and lower lips on the inner surface of a bowl covered with a brilliant red substance.

  “That’s how lipstick is applied by Japanese theater people,” Papa said. When Papa finished, Mama looked pretty grotesque.

  “You’re not supposed to look at her close-up,” he said. “Pretend she’s on stage. You have to view her from a distance.” I couldn’t get far enough away to appreciate the effect.

  Papa had also been a part time Japanese-language announcer for the San Francisco radio station KPO before he married Mama. He worked at many other jobs as well after his arrival in the U.S. in 1917.

  That was also the year Mama made the journey across the Pacific alone to the U.S., but they didn’t know each other at the time. She was twelve and Papa was sixteen. Mama had left Osaka, Japan, to join her parents in Stockton, California, after a seven-year separation. Her father had come to the U.S. shortly after she was born. When she was five, her mother left with a promise to send for her as soon as she was settled. When at last they were reunited seven years later, Mama was given the responsibility of babysitting her toddler brother.

  Papa had come from Hiroshima, Japan, as a sixteen-year-old to work at a chicken ranch in Sebastapol, just north of San Francisco, in order to fulfill his father’s financial obligation.

  After completing the contract, he followed the job opportunity road wherever it took him. He joined a railroad gang repairing track, and eventually settled in Alaska to can salmon. The trail then led him back to California to settle in San Francisco. There he bussed dishes in a restaurant until he found work in a laundry and dry cleaning shop. Here he learned a trade. He eventually opened his own dry cleaning shop. And it was then he married Mama. He was twenty-seven and she was twenty-three. That was June 29, 1929, four months before the stock market crashed, plunging the nation into the Great Depression.

  * * *

  Mama finished silks in the back of the store beyond the pressing machine. Most of the gross pressing was done by Papa, and she would smooth out wrinkles around collars and sleeves with the steam iron. Mama also waited on customers and did minor repairs and alterations. In her spare time she sewed our clothes. She could draft patterns from clothes brought in by customers. If I saw a dress I liked, she could make one just like it. But that also meant she could make several dresses in the same style with different fabrics. I had many of those.

  Behind the work area, there was a cozy spot for company. A hot plate to boil water for tea sat on a cabinet against the left wall, although Papa’s friends mostly drank beer or sake when they came to visit. A sofa against a wall that separated the work area from the bedrooms formed an angle with an armchair. A coffee table was nestled in the crook of the angle. To the left of the sofa, there was a door that led to our bedrooms and kitchen.

  When we first moved, it seemed there was no floor space for our beloved free-standing Gilfillan radio, and we thought it would not make it to our new home. But Papa thought to build a cabinet over some equipment, creating a perch for it. No floor space required. He was so smart!

  The beautiful brown mahogany radio, with its rounded corners and dial that glowed green, filled our space with its magical sounds.

  The deep tones from the large speaker made the “I Love a Mystery” theme song soothingly scary and the roar of the plane that heralded “Captain Midnight” sounded like it would come crashing into our home. We could also get all the stations in the world, including Japan. My parents could listen to the radio in Japanese. The broadcast from Japan had the rhythm of the ebb and flow of waves as it traveled the distance from halfway around the world. I guessed that was why it was called “short wave.”

  * * *

  Brian and I transferred from Spring Valley in our old neighborhood to Lawton School as soon as we moved in December of 1940. Lawton was newer than Spring Valley and had “bungalows” for some of its grades. These were temporary buildings that sat on the playground until they could add onto the main building. My class was in a bungalow. Brian’s was in the main building.

  He was in fifth grade and I was only in third, so we weren’t dismissed at the same time. His school day was forty-five minutes longer than mine. Although it hadn’t been a problem at Spring Valley, when we started at Lawton, Papa and Mama made me walk with Brian to school and wait for him, so we could walk home together. I pounded erasers and cleaned the blackboard for Miss O’Brien, my teacher, until Brian was dismissed.

  After a few days, I decided I would ask permission to walk home by myself.


  “Why do I have to wait for Brian after school? It’s not as though I’d get lost walking the four blocks straight down Lawton.”

  “Okay. Why don’t we see if that works,” Papa said to Mama. Then he turned to me. “Just be sure you come straight home. And if you want to go somewhere to play, come home first and let us know.”

  “Okay!” I said.

  After school the next day, as the rest of the class was leaving, I waited to speak to Miss O’Brien to tell her I wouldn’t have to wait for my brother anymore.

  “Wonderful, Marie. Just be sure you go straight home.”

  “I will,” I said and rushed into the cloakroom to gather my things. It was empty. I was the last one out. That’s okay, I thought. It isn’t as though I needed someone to show me how to get home.

  I was feeling pretty good about my new-found independence and was trudging up the steep hill that led away from the school, when I heard what sounded like chanting.

  “Monkey! Monkey! You look like a monkey!”

  I looked around and realized there was no one but me and the chanters. They were chanting at me! They were a group of six kids. I turned quickly and continued walking up the hill. I didn’t say anything, but walked faster.

  “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” I thought. Besides, I know what I look like, and I know what monkeys look like. I definitely don’t look like a monkey. Stupid kids.