Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (20 page)
Read Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky Online
Authors: Sandra Dallas
Pop, you sent me the best present I ever got. It and Hiro’s flag pin will keep me safe. I never thought you’d part with your lucky
silver dollar, because I know what it means to you. I will carry it with pride and honor until I come home and return it to you
.
Mom looked up with tears in her eyes.
“Pop sent Roy his lucky dollar?” Tomi asked. She couldn’t believe her father would part with it.
Mom nodded. “Pop did not want us to know. He was afraid we would think him foolish. He must be proud that Roy joined the army after all. “Mom folded the letter and put it back into Pop’s pocket. She took a deep breath. “It is our secret. Now you must finish your schoolwork, Tomi.”
Tomi nodded and sat back down at the table. She knew what to write in her essay. She picked up her pencil and began.
ALMOST
everyone in Tomi’s class wrote essays about “Why I Am an American.” Mrs. Glessner took them home that night and graded them. The next day, she handed the essays back to the students. All but Tomi’s. “I will see you after class, Tomi,” she said.
Tomi’s face turned red, and she looked down at her desk. Mrs. Glessner didn’t like her essay. Tomi had thought her idea was a good one, but now she wasn’t so sure. She’d written the essay in a hurry. Perhaps it was sloppy. Mrs. Glessner wouldn’t like it if she’d misspelled words or used poor grammar. Tomi hoped her teacher wouldn’t visit Mom and Pop again and tell them Tomi had lost interest in her schoolwork.
Tomi fidgeted until the bell rang, ending classes for the
day.
“You want me to wait for you?” Ruth asked, as she picked up her pencil and arithmetic book.
Tomi shook her head. She’d be embarrassed if Ruth heard Mrs. Glessner bawl her out.
After the other students left, Tomi went to the front of the room and stood beside Mrs. Glessner’s desk.
“Sit down,” the teacher said.
Tomi swallowed. Sitting down meant a long conversation. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.
“I read your essay last night. In fact, I read it four times,” Mrs. Glessner began.
“I’m sorry if …” Tomi started to say, but Mrs. Glessner held up her hand.
“And I find it the finest writing you have ever done.” Mrs. Glessner smiled.
“Really?” Tomi couldn’t believe she had heard right.
“In fact, it is the best in the class.”
Tomi’s mouth dropped open. “I thought you didn’t like it.”
“You did? Why?”
“Well, you didn’t give it back. And you asked me to stay after school.”
Mrs. Glessner smiled again. “Oh, I’m sorry. I made you worry. But you see, I couldn’t talk about it with you in front of the class.”
Tomi didn’t understand.
“I want you to recopy it. You crossed out some words, and one word is misspelled. I want it to be perfect.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to enter it into the Colorado essay contest. It will be Tallgrass’s entry. I didn’t want the class to know because, well, Tallgrass wasn’t exactly invited to participate in the contest. I think it was an oversight, but who knows?” Mrs. Glessner said.
Tomi stared at her teacher, and her eyes grew big.
Her
essay was going to be in the contest! But how could that be if Tallgrass students hadn’t been invited to submit entries?
Mrs. Glessner looked uneasy. “I hope you will understand what I am going to say,” she said and waited until Tomi nodded before she continued. “I’ve asked one of the teachers at the Ellis school to send it in with the Ellis entries.”
Tomi thought for a minute. “Would the judges throw it out if they knew it came from a Japanese girl at Tallgrass?”
“I don’t know that for sure, but I wouldn’t want to take
a chance. It’s not right to have to mislead them, of course. But it wouldn’t be fair if you were eliminated because you are Japanese either. This way, your essay will have an equal chance with all the others. Your work will be judged on its merits, not on the race of the person who wrote it.”
“But what about my name? The judges will know I’m Japanese if they see my name.”
“Tomi Itano. You know, it sounds Italian to me,” said Mrs. Glessner.
Of course, Tomi didn’t expect to win. But she was thrilled that her essay was good enough to be entered in the contest. She carefully copied it, then gave it to Mrs. Glessner. When the two of them agreed it was perfect, Tomi folded up the original and put it inside her book.
Ruth was playing outside when Tomi left the classroom. Tomi was surprised to see her. After all, she had stayed in the classroom for a long time. “What did Mrs. Glessner want?” Ruth asked.
Tomi shrugged. “I had a misspelled word in my paper.”
“It must have been an awfully long word.”
“Oh, we got to talking.” Tomi didn’t tell Ruth about her essay. Ruth might think she was showing off. Besides, her entry was a secret.
Hiro came up to her then. “Wilson and I are going to play baseball. Want to watch us?”
“Sure,” Tomi said, glad to change the subject.
“Ruth said you had to stay after school,” he said. “Were you bad?”
Tomi laughed and poked her brother in the arm. “Not as bad as you are as a baseball player.”
“Hey, I hit a double last time I was at bat.” Hiro played baseball every chance he could.
“Dumb luck,” Wilson teased him.
Tomi thought again how fortunate the younger kids were that they had adjusted to the camp. She wondered if Hiro had forgotten about the farm where they had lived. Maybe that would be a good thing.
But he hadn’t forgotten. “When we go home to California, everybody’s going to be surprised at how good I am. I’ll be the first one picked when we choose up teams.”
“You’re kidding yourself. Those guys have gotten better, too. They have good baseballs and bats, better ones than we do. And they have those fancy ball fields with
grass. No dirt fields like Tallgrass,” Wilson said.
“That just means we’re tougher.”
“Come on, tough guys. You’re not playing at all unless you get to the ball field,” Tomi told the two boys.
As they walked to the field, Hiro said, “I’m glad you like to watch me play baseball, Tomi. Pop never comes to see me play. Everybody else’s dad does. Even Helen comes to see Wilson.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like baseball,” Tomi said.
“Sure he does. He went to all of Roy’s games in California. And remember how he used to play catch with me? Maybe he doesn’t like me,” Hiro said quietly.
Tomi put her arm around Hiro. “Of course he likes you, Hiro. Pop loves his family. He’s just unhappy with America.”
“What can we do?”
Tomi sighed. “I don’t know. Mom doesn’t either. Maybe when the war is over, Pop will turn into the old Pop.”
“I hope so,” Hiro said. “I miss him.”
“Tomi had to stay after school,” Hiro announced when they went inside the apartment after the baseball game.
Both Mom and Pop looked up from what they were doing. Pop frowned. “What did you do?” he asked.
“We don’t know that she did anything,” Mom said. “Maybe she just helped clean the blackboards.”
“We don’t have blackboards,” Tomi said. She shrugged. “It wasn’t anything.”
“Not anything?” Pop said. “You have to stay after school, and it’s not anything?”
“You haven’t lost interest again, have you?” Mom asked.
“Mrs. Glessner just wanted to talk to me about my essay,” Tomi explained.
Mom put down her sewing. She was using scraps of the blue cotton that Mrs. Hayashi had given her to make a pillow. “Did she like it?”
Tomi shrugged. “I guess. She made me recopy it.” She looked down at the floor. “I had a misspelling, and some of the words were crossed out. She said I was sloppy.”
“Serves you right,” Pop said.
Mom fitted two tiny pieces of blue together and pinned them. “I would like to read it, Tomi. Wouldn’t you,
Sam? Tomi says it’s called ‘Why I’m an American.’ ”
“No.” Pop picked up the camp newspaper. “Tomi’s a Japanese American. That’s not any kind of American at all.” He began reading again.
“Well, I still want to read it,” Mom said, putting aside her sewing.
“You can’t,” Tomi said. “It’s at school.”
Later, Tomi remembered she had put the original copy of her essay into her book, but she didn’t say anything about that. She didn’t want Mom to read it. What if Mom said Tomi had no business writing what she did?
