The Little Exile

by Jeanette Arakawa

  “You belong in a zoo!” A raspy voice bellowed behind me.

  “Who let you out?” a strained squeaky voice added. They were getting closer. I walked faster. Then I could hear someone say, “She’s a Jap. My dad told me. She doesn’t belong here. She should go back to Japan!” Then it was, “Jap! Jap! Go back to Japan!”

  Now, that made me angry. What’s wrong with these idiots, I wondered. This never happened in the Polk district. What a strange place. Is this why Papa and Mama didn’t want me to walk home by myself?

  * * *

  Actually we had come very close to not being able to attend Lawton School. When Papa had brought us to Lawton to register, the principal, Miss Baker, stated that the school was overcrowded.

  “Your children will have to go to Jefferson School on 19th Avenue,” she had told my father.

  “But Lawton close to our home and Jefferson far away. Crossing 19th Avenue dangerous,” Papa said. “No make sense.”

  “I don’t make the rules, Mr. Mitsui.”

  “Who make rules?”

  “The superintendent.”

  “You ask him, then!”

  “I can. But I know what the answer is going to be.”

  “And what happens Brian and Marie? Against the law not to be in school.”

  “Alright. They can stay until we straighten this out,” said Miss Baker.

  But that first day at Lawton, Brian revealed his talent as a poet. As a class assignment he wrote a clever poem about Lawton. His teacher was so impressed she posted it in the main corridor, so everyone could read it. Including Miss Baker.

  When we got home that afternoon Papa said that Miss Baker had called to say that we could stay at Lawton. There was no doubt in Papa’s mind that Brian was responsible for our good fortune.

  “The principal must have thought that because I couldn’t speak English very well, that I was stupid; therefore, she no doubt thought that you children were also stupid. She was probably afraid that you two would require a lot of extra attention. Brian, you showed her!” Papa was proud of him.

  * * *

  I reached the top of the hill. I turned and looked down at them. Then I shouted, “I’m an American just like you! I’ve never been to Japan, so how could I go back?” Stupid, stupid kids. Don’t they know that Americans don’t all look alike and can look like me?

  They all stopped. Although I was very short, I towered over them from the top of the hill.

  “She can talk,” a dark-haired girl with a chalky white face whispered loudly.

  “I’m an American just like you. I was born here. I’ve never been to Japan, so how can I go back?” I shouted again.

  “So which Jap zoo did you say you were born in?” said a skinny boy with straggly brown hair. He laughed and made faces.

  “Yeah,” the rest chimed in, laughing.

  “I wasn’t born in any zoo. And I wasn’t born in Japan. I was born here. San Francisco. Do you understand? Do you need me to spell it for you?”

  “Yeah. Spell it!” said the skinny one.

  “S-a-n F-r-a-n-c-i-s-c-o. San Francisco!”

  “Did she spell it right?” he asked in a whisper to his friend with short blond hair that stuck up in the back.

  “I think so. Ask her to spell California.”

  Before the skinny one could ask, I shouted, “C-a-l-i-f-o-r-n-i-a, California!”

  Then a strange thing happened. Once I started spelling, all the hurtful words seemed to disappear from their feeble minds and were replaced by requests to spell words! Weird. They caught up with me and began spitting out words for me to spell. Fortunately, they were simple words, which weren’t difficult to spell. Actually, I could have misspelled them, but they probably wouldn’t have known the difference. They weren’t very smart. Once I started spelling they must have gotten confused and forgotten they were teasing me. Thank goodness for that!

  As we continued down Lawton Street, they gradually dropped away like clumps of dirt off a muddy shoe, and each went in their own direction toward home. After what seemed like forever, the last of the idiots, the girl with the chalky face, left. Her parting words were “How do you spell Lawton?” and she walked off before I could answer. I was finally alone and within sight of the cleaners. I ran down the hill the rest of the way home.

  “How was your walk home?” asked Mama.

  “Fine,” I said, “I made some new friends,” and quickly walked to the back to my room. I didn’t want to tell them what had happened. They would make me wait for Brian if I did.

  I climbed up to my bed and stretched out. I thought about what had happened and realized how lucky I was to have gotten home safely. It could have gotten ugly if I hadn’t started spelling. I could have gotten beaten up. I shook off the chill that suddenly surged through me.

  From now on, I would be smarter about walking home. I decided that I would never leave school alone. I would make certain to leave with the rest of the class. Jean Ireland, one of my classmates, lived on 25th Avenue, a block from the cleaners. I would walk home with her. She was about a head taller than me, and she commanded a lot of respect. Her father was also a high-ranking police officer.

  Fortunately, most of the other kids at Lawton were not like the “chanting idiots,” although a couple of the idiots continued asking me to spell things for a while after that. But that was better than having them tease me or beat me up. And from time to time one of them, Nancy, a rather quiet girl who always smelled like Ivory Snow, would walk with me when I wasn’t with Jean. We tried to be friends, but our friendship never extended beyond walking home from school together. Perhaps it was because she lived on the other side of the sand dunes.

  But Jean Ireland and I became best friends. We were inseparable. She was as tall as I was short and had curly brown hair with light-colored eyes that were set deep in her face, against my straight black hair, dark eyes, and flat face. Jean’s teeth were covered with wires and chunks of metal. When we dropped by Mrs. Bagley’s variety store across the street from the cleaners, she said that Jean and I were “a study in contrasts.”

  We tried to do everything together. Even the bus that took Brian and me across town to a Japanese-language school could not separate us. Jean persuaded her parents to let her learn Japanese along with Brian and me. Japanese school was held after regular school every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the Buddhist Temple in Japanese Town on the other side of the city. We didn’t learn much Japanese, but we had a great time on the long bus ride to and from school.

  When we weren’t at school of one kind or another, we were at Jean’s house. I never invited her to my house, because I was embarrassed about the makeshift nature of our living quarters behind the cleaners. Hers, particularly her room, was gorgeous. Pale violets bloomed in profusion on her curtains and bedspreads, and her soft-pink walls were lined with shelves decorated with dolls from every country in Europe.

  “Your room and house are really very beautiful, Jean. I wish that someday I could live in a house like this. But I know I can‘t.”

  Why not?”

  “Because all the houses around here have rayshulcubnants, and my father doesn’t like them.”

  “All the houses have what?

  “My father says he doesn’t like the rayshulcubnants. He says all these houses in the Sunset have them. So you must have them, too.”

  “What’s it called again? A Rachel Cubnant? That almost sounds like a person’s name. But I’ve never heard of it. Must be a fancy word for something simple. I’ll ask my mother when she gets home. She’ll know,” said Jean.

  Jean’s mother was a school teacher. She knew everything.

  * * *

  As a neighborhood, there wasn’t as much to do on Lawton Street as there was on Polk Street, since the playground didn’t have a recreation program and Lawton was very quiet, even with the shops. The cleaners was open almost every evening until seven, though most of the other stores were closed. By then, there was almost no traffic on Lawton. Though cl
osed, the shops stayed bright with their show windows and neon signs, and children often gathered on the well-lit street after dinner. Jean was never allowed to come out in the evening. Most of the kids who did went to St. Anne’s or were in junior high. Often, we played kick the can, a form of hide-and-go-seek in the street. Thankfully, neither the can nor we children ever got run over while playing kick the can.

  * * *

  Cinnamon toothpicks were a favorite treat of mine. The drugstore on the corner of Lawton and 25th sold tiny bottles of liquid cinnamon. They cost a dime and were just large enough to soak toothpicks. After a good soaking, I would lay them out on wax paper to dry. They became sucker sticks that would release their spicy cinnamon flavor when I placed them in my mouth.

  I shared my toothpicks with Joey, a skinny boy with dark brown hair and enormous eyes, who lived on 25th Avenue near Kirkham. He always wore short pants and shirts with “Peter Pan” collars.

  “I go to a private school and this is my uniform,” he said. He not only dressed differently, he had to follow very strict rules. For example, although he was nine years old, he wasn’t allowed to cross the street by himself.

  One day, Joey wanted some of my cinnamon sticks, but I had only a few left, and I wanted to keep them for myself.

  “I’m sorry, Joey, I’m all out,” I said. “I spent my allowance on something else, and I can’t buy any cinnamon right now. I’ll have some next week.”

  “But I want some now!” he said. “If you don’t have any, I guess I’ll just have to make my own.”

  “Good. Do that.”

  “How do you make them?”

  I told him what to do, and he sounded confident he could do it.

  But the drugstore was “off-limits” for him, because it was across the street. He had to be taken by his mother or nanny. I wondered if they would approve. I wondered what he would do.

  The following day shortly after I got home from school, I heard the screech of brakes and ran outside. I could see a crowd forming around a white pickup stopped by the corner. I ran over and pushed my way through the people clustered at the front of the truck. On the ground lay Joey! I suddenly felt very ill. I felt like vomiting. I ran from the crowd and managed to reach the gutter storm drain in time.

  Joey had dashed across the street by himself and got hit by the truck. And it was all my fault. If only I had shared my cinnamon sticks, it would never have happened. If only I had even offered to buy the cinnamon for him, it would never have happened.

  Fortunately, my selfishness didn’t kill him. It only broke his ankle. A few days later, I heard from the other kids on the block that Joey was home from the hospital. So I went to visit him. His nanny, a chubby lady in a black dress with white lace collar, opened the door. I had seen her before, when she brought clothes to our cleaning shop. That was how I had met Joey. She had brought him into the store with her.

  “I’m here to visit Joey,” I said.

  “You a friend of his?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a minute . . . I know you!” said the nanny as she looked down at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re the girl from the cleaners, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Can I see Joey? I’d like to see Joey.” A heavy feeling of sadness started to fill my entire body, bringing tears to the edge of my eyes.

  The nanny’s glare began to soften.

  “Okay, you can come in, but only for a couple of minutes. He’s been injured, you know. He can’t play. You can only talk to him.” She led me down the hall to his room.

  I had never been in a boy’s room before. I was immediately struck by the oily sweetness that greeted me as I entered. The smell of a broken ankle, I thought. I was further surprised by the gloom of Joey’s room, compared to the cheery brightness of Jean’s room. Dolls and flowers were replaced by heavily framed pictures of clowns on a dark wallpaper and dark brown furniture. Joey lay propped up in his bed reading. There was an outline of a box under the brown covers that matched his wallpaper. His injured ankle lay under that, I thought. Poor Joey. Because of me, he has to endure the pain of a broken ankle and its accompanying smell in this dark, gloomy room.

  “I’m really sorry, Joey,” I said. “It’s a little late, but I brought you some cinnamon sticks.”

  “Wow. Thanks, Marie,” he said, as he pulled himself upright. He took them and tucked them under his pillow with a grin.

  “Hey, do you want to see my ankle?” he said as he began to throw off his blanket.

  “No, no. It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you outside when you’re well.”

  But I never saw him again. Kids said he moved away.

  CHAPTER 4

  “God Bless America”

  KATE SMITH

  As far back as I could remember, Mama’s lap was my seat in the car whenever we traveled together as a family. But as time wore on, it was getting increasingly uncomfortable. For me as well as Mama. Her lap wasn’t as soft as it used to be, and she complained that I made her legs go numb. I particularly dreaded the long trips to Stockton when we visited Grandma and Grandpa. We made the three-hour trip about four or five times a year.

  Our sedan delivery had a bench seat only in the front, and it had to accommodate all four of us. Papa in the driver’s seat, Brian in the middle straddling the gear shift post, and Mama on the end with me perched high up on her lap. The area in the back was flat with a rod running above it near the ceiling. That was Papa’s delivery rack. During the day, when he wasn’t out on deliveries, our car was parked in front of the store. At night, he parked at the Mobil gas station on the corner of Lawton and 25th Avenue. It was against the law to leave a car parked at the curb at night.

  One day I returned home from school to see a beautiful gray car parked in front of the cleaners, instead of our green Chevrolet. Papa’s out, I thought.

  “Tadaima, kaerimashita,” I shouted as I walked into the cleaners. That meant “I’m home” in Japanese.

  “Okaeri,” was the response. That meant “Welcome home.” It was Papa’s voice. Papa’s home?

  “Someone’s parked in your space, Papa,” I said as I walked in.

  “That’s our car,” Papa replied.

  “No, Papa, there’s a gray Dodge sedan out there.”

  Papa appeared from the back. He had a large grin on his face.

  “I just bought it.”

  “That car is ours? What happened to our sedan delivery?”

  “I traded it in.”

  “It’s really ours? That beautiful car with two rows of seats is ours? But, how will you make your deliveries?”

  He took my hand and led me outside to the car. We stood and looked at it for a moment. Its sleek silvery body was one sloping unbroken line from the windshield to the rear fender. It looked like a torpedo that could go as fast as the wind. Papa finally stepped up to it and opened the rear door.

  “See the bar that goes to the other side?” he said pointing to the rod that was fastened on either side just above the doors. “That’s where the clothes go. And it’s removable, so you won’t bump your head on it when you sit back here.”

  “I’ll have my very own place to sit! Thank you, thank you, Papa!” I said and hugged him.

  * * *

  One chilly Friday evening we closed our dry cleaning shop early. Business was good, so we were going clothes shopping for Brian and me. A new jacket for Brian and a coat for me.

  Beams of light sliced through the clear night sky as we drove across town. Soon we neared the origin of the light. We had been following their beckoning in our car, since we spotted the hide-and-go-seek lights a few blocks earlier.

  “There it is, on the right!” I shouted when I spotted the monster searchlights. The huge, burning, mirrored beacons made the surrounding area in front of the Sears Roebuck department store bright as day. The lights also illuminated a group of ragtag men who marched in a tight circle in front of the store. They wore zippered jackets and wrinkled, uncreased pants.


  “UNfair! UNfair! Sears Roebuck and Company is UNfair!” they chanted, holding signs that echoed their message. People scurried in and out of the store trying to avoid the picketers, paying them little attention. The spectacle of all the people, the chanting, and the brilliant lights was exciting. At the same time, I felt afraid.

  “What’s happening, Papa?” I asked.

  “The sign carriers are pickets and they’re saying that Sears Roebuck isn’t paying them enough. The searchlights are Sears Roebuck’s way of announcing they are opening a new store.”

  “Something like the Batman Bat-signal . . .” Brian whispered in my ear. “Instead of the Gotham police commissioner calling for Batman, Sears is calling for customers.”

  “I know!” I whispered back in his face.

  “Just stay close to me, Marie,” Papa continued. “And don’t look at the pickets. We’re going in.”

  I clutched his hand and could feel his pants brush against my leg as we walked. I looked down at a jumble of feet going every which way. I didn’t know where to go, but it didn’t matter. I felt safe glued to Papa. He decided. Brian and Mama were somewhere behind us.

  I was relieved to finally enter the store and leave the confusion behind. I looked up from the ground and into a huge brightly lit store with rows of showcases that glittered far into the distance. Sears Roebuck and Co. occupied an entire city block.

  Now, how were we going to find the clothing section, I wondered. Before I could ask, Papa suddenly began walking briskly toward a wall, dragging me behind him. He had located the elevators and the store directory as well.

  Brian ran past us to the directory. When we caught up, he announced proudly, “The children’s department is on the fourth floor.” We boarded the waiting elevator and gave the elevator operator our floor. When the door opened at the fourth floor my eyes feasted on a room with racks and racks of dresses, blouses, skirts, and coats as far as the eye could see. Even as a dry cleaner’s daughter, I had never seen so much clothing in one place before. Every color in a jumbo box of crayolas could be found on those racks. I made a dash for the coats. The beige one with the reversible dark brown velvet hood immediately caught my eye. It was love at first sight!