When the Cherry Blossoms Fell Page 5

  Michiko peered at it. “Do you have one too?” she asked her aunt.

  “We went to different schools,” Sadie said. “I went to dancing school. Look,” she said, “here’s the newspaper article about your mother’s school.” She read from it out loud. “Girls, it is noticed, come from all over the province to take courses in tailoring, dress design and dressmaking.”

  Michiko picked up the photograph of her parents’ wedding. “You wore your pearl necklace.”

  Her mother’s fingers went to her throat. “Your father gave it to me as a wedding gift,” she whispered. “The pearls came from a very special place.”

  “I know,” Michiko cried out in excitement, “I know where your pearls came from.”

  “You do?” her mother said. “Where?”

  “They came from Pearl Harbor,” Michiko said with a smile. “I heard about Pearl Harbor at school.”

  Both women gasped. They looked at each other with wide eyes.

  “No,” her mother said crossly. “My pearls were harvested by the lady divers of Mikimoto.” She packed up the box. “Your father had my necklace sent from Japan.”

  “Where is it?” Michiko asked. “Can I see it? Can I try it on?”

  “No, you can’t.” Her mother looked at the picture in her hands. “It’s gone.”

  “Did you lose it?”

  Her mother did not answer.

  Michiko wanted to know what had happened to the beautiful necklace. “Did someone steal it?” But her mother still did not respond. She placed the basket back on the shelf.

  “She sold it,” Sadie said finally. “She sold it along with the piano and everything else of value in the house.”

  “You sold your necklace?” Michiko stared at her mother with her mouth open. “Why?”

  “I had to,” her mother said. Then she slumped down in her chair and laid her head on her arms.

  Sadie turned to finish the dishes. Michiko took one of her mother’s hands and held it. She didn’t know what else to do. There were tears on her mother’s cheeks.

  Suddenly Eiko rose and ran out the front door. Michiko went to follow, but Sadie grabbed her and held her back. “Leave her.” She drew Michiko into a hug. “She hasn’t shed a single tear till now.”

  Michiko looked into her aunt’s eyes. They were brimming with moisture. “It’s time your mother had a good cry.” Sadie hugged Michiko harder. “It will do her good.”

  Michiko didn’t want her mother to cry. She wanted her to wear the pearl necklace. Her eyes filled with tears as well.

  Eight

  School in Town

  Ted showed them a small opening in the bush. “It’s an overgrown trail,” he told them. “The wagons took the apples to market this way.” He pointed into the trees. “Follow it until you reach the road, then turn left.”

  Michiko trudged alongside Geechan. The hardboiled egg, nestled inside her tiny furoshiki, bounced against her leg. She had two rice balls and fiddleheads for lunch as well.

  They pushed their way along the broken branches and grass. The trees seemed to close in behind them as they walked. Geechan had to duck under the low branches more than once. As they wound their way along the pine-scented path, the wind whispered through the needles. Michiko hoped they wouldn’t meet a bear.

  Part of the path followed a stream that trickled over the rocks and boulders. Michiko could smell the rotting marsh grasses. When the rasping call of a blackbird rose from the bullrushes, they waited to see the flash of red on its glossy black wing. The croaking and beeping of the frogs beckoned her to a game of hide-and-seek. She wished they could stop longer and watch for dragonflies.

  Finally, they emerged from the bush onto the long stretch of dusty road. Thorny bushes covered with wild roses greeted them from the shallow ditch.

  They passed a rutted laneway much like theirs, which led into a pasture dotted with daisies. The sound of hammering drifted up to the road. Michiko saw her grandfather’s eyes drift longingly towards the sound. His hands were always restless. Her mother had once told her this was why he made such a good barber. When he wasn’t cutting hair, he was whittling at a piece of wood.

  When they reached the narrow metal bridge, Geechan stopped. Past the bridge was the town. Michiko leaned over the handrail to look at the willow that swayed above the river. Grey water rushed past below them with a roar.

  Geechan gave her a small push. Michiko knew this meant she was to go on alone. She turned to her grandfather. “What if no one likes me?” she said in a low voice.

  “Not like you?” Geechan’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “You are nice girl with a smart head. Why they not like you?”

  Michiko took a deep breath and stepped off the bridge. She walked for a bit, then turned to wave, but her grandfather had not waited. He was off to the field of hammers.

  She smiled. Uncle Ted often joked about his nine-man team. He said the government paid eight men for eight hours to put up a house. When Geechan helped, they took a longer lunch break.

  One night at dinner, Ted had used chopsticks to demonstrate how the little houses went together. “The posts go into the ground, and we lay the main beams,” he said. “Then we put the floor panels down, and the walls go up.” He told them how they built each wall with the door and window spaces right on the ground. Then they lifted the the wall and bolted it to the floor. After the stoves went in, they added the roof panels. The house was finished when they nailed the last panel down.

  Several of her uncle’s small square wooden houses with shingle roofs now stood in the orchard. Smoke from one of the chimneys curled up into the pale blue sky. Maybe I will meet someone from those houses at school, she thought as she walked into town.

  The spaces between the large roadside maples grew wider. She spied the church steeple as she approached the square wooden buildings on the corner. No buses, no streetcars, and no traffic lights, she could hear her aunt say as she turned and made her way down the main street.

  A soft fragrance wafted towards her. It came from a small tidy house with scrolls of woodwork around the porch. A picket fence separated the house from the street. The arched gate was overgrown with a cloud of lavender and ivory lilacs that filled the air with their perfume.

  Michiko stopped in the middle of the road to breathe in the fragrance. It reminded her of the cherry tree in her own backyard.

  “Hey,” someone yelled, “move.”

  The sound of the bicycle bell made her jump. Michiko darted in the same direction as the rider.

  “Watch out!” the boy on the bike yelled. He stomped hard on his brakes. The bicycle wobbled and fell to one side. The boy fell off, and the bicycle landed on top of him.

  Michiko could only stare at the brightly polished fenders and leather seat.

  A boy got slowly up off the ground. He dusted himself off and looked up. “So, is it a dirty Jap that made me fall?”

  “I didn’t mean—” Michiko started to say, but he cut her off.

  “Next time, I’ll run you over.” His cold blue eyes told her he meant what he’d said. He turned and picked up his bike.

  Michiko watched the white-walled balloon tires turn the corner. She continued to walk, but when she turned the corner, the Union Jack was fluttering high on the pole. That meant school had started. She broke into a run, making her pigtails smack hard against the side of her face.

  Out of breath, she pushed open the schoolhouse door. Without thinking, she slipped off her shoes as she did at home and stepped into the schoolroom, leaving her shoes outside the door. Thirteen pairs of unsmiling eyes turned her way. The teacher put down her piece of thick yellow chalk. Michiko waited in the aisle, not knowing what to do next.

  “Come in,” the teacher said.

  Michiko moved forward.

  A boy on the aisle looked down. “She ain’t got no shoes,” he exclaimed. “She must be even poorer than me.”

  Everyone laughed, and Michiko hung her head.

  “Now, n
ow, boys and girls,” cautioned the teacher. “She must have shoes. Her socks are a lot whiter than any of yours.”

  Several children bent to examine their own socks.

  “Put your shoes back on,” the teacher directed Michiko kindly. “We don’t take our shoes off here.”

  Michiko returned and thankfully slipped them back on. The coolness of the dark linoleum floor was already seeping through her socks.

  “Come up to my desk,” the teacher said. She sat beside a clay pot of scraggly geranium plants. “My name is Miss Henderson,” she said softly. “You must be the little girl Mrs. Morrison came to see me about.”

  Michiko stood before her, her hands at her side. She didn’t know what to say.

  “What is your name?” the teacher asked.

  Michiko whispered her full name. “I am Michiko Takara Minagawa.”

  “Please say it again,” the teacher requested. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

  Michiko whispered it a second time. The teacher shook her head.

  “Maybe she’s Italian,” someone from the back offered. “Maria didn’t know English when she first came.”

  “Write your name for me, please,” Miss Henderson directed as she pushed a piece of paper towards her. Michiko picked up a pencil and wrote her name.

  “She better not be one of those yellow bellies,” a different voice from the back piped up.

  The teacher looked up and frowned. “That’s enough,” she said. She looked at Michiko’s name for a minute and picked up the pencil. She crossed out some letters and wrote down some new ones. She examined the paper for a moment, then looked up at the class. “We have a new student,” Miss Henderson announced. She focused directly on the boy with the bike. “Boys and girls, meet Millie Gawa.”

  “Hello, Millie Gawa,” they chorused.

  The teacher pointed to a desk in the second last row. “You can sit beside Clarence.”

  “Hey, Clarence,” a boy in the back called out. “Looks like you finally got yourself a girlfriend.”

  Miss Henderson clapped her hands loudly. All went quiet.

  Michiko slipped into the seat beside the boy named Clarence, who looked as if he had been born on the sun. Red hair fell about his freckled face in curls. His large ears, rimmed with sunburn, stuck straight out like the open doors of her father’s car. His nose peeled. Clarence wore a long-sleeved plaid flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants. One of the buttons on the cuff was missing. The corner of the pocket was slightly torn.

  Her mother would never have let her come to school like that, Michiko thought. She’d let down the hem of Michiko’s cotton skirt, washed it, and dried it. Her white blouse was spotless.

  They spent the morning writing out addition questions and multiplication tables. At recess, Michiko stood with her back to the wall, watching the children coo like pigeons over the green and ivory bicycle leaning against the wall.

  “It’s the New Elgin Deluxe,” one of the boys called out to the others.

  Its owner patted the silver mound between the two handlebars. “This is an electric beam,” he boasted.

  Clarence came late into the yard, returning the coal bucket from the small stove to the shed at the back. The sun tinged his red hair with gold as he closed the shed door with the toe of his boot.

  At lunchtime, Miss Henderson asked Michiko to remain inside, while the others spilled out on to the wooden trestle table in the side yard. She gave Michiko a few words to spell and several passages to read. Then they ate their lunch together in friendly silence.

  After lunch, the class had a botany lesson. The teacher directed them to sketch a flowering plant. If they wished, they could use watercolors to enhance their drawing. Michiko’s eyes shone when the students passed back pieces of drawing paper. She found that drawing often helped her to ease her fears. Her joy diminished, however, when she opened the green enamel box. Most of the cakes of colour were gone. Those left had large holes in the centre, and the white enamel of the box’s bottom showed through.

  Clarence watched her sketch a long stem with small buds. Below, she drew clusters of small-petal blooms.

  “That’s good,” he said. “It’s a lilac, right?”

  Michiko looked up, but he turned back to his work.

  “Prepare for dismissal,” the teacher announced.

  Michiko blew gently on her paper before slipping it inside her desk.

  “No leapfrogging across the desks,” Miss Henderson warned the boys at the back as the children crowded towards the door.

  Michiko raced along the hard dirt road until she reached the wooden bridge. Then she slowed down to walk the rest of the way. School had not been anything like the one she went to at home. She didn’t know how to tell her mother that she had a new name.

  At home, she slapped her furoshiki on to the kitchen table, laid her head down and closed her eyes. Her mother moved her hands to retrieve the bundle.

  “What are these small cuts on your fingers?” Eiko asked. “What have you been doing?”

  A bundle of thorny dark green stems and small pink roses fell out of the furoshiki.

  Michiko opened her eyes. “The teacher said,” she mumbled, “if you pick flowers and hang them to dry, they will keep their colour.” She closed her eyes again. “We always had flowers on the table at home.”

  Nine

  A Boat Called Apple

  Everyone is to begin on page one,” Miss Henderson directed as she handed out the papers. “Work as far as you can.”

  The class groaned as their day began with an arithmetic test.

  Michiko twisted her braid before she started. She whizzed through the first page. It was all addition and subtraction questions. She turned the page. Clarence, she noticed, was counting his fingers inside his desk.

  She completed the second page of multiplication and division questions and moved on to the third. It was word problems. After reading the first, she gazed across the room. Miss Henderson smiled at her. Michiko lowered her head to make a small drawing to help solve the problem.

  A sudden sting on the back of her head made her jerk upright. Clarence picked up the bit of crumpled paper that bounced on to his desk. He slid it inside and unfolded it. His face flamed redder than his hair.

  Michiko looked behind her. The boy with the bike smirked at her. Clarence ripped the note in half and stuck it in his shirt pocket.

  “Put your papers on my desk on your way out,” Miss Henderson directed.

  The girls skipped but didn’t invite Michiko to join. She stood and watched until Miss Henderson emerged from the school. As she waved the hand bell, Clarence ambled up to her side.

  “I always wait until the rest have gone in,” he told her. “That way nobody pushes you.” He waited with Michiko until everyone was inside before he spoke again. “Most of the students dislike George,” he told her. “Try to stay out of his way.”

  “Millie,” the teacher called out as she entered the classroom. “I’ve marked your arithmetic paper. Well done. I’m moving you up a grade. You are to sit beside George from now on.”

  Michiko’s eyes darted to Clarence’s as she picked up her notebook and pencil. She moved to the desk beside the boy who owned the bike, took a deep breath, sat down, and smiled.

  His clear blue eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Are you one of those Dirty Japs?” he whispered.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “I asked if you were a Dirty Jap,” he repeated.

  Michiko heard him clearly that time.

  George stared at her, waiting for something to happen. But Michiko couldn’t think of anything to say. She flipped through the pages of the textbook. She would have liked to have said something, if she only knew what.

  At home Michiko talked about her day at school. “A boy in my class called me a Dirty Jap,” she said to her mother’s back as she prepared dinner.

  “And what did you say?” Eiko asked without turning around.

  “I didn’t know what t
o say.”

  “What is a Dirty Jap?” Michiko asked, moving to her mother’s side.

  Ted and Sadie overheard as they came into the kitchen.

  “Did you do or say anything to this boy to make him angry?” her uncle wanted to know.

  Michiko shook her head. “After the arithmetic test, the teacher made me sit beside him.”

  “That means he’s jealous,” Sadie said. “He was used to being the smartest in the class until you came along.”

  “Why did he call me dirty?” Michiko asked. “Even the teacher complimented me on my clean socks.”

  Ted pulled her into his arms. “I’m afraid in the eyes of some people, all Japs are dirty.”

  “Especially Hiro, when he fills his diapers,” Sadie said loudly. She laughed heartily.

  “Shizukani, Sadie,” Eiko cautioned her. “This is why I didn’t want her to go to school.” She leaned against the sink. “I could have taught her here.”

  “With what?” Sadie retorted. “We don’t have any books. Besides, she should know what is going on.”

  Sadie pulled Michiko away from Ted. “Listen, Michiko,” she said, spinning her around to face her. “The lesson you learned at school today wasn’t about arithmetic. It was current events.”

  “Stop it,” Eiko cried.

  Sadie ignored her. “Canada is at war with Japan after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in the United States,” she continued. “For some reason, people think all Japanese people are enemies.”

  Michiko’s eyes widened. “Enemies?” she repeated.

  “That’s why we left Vancouver.” Sadie stopped holding Michiko and relaxed her arms. “Everyone who was Japanese had to move away from the coast. It is the law.” She slumped into a chair. “We left before they threw us out.”

  “Stop it,” cried Eiko. “Stop it, Sadie.”

  But Sadie didn’t stop talking. Her voice grew louder, as if she were telling a whole roomful of people. “The government made new laws for the Japanese every week. We weren’t to have cameras or radios. Then we couldn’t have cars or boats.”