Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (9 page)

Mom explained they would assemble the squares and triangles into a block. It would take many blocks to make a quilt.

“I don’t have so much material,” one lady complained.

Mom looked at the small stash of fabric the woman had brought, then glanced around the table. No one had enough for a quilt. She thought that over, then brightened. “I know. We will make one big quilt, all of us together.”

“Who will get the quilt?” Mrs. Hayashi asked.

“Maybe we draw straws,” another said.

“Yes,” Mom said. “But it doesn’t seem fair if we all work on the quilt and only one keeps it.”

“We could give it to the hospital,” Mrs. Hayashi suggested, and Mom nodded.

“I know,” Tomi spoke up. “We can have a raffle. The money will go to the war effort.”

The ladies smiled at each other and nodded. Mrs. Hayashi said, “It is a good idea. We can sell tickets for five cents. Maybe we will make enough money to buy a tank.”

1943 | CHAPTER ELEVEN

SOLVING TWO PROBLEMS

AS THEY
left the quilt room, Tomi told Ruth, “I don’t think they’ll make enough money to buy a tank; maybe only a gun.”

“Who cares if it’s only enough for a handful of bullets? This might be the first time I’ve seen Mother smile since Ben died,” Ruth said.

Indeed, Mrs. Hayashi was smiling as she told Mom, “I think my husband has some indigo cloth from Japan left from the store. It is just cotton and was used to make work shirts a long time ago. The people who took over the business wanted only silk. The blue cotton is very old and very beautiful. I will ask my husband if the people in San Francisco will send it to us for a quilt.” She took Mom’s arm and smiled at her. “Perhaps we could make a Japanese
design with your squares and triangles.”

Then she asked if Tomi was going to help piece the quilt.

“Who, me?” Tomi asked and made a face. “I don’t care about sewing. But I’ll sell raffle tickets. Maybe everybody in camp will buy one. What’s five cents times five thousand?”

“A lot,” Ruth replied. “You know, I think quilting takes Mother’s mind off Ben, at least for a little while. She seems happier when she’s sewing. But other times …” Ruth shrugged. Then she said, “I don’t want to talk about Ben.” She changed the subject. “Who’s that new girl in your barracks? She looks familiar. She was standing in the hall when I came to your apartment yesterday, and she looked angry.”

“You mean Helen,” Tomi said. “She lives there with her two brothers. They’re orphans. Her mom died just before Helen came to Tallgrass.”

Ruth stopped and cocked her head. “Now I remember. I think I know her. She used to sing in the choir at our church in San Francisco. She’s a bobby-soxer. She has a beautiful voice.”

“She doesn’t sing here. Mostly, she just looks mad,”
Tomi said.

“That’s too bad. I was mad when I came here, but now, I’m not so mad. Does she work?” Many of the internees held jobs in the camp. They weren’t paid much. Most received twelve to sixteen dollars a month to work in the post office or the print shop, where they produced posters for the war effort. Professional people, such as doctors, made only nineteen dollars. But the jobs filled their time and made the people feel useful. It also gave them a little money they could spend in the camp store or on items they sent away for in the Montgomery Ward catalogue. Mom was paid twelve dollars a month for teaching the quilting class, and she’d promised to spend her first paycheck on boots for Tomi.

“Helen doesn’t work even though she’s old enough to have a job. She doesn’t go to school either. She has to take care of her little brother. She’s like a mother to him. The camp was going to divide up the three of them and put them with different families, but Helen said no. She wouldn’t give up her brothers,” Tomi told Ruth. “It’s not fair.” She remembered that she had once told Ruth it wasn’t fair that Pop was in prison, and Ruth had replied that it wasn’t fair her brother, Ben, had died.

“There are a lot of things at Tallgrass that aren’t fair.”

The two hurried to catch up with their mothers when something occurred to Tomi. She put her hand on Ruth’s arm, and the two stopped. “I have an idea …”

Ruth looked at Tomi, a question on her face. “What?”

“I have an idea,” Tomi repeated. “Your mother …” She paused, thinking that what she was about to say was none of her business.

“My mother what?”

“Helen needs somebody to watch her brother Carl. He’s four, the age you said Ben was when he died.”

“And?”

Tomi took a deep breath. “What if your mother took care of him?”

“You mean you want her to work as a nursemaid? Mother would never do that. She’s never worked a day in her life except for helping Father at the store. We could use the money, but Mother would think taking a job was … well … disgraceful. It would be as if she said Father couldn’t provide for us and she had to help out. It would make Father feel useless.”

“What if it’s not a real job? Helen probably couldn’t even pay her if she wanted to. Maybe your mother could
just ‘help out.’ With your brother gone, she might like having Carl around.”

Ruth looked down at the ground, thinking. “I don’t know,” she said at last.

“You could ask her,” Tomi said.

Ruth shook her head. “She’d say no, just like your mother did the first time she was asked to teach the quilting class. We’d have to find another way. We’d have to make her think it was her idea.”

“We could just take Carl to meet her, and maybe she’d get the idea on her own,” Tomi suggested.

Ruth slowly nodded her head up and down. “I don’t know if that will work, but it’s worth a try.”

Not long after that, Tomi knocked on Helen’s door. “I thought I’d take Carl out to play,” Tomi said.

Helen frowned, her hands on her hips. “Why would you do that?”

Tomi had thought Helen would be glad to get rid of her brother for a while, and she didn’t know what to reply. When in doubt, Roy always joked, tell the truth. Or part
of it, Tomi thought. She said, “My friend Ruth, her brother died, and she misses him. Maybe playing with Carl would make her happy.”

Helen thought that over. “I guess that’s all right.” It was cold outside, and Helen told Carl to put on his coat. “He doesn’t have mittens. We didn’t need them much in San Francisco.”

Tomi took Carl’s hand in her own mittened hand and led him along the street to Ruth’s barracks. Ruth answered the door. She knew what Tomi was up to, of course, and grinned. “Oh, what a cute little boy. Who’s he?” she asked.

“This is Carl. His sister Helen takes care of him. They’re orphans. I said I’d watch him for a little while. But he doesn’t have any mittens, and it’s too cold to play outside. Maybe we could read him a story. Do you have any books?”

Before Ruth could answer Carl spotted the pull-toy that had belonged to Ben. “I want to play with the dog,” he said.

“Oh no,” Ruth told him. She had a horrified look on her face. “Nobody plays with that but Ben—I mean, my mother,” she said.

Carl looked disappointed, but he didn’t complain. He
took off his coat and sat down on the floor. “You got anything to play with?”

Ruth glanced at her mother, who sat in a chair, looking at the floor instead of at the children. She seemed to be ignoring them.

“I have a pencil. Do you want to draw?” Ruth asked.

Carl nodded, and Ruth gave him a pencil and the back of an envelope.

“Can you draw a horse?” Tomi asked.

“No, a dog. We had a dog. His name was Rusty.”

Ruth turned to Tomi, her eyes wide. Then she nodded at the pull-toy. “That’s the name of Ben’s dog,” she whispered.

Carl turned over onto his stomach and began drawing, laughing, and holding up the paper when he was finished. Tomi told him the drawing looked like a fish.

“He’s not a fish. He’s Rusty.” He set the paper back down on the floor and made another drawing. “That’s a fish,” he said, holding up a picture of a blob. “Let’s go outside. I’ll draw another animal. I can use a stick in the dirt.”

The three put on their coats, and as they left the apartment, Mrs. Hayashi asked quietly, “He’s an orphan?”

“He and his brother and Helen. She’s only sixteen. She
has to take care of Carl, so she can’t work or go to school. She can’t even let Carl go outside and play by himself, because he mixes up the barracks and gets lost,” Tomi explained.

“Maybe you remember Helen, Mother,” Ruth added. “She sang in our church in San Francisco.”

They left the apartment, and Carl played outside with Tomi and Ruth until he complained of the cold, and Tomi said it was time to take him home. “I don’t think your mom fell for it,” she said, disappointed. “She didn’t say anything.”

“I don’t know. Let’s go back to the apartment for a few minutes,” Ruth told her.

They took Carl back to the Hayashis’ barracks. As they walked down the hall, Tomi slipped and knocked against Carl. He giggled and knocked her back on purpose. As they entered the apartment, Carl told Mrs. Hayashi, “She bumped me, but I bumped her good.”

Mrs. Hayashi smiled as she rose from her chair. The pull-toy was in her hand. “You may play with this. Very carefully,” she said, handing the dog to Carl. Then she nodded at the table. She had covered it with an embroidered white cloth and set of four tiny china cups as thin
as butterfly wings on the table. A teapot rested on the table, too. And there was a small bowl of Japanese crackers. Mrs. Hayashi must have brought them from California, because Tomi had not seen them in the camp store.

“Please sit down,” Mrs. Hayashi said. When they were all seated, Mrs. Hayashi poured tea into the cups. She was as graceful as a swan Tomi had seen once in California.

“Oh boy, crackers!” Carl said. “Thank you, lady.”

“She’s Mrs. Hayashi,” Tomi corrected.

“You may call me Aunt Hayashi,” Ruth’s mother said. “And if you are careful, you may play with some other toys I have.”

“Wow!” Carl said.

Tomi stared at the table. She was afraid that if she looked at Ruth, Mrs. Hayashi would know they were up to something.

After the tea was finished and Carl was rolling the dog back and forth, Mrs. Hayashi said, “I do not want to keep any girl from school. You may tell your friend I will watch Carl while she attends classes.”

“Really? I never thought about that, but I’m sure Helen would be happy. That’s a really good idea you have, Mrs. Hayashi,” Tomi said. She had to work hard to keep
from breaking into a grin.

Mrs. Hayashi cleared away the tea things, and Ruth nudged Tomi in the ribs. “It worked. She thinks it was her own idea,” she whispered.

Tomi wasn’t so sure, because as she opened the door to leave, Mrs. Hayashi called to her. “Oh, Tomi,” she said, and Tomi stopped. “You are a very clever girl.”