When the Cherry Blossoms Fell Read online

  In bed that night, Michiko listened to the household sounds that were now part of her life. She heard the clank of the aluminum kettle and the hiss of water dropping on the hot iron plate. Michiko closed her eyes to the thud of a log dropping in the great iron stove. A terrible heaviness formed around her heart. The sound of an owl screeching in the forest added to the awful feeling growing in her heart. She was beginning to think they would never be going back.

  Fourteen

  Bears

  Ouch,” Michiko complained. “You’re pulling too tight.”

  “I’m almost done,” her aunt said. “Sit still. Once it’s braided, you can sit in the sun and let it dry.”

  Sadie stood back to study her handiwork. She lifted the ends of the two braids and sat them on top of her niece’s head. “Maybe we should cut them off,” she suggested.

  Michiko stared up at her aunt in horror. “My braids?” she wailed. Both hands flew to the top of her head.

  “Shall I?”

  “No,” she stated firmly. “Father wouldn’t like, that.”

  “I’m sure he would still recognize you,” Sadie said with a smile.

  Michiko had wondered about cutting her braids, but they were an important part of her secret identity. None of the other children at school seemed to care if she was Japanese, but it mattered to George. His dislike of Japanese people was intense, and he wasn’t ashamed to let people know it.

  Every now and then, she stuck a feather in one of her braids to make Clarence laugh.

  After the fishing trip, she and Clarence had become friends. Sometimes they searched for gold nuggets along the creek bed. Even though the mountain water was ice cold, Clarence panned in it, believing, one day, it would bring them gold.

  Michiko taught Clarence how to make paper boats. They used the pages from George’s pamphlet and launched the Yellow Belly Fleet. They pretended each boat would return with a nugget of gold on board.

  One afternoon they lay on their backs in the orchard munching early apples. They watched the sky. All about them was the humming of lazy bees.

  “Look,” Michiko said, pointing to a fat rolling cloud, “that’s the shape of a peach.”

  “I hate peaches,” Clarence said.

  “How can you hate peaches?” Michiko asked in surprise.

  “You don’t know?” he responded. Clarence tugged at a golden red curl. “George calls me Peach Boy all the time.”

  Clarence’s hair and pale skin reminded Michiko of a peach as well.

  “That’s a compliment,” she told him.

  “How can it be a compliment?” Clarence complained as he rolled over on to his stomach.

  That day, Michiko had told Clarence the story of Momo-Taro, the boy born from a peach.

  Michiko shook her braids now and stopped daydreaming. “I’ve got to get going,” she told her aunt. “I’m meeting Clarence. We’re picking blueberries.”

  Bert was taking a load of pickers up to the mountains. For each pail picked and delivered, he credited them with twenty-five cents, which he recorded in his little black book. Clarence had told her that at the end of the picking season last year, he had amassed the small fortune of five dollars. Instead of having them walk five miles to his farm, Mrs. Morrison had persuaded Bert to pick them up at the bridge.

  There was no sign of Clarence when Michiko arrived, but she knew he would emerge suddenly from one of the fields. Michiko thought he was brave to walk the tracks. It frightened her to hear he walked the trestle that spanned the creek.

  “Aren’t you worried about a train coming?” she’d asked.

  “Nah,” he’d scoffed. “My old man’s a railway man. I know all the schedules.”

  The familiar green pick-up truck turned the corner and rumbled across the wooden planks. Bert steered with one hand while the other dangled out of the window. “Get in the back,” he barked as he stopped. Several Japanese women wearing floppy hats tied under the chin stared at her. Their fingers showed through holes cut in lengths of old socks.

  Michiko didn’t join them. She looked up and down the road.

  “I ain’t waiting around all day,” Bert snapped. “You coming or not?”

  There was no sign of Clarence. Michiko was in no hurry to experience another ride hanging on to loose, rattling boards. Besides, she wouldn’t go without Clarence. She shook her head.

  Bert snorted and drove off.

  Michiko decided Clarence must have forgotten and headed back home.

  When she reached the orchard, someone came running full pelt down the lane. Michiko lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The sun caught the runner’s bright red hair. Why was Clarence coming from this direction?

  He arrived, panting. He wrapped his arms about his waist and bent over.

  “The truck already left,” Michiko told him. “Didn’t you see it go by?”

  “Bears,” was the only word he could get out. He put both hands on his knees and breathed in deeply.

  “What did you say?”

  Clarence pointed down the road. “Bears,” he repeated. He continued to pant. “I came out of the field and almost fell over them. They were in the ditch.”

  “Real bears?”

  Clarence nodded. “They don’t usually come this close to town.” His face was bright red.

  “What are they doing?”

  “They’re feeding off those berry bushes by the road.” Finally he stood up straight. “I had to back away and run along the tracks.”

  “Take me to see them,” Michiko pleaded. “I’ve only seen bears in the zoo.”

  “You’ll have to be real quiet,” Clarence warned. “You don’t mess with bears.”

  They walked down the road in silence. Suddenly Clarence stopped and stuck out his arm to prevent her from going further. Two young bears wrestled in the tall grass at the verge of a small hill. One wore a magnificent honey blonde coat. It had a dark face and dark ears. The other was plain brown. They stopped rolling and batted at the shrubbery about them using their clawed paws. “Don’t make any sudden movements,” Clarence cautioned. He took her arm and pulled her to an outcrop of quartz. “Let’s get behind these rocks.”

  The bushes drooped with berries. Michiko could see their little pink tongues dart in and out as they tasted the dark fruit. Would her tongue turn blue like theirs had?

  Then the brown one turned his attention to a rock. He used his paw to heave it out of the ground. He nosed about the hollow.

  “What are you two doing?” came a voice from behind them. It was George. Michiko and Clarence were so engrossed that he had ridden up unheard.

  Clarence put a finger to his lip. “Sshh,” he whispered. “We’re bear-watching.”

  George stood beside his bike. He looked across the road. “They’re just a couple of cubs,” he scoffed.

  “Babies are never far from their mothers,” Michiko told him. She was thinking of Hiro.

  “She’s right,” said Clarence. “I wouldn’t argue with a Kootenay. They know all about bears.” He winked.

  Just then a large silvertip grizzly ambled out of the trees, and the three of them gasped. George lowered his bike and got behind the rock.

  The cubs must have picked up his scent. They looked to their mother, but she paid no attention. They moved out of the ditch closer to her. The mother bear touched noses with one of the cubs. The other tried to climb onto her back.

  “Hey, look,” said George as he pointed at the two figures emerging from the forest.

  Michiko peered over the rock. She recognized them at once. One was Tadoshi, the old carpenter who worked with her Uncle Ted. The other was Geechan. They had become fast friends and often walked and talked together.

  The men approached the clump of berry bushes and stopped. The bears were behind the bushes in the meadow. Turn back, Michiko wished desperately, turn back.

  “They’re Japs,” George remarked.

  “How do you know that?” Clarence asked.

  “Look at t
heir skin,” he whispered. “It’s like a lemon colour.” He rubbed his hands in glee. “Wait until they get closer,” he said. “You’ll see how their eyes slant towards their nose. If they scream, we’ll get to see their big buck teeth.”

  Michiko looked at George in surprise.

  “Too bad they got shoes on,” George commented. “If they had their wooden sandals, we could see their six toes.”

  Michiko emitted a short involuntary shriek that sounded like hysterical laughter. She couldn’t help it. What George had just said was absolutely ridiculous.

  George looked at her approvingly. “Yeah,” he said with a smirk. “We’ll get a good laugh when those two old Jap men meet up with those bears.” He patted her on the back, but his touch made her shudder.

  Geechan and Tadoshi remained standing. They were engrossed in each other’s words. Then they each took a stance. It was as if they were acting out a karate match.

  Suddenly, Clarence leaped up and jumped on to George’s bike. Screaming “Bonsai!” he tore off down the road, yelling in what he hoped sounded like Japanese.

  The big silver bear looked up. She bounded across the meadow, back into the woods, with her cubs behind. The two men stood and stared.

  Clarence returned. “That was great,” he said with satisfaction. “I scared them both.” He leaned the bike against the boulder.

  George stood up in anger. “You were supposed to let the bears scare the Japs,” he growled at Clarence. “You don’t know how to do anything right.” He yanked his bike from the ground and rode off.

  Clarence peered over the rock. “It’s okay,” he told Michiko. “The bears are gone.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes moist with tears. She picked up a rock and heaved it as hard as she could across the road. She was angry with George. Geechan and Tadoshi could have been hurt. But most of all, she was angry with herself. She had just pretended not to know her very own grandfather.

  Fifteen

  Camp School

  It glowed so bright, Michiko had to squint to see out her window. She pressed her palm to the pane, and the lace of frost melted. Fine white crystals covered the entire world. Every branch of every tree sparkled. Tiny twigs twinkled like wands, and the pine tops wore tiaras. It was a world of gleaming ice. Michiko looked towards the mountains. The glittering surface stretched on endlessly into the sun.

  She dressed quickly and raced to the kitchen. Pulling on her boots, she stepped outside. The ice crackled beneath her feet.

  A set of footprints led down the steps. Geechan stood talking with one of the local farmers. Once a week, he sold them dry beans. Sometimes he brought freshly baked bread from his wife’s kitchen.

  The two men chatted beside the farmer’s horse-drawn sled. Icicles hung from the ledge of the tiny windows of the little barnboard house on rails. The wooden boxes stacked about the flat roof were pillowed with snow. The sleek black horse wore several burlap sacks. His harness bells glistened with frost. The large bundled man gestured broadly with red, swollen hands wrapped in rags. He mimicked shooting a rifle.

  Sadie knocked icicles from the edge of the roof with the broom handle. They clattered and smashed at her feet. “This way,” she said, picking up the shards and putting them in a bucket, “we can save ourselves a trip to the creek.”

  “You’ll turn into an icicle yourself without a coat,” Eiko said at the doorway. Michiko followed Sadie inside.

  Sadie placed the bucket on the stove. Michiko munched a piece of toast spread with sardines and watched the icicles lower themselves into their hot, steamy bath.

  Geechan entered carrying a wooden box of supplies. “No school,” he told his granddaughter. “Too slippery.”

  “I should think not,” Sadie remarked. She smiled and said, “Unless you hitched a ride.”

  Geechan told them the farmer had shot a wolf. They were so hungry, they came out of the mountains to hunt farm animals. Sadie and Michiko looked at each other with wide eyes.

  Wednesday was baking day. Michiko was glad she didn’t have to go to school. She helped dry the dishes. Then she settled at the end of the small table to read.

  Geechan sat at the other end peeling apples. Michiko and Clarence had picked every apple that grew on the trees at the side of the house. They had stored them between layers of pine needles in the root cellar.

  The rough round apple turned slowly in Geechan’s dark, coarse hands. As the white flesh appeared, a ribbon of peel unwound downward. He laughed and held it up in the air for her to see. Then he jiggled it. For a single minute, it held the shape of the apple before collapsing on the oilcloth. Michiko smiled. Then he sliced the apple into thin wedges and ate them off the tip of his knife.

  Her mother hummed as she worked bent over the stove. The oven door clanged open. She put her hand in and began to count aloud. “One, two, three,” she said in a singsong voice. Michiko joined in, “twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.”

  “Hot enough,” her mother said and pulled out her hand. She placed a large sheet of round scones inside. The scones were for Mrs. Morrison.

  Winter didn’t stop Mrs. Morrison. She had unearthed a sleigh from her barn and put her farm horse in harness. The mare was short, stout and thick in the legs, just like her. Geechan rose to give her an apple for the horse.

  Mrs. Morrison brought them all the news that flew about town. People were preparing for the winter. Drifting snow could make the ten miles of winding road to the next town impassable. The supplies on the store shelves were gone.

  “Some snow banks are five feet high,” she told them, struggling out of her shabby beaver coat. “The shovelled walks are only wide enough for one.” Her large knuckles tugged at the knot in her woollen kerchief. “They are trying to decide where to put the new school.”

  “New school?” asked Michiko. “What’s wrong with the old one?”

  “Nothing, really,” replied Mrs. Morrison. “There are so many children in town, they need to open another one.”

  “How will they decide which children go to which school?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” said Sadie. “The government has already made that decision.” She banged the baking sheet. “The new school is for Japanese children only.”

  “Just Japanese children?” asked Michiko.

  Michiko thought about the rows and rows of tiny houses with pencil-thin curls of smoke coming out of the chimneys. She and Clarence had visited the orchard to watch the older boys play baseball.

  Kiko, one of the girls her age, had invited Michiko inside her house. It was a lot different from the way Michiko imagined. Tarpaper and cardboard patched the walls. Bedding was draped from the rafters, and clothes were hung from wooden pegs along the walls. The iron cook stove was half the size of the one they had. Kiko called it their gangara stove. There was no pump over a sink, just a galvanized tub and a bucket in the corner. They had to walk to the creek every day, even in the summer, for water. Two families occupied the house, sharing the kitchen.

  “Do you mean to tell me the children have not gone to school yet at all?” Eiko asked.

  “Believe it or not,” said Mrs. Morrison, “they were holding classes out of doors.” She split open a lightly browned scone. “There’s a Japanese woman staying at the hotel.” She smeared it with huckleberry preserves. “She’s the supervisor setting up the school.”

  “Have you met her?” Michiko’s mother asked. “What is she like?”

  “All I know is she is looking for teachers,” replied Mrs. Morrison.

  Michiko thought about Miss Henderson. She was nice, but she didn’t have much discipline. Some of the boys, especially George, often spoke out of turn.

  “What about you, Auntie Sadie?” asked Michiko. All three women looked at her in surprise.

  “What would I teach?” Sadie asked.

  “English, Arithmetic, Art, Physical Education,” Michiko said loudly, counting off her fingers. “Especially Music and Dance.” Then she wagged a finger. “And they would
listen to you.”

  “Maybe,” Sadie mused as she took a sip of tea. “I could look into it.”

  “What are your plans for Christmas?” Mrs. Morrison suddenly asked.

  “Christmas?” repeated Eiko.

  Michiko looked up from her book. “What about Father?” She turned to her mother. “He has never missed a Christmas.”

  Sadie put her scone to one side. “I told you she would be asking soon.”

  Michiko threw her arms in the air and cried out. “What about my father?”

  Her mother looked at Sadie. “I don’t know,” she said through tight lips. “I don’t know when your father will be home.” She put her head in her hands.

  “You know, Michiko,” Sadie said, “sometimes you forget you are not the only one who misses him.” She sat down next to her sister and put her arm around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” said Michiko. She laid her head on her mother’s back.

  “You know something,” Sadie said, “we could make some decorations. It would brighten the place up.”

  “I remember when I was a child,” Mrs. Morrison mused. “We decorated the mantle with bows of greenery.” She sighed. “We strung popcorn and hung cookies on the tree.”

  Michiko’s mother gave a small smile. “There is no lack of pine around here,” she said.

  Michiko threw her hands up towards the ceiling and twirled around. “We can make paper chains.” She danced over to Hiro. “We can do origami.” She clapped her hands in front of her baby brother. “We can wrap presents.” Then she stopped. “That is, if we had any.”

  The three women looked at each other and burst out laughing. They laughed so hard, tears streamed down their faces. Sadie and Eiko each used an end of the dishtowel to wipe their eyes. Mrs. Morrison pulled a laced handkerchief from her purse. Hiro grinned and gurgled.

  Sadie stood up. “Well, that was good, thanks, Michiko.” She pulled the kettle back onto the hot plate.

  “Will you come?” Michiko asked Mrs. Morrison.

  Mrs. Morrison put her teacup down. “Where?” She asked.