After the Bloom

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  Lily was no less tight-lipped. And it was dangerous to push her because the mere mention of Kaz’s name could presage a plummet in her mood.

  Snippets of information Rita had scavenged from eavesdropping on Lily and Grandpa: Kaz had been a man who liked to dance, a man who was good with the ladies; he’d had no respect for the rules; he was a lazy, good-for-nothing bum. They rarely talked about him, beyond a lone comment, quickly averted. Still, it was enough to provide her imagination with a hanger on which she could drape her own images and associations. If Kaz had been a bum, she pictured Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, a man of principles, in his own tragic, sorry-ass way. Or he was like Alan Ladd in Shane, full of simmering fury and underlying decency.

  “So how did your mom meet this Kaz fellow?” Gerald’s arms were tightly crossed, his face lit up in blotchy patches.

  “I guess they must’ve met at camp,” Tom said.

  “Camp?”

  “Yeah, it was just some church camp,” Rita blurted.

  Although Tom raised an eyebrow, he began nodding, backing her up. “Picnics, canoeing, you know.” Amused complicity twitched about his lips. Maybe neither of them was prepared to get too cozy with Gerald Anderberg just yet.

  “Hey, I love camping. One of these days, I’m gonna buy us a Winnebago.”

  “You do that,” Tom said.

  Heat bloomed over Rita’s skin. She tried to get a hold of her breathing, her throat too narrow for all the choppy emotions suddenly surging up. She didn’t understand where this urge for secrecy was coming from — the very refusal to talk about the past that had forever irked her about their mother. But what did she and Tom know about what had gone on at camp? For all they knew, it had been one big cookout, everyone holding hands around the fire, singing “Kumbaya,” or the Japanese equivalent. It was as much a mystery to them as to anyone. They’d just be guessing, spinning tales.

  The Desert

  1943

  Three

  At first, he faded into the mountain’s shadow. Lily’s eyes played tricks on her. That dark presence at the edge of her vision, could it be nothing more than sand and wind and her lonely imagination? The ground was a mess of chalk dust flying up and mixing with the powder on her cheeks, sticky as cake batter. Should she turn around? Cast a flirtatious glance over her shoulder? But that would seem immodest, and she had to leave those days behind.

  The farther she walked, the more certain she became that someone was following her. An admirer in the middle of the desert? That meant she still looked pretty — at least, somewhat. The rush of adrenalin jarred her mood from the falling grey skies.

  All the barracks looked the same: the same sagging, makeshift steps and filthy mop perched outside, dried laundry stiff and grey, dismal as skinned rabbits. Despite everything, an air of refinement still surrounded Lily, or at least she liked to think so, as she bent down to adjust the tiny buckle on her high-heeled shoe. Really, she just wanted an excuse to look back at her admirer, without making it too obvious, of course.

  Oh, God. Him again.

  She’d seen him gazing at her across the mess hall the other day, a dreamy smile melting across his lips. Before the war, she’d never had to associate with guys of this sort, their hats tied on with scarves, dirt-smeared shirts. They had a different way of standing, boys of that sort, bending their knees as though their toes had sunk into the earth. Her father would have slapped her silly if he’d ever caught her mixing with them. Although, in truth, he was once no different than these peasant boys, these kitchen boys, fresh from Japan.

  The guy froze in his tracks. A teasing smile lingered. He knew he’d been caught, and like a little kid about to be punished, he kept on mocking her, daring her to look away.

  Everyone was aware they were the ones stirring up trouble. Spreading rumours about sugar vanishing from mess halls, pointing fingers, getting people riled up. Sure been a long time since we had anything sweet. Yesterday, another fight broke out and a couple more nisei boys showed up at breakfast with black eyes.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “I’d like to take your picture.”

  He must be soft in the head. He didn’t have a camera, none of them did. A crude wooden box that looked more like a breadbox was nestled in the crook of his arm.

  Salt air, solitude. All she could think about was how desperately she missed the ocean. The sound of the waves whooshing in and out…. They used to go to the ocean often before the war. Her father had a car back then, a black Studebaker, which he needed to make deliveries. Sunday was his day off, and she could still feel the sticky hot seat against the backs of her thighs as he’d look at her with a half-disapproving, half-indulgent smile. “Sit with your legs crossed, young lady. Never forget you’re representing the Japanese-American life.”

  How quickly things could change. No longer was there any such thing as “Japanese-American.” And how could she hold on to a shred of dignity with these thugs following her around?

  Maybe he’d been watching her for a while now. Every day she was out here, practising her walk. In the last pageant the judges criticized Lily’s walk as too American: her stride too long and fluid, too much swing to her hips. They docked her points. The nerve of them. For the next Cherry Blossom Pageant, she had to learn to walk properly in a kimono: slowly, evenly, in small steps — the Japanese way of walking. She should try to turn slowly, showing off the nape of her neck and that petal-soft slip of skin at the top of the back, the only bit of nudity allowed. If she was lucky, she’d have a flatter backside, less inclined to twitch back and forth.

  So every day she had to practise her walk, an old pair of pantyhose tied around her thighs under her skirt, binding her legs together in delicate, mincing steps.

  With each step, she relived her moment of glory, or near-glory at least. Men of all ages had sat in the front rows, staring with appraising smiles at the girls. Receiving so much attention was novel and intoxicating, and she loved how it continued after the contest was over as the men lingered by the curb waiting for the convertible draped in red, white, and blue bunting to drive through Little Tokyo and part of downtown LA. The queen’s crown glittered like shattered glass as Lily sat in the back seat. First runner-up. How tantalizingly close she’d come to wearing that crown.

  “Can’t I take your picture, miss?”

  She shook her head, backing away as he looked inside that strange wooden box — his imaginary camera. Sweat had soaked through her dress in grey blotches, making her all too aware of the astringent smell of her own basting flesh.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not working for the government. I’m not making a documentary. I just like to take pictures of beautiful things.”

  “I’m not even supposed to be here.” The words flew from her lips with the authority of a headmistress, as though it were all some administrative mistake that her name had been put on the list.

  “None of us are supposed to be here.”

  Her cheeks on fire, she turned away. The sun beat down and she continued to walk until everything started to look the same throughout this godawful place. The tarpaper barracks went on and on, block after block. Thirty-six blocks and counting. At the southern end, she saw men — her men — swinging axes to clear the sagebrush. Their chests glistened as they worked with a force that scared her.

  It was unsettling to see these once distinguished men reduced to beasts of burden. The stoic, polite behaviour, once said to elevate the Japanese above the other Oriental races, was slipping away, rapid as the windblown sand. Out here no one knew how to behave — or who they even were. Would Mrs. Sato have gotten into a screaming match with that surly Matsumoto boy in the old days? Unheard of. Would bags of sugar vanish in the night, dragged off by God knows whom? A fistful of dollars exchanged for a few burlap bags. There are bad apples here, people were whispering.

  The ground began to waver and clumps of brush o
n the horizon reminded her of ocean waves, frozen at an instant.

  The art building had to be around here somewhere, but she might have already walked past it, and dust was getting trapped in her eyes and nose and ears. It flew up her skirt, sticking to her thighs, and she couldn’t stop thinking how much she missed the ocean.

  A fuzzy feeling crept into her head, a great dark pressure expanding across her brain. A wave of light-headedness, sweat dripping down her back. The wind had muted to a strange buzz and everything was moving in a kind of slow motion, like the blades of a fan in those seconds after it’s been flicked it off. Her thoughts also ran in circles…. The nerve of him — speaking to her like that. None of us are supposed to be here. She struggled to hang on; the gritty air forced its way into her lungs. She’d show him. In the next pageant, she’d walk across the stage as delicate as a little boat floating in the breeze.

  The sky covered her and she fell to her knees, everything spinning, until the thud of darkness.

  You dream when you faint?

  Her vision was being tunnelled while everything faded to black and white, the contrast between light and dark so extreme. Yet she was still here, at camp. She knew by the sickly apple trees, gnarled as the toes of an old man. Then in a flash, like some trick of moviemaking or time-lapse photography, everything sped up and the trees were rejuvenated to a sea of cherry blossoms in full bloom, stirring her soul to life — little ballerinas.

  Something was pulling under her chin, a peculiar bonnet. She was dressed like a pioneer woman, a rancher’s wife, but her husband was nowhere to be seen. She stared down the road at the Inyo Mountains, rising higher than God himself through the haze, and felt the sad presence of the Indians, who used to range across the valley, back before the Spanish ranchers kicked them out. Blood on both sides ended up soaking the sand, so the few survivors called the place Matanzas. Spanish for massacre.

  Lily scanned the sand at her feet, searching for bloodstains. The wind whipped it up into her eyes as she began to wake up.

  Blinking, she looked up: a stubbly chin, eyes darker than her own. In the dream state she was still slipping out of, immersing herself in the grassy, ripe odour of this stranger’s body felt oddly lulling. She settled back in the hammock of his arms, awash in a feeling she couldn’t quite place.

  He carried her through a set of doors down a long white corridor and laid her down on a bed covered in fresh white sheets, the freshest she’d had in months. An artificial meadow smell, intoxicating and familiar. Everything about the room looked very clean and impressive, like the walls were glowing with a fierce white aura.

  “She fainted,” the guy said.

  A stout, iron-haired nurse rushed over with a basin. She began pouring cool water over Lily’s wrists.

  Now, as he backed away, Lily could see him better: a tall, lanky fellow, perhaps a couple years older than she, twenty maybe. He seemed uncomfortable, hands jammed in his back pockets.

  The doctor came over. A small, lithe man with cheeks smooth as pebbles, his lab coat blindingly white. Dr. Takemitsu. Seeing him from a distance, Lily had assumed he was in his forties, but up close there was something younger looking — ageless almost — about his glowing skin, his serious, all-seeing eyes. A hush fell over her stomach. This was her first time in a doctor’s office; there were very few doctors in the Japanese-American community. Whenever their wives used to come to the shop, her father’s face would light up and he’d give them special treatment, discounting prices, expediting orders. It was more than just the fact that these men were leaders in the community. They were touched by some mysterious, near magical power, holding the health and future of the entire community in their ivory-smooth hands.

  “What happened?” Dr. Takemitsu said.

  “Girl got too much sun, I guess. I dunno.”

  “You were following her? Kaz has nothing better to do than chase skirt all day.”

  “Hey. I was out walking. I happened to see her collapse, so I went over. Okay, Dad?”

  “Well, she’s lucky he was following her,” the nurse said. “Otherwise, she’d still be slumped in the sand.”

  So his name was Kaz, and he was the doctor’s son? Really? His sloppy clothes, his scowling expression…. He wasn’t one of the guys she’d seen flipping and swinging girls across the dance floor at the mixers the JACC organized in tinsel-clad mess halls. He wasn’t blowing his brass like some would-be Benny Goodman in the bands that everyone and his brother had joined to pass the time.

  But upon closer examination, Lily wondered if there wasn’t something a bit too clean-shaven about this Kaz fellow, after all. She looked at his smooth, slender hands, and those weren’t the fingers of someone used to digging through soil. The soft-gelled wave of his hair appeared at odds with the country-boy image he seemed to be cultivating. The crumpled bandanna around his neck suddenly looked no more real than a costume for a school play, the slight grime on his cheeks like stage makeup.

  Kaz. The name had an appealing intensity. Her admirer, her rescuer…. In a flash he’d been redeemed: transformed from some lunatic bumpkin kid into someone important — a leader, a healer, a scion. The sweet rush made her feel that she could be someone else, someone important, too.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” she called over.

  Kaz’s face softened though he remained silent, slouched against the wall. She wanted to ask him what was wrong, baffled by how he could look at the doctor with such hostility. Before she could say anything, he’d slipped out the door without so much as a glance back.

  “That boy.” Dr. Takemitsu shook his head. “Better watch out for him.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  But the doctor had already walked away.

  Sitting up, Lily observed that only a few other patients occupied the row of beds. An old woman snored lightly, her long white hair pouring over the pillow. A young man with two black eyes tried to hide himself behind a magazine. Wasn’t he June Shigetani’s younger brother?

  “Bob, is that you?”

  He tried to smile, not very successfully. His nostrils had disappeared into a swollen mound.

  “My God! What happened to you?”

  “It’s nothing. Just a scrap over some girl.”

  He was lying, she suspected. His battered face had nothing to do with a girl.

  Before she could question him further, the double doors flew open. In stormed a gaggle of shrieking women. They were carrying a pregnant girl, laid out on an old door being used as a stretcher. Lily half recognized her from the barracks — Esther, wasn’t that her name? She was moaning like no tomorrow. The room started to spin again as the salty, raw smell of blood and oozing innards wafted over.

  “She slipped!” Esther’s sister said. “Rolled down the hill like a watermelon.”

  Dr. Takemitsu and the nurse sprang into action, stretching the poor girl out on a bed all too close to Lily’s. The sheets were soon soaked in watery crimson.

  She was amazed by how the doctor remained so calm and in control, swiftly commanding this and that instrument. On the periphery of her vision, giant forceps rested ominously on the table.

  Lily clenched her eyes. The room faded in and out, everything drowned out by Esther’s cries. Guttural, inhuman cries.

  After a while, the noise levelled into a thick hum that insulated the walls of her brain. A story edged its way in, one of the Japanese fairy tales her mother used to tell her.

  A poor charcoal maker, who lived up in the mountains, had a beautiful, young wife. Every evening, she insisted on spending a great deal of time alone, shut inside their bedroom closet. Perplexed and rather hurt, he struggled to respect her wishes. One night, when his wife didn’t come out for hours, his curiosity got the better of him and he peeked through the crack of the door. All he could see was a gangly crane — naked of all feathers, covered in ruddy, bumpy skin. Lily couldn’t re
member how or why the woman had been transformed into a bird; the story was dim and fragmented in her mind. All she could recall was that the crane had been holding the last feather plucked from her own behind to weave into an exquisite tapestry that unrolled at her feet.

  “You’ve seen my true body now and must be disgusted,” the crane said to the charcoal maker in his wife’s voice. “So I must leave you immediately!”

  A window flung open and the naked bird made her escape as a thousand other cranes converged in an upsurge of snowy feathers to shelter her.

  Look away.

  That seemed to be the story’s peculiar message. It was wisest to look away from such things: a naked crane weaving its magic, a naked woman pushing life into the world. To see that true body could only spell disaster. Some secrets were best left untouched; Lily had learned that lesson all too well. Her mother’s pale, downcast face. The cadence of her words in Japanese like the clink of falling dominoes.

  That was the last story her mother had ever told her. Not long after, her mother, like the crane, had disappeared forever.

  A shrill cry pierced the air. How much time had gone by? Ten minutes, an hour, a day? The next thing Lily knew, the doctor was beaming at the foot of Esther’s bed, holding in his hands a slick, purplish bundle of flesh. A crying baby. And Esther was crying, too, sweat and tears mixed on her florid cheeks. Her sister ran outside to tell their family.

  “It’s a boy,” Dr. Takemitsu said proudly.

  “Haruki,” Esther whispered, cradling the baby against her breast. “Harry, for short. Thank you for saving my little Harry!”

  An hour later the excitement had subsided. Esther and her entourage of visitors had been moved to another room, leaving the doctor with nothing to do except make rounds again.