No-No Boy

by John Okada

  “Who’s home, Pop?” he asked, holding out the bag.

  “Nobody,” said the father, taking the present and looking into the bag. It held two fifths of good blended whisky. He was a big man, almost six feet tall and strong. As a painter and paper hanger he had no equal, but he found it sufficient to work only a few days a week and held himself to it, for his children were all grown and he no longer saw the need to drive himself. He smiled warmly and gratefully: “Thank you.”

  “Sure, Pop. One of these days, I’ll bring home a case.”

  “Last me two days. Better bring a truckful,” he said, feigning seriousness.

  They laughed together comfortably, the father because he loved his son and the son because he both loved and respected his father, who was a moderate and good man. They walked into the house, the father making the son precede him.

  In the dining room the father deposited the two new bottles with a dozen others in the china cabinet. “I’m fixed for a long time,” he said. “That’s a good feeling.”

  “You’re really getting stocked up,” said Kenji.

  “The trust and faith and love of my children,” he said proudly. “You know I don’t need clothes or shaving lotion in fancy jars or suitcases or pajamas, but whisky I can use. I’m happy.”

  “Are you, Pop?”

  The father sat down opposite his son at the polished mahogany table and took in at a glance the new rugs and furniture and lamps and the big television set with the radio and phonograph all built into one impressive, blond console. “All I did was feed you and clothe you and spank you once in a while. All of a sudden, you’re all grown up. The government gives you money, Hisa and Toyo are married to fine boys, Hana and Tom have splendid jobs, and Eddie is in college and making more money in a part-time job than I did for all of us when your mother died. No longer do I have to work all the time, but only two or three days a week and I have more money than I can spend. Yes, Ken, I am happy and I wish your mother were here to see all this.”

  “I’m happy too, Pop.” He shifted his legs to make himself comfortable and winced unwillingly.

  Noticing, the father screwed his face as if the pain were in himself, for it was. Before the pain turned to sorrow, before the suffering for his son made his lips quiver as he held back the tears, he hastened into the kitchen and came back with two jigger-glasses.

  “I am anxious to sample your present,” he said jovially, but his movements were hurried as he got the bottle from the cabinet and fumbled impatiently with the seal.

  Kenji downed his thankfully and watched his father take the other glass and sniff the whisky appreciatively before sipping it leisurely. He lifted the bottle toward his son.

  “No more, Pop,” refused Kenji. “That did it fine.”

  The father capped the bottle and put it back. He closed the cabinet door and let his hand linger on the knob as if ashamed of himself for having tried to be cheerful when he knew that the pain was again in his son and the thought of death hovered over them.

  “Pop.”

  “Yes?” He turned slowly to face his son.

  “Come on. Sit down. It’ll be all right.”

  Sitting down, the father shook his head, saying: “I came to America to become a rich man so that I could go back to the village in Japan and be somebody. I was greedy and ambitious and proud. I was not a good man or an intelligent one, but a young fool. And you have paid for it.”

  “What kind of talk is that?” replied Kenji, genuinely grieved. “That’s not true at all.”

  “That is what I think nevertheless. I am to blame.”

  “It’ll be okay, Pop. Maybe they won’t even operate.”

  “When do you go?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “I will go with you.”

  “No.” He looked straight at his father.

  In answer, the father merely nodded, acceding to his son’s wish because his son was a man who had gone to war to fight for the abundance and happiness that pervaded a Japanese household in America and that was a thing he himself could never fully comprehend except to know that it was very dear. He had long forgotten when it was that he had discarded the notion of a return to Japan but remembered only that it was the time when this country which he had no intention of loving had suddenly begun to become a part of him because it was a part of his children and he saw and felt it in their speech and joys and sorrows and hopes and he was a part of them. And in the dying of the foolish dreams which he had brought to America, the richness of the life that was possible in this foreign country destroyed the longing for a past that really must not have been as precious as he imagined or else he would surely not have left it. Where else could a man, left alone with six small children, have found it possible to have had so much with so little? He had not begged or borrowed or gone to the city for welfare assistance. There had been times of hunger and despair and seeming hopelessness, but did it not mean something now that he could look around and feel the love of the men and women who were once only children?

  And there was the one who sat before him, the one who had come to him and said calmly that he was going into the army. It could not be said then that it mattered not that he was a Japanese son of Japanese parents. It had mattered. It was because he was Japanese that the son had to come to his Japanese father and simply state that he had decided to volunteer for the army instead of being able to wait until such time as the army called him. It was because he was Japanese and, at the same time, had to prove to the world that he was not Japanese that the turmoil was in his soul and urged him to enlist. There was confusion, but, underneath it, a conviction that he loved America and would fight and die for it because he did not wish to live anyplace else. And the father, also confused, understood what the son had not said and gave his consent. It was not a time for clear thinking because the sense of loyalty had become dispersed and the shaken faith of an American interned in an American concentration camp was indeed a flimsy thing. So, on this steadfast bit of conviction that remained, and knowing not what the future held, this son had gone to war to prove that he deserved to enjoy those rights which should rightfully have been his.

  And he remembered that a week after Kenji had gone to a camp in Mississippi, the neighbor’s son, an American soldier since before Pearl Harbor, had come to see his family which was in a camp enclosed by wire fencing and had guards who were American soldiers like himself. And he had been present when the soldier bitterly spoke of how all he did was dump garbage and wash dishes and take care of the latrines. And the soldier swore and ranted and could hardly make himself speak of the time when the president named Roosevelt had come to the camp in Kansas and all the American soldiers in the camp who were Japanese had been herded into a warehouse and guarded by other American soldiers with machine guns until the president named Roosevelt had departed. And he had gone to his own cubicle with the seven steel cots and the potbellied stove and the canvas picnic-chairs from Sears Roebuck and cried for Kenji, who was now a soldier and would not merely turn bitter and swear if the army let him do only such things as the soldier had spoken of, but would be driven to protest more violently because he was the quiet one with the deep feelings whose anger was a terrible thing. But, with training over, Kenji had written that he was going to Europe, and the next letter was from Italy, where the Americans were fighting the Germans, and he found relief in the knowledge, partly because Kenji was fighting and he knew that was what his son wished and partly because the enemy was German and not Japanese.

  He thought he remembered that he had not wanted Kenji to go into the army. But when he was asked, he had said yes. And so this son had come back after long months in a hospital with one good leg and another that was only a stick where the other good one had been. Had he done right? Should he not have forbidden him? Should he not have explained how it was not sensible for Japanese to fight a war against Japanese? If what he had done w
as wrong, how was it so and why?

  “Would you,” he said to his son, “have stayed out of the army if I had forbidden it?”

  Kenji did not answer immediately, for the question came as a surprise to disturb the long, thought-filled silence. “I don’t think so, Pop,” he started out hesitantly. He paused, delving into his mind for an explanation, then said with great finality: “No, I would have gone anyway.”

  “Of course,” said the father, finding some assurance in the answer.

  Kenji pushed himself to a standing position and spoke gently: “You’re not to blame, Pop. Every time we get to talking like this, I know you’re blaming yourself. Don’t do it. Nobody’s to blame, nobody.”

  “To lose a leg is not the worst thing, but, to lose a part of it and then a little more and a little more again until . . . Well, I don’t understand. You don’t deserve it.” He shrugged his shoulders wearily against the weight of his terrible anguish.

  “I’m going up to take a nap.” He walked a few steps and turned back to his father. “I’ll go upstairs and lie down on the bed and I won’t sleep right away because the leg will hurt a little and I’ll be thinking. And I’ll think that if things had been different, if you had been different, it might have been that I would also not have been the same and maybe you would have kept me from going into the war and I would have stayed out and had both my legs. But, you know, every time I think about it that way, I also have to think that, had such been the case, you and I would probably not be sitting down and having a drink together and talking or not talking as we wished. If my leg hurts, so what? We’re buddies, aren’t we? That counts. I don’t worry about anything else.”

  Up in his room, he stretched out on his back on the bed and thought about what he had said to his father. It made a lot of sense. If, in the course of things, the pattern called for a stump of a leg that wouldn’t stay healed, he wasn’t going to decry the fact, for that would mean another pattern with attendant changes which might not be as perfectly desirable as the one he cherished. Things are as they should be, he assured himself, and, feeling greatly at peace, sleep came with surprising ease.

  * * *

  —

  After Kenji had left him, the father walked down the hill to the neighborhood Safeway and bought a large roasting chicken. It was a fat bird with bulging drumsticks and, as he headed back to the house with both arms supporting the ingredients of an ample family feast, he thought of the lean years and the six small ones and the pinched, hungry faces that had been taught not to ask for more but could not be taught how not to look hungry when they were in fact quite hungry. And it was during those years that it seemed as if they would never have enough.

  But such a time had come. It had come with the war and the growing of the children and it had come with the return of the thoughtful son whose terrible wound paid no heed to the cessation of hostilities. Yet, the son had said he was happy and the father was happy also for, while one might grieve for the limb that was lost and the pain that endured, he chose to feel gratitude for the fact that the son had come back alive even if only for a brief while.

  And he remembered what the young sociologist had said in halting, pained Japanese at one of the family-relations meetings he had attended while interned in the relocation center because it was someplace to go. The instructor was a recent college graduate who had later left the camp to do graduate work at a famous Eastern school. He, short fellow that he was, had stood on an orange crate so that he might be better heard and seen by the sea of elderly men and women who had been attracted to the mess hall because they too had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. There had been many meetings, although it had early become evident that lecturer and audience were poles apart, and if anything had been accomplished it was that the meetings helped to pass the time, and so the instructor continued to blast away at the unyielding wall of indifference and the old people came to pass an hour or two. But it was on this particular night that the small sociologist, struggling for the words painstakingly and not always correctly selected from his meager knowledge of the Japanese language, had managed to impart a message of great truth. And this message was that the old Japanese, the fathers and mothers, who sat courteously attentive, did not know their own sons and daughters.

  “How many of you are able to sit down with your own sons and own daughters and enjoy the companionship of conversation? How many, I ask? If I were to say none of you, I would not be far from the truth.” He paused, for the grumbling was swollen with anger and indignation, and continued in a loud, shouting voice before it could engulf him: “You are not displeased because of what I said but because I have hit upon the truth. And I know it to be true because I am a Nisei and you old ones are like my own father and mother. If we are children of America and not the sons and daughters of our parents, it is because you have failed. It is because you have been stupid enough to think that growing rice in muddy fields is the same as growing a giant fir tree. Change, now, if you can, even if it may be too late, and become companions to your children. This is America, where you have lived and worked and suffered for thirty and forty years. This is not Japan. I will tell you what it is like to be an American boy or girl. I will tell you what the relationship between parents and children is in an American family. As I speak, compare what I say with your own families.” And so he had spoken and the old people had listened and, when the meeting was over, they got up and scattered over the camp toward their assigned cubicles. Some said they would attend no more lectures; others heaped hateful abuse upon the young fool who dared to have spoken with such disrespect; and then there was the elderly couple, the woman silently following the man, who stopped at another mess hall, where a dance was in progress, and peered into the dimly lit room and watched the young boys and girls gliding effortlessly around to the blaring music from a phonograph. Always before, they had found something to say about the decadent ways of an amoral nation, but, on this evening, they watched longer than usual and searched longingly to recognize their own daughter, whom they knew to be at the dance but who was only an unrecognizable shadow among the other shadows . . .

  Halting for a moment to shift the bag, Kenji’s father started up the hill with a smile on his lips. He was glad that the market had had such a fine roasting chicken. There was nothing as satisfying as sitting at a well-laden table with one’s family whether the occasion was a holiday or a birthday or a home-coming of some member or, yes, even if it meant somone was going away.

  Please come back, Ken, he said to himself, please come back and I will have for you the biggest, fattest chicken that ever graced a table, American or otherwise.

  * * *

  —

  Hanako, who was chubby and pleasant and kept books for three doctors and a dentist in a downtown office, came home before Tom, who was big and husky like his father and had gone straight from high school into a drafting job at an aircraft plant. She had seen the car in the driveway and smelled the chicken in the oven and, smiling sympathetically with the father, put a clean cloth on the table and took out the little chest of Wm. & Rogers Silver-plate.

  While she was making the salad, Tom came home bearing a bakery pie in a flat, white box. “Hello, Pop, Sis,” he said, putting the box on the table. “Where’s Ken?”

  “Taking a nap,” said Hanako.

  “Dinner about ready?” He sniffed appreciatively and rubbed his stomach in approval.

  “Just about,” smiled his sister.

  “Psychic, that’s what I am.”

  “What?”

  “I say I’m psychic. I brought home a lemon meringue. Chicken and lemon meringue. Boy! Don’t you think so?”

  “What’s that?”

  “About my being psychic.”

  “You’re always bringing home lemon meringue. Coincidence, that’s all.”

  “How soon do we eat?”

  “I just got through telling you—in a lit
tle while,” she replied a bit impatiently.

  “Good. I’m starved. I’ll wash up and rouse the boy.” He started to head for the stairs but turned back thoughtfully. “What’s the occasion?” he asked.

  “Ken has to go to the hospital again,” said the father kindly. “Wash yourself at the sink and let him sleep a while longer. We will eat when he wakes up.”

  “Sure,” said Tom, now sharing the unspoken sadness and terror which abided in the hearts of his father and sister. He went to the sink and, clearing it carefully of the pots and dishes, washed himself as quietly as possible.

  It was a whole hour before Kenji came thumping down the stairs. It was the right leg, the good one, that made the thumps which followed the empty pauses when the false leg was gently lowered a step. When he saw the family sitting lazily around the table, he knew that they had waited for him.

  “You shouldn’t have waited,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I slept longer than I intended.”

  “We’re waiting for the chicken,” lied the father. “Takes time to roast a big one.”

  Hanako agreed too hastily: “Oh, yes, I’ve never known a chicken to take so long. Ought to be just about ready now.” She trotted into the kitchen and, a moment later, shouted back: “It’s ready. Mmmm, can you smell it?”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing,” Tom said with a famished grin. “Let’s get it out here.”

  “Sorry I made you wait,” smiled Kenji at his brother.

  Tom, regretting his impatience, shook his head vigorously. “No, it’s the bird, like Pop said. You know how he is. Always gets ’em big and tough. This one’s made of cast iron.” He followed Hanako to help bring the food from the kitchen.

  No one said much during the first part of the dinner. Tom ate ravenously. Hanako seemed about to say something several times but couldn’t bring herself to speak. The father kept looking at Kenji without having to say what it was that he felt for his son. Surprisingly, it was Tom who broached the subject which was on all their minds.