After the Bloom

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  She thought about going to the doctor and telling him everything. Maybe that would ease her conscience. Wasn’t that what he’d told her — she could come to him for help at any time? The thought of further undermining his opinion of Kaz, however, was just too unpleasant. She wanted him to see that his son wasn’t such a bad seed. Besides, what did she have to report? So Kaz had taken a few pictures he shouldn’t have. Was it such a big deal, really? Worse things were going on here.

  So she said nothing and the days wore on.

  Kaz’s moods shifted with the winds: one moment cool, trapped in his own thoughts, the next moment balmy, brimming with laughter. His body language was just as unpredictable. His palm brushed against her backside — so innocently, so deliberately — but nothing more would happen. Their kisses were halting, plagued by distractions and interruptions. One minute, he’d be staring at her, wide-eyed, mesmerized, but in a flash she watched his desire fade as his thoughts curled away from her. Caught up in his latest scheme with Kenny.

  Each week when he signalled to her they were planning to meet that night, she told herself no, no, she couldn’t do this anymore. But come nightfall she went. It was always the same group — their whispers full of big plans. As time went on, she relaxed a little: the extent of their crimes, as far as she could tell, didn’t amount to much. Not yet, at least. Oh sure, they bragged from time to time about roughing up some poor JACC boy the night before, but fist fights had been erupting all over camp for months now. Grown men, bored for lack of anything to do, were reduced to gang rivalries reminiscent of the schoolyard.

  No, it wasn’t the violence that upset Lily; the violence had actually started to seem normal. Kenny’s convoluted ideas, on the other hand, made her skin crawl.

  At their meetings he always did most of the talking, full of bizarre ideas about corruption and conspiracy. All camp officials were in the pay: everyone from the lowliest guard to the head honcho, Ed Howells himself, whom he imitated, swaggering around, clipboard in hand. Why had their clothing allowance cheques been delayed for months now? “It’s obvious,” Kenny said. Somebody’s pocketed them. And why so little food? Again, Kenny insisted that the camp bosses were to blame. They had a special arrangement worked out with grocers in neighbouring towns. The sugar intended for Matanzas never even made it here. And what about all the tomatoes the internees had planted, row upon row? They couldn’t seriously believe they were getting the full harvest. The guards had taken them by the truckload.

  “We have to get the word out,” Kenny announced, one night.

  Kaz nodded. “Let’s post bulletins exposing the corruption outside the mess halls. We’ll sign each post with ‘Black Dragon.’”

  But Kenny had bigger fish to fry. “To really get things going, guys, we need to start a union. The Kitchen Workers Union. We can demand better wages. Demand our food back.”

  “Overthrow the administration.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Shig grinned.

  “We already have the Matanzas Work Corps, don’t we?” Lily said.

  The guys sniggered and she tried to laugh, too, as if in on the joke.

  “That doesn’t count. The Jackalopes set up that sham organization ages ago and it isn’t doing squat to protect the workers. We need our own organization. If you can’t see that, maybe you shouldn’t be with us.”

  Recently, she’d noticed Akira watching her with distrust. He was smarter and more perceptive than the others.

  “So, Lily, are you with us or not?”

  “Of course I am.”

  She sensed he still had reservations, though.

  “Well, good then, ’cause there’s something we want you to do for us.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ll go over the details later. For now, start familiarizing yourself with this.” Akira handed her an envelope.

  Reaching inside, she pulled out a pile of newspaper clippings. “JACC Leader Promises Cheerful Co-operation,” read one headline. In the photo Frank Isaka was smiling broadly behind a podium, his hand sweeping through the air. There were also some pictures clipped from a high-school yearbook. “Frank Isaka — President of the Debating Club.” Already, he’d perfected his suave smile, his well-styled hair. In another photo, he was lounged back on the school steps, his arm draped around a pretty girl with solemn eyes. Although he was trying to appear easygoing, there was something forced about that smile.

  “What do you want me to do with all this?”

  “Just read it. Study it.” Kaz’s hand brushed the small of her back. “We want you to know everything there is to know about Mr. Frank Isaka. Try to get into his mind and figure out what makes him tick.”

  “Think about how you’d make him fall for you,” Kenny added.

  “Fall for me?”

  “Yeah, fall head over heels, like all the guys do.”

  A soft, high-pitched ringing filled her ears, rising in tandem with her stuttering heart.

  “Like I’ve fallen for you, of course,” Kaz said.

  Beneath all the bravado: a drop of tenderness. Her anger thinned. Kaz couldn’t help being susceptible to the influence of his low-life friends. He just needs the influence of a good woman. Wasn’t that what his father had said?

  The summer wore on, each day at the net factory hotter and longer than the last. The web of scraps seemed to swim before her, slipping through her fingers like swamp weeds.

  One morning, the supervisor called Lily to the front. “You no longer work here, my dear.”

  “What do you mean? I’ll work harder —”

  “Don’t worry, you’re not fired. Greener pastures for you. Dr. Takemitsu wants you to report to your new job at the hospital.”

  Girls down the line cast envious stares, dust peppering their cheeks.

  Lily was floating on air as she entered the cool, bright halls of the hospital. She didn’t see its shabby, improvised quality: the old floor lamp being used to illuminate the exam table, which wasn’t even a real exam table, just a mattress liner draped over a beat-up desk. All she saw was the pristine whiteness of the walls and the doctor’s lab coat.

  He greeted her in his usual brisk manner.

  She thanked him for what he’d done but explained she had no skills as a nurse. Perhaps she could mop and clean. The doctor shook his head, looking amused.

  “Then what’ll I do?”

  “A girl like you surely knows ikebana.”

  Before the war, Lily used to dabble in it. Her mother had taught her the basics. It came in handy when she was competing in the Cherry Blossom Pageant; the judges were known to favour girls who could showcase their Japanese hobbies. But it had been ages since she’d done a proper flower arrangement, and what would she use out in this wasteland?

  The doctor told her to see what she could find outside.

  Hardly a bush or bud. Nothing at all lush or elegant. She snipped some brittle branches from an old apple tree, from which she also plucked a couple of wilted blossoms. Some creamy puffs of Indian ricegrass made up the rest of her bouquet.

  It was a slow morning at the clinic. The doctor tended to folks suffering from heatstroke while Lily spread out her foliage on the counter. She was surprised to see he had all the right equipment: kenzans in different sizes had been laid out for her to choose from, their brass needles like porcupine backs, alongside a small hatchet knife, steel clippers, a ball of wire, and a shallow ceramic vase.

  It was important that the branches appeared to rise from the same stalk, an effect that could be achieved easily enough with a twist of wire. The challenge was to perfect the shape of the uneven triangle. You had to bend the branches without breaking them, sculpting them with your fingertips, treating them like an extension of yourself. Through the delicate bark, you could supposedly intuit the plant’s moods and coax the branch to bend accordingly. But Lily never had much of a handle on even her ow
n moods, and these branches were particularly difficult to work with, snapping at the lightest touch.

  When the doctor came to check on her, all she had was a pile of broken twigs. Her face burned as he regarded her failed creation.

  “We have to get you some real flowers to work with. I bet Mr. Murase would be willing to help.”

  “Oh, no. He’s scary.”

  Before the war Mr. Murase owned a bustling nursery. Right outside his barrack door, he’d managed to create a garden oasis: the bushes and bulbs he’d brought from home were miraculously flourishing in luscious patches of colour. Yet the old man was fiercely protective of his flowers, enclosing them under a wire blanket at night. Not even the jackrabbits and squirrels dared to feast.

  “Let’s just say that Mr. Murase owes me a favour. I’ll talk to him. It’s for the good of my patients to bring a touch of nature inside these sad walls.”

  Something else was on the doctor’s mind; he lingered, awkward as a schoolboy. His capacity to return her own shyness filled her with a sudden, fumbling pleasure.

  “So tell me about my son,” he finally said.

  Lily could see that he had fears and suspicions eating away at him, responsible for sleepless nights. That was the real reason she’d found herself here. That was why he’d created this sham job for her.

  “Well, what do you want to know?”

  “I have eyes, Lily. Things have been getting worse around here.”

  “Oh?”

  The doctor sighed, disappointed she wasn’t being more forthcoming. “Remember what happened to poor Burt Kondo? A broken nose and two broken ribs. And he’s not even the worst of what I see these days.”

  “Those JACC boys can be pretty arrogant.”

  “All I care is that Kaz’s staying out of all that nonsense.”

  He wanted to know, yet he didn’t want to know. The truth hover­­ed between them, a balloon of warm, quivering air.

  How she longed to tell the doctor everything. Burt’s beating was the least of it. It was more than just talk now — Kenny knew how to rally the troops. Word had gotten out about the Kitchen Workers Union, and a surprising number of folks wanted in.

  “Everything will blow over. Kaz’ll be just fine. After the war, he’ll get back on track. You’ll see.”

  “You certainly see the good in people, Lily-san.”

  She smiled, but was he complimenting her at all?

  The doctor wasn’t going to let it drop. “What I’m asking is whether Kaz’s been involved in anything I should be worried about.”

  When she didn’t reply, bewilderment clouded his eyes. “I thought I could depend on you, Lily.”

  “You can depend on me.” And the words began tumbling from her lips, mixed with gasps and sobs.

  One night when she arrived at the aqueduct, there were no conspiring voices. No taunts, no posturing, no male laughter. Kaz was all alone, slouched against the curved cement, a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke swirling about his hair.

  When he looked up — his eyes smiling, gleaming deviously — her heart tripped over itself. She could see what he was thinking. It’s time. There was a tautness to his jaw, a tight energy coiled in his knees, a dewy sheen on his forehead. The pungent, fiery whiff of whiskey on his breath. She felt she could smell every hair on his body: the essence of sage and sweat and sex. It wasn’t the first time Lily had arrived at this place, where men start to resemble panthers. Kaz ran his hands up the nape of her neck, more rough than gentle, and she wanted him to look at her like he really saw her, but his eyes remained cloudy slits.

  Strangely enough, Lily found his remoteness alluring — proof that he’d crossed this threshold many times before. The jazz singer he’d almost run away with. All that “chasing skirt,” as Dr. Takemitsu had put it. Pangs of jealousy cut across her brain, feeding that bottomless pit inside her, her need to make him entirely her own.

  “I … love you.”

  His hands continued moving up her thighs, scrunching up her skirt.

  His silence hurt her, yet she pushed it aside. He’d come around. She’d make him come around. She stared at the full moon, mesmerized by its brightness, its roundness, as his hands kept exploring and her mind drifted up toward the vast, jewel-studded sky.

  As his fingers moved lower, one moment arousing her, the next moment hurting her a little, her thoughts were scattered, adrift. Images of the doctor began flooding her mind. She pictured him standing on the edge of the aqueduct, looking down at them — approvingly? mirthfully? jealously? — and as she craned her neck back, their eyes locked. Kaz became rougher, grabbing her hips, flicking his belt buckle, but she didn’t mind because it reminded her how far he’d fallen from his father’s dreams. And that was where she came in. By redeeming Kaz, she’d win his father’s love: two men, simply versions of the same man, in love with her…. How she luxuriated in that thought, as though becoming Kaz’s girl was just a pleasant side effect of what she’d been craving all along: the doctor’s love. She imagined the years peeling off his skin, restoring it to the smooth clarity of Kaz’s, and it was both their faces kissing her now, the one superimposed upon the other, flickering back and forth, moment to moment.

  The doctor. Kaz. The doctor. Kaz.

  Seven

  When she woke up, an ache stretched across her hip bones. As she pushed hair from her eyes, a veil of sand streamed onto her pillow and she rubbed the granules between her fingertips, rejoicing in their lovely, frictive texture. Warm memories of last night washed over her.

  What did she expect Kaz would do when he saw her at breakfast? A tender glance, a knowing smile? Some simple display of possessiveness? A flurry of attentive gestures? Whatever Lily had in mind, she expected, at the very least, that he’d sit with her.

  But he was already at a table of girls. She took the only seat available at the end. He didn’t even get up. Barely looked at her. Didn’t come over and take her hand. He seemed perfectly content to sit next to Linda Itabe, who kept flicking her glossy ponytail and erupting in giggles.

  Hurt and confusion clouded Lily’s brain, fuzzy from lack of sleep. Sand was falling from her hair onto her lap, but it no longer seemed like proof of anything.

  And yet the following day when Kaz came to her, Lily couldn’t bring herself to turn him away. He appeared out of nowhere in the late, shadow-filled afternoon as she was practising her walk down a secluded alley. Without even turning around, she sensed his footsteps behind her. A brief interval of hesitation — as though he’d had second thoughts and wanted to pull away from her — and then it was too late; he’d locked his arms around her rib cage, burying his mouth in the nape of her neck, enclosing her in his cloud of earthy sweatiness.

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather be doing this with Linda Itabe?”

  “Relax, Lily. It’s better we keep things between us secret.” His hands were riding up her breasts.

  She pushed them back down. “Secret? Why?”

  “Black Dragon, of course.” His hiss barely a whisper. “Kenny and I have big plans in the pipeline.”

  Black Dragon. He acted like it was all so important, rather than just a bunch of bored guys acting big to pass the time. Still, it was a relief to know he trusted her. Of all the girls he could have chosen to draw into his inner circle, he’d chosen her.

  Some days, she’d squirm and protest — what if someone saw them and Aunt Tetsuko found out? — but he would grab her wrists and laugh, whispering that she wanted everyone to find out, didn’t she? His fingers shoved into her mouth, daring her to bite and make him scream.

  Other times, though, Kaz had a tender side. He’d come to her early in the morning, when she was doing ikebana. He slipped in through the back entrance of the hospital, so nobody would see him. The doctor had given her a little room there, barely larger than a storage closet. Glistening pink light streamed in through the tiny window a
nd danced in mottled dots over her branches and leaves and blossoms, everything spread out on the bare mattress. Thanks to Mr. Murase, her supply was always stocked with a handful of roses, carnations, or lilies. And Kaz brought other things he’d foraged: tiny green apples touched with a hint of blush cloud, branches that sloped up at such elegant angles, constellations of bright yellow blossoms shooting up like a starry night. Even withered leaves and petals could be used; nature on the verge of dying was often more beautiful than at the height of its bloom.

  She let him undress and caress her body, finger each tiny mole and scar. She sensed his soul hungering for more, at moments like this. What Kaz needs is the influence of a good woman. Her thoughts drifted to the doctor, a stone’s throw down the hall. Kaz hoisted her onto the bed, and the leaves and branches scratched cryptic patterns across her thighs, backside.

  “Do you think your father knows about us?”

  “Knows what?”

  “That we’ve gone this far?”

  His hands stopped moving, turned clammy. “Why’d you have to bring him up at now of all times?”

  “I can’t help it.” She wanted the doctor to think well of her.

  “I don’t care if he does!”

  Mocking, tittering whispers. The voices might have been coming from behind her, like she was sitting on a bus and eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers. Yet as she listened, it turned out they weren’t strangers — these voices were gossiping about her, laughing at her, laden with malicious, schoolgirl glee. “She thinks she’s such a good girl, but what a joke, what a hussy!” “She wants both father and son, you know she does!” “Does she even know who’s touching her now? Whose fingers are opening up our little Cherry Blossom Queen, petal by petal?”

  Lily tried to block it all out by humming a tune in her head.