Gasa-Gasa Girl (19 page)

The
chawan
-cut woman, who introduced herself as Seiko Sumi, Anna’s roommate, gestured for them to come in. The apartment was airy; a sliding-glass door in the living room opened out to a balcony crowded with ferns and other houseplants.

“Anna was resting, but she’ll be out in a moment. She’s had a difficult day. A close friend of ours passed away, and we went to the memorial service this afternoon.”

Mas stared at Mari, but she instead was focused entirely on Seiko.

“Sit down, sit down.” She gestured to the couch. As Mas and Mari complied, Seiko began to ask, “Now, how do you—” Mas cringed as he prepared to hear the dreaded question.

“You have a lovely apartment,” interrupted Mari, leaping to her feet.

Mas took a quick look at the living room. Reminded him of any other Nisei house. Some Japanese
sumi-e
paintings of jagged mountains. A Japanese doll wearing a bright kimono in a glass box. A couple of papier-mâché tigers. Somebody there was obviously born in the Year of the Tiger. Mas followed Mari as she examined a special glass case in the corner. It looked like some kind of mini historic display with an old nursing uniform, old books, and a badge that read Seabrook Farms. Mas faintly remembered a gardener mentioning that he had worked back East on Seabrook Farms during World War II.

“Seabrook Farms,” Mari said. “I was the videographer for the fiftieth-anniversary reunion event.”

“Oh, really? My mother was in Seabrook—she worked in the infirmary. She died some years ago, but I know that she would have loved to go to the reunion. Quite an event, I heard.”

Mari nodded. “Five hundred people. They have a museum, you know.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve even donated some of my mother’s belongings to them.” The
chawan
-cut woman paused, her eyes darting from Mas to Mari. “Well, you know Anna was there in Seabrook, right? My mother got to know her when Anna was in the infirmary, recuperating from chicken pox. Newcomers aren’t exposed to the same diseases as we are.”

“Ah, of course—” Mari stumbled on her words.

Seiko’s eyes thinned. “How do you know Anna again?”

Mari seemed to know that they couldn’t keep playing this game. “I really don’t know Anna,” she admitted. “I’m really sorry to have deceived you. My husband actually has met her. He worked on Kazzy’s new garden.”

Seiko’s mind seemed to be percolating. “But you weren’t at the memorial service.”

“Our three-month-old son has been ill. We’ve had to be at the hospital.”

“What is your name again?” Seiko asked.

“Mari Arai—well, Jensen now.”

“Jensen.” The tone of Seiko’s voice was sharp, like a bird whistle. “Is your husband Lloyd Jensen?”

Mari nodded.

“I read about him.”

Mas felt like folding his hands over his eyes. It was over.

“I don’t know what you want with Anna, but I’m sure that she won’t want to see you. She’s gone through enough already.”

The door to one of the back bedrooms opened. A
hakujin
woman who looked like an older version of actress Ingrid Bergman in the movie
Casablanca
stood in the doorway. A calico cat slithered through the woman’s legs. “Tama,” she called out. Mas was surprised. Tama was a Japanese name meaning “ball,” the same meaning as the name Mari. The cat sniffed at Mas’s right jean leg and then opted to go into the kitchen.

Anna took a step forward. “What’s going on, Seiko?” Mas couldn’t help but notice that she was shaped like an old-time Coca-Cola bottle. In spite of her being at least sixty, the woman’s figure was good, especially her legs. She must have known that, since she was wearing a skirt cut above the knee.

“These people lied to get in here. I’m going to call the security guard downstairs.” Seiko headed for the telephone in the kitchen.

Anna looked confused, afraid to move.

“Please, just a few minutes of your time, Ms. Grady,” Mari implored. “We know that you sent Kazzy a note to meet him the evening he was killed.”

“How did you—” Anna said, and then shifted gears. “I’ve already spoken to the police.”

She spoke as if she was holding something in her mouth, and Mas detected a slight accent. Maybe this Anna Grady was not from America.

“But did you talk to the police about the gardenia?”

Anna’s blue eyes desperately searched for her roommate.

“Security’s coming,” reported Seiko, appearing from the kitchen, not a strand in her
chawan
haircut out of place.

Mari placed her business card on the couch and pulled at Mas’s jacket sleeve. “We didn’t mean to cause any problems,” she said. “But call me if you change your mind.” They quickly walked out the apartment into the hallway. Mari rushed to the elevator and furiously punched the Down button. Luckily there were two elevators, and the one that opened first only had a woman with a child in a stroller. They slipped in, and as the doors closed they heard the next elevator ring to announce that it was on its way.

T
hey had effectively eluded the sole security guard and practically ran to the bus stop in the open plaza. Fort Lee looked nothing like its name, but Mas felt that they had dodged some serious bullets at the high-rise. He had no intention of coming to Fort Lee again.

The ride on the bus back to Manhattan was quiet. Mas dozed off as soon as he settled in a seat next to Mari. Transferring to the crowded subway at Port Authority, Mas and Mari had to grab on to a pole and stand. It was obvious that Mari had been thinking this whole time.

“I have a friend, a professor, who helps out at the Seabrook museum.”

Mas tried to follow Mari’s thinking. “You think this Seabrook has sumptin’ to do with Kazzy?”

“Well, I’m going to e-mail him when we get back to the apartment and see if he knows anything about Anna Grady.”

Mas was dead tired by the time they got home. He didn’t bother to take a bath or change out of his jeans and sweater. He was, in fact, dreaming of cats, the Japanese kind with no tail, when he felt something pull on his shoulder. “Huh—” He looked up from the couch to see Mari in a flannel nightshirt. “Whatsamatta?”

“My friend already e-mailed me back.”

Mas made two fists, one with his good right hand and the other with his bandaged left hand, and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Sumptin’ on Anna Grady?”

“Nothing on her, but listen to this: Kazzy went to the Seabrook museum six months ago, asking to see some documents on Asa Sumi.”

“Who dat?”

“Seiko Sumi’s mother.”

“Huh?”

“Anna Grady’s roommate.”

Mas’s mind couldn’t catch up with Mari’s words.

“I don’t know what’s going on with those two roommates, but it’s worth looking into. Do you know if Tug still has his rental car?”

chapter nine

Mas sat in the back of Tug’s rental car with a Triple A map spread out over his knees. He didn’t bother to fasten his seat belt, although Tug had asked him to before they left the curb of Carlton Street at nine o’clock in the morning. But that was two bathroom stops ago, and Tug had apparently forgotten to reissue his gentle reminders.

Tug was in the driver’s seat, and Mari was in the passenger’s. She had her own map, but said she didn’t need it, because she had been to Seabrook before, to film the reunion. “It was a few years ago,” she said to Tug. “It was organized mostly by Japanese Americans, all celebrating when they first came to work at Seabrook Farms in 1945.”

Mas shook his head. The Nisei were always celebrating this, celebrating that. When Chizuko was alive, she and Mas were invited to their share of twenty-five-year wedding anniversaries. Usually they took place in the back of a Japanese restaurant, where they were served limp tempura and rolled sushi with rice a little hard from being left out too long. In front of each place setting was usually an origami crane or a dollar bill folded up like a stiff
kaeru
, frog, the symbol of luck among the luckless Nisei and Sansei.

But it didn’t stop with wedding anniversaries. There were
yakudoshi
celebrations, so-called bad-year birthdays (thirty-three for girls, forty-two for boys), and then those events when sixty-year-old fools dressed up in bright-red caps and vests to prove that they were born again.

And then there were those camp reunions. Why did they want to remember being locked up together during World War II? Mas had wondered. Tug explained to him that most of the organizers for these reunions had been young, teenagers in camp. Their memories were much sweeter than those of their parents, who were now gone.

“So, whatsu dis Seabrook, anyways?” Mas asked. He could barely find it on the map. New Jersey was shaped like a flattened boxing glove, and Seabrook was located on the bottom tip, right underneath
PHILADELPHIA
, a city in all capitals.

“There’s nothing much there anymore,” explained Mari, who pushed her sunglasses up on her nose. “But it once was one of the centers of the vegetable canning industry. They called this Charles Seabrook the Spinach King.” Mari went on to describe Mr. Seabrook’s grand scheme of workers on the run from the Great Depression, Stalin, communists, and, of course, American internment camps.

“Knew some guys in the service who had family over in Seabrook,” commented Tug. “Mr. Seabrook and his staff recruited them right out of camp. Even if they worked long hours, it was better than being behind barbed wire, I guess.”

Mas knew what kind of deal that was. Work like a dog for nothing. He looked out the window and saw great empty spaces, tilled land ready to give birth to green vegetables. Accumulated water stayed still in the furrows, and now and then Mas saw a lone creek or marsh. The gray skyline was held up by lines of trees, their bare branches resembling a witch’s gnarled hair. Now that they were away from the hubbub of New York, Mas thought that he would be relieved. But instead his stomach felt on edge, as if there would be no place to go in case of trouble.

They continued on the New Jersey Turnpike until they hit a smaller highway and then eventually transferred to Route 77. More trees and then a lone white building, looking prim and proper like something from America’s pioneering days. Mas noticed a Japanese motif on the front of the building.

It was as if Mari had read his mind. “Yup, that’s the Buddhist temple,” she said. “A lot of the members are non-Japanese, I think. Even had a
hakujin
woman minister once.”

Mas pursed his lips. Everything took on another angle here on the East Coast.

“The church must have been established around World War Two, when all the Japanese came,” Tug said.

Mari nodded. “A lot of the Japanese have moved out to New York and other places,” she explained. “But they do have a JACL chapter here. Their annual chow mein dinner sells out every year.” Japanese Americans and Chinese food, the traditional combination. Funny remnants, here and there, thought Mas. One big shot recruits workers, and look what happens. Buddhist temples and chow mein fund-raisers. People and cultural practices that were being transplanted like weeds stuck on the blades of a lawn mower.

Mari then gave Tug more directions—“Turn right, then left”—and finally they parked in an open lot next to a brick building with a yellow steeple. The steeple was boxed in by a fancy fence and topped with a weather vane.

Before Mas could ask, his daughter said, “This is the city township building, you know, like their city hall. And also the location of the Seabrook museum.”

This was what they had driven more than two hours for? Mas asked himself.

They piled out of the rental car. Like a roll-away bed, Mas hunched over to get out of the two-door sedan and then straightened up in the parking lot, pounding his sore back with the back of his right hand.

“It’s down here.” Mari pointed to the side of the building, where stairs led down to a yellow door. One by one, they entered: first Mari, then Mas, and finally Tug.

T
hey went down a hallway and then entered a brightly lit, airy room. A banner reading Seabrook USA hung from the ceiling. Familiar Seabrook Farms labels had been framed and placed on the walls. Mas headed straight for a diorama of the entire operation, which included a water tower and a factory marked by a long chimney. This Seabrook had once been quite an operation. Mas had seen his share of rice paddies in Hiroshima, lettuce fields in Watsonville, and rows of tomato plants in various towns in Texas. This Seabrook made all of those farms look like someone’s backyard vegetable garden.

“Hey, Mari,” said a young Sansei man in a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. His hair was all shaved off like an
obosan
at a Buddhist temple. The rest of him looked strong and healthy, the type to be hiking in the hills, not hiding in the basement in a small town called Seabrook. He walked around a counter and gave Mari a quick hug. “Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“About five years.” Mari’s face seemed flushed, as if she had been in an
onsen
, a hot-spring bath. “This is Tug Yamada, and my dad, Mas Arai. Kevin Tachibana.”

Kevin had a firm grip, and Mas was surprised to feel that his hand was callused.

“You a farmer?” Mas couldn’t help but blurt out.

“Dad!” Mari said. “He’s a professor.”

“No, it’s quite all right. I’ve bought an old house outside of Philly. Been renovating it myself. I guess I have some home-improvement battle scars.” He grinned, and Mas took a liking to him instantly. A Sansei, smart, and even worked with his hands on his own house. Why couldn’t Mari have fallen for a man like this?

“So you’re the boss today,” Mari said.

“Well, it’s my spring break. I’m just filling in while the director’s on vacation.” Kevin looked at Mari’s left hand. “Well, how are you? Married, I see.”

Mari, thankfully, did not have a matching tattoo ring, but a simple silver one instead.

“Yeah,” Mari said. “And one baby.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Three months old.” Mari’s eyes grew watery.

“Wow. I guess you’ll want to get back to your baby ASAP. So, let’s see—you’re doing research on Kazzy Ouchi, right?”

Mari nodded. “You mentioned that Kazzy had contacted you about six months ago.”

“Well, since I’m doing my research on prewar Nisei in New York and New Jersey, he wanted to meet with me. He specifically wanted to know about this Asa Sumi.”

“Yes, the mother of Seiko Sumi, right?”

“Yeah, Seiko lives up in Fort Lee. Really nice woman. Have you met her?”

Mari nodded.

Mas noticed small beads of perspiration on his daughter’s nose. Whenever she was caught in a lie or a tight situation, her nose would begin to sweat.

“Well, anyway, apparently Seiko’s mother had worked as a housekeeper over in the Waxley House back in the thirties. I guess she worked under Kazzy’s mother, Emily, and even filled in when Emily was pregnant. During the war, Asa was over here, in Seabrook, so I guess he wondered if we had any information.”

“Did you?”

“Well, Seiko had showed us a journal.”

“Yes,” Mari murmured. Mas also remembered some sort of diary on display in the high-rise apartment.

“She didn’t give to us, of course, but did leave some sample pages. She wanted to know if we could translate it for her or at least find someone who could. Unfortunately, I can’t read
kanji
, only some
katakana
and
hiragana
, you know? My Japanese is terrible; I took Italian for my PhD. For a while I was introducing myself as Tachibana-
san
to visiting scholars, until I found out that no Japanese puts ‘
san
’ after their own name.”

Mas wasn’t surprised about the young man’s inability to speak Japanese. He was third-generation, after all. Even a Nisei like Tug didn’t know much. The World War II camps and racism in general had made the Japanese lose their language. Why try to retain it if it was just one more thing that the government and people would hold against them?

Mari apparently felt that way. “But we’re not Japanese. We’re American,” she said.

“That’s true.” Kevin laughed. “Maybe it was my subconscious, attempting to assert its Americanness, huh? Anyway, I couldn’t read the thing. Neither could most of the staff. But we are planning to apply for a grant to do the translation. Seiko couldn’t afford it otherwise; she’s a retired nurse and also a perfectionist. Her Japanese is limited to a few phrases she learned from her parents. Simple stuff that I also remember hearing from my grandparents. But no writing or reading of
kanji
. Seiko wanted it professionally done. She told us that she would keep the original for now, but that we could have access to the journal anytime we wanted.”

“Do you have the sample pages?”

“Oh, yeah, I dug them out for you. I have it in the back. Hold on a second.” He disappeared through a door to a storage area.

Meanwhile, Tug had wandered to a photo exhibit of Seabrook, and Mas joined him. One photo had a line of women, their heads covered with white caps like the ones nurses used to wear, sorting vegetables on a conveyor belt. Men and teenagers picking beans. Nisei singles dancing, twists of crepe paper overhead.

Tug pointed to a black-and-white photo of girls, both Nisei and
hakujin
, standing together in Girl Scout uniforms. “Kind of like a mini United Nations. Jamaicans.
Hakujin
escaping the Dust Bowl.”

Mas stared at an image of a line of
hakujin
women wearing headbands and long, flowing dresses with geometric patterns. “Theysu Americans?” Mas asked.

Tug examined the photo in front of Mas. “Oh, no. There were a lot of Estonians who were here. Their country was over by Russia. The Soviets occupied them, then the Germans, then the Soviets again. Some escaped to come here in fishing boats.”

“
Hakujin
boat people?” Mas was surprised. People were running away from their troubles any way they could. It didn’t matter if you were black, Asian, Latino, or even
hakujin
. “Dat Anna Grady not American. Sheezu come from somewhere else.”

“Maybe she’s Estonian.”

Mas nodded, and Tug took out his notebook from his pocket and jotted some notes. Health inspector turned detective, Tug took on his new role with relish.

Kevin finally returned to the counter with some papers in hand. Tug and Mas could overhear him and Mari struggle with the Japanese.

“Let’s see, hmm, well, this is the date, right? Damn, the year’s written by era. What are they again?” asked Mari.

“Meiji, Taisho, Showa,” Kevin recited. “Showa is during Emperor Hirohito’s reign. Starts around 1926, I think.”

Mari held a page close to her face. “These are the characters for Showa. How does it work again? The year in which the era begins minus one plus the number that follows the era?”

“Confusing.”

“I know,” said Mari. “It’s just like when babies are born in Japan; they come out a year old already. We had a heck of a time figuring out what year my grandmother was born after she died.”