The Little Exile

by Jeanette Arakawa

  “Hey, I can come back later. You haven’t even gotten up yet. You probably have things to do.” If she only knew, I thought to myself. Then she said, “I was thinking. If you aren’t doing anything, you and I could go to the movies this afternoon.”

  “That would be great!” I said. “Can you come back around 11:30? Then we could get a ten-cent hamburger at Ken’s.”

  “You know about that place? Aren’t their hamburgers just out of this world?” Jean said. “I’ll see you later.” She then bounded out the door.

  As soon as she was gone, I leaped out of bed and slipped out of my wet gown. I pulled on my robe, grabbed the soap and towels and headed for the shower. The last two times I wet the bed, I threw the sheets away. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I guess I’d have to do the same with this one. Mama never said anything about missing sheets. I don’t know if we had so many she didn’t count, or she knew what was happening and was ignoring it. We slept in the same bed, but I never moved from the spot that I puddled, so she wouldn’t have known about my accidents. She left for work before I woke up, giving me a chance to tear the bed apart after she was gone. In any case, the sheet inventory was going to be down one more sheet.

  I took my wet nightgown to the sink which was used for laundry, dishwashing, food preparation, and handwashing after using the toilet. I scrubbed the gown on our washboard and hung it on the clothesline that ran the length of the enclosed porch. I would claim it before my parents came home from work.

  Later, Jean came to pick me up as promised. I left a note for Brian, and we went to the ten-cent hamburger place. It was a very narrow shop with just enough room for customers to stand opposite a counter from the cook. There were no tables. A customer would order her hamburger, and the cook would turn his back while he placed a pre-formed patty on the griddle before him. The secret of the tastiness of the burger was in the way he salted it, we all concluded. He would flip the patty just as little beads of red began to break through the raw surface. Then he would give two quick flicks of the oversized, dented aluminum salt shaker, depositing just the right amount of the tiny granules on the raw side. When little red beads formed on the cooked side, it, too, received a couple of shakes of salt. The cooked patty was then scooped up and placed on a bun that had been toasted on the griddle. This he wrapped in waxed paper. There was no need to add any condiments to this sandwich. It was perfect just the way it was. We took our hamburgers outside and ate as we walked down Arapahoe Street to the theater.

  We went to see State Fair, starring Jeanne Crain, Dick Haymes, and Dana Andrews. It was a musical about a fair and the adventures of a family who attends it. Jeanne Crain and Dick Haymes played siblings, and they find romance there.

  “Do you want to come by my place?” I asked Jean as we walked home after the movie.

  “Well, I probably should be getting home.”

  “We can take the alley. Brian and his friends might be playing catch.”

  Jean’s face lit up. “On second thought, I guess I could be a little late.”

  As we approached the alley, I could hear voices. I guessed right. Brian shouted as soon as he spotted me, “Hey, Marie, how was the movie? Who’s your friend?

  “Jean was in my class in Rohwer. She knows Don’s family. That’s how she found where we lived.”

  Brian introduced her to his friends and I watched as she flirted with them. I tried to slip away to retrieve my nightgown off the clothesline before I went shopping for dinner. As I started up the steps, Jean called to me.

  “Do you want to go to church with me tomorrow?”

  “I have to ask my parents. I think it should be all right. We never do anything else on Sundays.”

  “I’ll come by to pick you up around 9:30 tomorrow morning. If you can go, fine. If not, not a big deal.”

  “Okay. And thanks for everything, Jean. Bye . . .”

  The Buddhist Church was a block away on Larimer Street. Mama was happy to hear that I was going.

  “Thank you for taking her,” Mama told Jean when she came by the following day. “Going to church is a good thing.”

  “Church is a really great place to meet boys,” Jean giggled as we left the building.

  The church was a little cottage nestled among shops and restaurants on the busy street. It had a gabled roof, clapboard walls, and a small covered porch. The front door opened into the living room, which was the sanctuary. There was a shrine on a table in the front of the room and folding chairs arranged in two sections in front of it. A curl of sweet incense smoke drifted up from an urn and managed to reach my nostrils, though I sat in the back of the room. The service was conducted in Japanese by a very nice minister, who made a point of speaking to me afterward. I understood very little of his spoken words, but his warm and friendly manner was very easy to understand.

  One of the rooms of the house was the social hall where cookies and punch were served after the service. There I met Masako, who lived on 21st and Curtis, just a couple of blocks from me. She was also an eighth-grader and was in my science class, but I had never noticed her. I concluded that was because Mr. Ward, our science teacher, didn’t call roll. He used a seating chart. And I sat up front.

  Masako and I talked about how weird our science teacher was. He had pale blue eyes that constantly darted around the room, as if daring anyone to get out of line.

  “Remember how on the first day of school he said he had an atomic bomb in one of his drawers, which he would use if necessary? That was supposed to be funny. Weird, weird, weird.” I said.

  “He’s also very tough. How far along are you on your science project,” Masako asked.

  “I haven’t even started. It’s not due until next spring, is it?”

  “Yeah, but kids who took from him last year say you have to keep up with his assignments. If you leave it to the last minute, it’s too much to do. You want me to help you?”

  “Could you? That would be so great,” I said.

  “Bring what you have over to my house after school, and I’ll see what you’ve got,” said Masako. “And how about walking to school together? You can pick me up around eight. Then we’ll pick up Mary, who lives on 23rd. And then there’s Jean. . . . By the time we get to school, it’s pretty much of a crowd. It’s fun. And it feels safer.”

  I have died and gone to heaven, I thought. At last I have some friends! I couldn’t wait to return to school.

  I saw Jean only occasionally after that. She was more interested in boys than girls. But I feel she saved my life. If she hadn’t come by that Saturday morning, I might not be here telling you this story. The need to throw away sheets disappeared, too. I no longer had those misleading dreams. Best of all, I looked forward to going to school.

  Things settled down for Papa, too. At work, he was transferred to the benzene room. The benzene machine was like a washing machine but used benzene rather than soap and water. He was much more relaxed when he got home at the end of the day.

  * * *

  A few weeks later, Papa said he had a surprise for us. He had just returned home from work.

  “Look out the window,” he said.

  “What are we supposed to look at,” asked Brian.

  “Look down at the street right below our window.”

  “At that old brown car?”

  “Yes, the car!” Papa shouted. His excitement was turning to impatience.

  That was the surprise. It was brown and boxy with a square of black canvas for the roof and a spare tire fastened on the back. It was one of the ugliest, old-fashioned cars I had ever seen. I remembered the sleek “torpedo body” 1940 Dodge that we had before the war. What a contrast. But I knew I had to act pleased.

  “What a nice . . . big car!” I said with a forced smile.

  “It’s a 1934 Oldsmobile. And I bought it for just two hundred dollars! It’s a real bargain. The only problem is that it has a cracked block. It’s just a small crack. All we have to do is make sure the radiator is always full of water
. The tires are also odd-sized. And they’re recaps. They don’t make tires this size anymore, but we should always be able to find recaps, if these wear out.”

  It was clear that he was proud of his new purchase. No one dared tell him what they really thought.

  “That’s great, Papa. Can I go down and look at it now?” Brian said.

  “Why don’t we eat dinner first. Then we can all go out for a drive,” he said.

  We all hurried through our dinner of raw squid (five cents a pound), ground ginger, lettuce, rice, and miso soup, left the dishes in the dishpan to wash later in the community sink, and hurried downstairs.

  It was a four-door sedan. Brian wanted to sit up front, so Mama and I would have to sit in the back. I was taken by surprise when I opened the rear door. The seats were identical to the ones in the playground director’s car at Helen Wills in San Francisco. They were a light, plush mohair, with soft bristles that stood straight up and stitching evenly spaced about six inches apart. In my mind’s eye I saw a mound of jellyfish in the middle of it. After I recovered from the shock of the seats, I looked around and noticed there was a shade for the rear window. Just like the shades on the train that took us to the camp. I tried to put all of that aside, slid over next to the far door, and settled into the soft, comfortable seat.

  “Hey, Marie,” said Brian as he turned around, “these seats look exactly like the playground director’s. Remember that thing with the jellyfish?” said Brian.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Don’t remind me.”

  The car ran amazingly well, considering it was ugly, had a cracked block and recapped tires, and was filled with reminders of a past I would have liked to have forgotten.

  * * *

  In the spring, there was an all-school musical, and our home economics class was selected to participate. We had made aprons to wear in a dance number. When I discovered that “It Might As Well Be Spring” was to be the song we would be dancing to, I was determined to be in it. It was one of the songs featured in State Fair, the movie Jean and I had seen together. The dance was done with brooms as props. We were supposed to be maids or something doing spring cleaning. It was sort of silly, but fun. The musical was a major school event on a Saturday afternoon at the Civic Center Auditorium. I must have been one of the more confident dancers, because I was placed in the front row. Or maybe it was because I was short. In any case I had an excellent view of the huge audience, made up of a mixture of adults and children. Families of the performers. Unfortunately, my parents were working that day and Brian had a baseball game. I think I was the only one whose family members weren’t there. But I enjoyed myself nonetheless.

  Soon after, we moved from Lawrence Street to 21st Avenue, about a mile away. The former occupants were Papa’s friends who had found a larger place. We would now have a real stove and oven, a sink with a drain attached, and an icebox. Something to keep food cold. It wasn’t a refrigerator, but now we could give up our daily shopping. The ice box was made of wood with a compartment on top for a block of ice. Below that was the space for food. The last layer of the box was space for a pan. The melting ice dripped into it. Once again, something to be emptied. But this time, the traveling distance from the bucket to the sink was just a few feet. The pan rarely overflowed. That was not the problem.

  Our box used a twenty-five pound block of ice, which was delivered by the ice company. They gave us a card that had the various sizes of ice blocks written at the corners, with the bottom of each number toward a different corner of the card: 25, 50, 75, 100. If the card was in the window, the ice man would deliver ice according to which number was right side up. If we didn’t need ice, we were supposed to remove the card. Saturday morning was our delivery day. If we forgot to remove the card from the window, the ice man would be at our door with a block on his shoulder.

  Our assigned ice deliverer happened to be one of my classmates, Dan. I’m sure he thought that I wanted an excuse to see him, because I kept forgetting to remove the card when we didn’t need ice. I would bolt up on Saturday morning. It was probably the sound of the heavy truck rumbling down the street. I would suddenly realize I had forgotten to remove the card. By that time, it was too late. Dan was at the door with the heavy block balanced on his shoulder. Fortunately, Dan was a sweet guy and didn’t complain.

  “She’s just unconscious,” Brian would say. At dinner, Brian would share my unconsciousness with the folks.

  We also had half a bathroom. That is, we shared it with our neighbors next door. It was a bathroom with two doors. One leading to their apartment and the other to ours. The trick was to remember to unlock our neighbor’s door after we finished. Our neighbor rarely left our door locked, but they were constantly pounding on our common wall reminding us to unlock theirs. I was usually the guilty party. And it really caused a commotion when that happened. For some reason, I would have lapses of memory. As I turned the lock on the neighbor’s door, I would repeat to myself, “Don’t forget to unlock the door. Don’t forget to unlock the door . . .” By the time I was done with my business, other thoughts would totally obscure “Don’t forget to unlock the door.” If one of the others of my family went in after me, they made certain it was unlocked. That happened most of the time. Again, it was because I was “unconscious.”

  Between our ice delivery and the bathroom, I was in perpetual trouble.

  CHAPTER 21

  “To Each His Own”

  THE INKSPOTS

  A few days before the end of the school year, Miss Mills asked me to stay after class.

  “Most of your former internee classmates are returning to California. . . .” she announced.

  “What? Who’s leaving?” I interrupted.

  “Masako, Violet, Janet, Jean, and others. Promise me, Marie, that you won’t leave, too. . . .”

  As she spoke, memories of those first miserable weeks at Cole bubbled up. All my friends who have since made life at Cole bearable would be leaving! Everyone will be gone, I thought. How will I survive? Why hasn’t anyone told me?

  “Marie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Promise me you won’t leave, too.”

  “Sure. Okay. I promise,” I said without looking up.

  “Good. You’re one of our best students. I don’t want to lose you, too.” Sure, I thought. One of your best students. One of your favorites, too, who ruined your shoes.

  I rushed to science hoping to catch Masako before class started.

  “Masako! Why didn’t you tell me you were moving to California!”

  “I don’t like talking about it. . . . But how’d you know? I just found out myself.”

  “Miss Mills told me,” I said. “Did you know that a whole bunch of other kids are leaving, too?”

  “You’re kidding!. I don’t need to feel so bad then. If everyone else is leaving, I guess it won’t be so bad. What about you, Marie?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. This place would be unbearable without all of you. I don’t want to be the only one left.”

  When I got home that day I told Brian.

  “The same thing is happening at Manual High,” said Brian. “We’ve got to convince the folks that we should leave, too.”

  * * *

  But when Papa got home that night, he greeted us with a surprise.

  “I’ve found a house! It’s over on 23rd and Arapahoe. I’ve made an appointment for us to look at it after dinner,” he said, his voice ringing with excitement.

  “We’re going to buy a house?” I asked, “Here in Denver?” This was the first we were hearing of it. I had no idea Papa was looking for a house. So much for returning to California, I thought.

  “Yes,” Papa replied, “not too far from here. Mr. Yamanaka at the cleaning plant is returning to California and is selling his house. He never went to camp. Instead, he came directly from Los Angeles.”

  We were never able to buy a house in San Francisco. We couldn’t even rent one in the Sunset. But here we could buy a house? Just like that?
Wow.

  “We’ll go take a look at it after dinner. I have the key,” said Papa.

  It was a two-story beige stucco house. It had a Spanish look to it. A staircase curved up to the second story built over the garage. The front door opened to a large entry area.

  “In Colorado, they will let me buy a house. Not like California. I feel like a real man!”

  “Look over here,” he said pointing to living room. A handsome fireplace with an arched opening stood on the opposite wall. His gestures brought back memories of Lawton Street when he showed us the empty store. There he was trying to convince us of his cleverness and his vision of converting a bleak space into something livable. But this required no imagination. It was the most livable place we had ever seen. “It even has a dining room. And a place to eat in the kitchen, as well,” he said as he continued to lead us through the house.

  “Take a look. It’s a real kitchen with a stove that has an oven, and look at this refrigerator.” Mama peered into it as Papa spoke.

  “It’s not as nice as the one we had on Lawton Street. But it’s a refrigerator.”

  “You won’t have to worry about the ice man anymore, Marie,” said Mama.

  “And you two can each have your own rooms,” Papa interrupted. “We’ll have our own bathroom. No more worrying about locked doors.”

  “Can we afford it?” Mama asked.

  “They want $2,000 for it. We have at least that much saved up.”

  It was the perfect house. It was the kind of place where normal people lived. It was beautiful from the outside, beautiful on the inside . . . it was perfect! It was a dream come true. This was terrible.

  “Brian,” I whispered. “What are we going to do? It’s such a beautiful house. It would be so nice to live here. And Papa and Mama are so excited. This is a revolting situation. But if we decide to live here, we won’t be returning to California. All our friends will be gone. Brian, what are we going to do?!?”

  “I’ll just have to talk to Papa. Explain how we feel.”

  “What’s the matter? You two. What’re you whispering about? You don’t look happy. What part of this house don’t you like?” Papa shouted. “Do you know how hard I tried to get this house? When I found out that the Yamanakas were moving, I took him out for drinks to persuade him to sell it to us.”