After the Bloom

by Leslie Shimotakahara

  So maybe it all came down to money, in the end. For whatever reason, Grandpa had loved her more than Tom and attached to that love a very generous cheque that left her forever confused, guilt-ridden.

  Lou looked up from his notes. “I’d like to explore this issue further next time.”

  Although the café was closed for the night, lights were still on. Rita could see through the glass door a large shambling man wiping down the counter. He looked up and saluted before letting her in. Yesterday she’d heard locals joking around with him, calling him Patrón, and she’d wanted to say something friendly as well, though nothing came to her. Today they just smiled at each other while she chose an almond croissant and he fixed her a cup of decaf.

  Wending her way into the market, she walked past the vintage clothes shops full of gold lamé dresses and beat-up jeans, past the ethnic curio shops with African masks and beaded headdresses hanging in the windows. She speed-walked down Baldwin. A couple of punks were dumpster diving in the twilight, NIL spray-painted in fluorescent green on their leather jackets. She breathed deeply, inhaling the rotting vegetables mixed with cigarette smoke and other earthier, more potent odours, hoping to catch a second-hand high that would provide a moment’s respite from her life.

  A wild-looking creature was roller skating down the street. She was dressed unseasonably warmly in a matted fur coat that seemed to continue into her tangled blond dreadlocks, bits of fluorescent pink wool woven throughout. She spun around on unsteady, pelican-thin legs. Delicate moons of soot rimmed her eyes, pancake makeup seeped into her wrinkles, giving her skin the look of melting wax, but also a strange, sad beauty. For the past twenty years, she’d been here partying and, though oblivious to the passage of time, time had left its marks all over her body.

  She skated over, waggled a half-smoked cigarette butt.

  “Can you help me?” Her voice breathy. She snapped her fingers mimicking the flick of a lighter.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t smoke anymore.”

  The woman rolled closer, the rot of her breath covered by cinnamon gum. She seemed to think she belonged somewhere else — somewhere much grander, with red carpets and flashing cameras — and was sadly confused to find herself on this dingy street. That glint of hard-edged disappointment mixed with indignation and lost dreams. There could be no reasoning with that look, Rita knew all too well from experience.

  Eleven

  Fatigue descended, and cold seeped into her body. Veils of clamminess spread down her legs and arms, wrapping around each finger and toe.

  It was those pictures stashed under her bed. Sad, wraithlike faces. Smudged apparitions of lives that could have been. Lily wanted to stare them down — strip them of their haunting power. Rip them to tatters and set them free on the wind.

  But what was the point of tormenting herself? She thought of Urashima having returned to the land of the living with the three boxes the sea princess had given him. Wouldn’t he have been better off if he’d never opened them up? What good could come of knowing you’d fallen out of time, your whole life seized away from you?

  Aunt Haruko came in. “Another bad dream, ne?”

  Must have been crying out again in her sleep. When she closed her eyes, there was only a blackness beyond all blackness, without a trace of dream residue. Lily shook her head.

  “Mou daijobu.” You’re all right now.

  The soft, melodic syllables soothed her senses and she might have become a child again, pressed against her mother’s bulky lap.

  Upon opening her eyes, though, she didn’t feel all right. Her hands were boiling, then freezing. An army of aches was attacking her tender right breast. She wasn’t even sure where she was right now, beyond a vague sense that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. This wasn’t her childhood bedroom. This woman she called Aunt Haruko wasn’t her real aunt.

  Lily suspected she’d been overheard retching the other morning. Outside the bathroom, Aunt Haruko turned away abruptly, as though something had upset her. Lily felt confused. It was no secret that the food from the mess hall often made her sick.

  “Here.” The speckled hand extended a glass of powdered milk.

  As the chalky fluid hit the back of Lily’s throat, a surge of sour sweetness came back up.

  She had to find Kaz. She hadn’t seen him since the night he’d stormed off, the night of Kenny’s arrest. A mutiny of voices: she could hear them whispering, tittering away, condemning her for being such a coward, Daddy’s little girl. She could have helped Kenny, but instead she’d remained silent, just as she’d always kept silent about her father. And now it was too late.

  The scabs were falling off, leaving droplets of newborn skin; her bruises had faded to a pale green-yellow aura. If she waited too long, all traces would vanish, her last hope of winning Kaz’s sympathy, forgiveness.

  A tangle of shoots and flowers spread out on the kitchen table. The delicate, butter-yellow petals splayed back acrobatically, their last triumphant stretch before slackening. Sturdy, leafy stalks curved gracefully. A lush coral flower, paler at the centre. When she was little, they’d called it the drunken-lady flower, because it was white upon first blooming, but pinkened in the final euphoria of its beauty.

  And after that there was nothing but death.

  Running her fingertips along the kenzan, she thought of falling back — just letting her body go limp and falling upon the bed of upturned needles.

  The doctor had left all these materials out for her in hopes that a little activity would help revive her.

  Snip, snip, went the steel clippers. Caress of a waxy green skin. Sculpting it, the way she used to sculpt her hair in the morning. Her style had become looser, improvisational — no longer did she care about controlling the height and shape of each branch and leaf. These traditional principles fell from her mind, and now she randomly stuck flowers in, here and there, a riot of colour. A peculiar queasiness, like motion sickness, grabbed at her chest as her fingertips traced the wobbly bright blotches.

  And then the doctor was standing behind her. So it was evening already. The colours deepened, drowned in shadow.

  She pushed her arrangement off to the side, hoping he wouldn’t be offended by her ugly creation. But the doctor had other things on his mind.

  “I don’t suppose Kaz’s come to see you?”

  She shook her head and the yellow streak jumped out at her.

  “He’s been sucked into the secret meetings, I’m sure of it. Have you heard?”

  How could she have heard about anything?

  Yellow flowers symbolized something wishful, uncertain. They said, Take my love — won’t you please take my love? Hopeless desires and memories of lost times.

  Secret meetings. The doctor was saying things she didn’t want to hear. It seemed people had gathered today behind Kenny’s mess hall. The same thing had happened yesterday or the day before, or maybe he’d been talking about this for several days now; her capacity for processing such news had reached its saturation point.

  “Not just members of the Kitchen Workers Union — now it’s also regular folks. Issei and nisei alike.”

  “Why do they meet?”

  “People have been gathering for days, Lily. Haven’t you been listening? Ever since Kenny was arrested. Each afternoon they scheme about how to bring about his return to camp. Now the crowd’s gotten so large the meetings might have to move to the firebreak.”

  She toyed with an uncut branch that resembled a broken antler.

  “You know what else I’ve heard? The meetings are conducted entirely in Japanese, so the camp supervisors are kept in the dark. They try to break it up, but people keep right on talking.”

  It was her fault. Her fault that Kenny had been taken away. Because of something she’d said. The FBI agent had stretched his eyelids into thin slits, like buttonholes sewn out of flesh. It had given her quite a fright
, that face he’d made, so she’d nodded just to get him to stop. Yes, she’d nodded, she could remember that part now: she’d confirmed his suspicion that her attacker had Oriental eyes. Oh, why had she done that? Why was it always so much easier just to tell people what they wanted to hear? If only she could take it back.

  Surely, that wouldn’t have been enough for them to arrest Kenny.

  “But he didn’t. Didn’t attack me.”

  The doctor acted as though she hadn’t said anything. Maybe she hadn’t.

  “Kenny didn’t attack me!”

  “Not another word about Kenny Honda. You stay out of it, Lily. You hear me?” It was the same cold expression he’d had when saving that poor girl’s baby. Bringing life into the world, saving lives, knowing when to pull the plug. When to pluck out a diseased apple. Getting blood on his hands didn’t bother the doctor at all.

  “What did you tell the FBI? He didn’t attack me. It wasn’t Kenny!”

  “How can you be so sure, Lily? The man was wearing a mask, you said it yourself. Besides, Kenny’s a troublemaker. He’d have been arrested one way or another, in the end.”

  “I know it wasn’t Kenny. What did you tell them?” Tears stung her eyes.

  “They asked for my opinion and I gave it to them. Based on what I know.”

  That included everything she’d told him on those hot afternoons at the hospital.

  More than once, in recent days, she’d seen Frank Isaka sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea, talking with the doctor softly. Their heads, bent together, formed a dark tent. When Lily hurried past to fetch a cup of water, Frank looked up, his gaze lit with interest. For a second it looked like he wanted to say something to her, but she quickly turned away.

  Cold, dry air slapped her skin. A fine white patina on the ground reflected the sun, dust indistinguishable from frost.

  How many days had she been tucked away, convalescing? Time itself felt unstable, as though she’d awoken from a coma and couldn’t ascertain where the threshold of reality began. The place seemed different now; the front of chilly air had energized people, jolted them out of complacency. They were walking around in small, tight-knit groups, shoulders hunched up under bulky coats, speaking in hushed tones, eyes brimming with secrecy and suspicion. Why were there so many aimlessly wandering around in the middle of a workday anyway?

  In front of the net factory, a crowd had gathered. Shig and Akira were setting up signs. They glanced up at Lily and then chose to ignore her. She noticed Kaoru at the edge of the group.

  “Where’s Kaz?”

  “He was here earlier,” Kaoru said. “He must’ve gone to one of the other protest sites.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Didn’t you hear? No one’s working today. Everyone’s up in arms — taking to the streets!”

  “Free Kenny Honda, Hero of Our People,” read one sign. “Fair Wages for Your Kitchen Workers!” announced another.

  “Rumour has it that guard died last night at the hospital, Lily.”

  “What?”

  Then a terrible relief swept over her: if he were dead, at least that meant he’d never wake up.

  “Yup, you heard me. So everything’s getting pinned on poor Kenny! But everybody knows he hasn’t done anything. The camp bosses just want him out of the way because he’s been pointing fingers, raising a ruckus.”

  “But the police,” Lily said weakly. “The police won’t tolerate this.”

  “What police? Our evacuee police force? Those boys are in the same boat as us and some of them are getting pretty sick of it, too. And the FBI? Well, they’ll have their hands full if they try to arrest all of us.”

  When the shit hits the fan, everyone’ll stand behind us. That was the whole point of the Kitchen Workers Union, as Kenny had said from the get-go. It almost made her laugh. After all his moaning and railing about how they needed to think bigger, all he had to do was get arrested. In his absence, all Kenny’s plans were playing out beautifully. It couldn’t have been going better if he were here in the flesh, running around, barking orders. As their martyred leader, he’d turned himself into the heroic cause that could win people’s hearts and anchor the movement.

  But at what price? Was he going to be blamed for beating that guard to death? Had he? Or had it been Kaz? Their faces blurred together like a ruined photograph in the cavern of her memory.

  “Why don’t you join us, Lily? That would send a strong message.”

  “I’m not feeling well. I need to lie down.”

  In the middle of the circle, Shig had made a bonfire in a garbage can. A gust of ashes blew in her face. She got jostled aside as the crowd gathered around, chanting and shaking their fists.

  Crossing camp, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Garbage cans were burning, full of odds and ends of homemade furniture pillaged from the barracks. Bright yellow signs, bearing the words INU or TRAITOR, were tacked to certain doors. Guys in black masks — brandishing baseball bats — darted from door to door, shouting obscenities in Japanese. A new spirit of wildness and something frighteningly close to festivity infused the air.

  Her story about the man in the black mask must have caught hold in someone’s imagination….

  The door of their old barrack had been removed from its hinges. No one was there. Aunt Tetsuko and her brood must have fled, salvaging as many of their possessions as possible.

  Wind cut against Lily’s cheeks. She was walking — no, she was running — but had no idea where she was going; she just kept moving in circles. No place was safe now, not even the doctor’s house.

  A stage had been set up outside. A banner that read JACC CALL FOR CALM fluttered overtop. A crowd had gathered around. As Lily moved closer, Frank Isaka ascended to the podium. He glanced nervously at Ed Howells, the camp director, who stood on stage beside him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Frank said, “we’re a law-abiding, patriotic people. How can it be that a few troublemakers have managed to seize control of our camp? I beseech you to think twice before you join the bad apples in their campaign of anarchy! Don’t bring shame to our entire community by forcing Mr. Howells to call in military assistance, as he’ll be forced to do if this outrageous behaviour doesn’t stop!”

  Frank launched into his usual monologue about the grand hist­ory of the Japanese-American people — struggling to overcome prejudice, but always in a peaceful manner, and if necessary, quick to turn the other cheek. But where his rhetoric had once brought tears to old ladies’ eyes, a current of jeers and hisses now rose from the masses.

  “What have you done for us, you Jackrabbit!”

  “You’re all just out for yourselves.”

  “I’d take the Black Dragons over the Jackalopes any day!”

  The taunts grew louder, drowning out Frank’s voice. He raised his hands, but no one paid any attention and someone yelled out, “Who do you think you are? The Messiah himself?” followed by much laughter. A tremor passed through the crowd, like the first quivers of an earthquake, and Lily backed away to extricate herself from the upsurge.

  “That girl, the one who’s walking away.” Frank pointed, looking at her like they shared a special bond. “The girl with the bruised cheek. Lily. I’ve heard all about your story.”

  She froze, speechless.

  “Poor Lily,” Frank continued, “is evidence of the destructive force overrunning our community. Did everyone hear about how she was attacked?”

  “Come up on stage so everyone can see you,” Mr. Howells said through his loudspeaker.

  Terrified, she didn’t budge an inch.

  The camp director kept gesturing and someone pushed her forward so she was forced to go up.

  How startlingly different it was to be on stage now. What had happened to the sweet rush of all those upturned faces as she’d sauntered across the stage in her rented kimono? How foolish and
faraway those girlish dreams seemed from here. She captured their attention for other reasons now. Her battered face had transformed her into a symbol for the entire community: vulnerable, caught off guard, beaten, stupid. That was why the sympathy in people’s eyes quickly switched over into wariness and self-loathing.

  And then, she glimpsed Kaz. He was smiling at her, a broad, beaming smile, proud to see her up there, perhaps. That smile breathed new energy into her body and her head began to clear.

  Frank put a hand on her arm while extolling her bravery in the face of anarchy, but she hardly even heard what he was saying. Kaz was smiling at her. In an instant, the light from his eyes seemed to diffuse into the eyes of everyone around him — transforming the crowd into adoring admirers. How desperately she wanted him to come closer, put his arms around her, bury his face in her hair forever. Everything was wavering and trembling through the sheen of her tears, and she might have been on the verge of fainting from pure happiness: the world felt so different under the warmth of Kaz’s darkly shimmering eyes.

  “That was brilliant,” he said, later that day. They were standing outside the mess hall, after dinner.

  There was so much Lily wanted to say, now that she finally had his attention. She didn’t know where to start, a whir of excitement in her head. “I feel terrible about Kenny’s arrest. You have to believe me, Kaz!”

  “Let’s not waste time pointing fingers. We’ve got bigger concerns now.”

  “Oh?”

  “Frank Isaka’s really warmed up to you.”

  She smiled, pretending to follow his line of thought perfectly. The envelope of newspaper clippings drifted into her mind. Her glow faded.

  “You can help us, Lily. You can help us even the score.”

  His words slid past, refusing to line up. Score. Even. Help. Score. Scorch. Their meaning constantly slipping away.

  An urge to do something unfathomable came over her — spit in his face, claw at his eyes, run away. A quiver of nausea, like a feather was tickling her tummy, but from the inside. Where would she run, though? The desert stretched out endlessly. She’d never get away.