When the Cherry Blossoms Fell (5 page)

“So what have you been eating lately?” Sadie asked Ted.

Ted bent his arms upward to flex his muscles. “Potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes,” he said. “I'm desperate for a bowl of
miso
soup.”

“We all are,” retorted Sadie. “Goodness knows where we'll get Japanese food out here.”

Michiko hauled off her cotton nightgown. Yesterday's clothes lay on the floor in a pile. Her mother hadn't put clean ones out for her. She pulled on her long-sleeved blouse and buttoned it up before stepping through the elastic waist of her wool skirt. This is what she usually wore to school. It felt odd wearing school clothes on a summer vacation.

Michiko wiped the fine dry dust of the road from the toes of her shoes. She slapped her socks against the foot of the metal bed to rid them of the brown rings before putting them on. Hiro stirred. She picked up her shoes and tiptoed downstairs.

The rough wooden surface of the kitchen table lay bare. Where was their embroidered cloth? Two small red enamel bowls sat alone with a pair of chopsticks across them. One bowl was half-full of rice, the other of green tea.

Michiko lifted the bowl of snowy white rice to her face to breathe in the sweet aroma. It was cold. She looked around. Where was the bowl that held her egg? There wasn't even
shoyu
on the table. Michiko always dribbled the dark soy sauce on top of the thick yellow
yolk. Then she stirred the large staring eye with her chopsticks and poured it over the hot steamy rice.
This is a very plain breakfast
, she thought. She poured some of the cold green tea over her rice and gave it a stir.

“Ohayo,”
her grandfather called out, hearing her move in the kitchen. He sat on the verandah in a wooden chair facing the sun, whittling. “You slept a long time, my little cherry blossom.”

“Good morning,” Michiko said as she moved to the steps to put on her shoes. The sun was bright, but the air was cool. She was glad of her long-sleeved blouse and warm skirt.

She walked to one end of the verandah and leaned on the railing, facing the field of crumpled grey grass. The other side of the dirt road was dense with trees.

“We should be grateful,” Geechan said.

Now Geechan is saying it
, Michiko thought as she turned to him.

Geechan gestured to the right with his knife. “We have an orchard,” he told her. “Next spring, we will have a grand
hanami
.”

Michiko glanced at the rows of short, gnarled trees sprouting small green leaves and shrugged.
Geechan doesn't understand we are only on vacation
, she thought. But he often didn't understand things about their life. He lived the same way he used to live in Japan, and Sadie complained about it a lot.

She heard her mother's and aunt's voices coming from the side of the house and went to investigate.

Sadie was busy tying a rope between two of the
small, stunted trees. A large white apron covered her denim overalls and red plaid shirt. A red silk kerchief kept her shiny black hair in place. Only her short straight bangs showed. Michiko was used to seeing her mother in an apron, but not her aunt.

The two women stared down at the large galvanized tub in front of them with their hands on their hips.

As Michiko approached, she stepped on a branch, hidden by pine needles. It made a loud crack, and both women looked up.

“Ahh, the princess is awake,” Sadie said. “But you are not Princess Minnehaha, a true daughter of the forest.” She lifted a finger to her lips. “You make too much noise when you walk.”

“What are you doing?” Michiko asked, ignoring her aunt's attempt at humour. She stared into the tub.

“Diapers,” her mother responded as she picked up the tin bucket at her feet and dribbled water down the side of the washboard. “We are washing Hiro's diapers.”

Sadie threw in a large yellow brick of soap, but it did not sink to the bottom as Michiko expected. “The water is still cold,” Sadie complained as she swirled it around in the water. “We should have heated it longer.”

“We can do that tomorrow,” Eiko said. “Let's get these done, or Hiro won't have any diapers at all.”

Sadie took one of the diapers from the small basket on the ground. She plunged it in and out. Holding the yellow brick, she rubbed the two together. “Too bad you didn't ship the washing machine,” she said as she plunged the diaper in again, “instead of the sewing
machine.” She rubbed the diaper up and down the washboard, plunged it in once again and gave it a hard wring. Then she handed the white twist to Eiko.

Eiko plunged the diaper up and down in the bucket. She too gave it a hard wring. Then she walked to the rope and draped the diaper over it.

“Is Hiro awake?” she asked.

Michiko shook her head.

“I'll go in,” Eiko said, removing her apron. “You can take over the rinsing.” She draped her apron over a branch.

Michiko couldn't believe her ears. What did her mother want her to do?

Auntie Sadie held out the white twisted roll. “Come on,” she said. “You'll get the hang of it in no time.”

Michiko put two fingers into the pail of water and quickly pulled them out. Aunt Sadie was right. The water was freezing.

“I can't wash clothes in this skirt,” she complained. “I'm not even allowed to play in it. It's for school.”

Sadie laughed aloud. “School?” she echoed. She tossed the diaper into the bucket. Then she grabbed her sister's apron from the branch. “Raise your arms.”

Michiko obeyed.

Sadie wrapped the apron around her chest. She tied it at the back then in the front. “Put it in fast,” her aunt directed. Then her voice softened. “I know the water is cold.”

Michiko plunged in her hands. She swished the diaper about, then she pulled it up out of the water. She swished it around again. She thought her hands would turn blue, but they only went bright red. She held the
diaper over the bucket and let it drip.

Her aunt snatched it up. She gave it a good hard twist, and water streamed out. Then she handed Michiko the twisted roll.

Michiko took it to the clothesline. She tried to arrange the diaper over the rope the same way as the one beside it. It almost fell into the dirt, but she caught it in time. She flipped it across the rope. Then she wrapped her hands in the hem of the apron and held them between her knees to warm them.

On the way back, Michiko stepped on the same stick, and it cracked again. The stick looked like a large fork. Michiko picked it up and stripped off the bark. She wiped it on her apron and stuck it in the pail, using it to swirl the diaper.

“Good thinking, princess,” her aunt complimented.

Michiko was hanging the third diaper when her mother came outside. Hiro stretched out his fat little hands. Michiko removed the apron and took him in her arms.

From her pocket, Michiko's mother brought out a handful of wooden pegs. They reminded Michiko of tiny people without arms. Her mother pegged the diapers to the line.

“You keep Hiro entertained,” she mumbled past the peg in her mouth. “I'll finish the washing.”

Michiko shifted her little brother to her hip and looked down into his chocolate brown eyes. “Well, Prince Hiro,” she cooed, “when will your royal baby carriage finally arrive?”

Hiro grinned and gurgled.

Michiko sidestepped the path that led to the small grey hut. The smell of lye and lime and the wooden bench with the round hole disgusted her. Last night was the first time she had ever used an outhouse. For once, Michiko wished she could wear diapers too.

She made her way down the rutted road, shifting her brother from one hip to the other. The weathered building at the bottom of the road reminded her of a barn, even though it wasn't barn-like in shape.

Across the front of the building, the ghostly outline of two pink circles rested on a bed of pale green leaves. Scrawled across the front, the faint peeling letters spelled out the word “Apples”. A row of small square-paned windows, several panes broken, ran beneath. Short stubby planks covered some of the windows haphazardly. Skeletons of vines rattled against the flaking patches of grey wood.

The two large-planked doors stood ajar. Michiko gave one of them a push. It swung open with a creak, and she stepped into the shadowy space.

“Ooh,” Hiro cooed. His eyes widened.

Once her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, Michiko could see long wooden benches against the walls. Broken wooden crates lay about an earth floor strewn with sawdust.

Michiko sniffed. She recognized the aroma.
Apples
, she thought,
I can smell the apples
.

The rays of sun streaming over her head rested on a new wall of yellow plywood. The sudden sound of several hammers pounding together startled her. Then
the hammering stopped. Uncle Ted appeared from behind the wall.

“Well, well, well,” he said, slipping his hammer into his belt. “Look who's come to visit.” He took Hiro from her arms.

“Thanks,” she said. “He's heavy.” She wiggled her arms about.

“Hey, Tadishi,” Ted called out, “come and meet my sister's kids.”

The man who stuck his head out from behind the partition was wearing a white bandana with a red circle across his forehead.

“Michiko,” Uncle Ted said, “this is Tadashi.”

Tadashi, wearing a white undershirt and khaki pants with a rope belt, stepped forward and gave her a slight nod.

“He used to work with me at the shipyard,” Ted explained. “He arrived from Japan recently,” he explained. Under his breath, he muttered, “Very bad timing.”

At first, Tadashi appeared to be the same age as Ted, but when he moved into the patch of sunlight, she noticed the shocks of grey hair above paper-thin eyelids that sagged and folded at the corners.

“What are you building?” she asked. She peeked around the corner but drew back suddenly. Behind the wall were two small metal bunks. The same rough grey blankets that she had on her bed were on these. Over one of them was the staring face of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito.
If Sadie saw that
, Michiko thought,
she would rip it down
, but she wasn't sure why her aunt disliked him so much.

“Is this someone's home?” She could see the top of a suitcase sticking out from under one of the beds. She had intruded. “I'm sorry,” she mumbled.

“Sort of,” her uncle told her. “We live here, while we turn this place into barracks.”

“Barracks,” Michiko repeated. “What's that?”

“A home for workers,” Ted told her. “We are going to fill the orchard with houses, and we need more than two men to do it.”

Michiko clasped her hands. They were going to build a neighbourhood. She had a vision of a street of houses like the ones in her neighbourhood.

“I'll show you,” her uncle offered and led her to a wide makeshift table. He rolled out a long paper, placing his hammer on the curly edge to hold it down.

Michiko realized she was looking at a house with the roof off, just like the doll's house she had at home.

The drawing showed one big room, divided by two half-walls. Michiko placed her finger on the words and read them out loud. In each corner, small rectangles were labelled “bunks”. A square in the middle read “cook-stove”. A circle across from it read “heat-stove”.

She placed her finger on a line with an arrow at the end of it. “Is this the front door?” she asked.

Ted nodded. “One house, two families,” he murmured. “The government is so kind to us.”

Before Michiko could ask what he meant, Hiro gave out a gigantic wail.

“He's probably hungry,” she said. “He's always hungry.”

As Michiko headed back to the farmhouse, she
hoped some children lived nearby. It would be nice to have someone to play with while they were on vacation.

That night, as she listened to the sound of crickets, the wind whispering through the pines and the hoot of an owl, Michiko began to wonder why two families would want to share a house. Why wouldn't they live in a house of their own?

Trucks laden with lumber travelled back and forth in front of the farmhouse daily, turning the road into two deep muddy ditches.

Michiko made a calendar using the bottom of a cardboard box Geechan brought home. He looked for things of use wherever he went, never returning empty-handed. One day he brought a small enamel basin caked with mud. Another day it was an armful of burlap bags. Sometimes he returned with things to eat. Michiko loved the fleshy fan-shaped mushrooms he gathered from the woods.

When he presented a pailful of wild vegetables to Michiko's mother, she glanced into it and smiled. Auntie Sadie looked and grimaced.

“Where did you find them?” Eiko asked.

“Dokodemo,”
he replied.

Michiko peeked in at the smooth green stalks with tightly coiled tips.

Geechan nudged her. “Try one.”

She reached in. The strange green antennae were cool to the touch. Their coils were covered in short rusty-brown
hairs. Michiko brushed away the hairs and bit into it. It was crisp and, to her surprise, sweet. “What are they called?”

“Warabi,”
he said, shrugging his shoulders. He did not know the name in English.

“They're called fiddleheads,” Sadie piped up. “See how the end looks likes the head of a fiddle?”

Everyone ate the greens for dinner.

“We need to find out how we can dry them,” Eiko said. “We could store them like mushrooms.”

“Ask Mrs. Morrison,” Sadie suggested. “That woman knows everything.”

Mrs. Morrison had visited Michiko's family once a week since they arrived. Michiko soon came to recognize the sound of her black-laced shoes stomping up the verandah stairs. There would be a short pause before she knocked, in order for her to catch her breath.