Weedflower (22 page)

A couple of days later at the good-bye party for her cousins and several others, friends of those who were leaving gave speeches about courage and strength. Sumiko just stood with her family. They hadn’t spent time together in public like this in a long while. It was as if they had become a family again so that they could say good-bye properly.

Couples began to dance to a phonograph record. The weather was already warming up at night, and the room took on a sweaty smell. Ichiro danced with one of his favorite girls. Even when there was no music, they held each other and swayed as if the music were still playing. Then a reverend announced a surprise: A couple of the men would be getting married that night. Everybody cheered. Sumiko searched out Ichiro in the crowd, wondering whether he would be getting married. But two men
she hardly knew made their way to the front with their future wives. The weddings took just a few minutes.

Sumiko noticed Bull leaving the party. She followed him, finding him standing near the fence outside. She stood next to him and stared out at the wild shapes of the mesquite trees.

“Will you write me?” she asked.

“Of course I will. Once a week.” He looked down at her. “Sumiko, do you really want to stay here?”

“Yes.”

He lit a cigarette and blew smoke over the barbed wire.

“Bull? What do you think about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. When you’re walking, or just sitting, or working, or before you go to bed at night.”

“Sometimes I think about the farm,” he said. “I wonder who works it now and who’s taking care of your
kusabana
.” He smiled at her.

Sumiko thought it was sad that today there were things about the flower farm that Bull didn’t know. “How long do you think the war will last?”

“I don’t even know who’s winning,” he said.

Sumiko suddenly had a wild thought. “Someday if you have a baby, can I pick out the name?”

“I’ll have to see what my wife thinks about that. But maybe.”

The party inside grew quiet suddenly, one of those random silent moments that can happen in a room. A strange fear washed over Sumiko, a fear she’d never felt about Ichiro. It was a fear that Bull would not be returning. She tried to imagine him as an old man, and she could not. With Ichiro, she could see him in her mind growing older, raising the kids she knew he would have. She could see the wrinkles forming on his face. She saw the dapper old-man clothes he would wear. But with Bull, she could imagine him in his uniform but nothing beyond that. She shook off the thought.

“I’ll write you all the time,” she said. “Do you want magazines?”

“Don’t waste your money on me.”

“It won’t be wasted!” she cried.

He smiled one of his rare big smiles and pulled her close against his wide chest. “Sumi-chan,” he said quietly. He squeezed her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe. He loosened his grip.

“I’ll send you lots of magazines!” she said.

The party started to disperse. Auntie exited arm in arm with Ichiro. Bull joined them, and the three of them walked off together.

That night Bull slept outside by himself again because he said he wanted it that way. From the doorway, as Sumiko watched him lying in his cot, she hoped he was thinking about the
kusabana
blowing beneath a Southern California breeze, the scent wafting over the fields and into their home. Maybe the smell from her little garden here in camp was what had reminded him of their farm. It was April, her favorite month on the farm, full of promise and lukewarm winds.

In the morning nobody woke Sumiko up. She opened her eyes and saw Tak-Tak asleep in his cot, with his glasses on. That was her fault. She usually took them off for him at night, but she’d forgotten yesterday. She turned to check the light outlining the curtains: It looked to be about seven o’clock. She shot up, completely awake. Bull’s and Ichiro’s cots were gone! Auntie was folding sheets, weeping.

“Did they leave?” Stupid question, but she had to ask. Before Auntie could answer, Sumiko ran to the door and saw that the sun was already white. They’d said they were leaving at dawn. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” she screamed.

Auntie didn’t reply, just kept folding sheets, lovingly, even holding the sheets to her face at times to smell them. Sumiko ran out to see the road. A truck was driving by spraying water, to prevent dust from flying around later that day. There were no other vehicles in sight. She knew her cousins were long gone.

She walked back to her barrack and noticed some
papers on her pillow. They were notes from Bull about farming, to give to Frank for Joseph. Auntie had put the sheets away and was packing the tablecloth, already preparing for the move to Illinois in three weeks.

32

E
VERY DAY
S
UMIKO TOLD HER AUNT THAT SHE WAS NOT
leaving, and Auntie just said, “Don’t be silly.” Sumiko did not even begin to pack. Also, every day for the next week and a half Sumiko went to search for Frank with Bull’s papers, but Frank never showed up. The corn was already tall, and the bean plants were thriving. She felt as lonely as she used to before camp. One day she actually fell asleep in a bean tunnel. She awoke to see Frank sitting a couple of feet away, just watching her. Of course she had forgotten the papers that day!

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Listening to you snore.”

“Ha-ha.” But he didn’t smile. “I thought you had abandoned me.”

He looked insulted. “Why would I do that?”

“Well, where have you been?” she asked.

“Mourning.”

“Morning?”

“M-o-u-r-n-i-n-g.”

“Oh … who …,” she said. She watched while he coolly blew a bubble and popped it as she waited for an answer. Then his eyes seemed to grow completely black, and very sad.

“My brother Henry,” he finally said. He lay on his back and stared upward. “He was killed in battle … in the Pacific. We already got his remains back.”

“I’m sorry!” If Henry was killed in the Pacific, that meant he was killed by Japanese soldiers. She felt guilty as if his death were her fault; and she felt defensive, in case he really thought it
was
her fault.

She lay beside him, and together they gazed through the leaves at the sky. Just when she’d decided he wasn’t going to talk about it, he said, “Mohave funerals last all night. They sing the old songs for hours.” He spoke as if dreaming. “We cremate the body.”

“So do we,” Sumiko said. “What are the songs about?”

“About the land and the river and the beginning.” He suddenly turned toward her and touched her face. “How come you’re still here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you said some people were leaving.”

“My aunt is going to get a job in Chicago. I don’t want to go. Auntie may let me stay.”

He didn’t speak for a long time, and she saw a few tears trickling down his face. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For saying it was better for the Indians if more Japanese stayed. I was wrong.”

“But you’ll get more land cultivated.”

“It doesn’t matter. The more people who are free in the world, the better it is for Indians. It’s better for everyone. You should leave. You shouldn’t live here.”

“
You
live here.”

“My future is here,” he said impatiently. “Yours is somewhere else.”

Tears still fell slowly down his temple and into his hair. He wasn’t crying explosively the way she had after the birthday party. So very long ago she had cried over a stupid birthday party! And he was crying because his brother was dead.

He turned to her. “So you’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“I don’t want to. Anyway, you’re my friend, right? So you should want me to stay.”

“You don’t know much about friendship, do you?”

“I’ve had friends before,” she lied.

“Then you should know I’m trying to help you.”

“I didn’t ask for your help!”

He pushed himself up suddenly. He looked annoyed. “I’m going home.” He scrambled out of the vines, leaving her lying on her back alone.

She sat up. Now
she
was annoyed. She pushed through the vines. “Frank!” she called out. But he was gone. It didn’t matter; she did not know what she had planned to say to him. She lay back down and tried to figure things out.

1. She felt annoyed with Frank for wanting her to leave.
   
2. She felt terrible about his brother.
   
3. She felt responsible for his brother because he was killed by a Japanese soldier.
   
4. She felt worried about her cousins.
   
5. She felt torn about what she should do. Stay or leave?
   

33

A
T HOME LATER
S
UMIKO BORROWED
M
R
. M
OTO’S
shovel and started digging on the edge of her garden to extend it. The dirt was so hard, she made slow progress. She kept working even after the sun rose and the May afternoon grew sweltering. Sometimes her feelings were all jumbled together into one huge mess of sadness and fear, and sometimes her thoughts became orderly and she studied each thought in turn. And sometimes she was only gardening, only thinking of all the flowers she would grow that year.

She planned to cultivate up and down the entire length of the barrack. Maybe Mr. Moto would agree to extend the pond, and maybe they could get a tree
somehow. Maybe she could live with Mr. Moto! Or maybe she could hide in the boiler room while the bus left with Auntie.

Her palms grew blistered, and she did not even eat dinner that evening, just worked and worked, though she could scarcely see in the dark.

When she finally stopped, she leaned the shovel against the barrack and sat down among her weedflowers.

If she left the camp, she would not have any friends at all. No more Frank. No more Sachi. No more Mr. Moto. A flock of snowy egrets flew low over the ground beyond. She didn’t know what to do. If she left camp, it would be just exactly as if all the years Jiichan had worked and all the years her parents had worked and all the years her aunt and uncle and cousins had worked were gone; they’d be starting all over again to make their way in a hostile land, just as Jiichan once had. And yet Jiichan had found a type of success. She realized suddenly that he had been a happy man. And a brave one.

She spotted a weed and jumped up and pulled it out. Then she saw another one and yanked that out.

She kept thinking of Jiichan on the ship to America, desperately trying to avoid the ultimate boredom. When he got here, all he’d known was hard work. What kind of freedom was that? Then she thought of what Frank had said, about his future
being here and hers being elsewhere. And she realized that it had not been freedom that Jiichan came to America for, but the future. And not his future, but
hers
—the future of his unborn grandchild.
That’s
why he had left Japan. He had loved her even before she was born.

“All right, I’ll leave,” Sumiko said suddenly. But there was nobody around to hear her decision.

That evening Sumiko sat in the bean fields for several hours, waiting for Frank to show up so she could tell him good-bye. He never did show up, but the next day she went out there again. And the next and the next and the next.

One day as Mr. Moto was planting new cuttings, she moseyed up to him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” He stopped working.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and back again. “Ummm.” Her gaze moved to the best carving in the garden: a samurai so realistic, he looked like Issoumbochi, the miniature man of Japanese fairy tales. You wouldn’t think a man with one eye could carve like that. “See … um … I have a friend.”

Mr. Moto nodded as if he understood.

“
Annnd,
I was wanting to give my friend a special present before I leave.”

“Ahhh.” Now he definitely understood. “So you’re
leaving after all.” He grunted as he lifted himself from the ground and walked over to the samurai. Then he looked thoughtful. “But do you think the garden will be able to win a prize without this?”