Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (24 page)

S
ince it was Saturday, Keiko had no school, and since Henry was a very special visitor, her parents let her skip her chores for the day – just this once. So while her mother did the laundry and the mending, and her father helped new families settle in on their block, Henry sat on the steps outside their building and talked to Keiko for the better part of the afternoon. If there had been a more quiet, more romantic part of the camp, they would have found it. But there wasn’t a park, or even a tree taller than a shrub for that matter. So they sat on cement blocks, side by side, their feet touching.

‘When are you leaving?’ Keiko asked.

‘I’m going to leave with the volunteers when the five-thirty whistle blows. I’ll just cluster in with them at the gate, wear my button, and hope to get through. That’s where Sheldon will be meeting me, so at least I’ll have someone to vouch for me.’

‘And what if you get caught?’

‘That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? I’d get to stay here with you.’

Keiko smiled and rested her head on Henry’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to miss you.’

‘Me too,’ Henry said. ‘But I’ll be waiting for you when this is all over.’

‘What if it’s years?’

‘I’ll still wait. Besides, I need time to get a good job and save money.’ Henry could hardly believe what he was saying. A year ago, he’d been working in the kitchen of Rainier Elementary. Now he was talking about taking care of someone. It sounded so grown-up and somewhat frightening. He hadn’t even dated Keiko, really, not when they were both on the outside of the fences. But a courtship could take a year, or several years. Even in his family, where his parents often argued over the tradition of using a matchmaker for Henry, nothing was decided. Would they even let him date American girls? It didn’t matter now that his father was so frail. Despite Henry’s guilt, he would have to make his own decisions from now on. He’d follow the intent of his own heart.

‘How long will you wait for me, Henry?’

‘As long as it takes, I don’t care what my father says.’

‘What if I’m an old woman?’ Keiko said, laughing. ‘What if I’m in here until I’m old and my hair is gray—’

‘Then I’ll bring you a cane.’

‘You’d wait for me?’

Henry smiled, nodded, and took Keiko’s hand. He didn’t even look, their two hands just seemed to fall together. They spent the better part of the day beneath that cloudy sky. Henry
looked up expecting rain, but the wind, which kept them a little chilly, blew the clouds south of the camp. There would be no more rain.

As the hours passed, they talked about music, Oscar Holden, and what life would be like when Keiko’s family came back to Seattle. Henry couldn’t bear to tell her that Nihonmachi was disappearing. Building by building and block by block, it was being transformed, bought out and renovated. He wondered how much, if anything, would be left by the time they got out. The Panama Hotel, like the rest of Japantown, was boarded up now, slumbering like a patient in a coma – you never knew if they would sit up, or just drift off and never wake up again.

As the evening shift changed for the many volunteers who worked inside Camp Minidoka, Henry said goodbye to Keiko’s family once again. Her little brother even seemed to regard Henry with a sense of longing. I guess even he knows I have a connection to the outside, a freedom he’s not allowed, Henry thought.

Holding Keiko’s hand, he walked with her as close to the volunteer gate as possible without being seen. They stood behind an outbuilding and waited for a crew of workers and missionaries to pass by, then Henry would disappear into the crowd and head to the gate. He hoped Sheldon would be waiting on the other side.

‘I don’t know when I’ll see you again. It took all I had to come see you this time,’ he told Keiko.

‘Don’t come. Just wait, and write. I’ll be here – you don’t have to worry about me. I’m safe here, and it won’t be forever.’

Henry hugged her close and felt her small arms around his shoulders. Leaning in, he felt the warmth of her cheek in the
cool autumn air. Their foreheads touched as he looked down into her eyes, rolling clouds moving slowly in the reflections. His head turned to the left as hers did the same, and a simple kiss found a home between their lips. When he opened his eyes, hers were beaming back at him. He hugged her one more time, then let her go – walking backward, waving, trying not to smile too broadly, but he couldn’t help it.

I love her
. Henry paused at the thought. He didn’t even know what that was, or what it meant, but he felt it, burning in his chest – feeling fuzzy inside. Nothing else seemed to matter. Not the somber crowd of camp workers drifting to the barbed-wire gate. Not the machine guns in the towers above.

Henry began to wave, then lowered his hand slowly as the words ‘I love you’ rolled off his tongue. She was too far away to hear it, or maybe he didn’t make a sound, but she knew, and her mouth echoed the same statement as her hand touched her heart and pointed at Henry. He simply smiled and nodded, turning back to the gate.

H
enry sank into his seat and spoke very little on the long bus ride home. He truly felt bad, imagining the concern he had caused. But he’d had to go. And he’d deal with the consequences. There was a strange, abiding comfort in knowing he could no longer let his father down. Not anymore. What more could there be to disappoint him? What more could he withhold from Henry as a punishment?

His mother, though. He worried about her. He’d left an additional note on his pillow for her to find later. Just a little something to keep her from worrying – too much anyway. The note told her that he was going to visit Keiko, that a friend would be coming along to keep him company, and that if all went well, he’d be home by late Sunday night. The money jar on his dresser was empty, so she’d assume that he had plenty of money for the trip. But in his entire life, he’d never been gone overnight. This would
worry her immensely, especially with his father ailing.

When Henry had left Seattle, he’d imagined that he felt the same way his own father must have felt leaving home at age thirteen. Scared, excited, and confused. For his father, leaving at age thirteen was a matter of pride, even though, deep down, Henry sensed a lot of emptiness and sadness along with it. Now, on the bus heading home, he knew what his father had felt. Hurt and loneliness – but also a need to do what was right. To his father, that meant helping causes back in China. To Henry, it meant helping Keiko.

When he and Sheldon finally said their goodbyes at the Seattle bus station, Henry was exhausted, despite having slept on the bus all day.

‘Everything going to be OK for you back home?’ Sheldon asked.

Henry yawned and nodded.

Sheldon looked at him, his eyebrows raised in concern.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Henry reassured him.

Sheldon stretched and said, ‘Thank you, sir, you have a fine day now,’ and headed for his home, walking in the direction of South Jackson, suitcase in hand.

Henry had assured him it would all be OK. But now, walking up the steps to his apartment, he realized it barely felt like home anymore. Somehow it all felt smaller. More confining. But he knew it was the same place he’d left.

The door was unlocked. A good sign.

Inside everything was dark and quiet. Their small home had a humid smell of rice cooking and the burnt, raw tobacco smell of the Camel cigarettes his father favored. His mother smoked them too, but not as frequently as his father had. That
was the one thing that had changed when his father fell ill. His ability to smoke had disappeared, along with his desire. What will he had left seemed aimed at denying Henry’s existence and focusing on the maps of the war in China.

The only light was a small ceramic lamp in the kitchen that his mother had made at the Yook Fun artisan shop years ago, before he was born. She’d had such a different life before Henry came along. He wondered whether she’d return to that life if he ever left. Next to the lamp was a small plate of food, cold rice and wind-dried sausages made from duck. Henry’s favorite.

Looking over, he saw his parents’ door was all but closed. Henry wasn’t sure what surprised him more. That his mother had left such a nice dinner for him, or that she wasn’t sitting here waiting for him, ready to pounce on his every excuse.

The silence was numbing.

He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and took the plate of food to his room, setting his small suitcase down just inside. He was stunned and confused as he looked at his bed and saw a large black suit laying there. On the floor were a pair of brown leather dress shoes that looked two sizes too big. The suit jacket was Western in cut but had an embroidered spiral design on the pocket, his mother’s doing – modern, but giving it a touch of the Orient. A sense of place in a modern world.

Then it hit him.
My father’s dead.

Henry had never worn such a fine suit in his entire life. The nicest clothes he had were the ones he wore again and again to Rainier Elementary. He wore them several days in a row, doing his best to keep them clean, then his mother would hand-wash and dry them and he’d wear them again.
His appearance was more important to her than the fact that he was teased mercilessly for being too poor to have any other school clothes.

But as Henry touched the fine fabric of the suit, he remembered that it wasn’t white. If Henry were to wear such a suit to his father’s traditional funeral, surely his mother would have insisted that he, as the birthright son, wear the color of his father’s traditions. White was a funeral color, not black. This suit would never do.

Henry opened his door and stepped across the hall to his parents’ room. Peeking in, he could see his mother sleeping, and the outline of his father. Henry could hear his father’s jangled breathing, no better, but no worse than when he’d left three days ago. His father hadn’t died. Henry sighed and felt his guilt make room for quiet relief.

Back in his room, Henry sat on the bed, looking at the suit, eating his cold dinner. The sausage was sweet and chewy. Fresh too. His mother must have made it while he was away. Chewing the last bite, he noticed the corner of a small envelope that must have been tucked in the inside breast pocket of the suit jacket.

Reaching in, he opened the jacket, which now looked too big for him. It was his mother’s way. Everything had to have room to grow. Everything had to last.

Pulling out the envelope, he touched the label, which read ‘China Mutual Steam Navigation Co.’ – it was a cruise line. Henry didn’t have to open it to know what was inside. It would be tickets – passage to China.

‘It’s for you. From your father and me.’ His mother was standing in his doorway, wrapping herself in a flowered robe,
speaking to Henry in his familial Cantonese, a language he hadn’t spoken all weekend. ‘Japan is losing,’ she said. ‘The Kuomintang has forced the Japanese Imperial Army north once and for all. Your father has decided you can go to Canton now. To finish your Chinese schooling.’

Henry stood by the bed, facing his mother. On the bus ride home, he had heard the latest reports on the fighting on Guadalcanal. But to his parents, the war with Japan was always seen from the Chinese side. They fought a different war. Still, Henry was thirteen now, a man’s age in his father’s eyes. Those same eyes that no longer regarded Henry as his son. Yet here he was, being given the one thing his father had always wanted most for Henry – a chance for him to return to China, a place he’d never known, never been, to live with relatives he’d never met. To his father, this was the most precious thing he could give Henry. And as much as Henry had feared this day would come, part of him wanted to go, at least to be able to come back with an understanding of what made his father who he was.

But Henry knew better. ‘He’s just doing this to keep me from her,’ he said. He studied his mother’s face, searching for a confirmation in her expression, in her reaction.

‘This is his dream. He’s worked and saved for years to give this to you. To do this
for
you. So you can know where you came from. Haven’t you dishonored him enough?’

The words stung. But Henry had been stung before. ‘Why now?’

‘The army … the Japanese … it’s finally safe …’

‘Why now? Why today? It’s not any safer getting there. The Japanese submarines have been sinking half the ships in
and out of southern China. Why do I know all this? Because that’s all he’s talked about for my entire life!’

‘This is his house. You are his son!’ his mother snapped back, not loud enough to wake Henry’s father but in a forceful way he’d never seen before. His mother had always walked the fence of conflict between him and his father. Striding with one foot firmly planted on each side of the neutral zone that Henry and his father never crossed. Now she was exerting her own will. She loved Henry as a son, he had no doubt, but she had no choice but to honor her husband’s wishes. Henry’s father was bedridden and could barely speak or move, but he still was head of the home.

‘I don’t want to go. This is his dream. Not mine! I was born here, I don’t even speak the same dialect as the village he came from. I won’t fit in
there
any more than I fit in at the
all-white
school he sent me to. Haven’t I done enough?’

‘Done enough? You have done plenty! You have taken sides with the enemy. The enemy of China –
and
America. We are
allies
. They are the enemy. You have become his enemy. And still he does this for you. For you!’

‘It’s not for me,’ Henry said softly. ‘And I didn’t do this to him.’ As the words came out, he almost believed them. Almost. But looking at his mother – tears streaming down her face, the anger and frustration so measured she was shaking – he knew he’d always be haunted by this, by the effect his actions had had on his father.

Henry looked down at the suit. It was hand-tailored, and expensive. The tickets were expensive too. He had no idea where he’d be going, where he’d be staying, or for how long. And, looking at his crying mother, who now spent her days
caring for her dying husband, for his dying father, Henry felt his resolve crumble. Maybe thirteen wasn’t old enough to escape the pain and pressures of his family. Maybe he’d never escape.

‘When do I leave?’ The words fell out of his mouth, rising like a white flag of surrender. He thought about Keiko, feeling farther and farther away from her as each moment passed, as if his heart were already onboard the ocean liner and being pulled far away, to the sweltering hot South China Sea.

‘Next week,’ his mother whispered.

‘For how long?’ Henry asked.

He watched her pause. This was obviously hard on her as well. She was sending him away, fulfilling the wishes of her husband, letting go of her only son. Henry looked up at her, not wanting to go.

‘Three, maybe four years.’

Silence.

Henry mulled it over. Realistically, he had no idea when Keiko would be coming home, if she ever came home. After all, what home did she have to come back to? Maybe the war would go on forever. Maybe she’d be sent to Japan. It was all unknown.
But four years
? It was unthinkable. Henry had never been away from his parents for
four days
. ‘I … can’t do that.’

‘You must. You have no choice. This is decided.’

‘I will decide. I’m the same age Father was when he left, when he made his own choices. If I go, it will be my choice, not his,’ Henry said. He sensed the conflict in his mother – wanting to obey her husband’s wishes but not wanting to lose her son. ‘My choice, not his. Not yours.’

‘What will I tell him? What would you have me say?’

‘Tell him I’ll go, but not now. Not until the war’s over. Not until she comes back. I told her I’d wait. I made a promise.’

‘But you won’t even see her – for years maybe.’

‘Then I’ll write to her every week.’

‘I cannot tell him—’

‘Then do as I’ve done these past years. Say nothing.’

She put her head in her hands, rubbing her temples. Rocking back and forth. ‘You are stubborn. Just like your father.’

‘He made me what I am.’ Henry hated saying it, but it was true, wasn’t it?