8,39 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
1986, The Panama Hotel The old Seattle landmark has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made a startling discovery in the basement: personal belongings stored away by Japanese families sent to interment camps during World War II. Among the fascinated crowd gathering outside the hotel stands Henry Lee, and, as the owner unfurls a distinctive parasol, he is flooded by memories of his childhood. He wonders if by some miracle, in amongst the boxes of dusty treasures, lies a link to the Okabe family, and the girl he lost his heart to so many years ago.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 499
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
Ähnliche
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
A Novel
JAMIE FORD
For Leesha, my happy ending
My poor heart is sentimental
Not made of wood
I got it bad and that ain’t good.
– Duke Ellington, 1941
Contents
The Panama Hotel
(1986)
Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel. What had started as a crowd of curious onlookers eyeballing a television news crew had now swollen into a polite mob of shoppers, tourists, and a few punk-looking street kids, all wondering what the big deal was. In the middle of the crowd stood Henry, shopping bags hanging at his side. He felt as if he were waking from a long forgotten dream. A dream he’d once had as a little boy.
The old Seattle landmark was a place he’d visited twice in his lifetime. First when he was only twelve years old, way back in 1942 – ‘the war years’ he liked to call them. Even then the old bachelor hotel had stood as a gateway between Seattle’s Chinatown and Nihonmachi, Japantown. Two outposts of an old-world conflict – where Chinese and Japanese immigrants rarely spoke to one another, while their American-born children often played kick the can in the streets together. The hotel had always been a perfect landmark. A perfect meeting place – where he’d once met the love of his life.
The second time was today. It was 1986, what, forty-plus years later? He’d stopped counting the years as they slipped into memory. After all, he’d spent a lifetime between these bookended visits. A marriage. The birth of an ungrateful son. Cancer, and a burial. He missed his wife, Ethel. She’d been gone six months now. But he didn’t miss her as much as you’d think, as bad as that might sound. It was more like quiet relief really. Her health had been bad – no, worse than bad. The cancer in her bones had been downright crippling, to both of us, he thought.
For the last seven years Henry had fed her, bathed her, helped her to the bathroom when she needed to go, and back again when she was all through. He took care of her night and day, 24/7 as they say these days. Marty, his son, thought his mother should have been put in a home, but Henry would have none of it. ‘Not in my lifetime,’ Henry said, resisting. Not just because he was Chinese (though that was a part of his resistance). The Confucian ideal of filial piety – respect and reverence for one’s parents – was a cultural relic not easily discarded by Henry’s generation. He’d been raised to care for loved ones, personally, and to put someone in a home was unacceptable. What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry’s life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never heals.
Now she was gone for good. She needed to be buried, Henry thought, the traditional Chinese way, with food offerings, longevity blankets, and prayer ceremonies lasting several days – despite Marty’s fit about cremating her. He was so modern. He’d been seeing a counselor and dealing with his mother’s death through a support group of some kind. Talking to strangers sounded like talking to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in – in real life. It was lonely. Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he’d buried Ethel. She now had a gorgeous view of Lake Washington, and was interred with Seattle’s other Chinese notables, like Bruce Lee. But in the end, each of them occupied a solitary grave. Alone forever. It didn’t matter who your neighbors were. They didn’t talk back.
When night fell, and it did, Henry chatted with his wife, asking her how her day was. She never replied, of course. ‘I’m not crazy or anything,’ Henry would say to no one, ‘just open-minded. You never know who’s listening.’ Then he’d busy himself pruning his Chinese palm or evergreen – houseplants whose brown leaves confessed his months of neglect. But now he had time once again. Time to care for something that would grow stronger for a change.
Occasionally, though, he’d wonder about statistics. Not the cancer mortality rates that had caught up with dear Ethel. Instead he thought about himself, and his time measured on some life insurance actuarial table. He was only fifty-six – a young man by his own standards. But he’d read in Newsweek about the inevitable decline in the health of a surviving spouse his age. Maybe the clock was ticking? He wasn’t sure, because as soon as Ethel passed, time began to crawl, clock or no clock.
He’d agreed to an early retirement deal at Boeing Field and now had all the time in the world, and no one to share the hours with. No one with whom to walk down to the Mon Hei bakery for yuet beng, carrot mooncakes, on cool autumn evenings.
Instead here he was, alone in a crowd of strangers. A man between lifetimes, standing at the foot of the Panama Hotel once again. Following the cracked steps of white marble that made the hotel look more like an Art Deco halfway house. The establishment, like Henry, seemed caught between worlds. Still, Henry felt nervous and excited, just like he had been as a boy, whenever he walked by. He’d heard a rumor in the marketplace and wandered over from the video store on South Jackson. At first he thought there was some kind of accident because of the growing size of the crowd. But he didn’t hear or see anything, no sirens wailing, no flashing lights. Just people drifting toward the hotel, like the tide going out, pulling at their feet, propelling them forward, one step at a time.
As Henry walked over, he saw a news crew arrive and followed them inside. The crowd parted as camera-shy onlookers politely stepped away, clearing a path. Henry followed right behind, shuffling his feet so as not to step on anyone, or in turn be stepped upon, feeling the crowd press back in behind him. At the top of the steps, just inside the lobby, the hotel’s new owner announced, ‘We’ve found something in the basement.’
Found what? A body perhaps? Or a drug lab of some kind? No, there’d be police officers taping off the area if the hotel were a crime scene.
Before the new owner, the hotel had been boarded up since 1950, and in those years, Chinatown had become a ghetto gateway for tongs – gangs from Hong Kong and Macau. The city blocks south of King Street had a charming trashiness by day; the litter and slug trails on the sidewalk were generally overlooked as tourists peered up at egg-and-dart architecture from another era. Children on field trips, wrapped in colorful coats and hats, held hands as they followed their noses to the mouthwatering sight of barbecue duck in the windows, hanging red crayons melting in the sun. But at night, drug dealers and bony, middle-aged hookers working for dime bags haunted the streets and alleys. The thought of this icon of his childhood becoming a makeshift crack house made him ache with a melancholy he hadn’t felt since he held Ethel’s hand and watched her exhale, long and slow, for the last time.
Precious things just seemed to go away, never to be had again.
As he took off his hat and began fanning himself with the threadbare brim, the crowd pushed forward, pressing in from the rear. Flashbulbs went off. Standing on his tippy toes, he peered over the shoulder of the tall news reporter in front of him.
The new hotel owner, a slender Caucasian woman, slightly younger than Henry, walked up the steps holding … anumbrella? She popped it open, and Henry’s heart beat a little faster as he saw it for what it was. A Japanese parasol, made from bamboo, bright red and white – with orange koi painted on it, carp that looked like giant goldfish. It shed a film of dust that floated, suspended momentarily in the air as the hotel owner twirled the fragile-looking artifact for the cameras. Two more men brought up a steamer trunk bearing the stickers of foreign ports: Admiral Oriental Lines out of Seattle and Yokohama, Tokyo. On the side of the trunk was the name Shimizu, hand-painted in large white letters. It was opened for the curious crowd. Inside were clothing, photo albums, and an old electric rice cooker.
The new hotel owner explained that in the basement she had discovered the belongings of thirty-seven Japanese families who she presumed had been persecuted and taken away. Their belongings had been hidden and never recovered – a time capsule from the war years.
Henry stared in silence as a small parade of wooden packing crates and leathery suitcases were hauled upstairs, the crowd marveling at the once-precious items held within: a white communion dress, tarnished silver candlesticks, a picnic basket – items that had collected dust, untouched, for forty-plus years. Saved for a happier time that never came.
The more Henry thought about the shabby old knickknacks, the forgotten treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart might be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another time. Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never forgotten.
Marty Lee
(1986)
Henry left the crowd at the Panama Hotel behind and walked to his home up on Beacon Hill. It was not so far back as to have a scenic overlook of Rainier Avenue, but in the more sensible neighborhoods just up the street from Chinatown. A modest three-bedroom home with a basement – still unfinished after all these years. He’d meant to finish it when his son, Marty, went away to college, but Ethel’s condition had worsened and what money they’d saved for a rainy day was spent in a downpour of medical bills, a torrent that lasted nearly a decade. Medicaid kicked in near the end, just in time, and would even have covered a nursing home, but Henry stuck to his vow: to care for his wife in sickness and in health. Besides, who’d want to spend their last days in some state-owned facility that looked like a prison where everyone lived on death row?
Before Henry could answer his own question, Marty knocked twice on the front door and walked right in, greeting him with a casual ‘How you doing, Pops,’ and immediately headed for the kitchen. ‘I’ll be right out, don’t get up, I just gotta get a drink – I hoofed it all the way from Capitol Hill – exercise you know, you should think about a little workout yourself, I think you’ve put on some weight since Mom died.’
Henry looked at his waistline and mashed the mute button on the TV. He’d been watching the news for word on today’s discovery at the Panama Hotel, but heard nothing. Must have been a busy news day. In his lap was a stack of old photo albums and a few school annuals, stained and mildew-smelling from the damp Seattle air that cooled the concrete slab of Henry’s perpetually unfinished basement.
He and Marty hadn’t talked much since the funeral. Marty stayed busy as a chemistry major at Seattle University, which was good, it seemed to keep him out of trouble. But college also seemed to keep him out of Henry’s life, which had been acceptable while Ethel was alive, but now it made the hole in Henry’s life that much larger – like standing on one side of a canyon, yelling, and always waiting for the echo that never came. When Marty did come by, it seemed like the visits were only to do his laundry, wax his car, or hit his father up for money – which Henry always gave, without ever showing annoyance.
Helping Marty pay for college had been a second battlefront for Henry, if caring for Ethel had been the first. Despite a small grant, Marty still needed student loans to pay for his education, but Henry had opted for an early retirement package from his job at Boeing so he could care for Ethel full-time – on paper, he had a lot of money to his name. He looked downright affluent. To the lenders, Marty was from a family with a decent bank account, but the lenders weren’t paying the medical bills. By the time his mother passed, there had been just enough to cover a decent burial, an expense Marty felt was unnecessary.
Henry also didn’t bother to tell Marty about the second mortgage – the one he’d taken out to get him through college when the student loans ran dry. Why make him worry? Why put that pressure on him? School is hard enough as is. Like any good father, he wanted the best for his son, even if they didn’t talk all that much.
Henry kept staring at the photo albums, faded reminders of his own school days, looking for someone he’d never find. I try not to live in the past, he thought, but who knows, sometimes the past lives in me. He took his eyes off the photos to watch Marty amble in with a tall glass of iced green tea. He sat on the couch for a moment, then moved to his mother’s cracked faux-leather recliner directly across from Henry, who felt better seeing someone … anyone, in Ethel’s space.
‘Is that the last of the iced tea?’ Henry asked.
‘Yup,’ was Marty’s reply, ‘and I saved the last glass for you, Pops.’ He set it on a jade coaster next to Henry. It dawned on Henry how old and cynical he’d allowed himself to become in the months since the funeral. It wasn’t Marty. It was him – he needed to get out more. Today had been a good start.
Even so, a mumbled ‘Thank you’ was all Henry could muster.
‘Sorry I haven’t come by lately – finals were killing me, plus I didn’t want to waste all that hard-earned money you and Ma paid to put my butt in college in the first place.’
Now Henry felt his face flush with guilt as the noisy old furnace shut off, letting the house cool.
‘In fact, I brought you a little token of my appreciation.’ Marty handed him a small lai see envelope, bright red, with shiny gold foil embossed on the front.
Henry took the gift with both hands. ‘A lucky-money envelope – you paying me back?’
His son smiled and raised his eyebrows. ‘In a way.’
It didn’t matter what it was. Henry had been humbled by his son’s thoughtfulness. He touched the gold seal. On it was the Cantonese character for prosperity. Inside was a folded slip of paper, Marty’s report card. He’d earned a perfect 4.0.
‘I’m graduating summa cum laude, that means with highest honor.’
There was silence, nothing but the electric hum of the muted television.
‘You all right, Pops?’
Henry wiped at the corner of his eye with the back of his callused hand. ‘Maybe next time, I borrow money from you,’ he replied.
‘If you ever want to finish college, I’ll be happy to front you the cash, Pops – I’ll put you on scholarship.’
Scholarship. The word had a special meaning for Henry, not just because he never finished college – though that might have been part of it. In 1949 he’d dropped out of the University of Washington to become an apprentice draftsman. The program offered through Boeing was a great opportunity, but deep down, Henry knew the real reason he dropped out – the painful reason. He had a hard time fitting in. A sense of isolation left over from all those years. Not quite peer pressure. More like peer rejection.
As he looked down at his sixth-grade yearbook, he remembered everything he had hated and loved about school. Strange faces played in his thoughts, over and over, like an old newsreel. The unkind glances of school-yard enemies, a harsh contrast to the smiling innocence of their yearbook pictures. In the column next to the giant class photo was a list of names – those ‘not pictured.’ Henry found his name on the list; he was indeed absent from the rows and rows of smiling children. But he’d been there that day. All day.
I Am Chinese
(1942)
Young Henry Lee stopped talking to his parents when he was twelve years old. Not because of some silly childhood tantrum, but because they asked him to. That was how it felt anyway. They asked – no, told – him to stop speaking their native Chinese. It was 1942, and they were desperate for him to learn English. Which only made Henry more confused when his father pinned a button to his school shirt that read, ‘I am Chinese.’ The contrast seemed absurd. This makes no sense, he thought. My father’s pride has finally got the better of him.
‘M-ming bak?’ Henry asked in perfect Cantonese. ‘I don’t understand.’
His father slapped his face. More of a light tap really, just something to get his attention. ‘No more. Only speak you American.’ The words came out in Chinglish.
‘I don’t understand,’ Henry said in English.
‘Hah?’ his father asked.
‘If I’m not supposed to speak Chinese, why do I need to wear this button?’
‘Hah, you say?’ His father turned to his mother, who was peeking out from the kitchen. She gave a look of confusion and simply shrugged, going back to her cooking, sweet water chestnut cake from the smell of it. His father turned to Henry again, giving him a backhanded wave, shooing him off to school.
Since Henry couldn’t ask in Cantonese and his parents barely understood English, he dropped the matter, grabbed his lunch and book bag, and headed down the stairs and out into the salty, fishy air of Seattle’s Chinatown.
The entire city came alive in the morning. Men in fish-stained T-shirts hauled crates of rock cod, and buckets of geoduck clams, half-buried in ice. Henry walked by, listening to the men bark at each other in a Chinese dialect even he didn’t understand.
He continued west on Jackson Street, past a flower cart and a fortune-teller selling lucky lottery numbers, instead of going east in the direction of the Chinese school, which was only three blocks from the second-floor apartment he shared with his parents. His morning routine, walking upstream, brought him headlong into dozens of other kids his age, all of them going the opposite way.
‘Baak gwai! Baak gwai!’ they shouted. Though some just pointed and laughed. It meant ‘white devil’ – a term usually reserved for Caucasians, and then only if they really deserved the verbal abuse. A few kids took pity on him, though, those being his former classmates and one-time friends. Kids he’d known since first grade, like Francis Lung and Harold Chew. They just called him Casper, after the Friendly Ghost. At least it wasn’t Herman and Katnip.
Maybe that’s what this is for, Henry thought, looking at the ridiculous button that read ‘I am Chinese.’ Thanks, Dad, why not just put a sign on my back that says ‘Kick me’ while you’re at it?
Henry walked faster, finally rounding the corner and heading north. At the halfway point of his walk to school, he always stopped at the arched iron gateway at South King Street, where he gave his lunch to Sheldon, a sax player twice Henry’s age who worked the street corner, playing for the tourists’ pleasure and pocket change. Despite the booming activity at Boeing Field, prosperity didn’t seem to reach locals like Sheldon. He was a polished jazz player, whose poverty had less to do with his musical ability and more to do with his color. Henry had liked him immediately. Not because they both were outcasts, although if he really thought about it, that might have had a ring of truth to it – no, he liked him because of his music. Henry didn’t know what jazz was, he knew only that it was something his parents didn’t listen to, and that made him like it even more.
‘Nice button, young man,’ said Sheldon, as he was setting out his case for his morning performances. ‘That’s a darn good idea, what with Pearl Harbor and all.’
Henry looked down at the button on his shirt; he had already forgotten it. ‘My father’s idea,’ he mumbled. His father hated the Japanese. Not because they sank the USS Arizona – he hated them because they’d been bombing Chongqing, nonstop, for the last four years. Henry’s father had never even been there, but he knew that the provisional capital of Chiang Kai-shek had already become the most-bombed city in history.
Sheldon nodded approvingly and tapped the metal tin hanging from Henry’s book bag. ‘What’s for lunch today?’
Henry handed over his lunch box. ‘Same as always.’ An egg-olive sandwich, carrot straws, and an apple pear. At least his mother was kind enough to pack him an American lunch.
Sheldon smiled, showing a large gold-capped tooth. ‘Thank you, sir, you have a fine day now.’
Ever since Henry’s second day at Rainier Elementary, he’d been giving his lunch to Sheldon. It was safer that way. Henry’s father had been visibly excited when his son was accepted at the all-white school at the far end of Yesler Way. It was a proud moment for Henry’s parents. They wouldn’t stop talking about it to friends on the street, in the market, and at the Bing Kung Benevolent Association, where they went to play bingo and mah-jongg on Saturdays. ‘They take him scholarshipping,’ was all he ever heard his parents say in English.
But what Henry felt was far from pride. His emotions had gone sprinting past fear to that point of simply struggling for survival. Which was why, after getting beat up by Chaz Preston for his lunch on the first day of school, he’d learnt to give it to Sheldon. Plus, he made a tidy profit on the transaction, fishing a nickel from the bottom of Sheldon’s case on the way home each day. Henry bought his mother a starfire lily, her favorite flower, once a week with his newfound lunch money – feeling a little guilty for not eating what she lovingly prepared, but always making up for it with the flower.
‘How you buy flower?’ she’d ask in Chinese.
‘Everythingwasonsaletodayspecialoffer.’ He’d make up some excuse in English, trying to explain it – and the extra change he always seemed to bring home from his errands to the market. Saying it fast, fairly sure she wouldn’t catch on. Her look of confusion would coalesce into satisfied acceptance as she’d nod and put the change in her purse. She understood little English, but Henry could see she appreciated his apparent bargaining skills.
If only his problems at school were solved so easily.
For Henry, scholarshipping had very little to do with academics and everything to do with work. Luckily, he learnt to work fast. He had to. Especially on his assignments right before lunch – since he was always dismissed ten minutes early. Just long enough to find his way to the cafeteria, where he’d don a starched white apron that covered his knees and serve lunch to the other kids.
Over the past few months, he’d learnt to shut his mouth and ignore the heckling – especially from bullies like Will Whitworth, Carl Parks, and Chaz Preston.
And Mrs Beatty, the lunch lady, wasn’t much help either. A gassy, hairnet-wearing definition of one of Henry’s favorite American words: broad. She cooked by hand, literally, measuring everything in her dirty, wrinkled mitts. Her thick forearms were evidence that she’d never used an electric mixer. But, like a kenneled dog that refuses to do its business in the same place it sleeps, she never ate her own handiwork. Instead, she always brought her lunch. As soon as Henry laced up his apron, she’d doff her hairnet and vanish with her lunch pail and a pack of Lucky Strikes.
Scholarshipping in the cafeteria meant Henry never made it out to recess. After the last kid had finished, he’d eat some canned peaches in the storage room, alone, surrounded by towering stockpiles of tomato sauce and fruit cocktail.
Flag Duty
(1942)
Henry wasn’t sure which was more frustrating, the nonstop taunting in the school cafeteria or the awkward silence in the little Canton Alley apartment he shared with his parents. Still, when morning came, he tried to make the best of the language barrier at home as he went about his normal routine.
‘Jou san.’ His parents greeted him with ‘Good morning’ in Cantonese.
Henry smiled and replied in his best English, ‘I’m going to open an umbrella in my pants.’ His father nodded a stern approval, as if Henry had quoted some profound Western philosophy. Perfect, Henry thought, this is what you get when you send your son scholarshipping. Stifling a laugh, he ate his breakfast, a small pyramid of sticky rice, flavored with pork, and cloud ear mushrooms. His mother looked on, seemingly knowing what he was up to, even if she didn’t understand the words.
When Henry rounded the block that morning, heading to the main steps of Rainier Elementary, he noticed that two familiar faces from his class had been assigned to flag duty. It was an assignment envied by all the sixth-grade boys, and even a few of the girls, who weren’t allowed, for reasons unknown to Henry.
Before the first bell, the pair of boys would take the flag from its triangle-shaped rack in the office and head to the pole in front of the school. There they’d carefully unfold it, making sure no part of it touched the ground, since a flag desecrated in such a way was immediately burnt. That was the story anyway; neither Henry nor any other kid in recent memory had ever known of such a thing actually occurring. But the threat was legendary. He pictured Vice Principal Silverwood, a blocky, harrumphing old bear of a man, burning the flag in the parking lot while shocked faculty looked on – then sending the bill home with the clumsy boy responsible. His parents surely would be shamed into moving to the suburbs and changing their names so no one would ever find them.
Unfortunately, Chaz Preston and Denny Brown, who were on flag duty, were not likely to move away any time soon, regardless of what they did. Both were from prominent local families. Denny’s father was a lawyer or a judge or something, and Chaz’s family owned several apartment buildings downtown. Denny was no friend of Henry’s, but Chaz was the real menace. Henry always thought Chaz would end up as his family’s bill collector. He liked to lean on people. He was so mean the other bullies feared him.
‘Hey, Tojo, you forgot to salute the flag,’ Chaz shouted.
Henry kept walking, heading for the steps, pretending he hadn’t heard. Why his father thought attending this school was such a great idea, Henry would never know. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Chaz tie the flag off and amble toward him. Henry walked faster, heading for the safety of the school, but Chaz cut him off.
‘Oh, that’s right, you Japs don’t salute American flags, do you?’
Henry wasn’t sure which was worse, being picked on for being Chinese, or being accused of being a Jap. Though Tojo, the prime minister of Japan, was known as ‘the Razor’ because of his sharp legalistic mind, Henry only wished he were sharp enough to stay home from school when his classmates were giving speeches about the Yellow Peril. His teacher, Mrs Walker, who rarely spoke to Henry, didn’t stop the inappropriate and off-color remarks. And she never once called him to the blackboard to figure a math problem, thinking he didn’t understand English – though his improving grades must have clued her in, a little bit at least.
‘He won’t fight you, he’s a yellow coward. Besides, the second bell’s gonna ring any minute.’ Denny sneered at Henry and headed inside.
Chaz didn’t move.
Henry looked up at the bully blocking his way but didn’t say a thing. He’d learnt to keep his mouth shut. Most of his classmates ignored him, but the few who made a point of pushing him around generally got bored when he wouldn’t respond. Then he remembered the button his father had made him wear and pointed it out to Chaz.
‘“I am Chinese,”’ Chaz read out loud. ‘It don’t make no difference to me, shrimp, you still don’t celebrate Christmas, do you?’
The second bell rang.
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ Henry replied. So much for keeping my mouth shut, he thought. We do celebrate Christmas, along with Cheun Jit, the lunar new year. But no, Pearl Harbor Day is not a festive occasion.
‘Lucky for you I can’t be late or I’ll lose flag duty,’ Chaz said before he faked a lunge at Henry, who didn’t flinch. Then Henry watched the bully back up and head into the building. He exhaled, finally, and found his way down the empty hallway to Mrs Walker’s classroom, where she reprimanded him for being tardy – and gave him an hour of detention. Henry accepted his punishment without a word. Not even a look.
Keiko
(1942)
When Henry arrived in the school kitchen that afternoon, there was a new face, though because it was turned toward a stack of beet-stained serving trays, he couldn’t see much of it. But it was clearly a girl, probably in his grade, about his height; she was hidden behind long bangs and the black strands of hair that framed her face. She sprayed the trays with hot, steaming water and put them in the dish rack, one by one. As she slowly turned toward Henry, he noticed her slender cheekbones, her perfect skin, smooth and lacking in the freckles that mottled the faces of the other girls at the school. But most of all, he noticed her soft chestnut-brown eyes. For a brief moment Henry swore he smelt something, like jasmine, sweet and mysterious, lost in the greasy odors of the kitchen.
‘Henry, this is Keiko – she just transferred to Rainier, but she’s from your part of town.’ Mrs Beatty, the lunch lady, seemed to regard this new girl as another piece of kitchen machinery, tossing her an apron, shoving her next to Henry behind the serving counter. ‘Heck, I bet you two are related, aren’t you?’ How many times had he heard that one?
Mrs Beatty wasted no time and fished out a Zippo lighter, lit a cigarette one-handed, and wandered off with her lunch. ‘Call me when you’re all done,’ she said.
Like most boys his age, Henry liked girls a lot more than he could bring himself to admit – or actually show to anyone, especially around other boys, who all tried to act cool, as if girls were some strange new species. So, while he did what came naturally, trying his best to show indifference, he was secretly elated to have a friendly face in the kitchen. ‘I’m Henry Lee. From South King Street.’
The peculiar girl whispered, ‘I’m Keiko.’
Henry wondered why he hadn’t seen her around the neighborhood before; maybe her family had just come over. ‘What kind of name is Kay-Ko?’
There was a pause. Then the lunch bell rang. Doors were slamming down the hall.
She took her long black hair in equal handfuls and tied it with a ribbon. ‘Keiko Okabe,’ she said, tying on her apron and waiting for a reaction.
Henry was dumbfounded. She was Japanese. With her hair pulled back, he could see it clearly. And she looked embarrassed. What was she doing here?
The sum total of Henry’s Japanese friends happened to be a number that rhymed with hero. His father wouldn’t allow it. He was a Chinese nationalist and had been quite a firebrand in his day, according to Henry’s mother. In his early teens, his father had played host to the famed revolutionary Dr Sun Yat-sen when he visited Seattle to raise money to help the fledgling Kuomintang army fight the Manchus. First through war bonds, then he’d helped them open up an actual office. Imagine that, an office for the Chinese army, right down the street. It was there that Henry’s father kept busy raising thousands of dollars to fight the Japanese back home. His home, not mine, Henry thought. The attack on Pearl Harbor had been terrible and unexpected, sure, but it paled when compared with the bombings of Shanghai or the sacking of Nanjing – according to his father anyway. Henry, on the other hand, couldn’t even find Nanjing on a map.
But he still didn’t have a single Japanese friend, even though there were twice as many Japanese as Chinese kids his age, and they lived just a few streets over. Henry caught himself staring at Keiko, whose nervous eyes seemed to recognize his reaction.
‘I’m American,’ she offered in defense.
He didn’t know what to say, so he focused on the hordes of hungry kids who were coming. ‘We’d better get busy.’
They took the lids off their steamer trays, recoiling at the smell, looking at each other in disgust. Inside was a brown, spaghetti-like mess. Keiko looked like she wanted to throw up. Henry, who was used to the putrid stench, didn’t even flinch. He simply showed her how to dish it up with an old ice-cream scoop as freckled boys in crew cuts, even the younger ones, said, ‘Look, the Chink brought his girlfriend’ and ‘More chop suey, please!’
At the most they taunted, at the least they sneered and glared suspiciously. Henry kept silent, angry and embarrassed as always, but pretending he didn’t understand. A lie he wished he believed – if only in self-defense. Keiko followed suit. For thirty minutes they stood side by side, occasionally looking at each other, smirking as they served up extra-large helpings of Mrs Beatty’s rat-scrabble slop to the boys who teased them the most, or the red-haired girl who pulled at the corners of her eyes and made a hideous bucktoothed face.
‘Look, they don’t even speak English!’ she squealed.
He and Keiko smiled at each other until the last child was served and all the trays and pans were washed and put away. Then they ate their lunch, together, splitting a can of pears in the storage room.
Henry thought the pears tasted especially good that day.
The Walk Home
(1942)
A week after Keiko arrived, Henry had settled into a new routine. They’d have lunch together, then meet by the janitor’s closet after school for the second part of their work duties. Side by side they’d clean the chalkboards, empty wastebaskets, and pound erasers behind the school on an old stump. It wasn’t bad. Having Keiko around cut the work he’d previously been doing in half, and he enjoyed the company – even if she was Japanese. Besides, all the work after school gave the other kids plenty of time to get on their bikes or their buses and be on their way long before he stepped out onto the school yard.
That was how it was supposed to work.
But today as he held the door for Keiko when they left the building, Chaz was standing at the bottom of the steps. He must have missed his bus, Henry thought. Or maybe he’d sensed a murmur of happiness since Keiko had arrived. Just a glance, or a smile between them. Even if he is here to show me up, Henry thought, that’s fine, as long as he doesn’t hurt her.
He and Keiko walked down the steps and past Chaz, Henry on the inside, putting himself between her and the bully. As they descended, Henry became all too aware that his nemesis was a whole foot taller than either one of them.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Chaz should have been in a higher grade, but he’d been held back – twice. Henry had long suspected he’d failed on purpose so he could continue to lord over his sixth-grade kingdom. Why give that up to be an eighth-grade nobody?
‘I said, Where do you think you’re going – Jap lover?’
Keiko was about to speak when Henry shot her a look, put his arm around her, and kept her walking.
Chaz stepped in front of them. ‘I know you understand every word I’m saying, I’ve seen you two talking after class.’
‘So?’ Henry said.
‘So.’ Chaz grabbed him by his collar and jerked him up to his chest, so close Henry could smell his lunch – onions and powdered milk, still ripe on his breath. ‘How about I make it so you can’t talk anymore? How would you like that?’
‘Stop it!’ Keiko shouted. ‘Let him go!’
‘Leave the kid alone, Charlie,’ Mrs Beatty interrupted, walking down the steps, lighting a cigarette. Judging by her nonchalance, Henry figured she was used to Chaz’s lapses in behavior.
‘My name is Chaz.’
‘Well, Chaz honey, if you hurt that kid, you’re going to be taking his place in the kitchen, you understand me?’ She said it in a way that almost sounded like she cared. Almost. The hard look on her face put just enough doubt in Chaz’s mind. He let go, shoving Henry to the ground – but not before ripping the button that read ‘I am Chinese’ off Henry’s shirt, leaving a small tear. Chaz pinned it on his own collar and gave Henry a bucktoothed smile before finally wandering off, presumably to find other kids to rough up.
Keiko helped Henry up, handing him his books. When he turned to thank Mrs Beatty, she was well on her way. Not even a goodbye. Thanks anyway. Did she care about playground bullying, or was she just protecting her kitchen help? Henry couldn’t tell. He dusted off the seat of his pants and wiped the thought from his mind.
After their week in the kitchen together, he hadn’t thought he could actually feel any more frustration or embarrassment. What a surprise. But if Keiko thought less of him after their run-in with Chaz, it certainly didn’t show. She even touched his hand, offering hers as they walked, but he ignored it. He wasn’t really shy around girls. A Japanese girl, though, that was a red flag. Or a white flag with a big red sun on it, as it were. My father would fall over dead, he thought. And in town, someone would see us.
‘Have you always gone to Rainier?’ she asked.
He noticed how cool her voice sounded. Clear and simple. Her English was much better than that of most of the Chinese girls he knew.
He shook his head. ‘Just since September. My parents want me to get a Western education – university – instead of going back to Canton for my Chinese schooling like all the other kids in my neighborhood.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t know how to say it.
‘Because of people like you.’ As the words came out, he felt bad for venting the day’s frustrations. But part of it was true, wasn’t it? Out of the corner of his eye he watched her undo the ribbon in her hair. Long black strands fell around her face, bangs almost covering her chestnut eyes.
‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s because the Japanese army has invaded the northeastern provinces. The fighting is a long way from Canton, but they still won’t let me go. Most of the kids on my side of town all go to the Chinese school, then finish back in China. That’s what my father always planned for me. Until last fall anyway.’ Henry didn’t know what else to say.
‘So you weren’t born in China?’
He shook his head again, pointing to First Hill, where Columbus Hospital stood on the outskirts of Chinatown. ‘I was born right up there.’
She smiled. ‘That’s where I was born too. I’m Japanese. But American first.’
‘Did your parents teach you to say that?’ He bit his words as they came out, afraid of hurting her feelings again. After all, his parents told him to say the same thing.
‘Yes. They did. My grandfather came over right after the great fire in ’eighty-nine. I’m second generation.’
‘Is that why they sent you to Rainier?’
They had walked past the black iron arches of Chinatown all the way to Nihonmachi. Henry lived seven blocks over, and had been here only once, when his father had to meet someone for lunch at the Northern Pacific Hotel, at the edge of the Japanese marketplace. Even then, Father had insisted they leave once he found out the place had been built by Niroku ‘Frank’ Shitamae, a local Japanese businessman. They were gone before their food even arrived.
‘No.’ She stopped and looked around. ‘This is why they send me.’
Everywhere he looked he saw American flags, in every shopwindow and hanging from every door. Yet many more shops had broken windows, and a few were boarded up completely. In front of them an orange public works lift truck blocked three parking spaces. A bearded man in the bucket was taking down the sign for Mikado Street and replacing it with one that read ‘Dearborn Street.’
Henry remembered the button his father had given him and touched the torn fabric over his heart where it had been. He looked at Keiko, and for the first time all day, the first time all week, she looked afraid.
Nihonmachi
(1942)
Saturdays were special to Henry. While other kids tuned in to the radio to listen to The Adventures of Superman on the Mutual Broadcasting System, Henry did his chores as fast as he could and ran down to the corner of Jackson and Maynard. Oh, sure, he liked the Man of Steel – what twelve-year-old didn’t? But during the war years, the adventures were, well, less than adventurous. Instead of smashing robots from another planet, the son of Krypton spent his days uncovering fifth columnists and Japanese spy rings, which hardly interested Henry.
Although he did wonder about Superman himself. The actor playing the voice of Superman was a mystery in 1942. No one knew who he was. No one. And kids everywhere obsessed over finding his true identity. So as Henry ran down the street, he’d look at the mild-mannered folks who wore suits and glasses, like Clark Kent, wondering if they just might be the voice of Superman. He even looked at Chinese and Japanese men – because you never knew.
He wondered if Keiko listened to Superman on Saturday mornings as well. He thought about wandering over to the Nihonmachi side of town, just to poke around. Maybe he’d run into her. How big could it be?
Then he heard Sheldon playing in the distance and followed the music.
Saturday was the only time of the week he could listen to Sheldon play. Most days when Henry came by after school, Sheldon’s instrument case had little more than two or three dollars in change, and by that time, he was usually packing up for the day. But Saturdays were different. With all the impressionable tourists, seamen, and even the crowds of locals who came and strolled down Jackson Street, Saturday was ‘payday,’ as Sheldon called it.
That morning, when Henry arrived, there was a crowd, maybe twenty people, swaying and smiling while his friend played some smooth jazz number. Henry squeezed to the front and sat on the sidewalk, enjoying the surprisingly sunny weather. Sheldon saw him and winked, not missing a note.
As he finished, the applause came and went, and the crowd dispersed, leaving behind almost three dollars in pocket change. Sheldon put a small handwritten sign in his case that read ‘Next Performance in 15 Minutes,’ and caught his breath. As he inhaled deeply, his wide chest seemed to be testing the limits of his satin vest. A button was already missing from the bottom.
‘Good crowd,’ Henry said.
‘Not bad, not bad at all. But, boy, you just look at that, there’s a lot of clubs these days – stiff competition.’ Sheldon pointed with his sax to where rows of signs and sandwich boards marked the nightclubs up and down both sides of Jackson.
Henry had once wandered the whole area, counting thirty-four clubs in all – including the Black & Tan, the Rocking Chair, the Ubangi, the Colony Club, and the Jungle Temple. And those were just the official clubs – ones that had glittering neon signs for the world to see. There were countless others tucked away in basements and backroom parlors. His father constantly complained about the racket they made.
On Saturday nights, Henry would look out his window and watch the changing landscape of people walking past. By day, Asian faces were everywhere. But by night, the crowds doubled, mostly white folks in their evening best, heading for an evening of jazz and dancing. On some Saturdays, Henry could hear faint music in the distance, but his mother didn’t like him sleeping with the window open, afraid he’d catch his death with a cold or pneumonia.
‘How’s the tryouts?’ Henry asked, knowing Sheldon had been auditioning for a regular job in the evening.
Sheldon handed him a card. It read ‘Negro Local 493.’
‘What’s this?’
‘Can you believe it? I joined the union. The white musicians formed a union to try and get more work, but the black players formed their own, and now we’re getting more gigs than we can handle.’
Henry didn’t quite understand what a union card meant, but Sheldon seemed excited, so he knew it must be good news.
‘I even got a cancellation gig at the Black Elks Club – tonight. The regular sax player got thrown in jail for something, so they call the union and the union called me. Can you believe that? Me, playing at the Black Elks …’
‘With Oscar Holden!’ Henry finished. He’d never heard the man play, but he’d seen his posters all over town, and Sheldon always talked about him in tones normally reserved for heroes and legends.
‘With Oscar Holden.’ Sheldon nodded, then belted out a few happy bars on his sax. ‘It’s only for tonight, but hey, it’s a good gig, with a good man.’
‘I’m so excited!’ Henry grinned. ‘That’s really big news.’
‘Speaking of big news, who’s that little girl I’ve seen you walking home with, huh? Something I should know about?’
Henry felt blood flushing his cheeks. ‘She’s … just a friend from school.’
‘Uh-huh. Would that be a girlfriend, perhaps?’
Henry quickly answered in defense. ‘No, she’s a Japanese friend. My parents would kill me if they found out.’ He pointed to the button on his shirt, a new one his father had made him wear after the other one was ripped off by Chaz.
‘I am Chinese. I am Lebanese. I am Pekinese. I am the ever-loving bees’ knees.’ Sheldon just shook his head. ‘Well, the next time you see your Japanese friend, you tell her oaideki te ureshii desu.’
‘Oh I decky tay ooh ree she day sue,’ Henry mimicked.
‘Close enough – it’s a compliment in Japanese, it means “How are you today, beautiful—”’
‘I can’t say that,’ Henry interrupted.
‘Go on, she’ll like it. I use it on all the local geisha girls around here, they always take it the right way, plus she’ll appreciate it being in her native tongue. Very sophisticated that way. Mysterious.’
Henry tried the phrase out loud a few more times. And a few more times quietly in his head. Oai deki te ureshii desu.
‘Now why don’t you head on over to Japantown and try it out – I’m closing up early today anyway,’ Sheldon said. ‘One more performance, then I’m saving my wind for my big spotlight gig with Oscar tonight.’
Henry wished he could see and hear Sheldon play with the famed jazz pianist. Wished he could see what the inside of a real jazz club looked like. Sheldon had told him that most of the clubs had dancing, but when Oscar played, people just sat back and listened. He was that good. Henry liked to imagine a dark room, everyone clad in their fine suits and dresses, holding long-stemmed glasses, listening to music drift out of the spotlight onstage, cool fog rolling in off a stretch of cold black water.
‘I know you’ll do great tonight,’ Henry said, turning to head south toward Japantown, instead of east toward his family’s apartment.
Sheldon flashed him his gold-capped smile. ‘Thank you, sir, you have a fine day now,’ he said and went back to his next performance.
Henry practiced the Japanese words, saying them over and over as he kept walking – until the faces on the street turned from black to white to Japanese.
Japantown was bigger than Henry realized – at least four times the size of Chinatown, and the farther he walked through the crowded streets, the more he realized that finding Keiko might be impossible. Sure, he’d walked her partway home from school, but that was just to the fringes of the neighborhood. They’d walk as far as the Hatsunekai Dance School, then he’d say goodbye, watching her head in the direction of the Mount Fuji Hotel. From there he’d cut back over to Jackson and on to South King in the direction of home. Walking down Maynard Avenue was like being dropped into another world. There were Japanese banks, barbers, tailors, even dentists and newspaper publishers. The glowing neon signs still flashed by day, paper lanterns hung outside the stoop of each apartment dwelling, while small children pitched baseball cards of their favorite Japanese teams.
Henry found a seat on a bench and read through a day-old copy of the Japanese Daily News, much of which, surprisingly, was printed in English. There was a going-out-of-business sale at the Taishodo Book Store, and a new owner had taken over Nakamura Jewelry. As Henry looked around, there seemed to be a lot of businesses for sale; others were closed in the middle of the day. All of which made sense, as many of the news articles had to do with hard times in Nihonmachi. Apparently business had been bad, even before Pearl Harbor – going all the way back to when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, in 1931. Henry remembered the year only because his father mentioned the war in China so often. According to the news article, the Chong Wa Benevolent Association had called for a boycott of the entire Japanese community. Henry didn’t know what the Chong Wa was exactly, some sort of Chinatown committee like the Bing Kung Association, which his family belonged to – but larger and more political, encompassing not only his neighborhood but the entire region and all the tongs – social networks that sometimes resembled gangs. His father was a member.
As Henry looked at the scores of people milling about the streets, shopping and playing, their numbers belied the hard times, boycotts, and the boarded-up, flag-draped storefronts. Poking through the streets, most of the locals ignored him, though some Japanese children pointed and spoke as he walked by, only to be shushed by their parents. There were more than a few black faces speckling the crowd, but no white faces to be seen.
Then Henry stopped in his tracks when he finally saw Keiko’s face – or a photo of it anyway – in the window display of the Ochi Photography Studio. There she was, in a dark sepia print of a little girl dressed in her Sunday best, sitting in an oversize leather chair, holding an ornate Japanese umbrella, a bamboo parasol with koi painted on it.
‘Konichi-wa,’ a Japanese man, fairly young by the look of it, greeted him in the doorway. ‘Konichi-wa, Ototo-san?’
Confused by the Japanese greeting, Henry opened his coat and pointed to his button that read ‘I am Chinese.’
The young photographer smiled. ‘Well, I don’t speak Chinese, but how are you today – looking for a photograph? A sitting? Or are you just looking for someone?’
Now it was Henry’s turn to be surprised. The young photographer’s English seemed near perfect compared with Henry’s own grasp of the language.
‘This girl, I go to school with her.’
‘The Okabes? They send their daughter to the Chinese school?’
Henry shook his head, waving his hand. ‘Keiko Okabe, yes. We both go to Rainier Elementary – the white school across Yesler Way.’
A moment of silence vanished in the car engines that roared by. Henry looked on as the photographer regarded the photo of Keiko.
‘Then you both must be very special students.’
Since when did special become such a burden? A curse even. There was nothing special about scholarshipping at Rainier. Nothing at all. Then again, he was here looking for someone. Maybe she was special.
‘Do you know where she lives?’
‘No. I’m sorry. But I see them a lot near the Nippon Kan Hall. There’s a park, you might look for her there.’
‘Domo,’ Henry said. It was the only Japanese word he knew, aside from what Sheldon had taught him earlier.
‘You’re welcome. Come back, I’ll take your picture!’ the photographer yelled.
Henry was already down the street.
Henry and Keiko walked through Kobe Park on their way home from school each day, and he knew the hillside park by the numerous rows of cherry trees that lined the streets. Across from the park sat the Nippon Kan Hall, more of a Kabuki theater really, complete with posters for plays he’d never seen, or even heard of – like O Some Hisamatsu and Yuku No Ichiya – written in kanji and English. Like Chinatown, the whole area around the park apparently woke up on Saturdays. Henry followed the crowds, then the music. In front of the Nippon Kan were street performers, dressed in full traditional costumes, fighting with shimmering swords that flexed and bent as they cut the air. Behind them, musicians played what looked like strange, three-string guitars. Nothing at all like the yuehu or gao wu, the two-string violins that he was used to hearing when the Peking Opera performed a fighting routine.
With the music and the dancing, Henry forgot all about looking for Keiko, though he occasionally murmured the words Sheldon had taught him – Oh I decky tay ooh ree she day sue – mainly out of nervous habit.
‘Henry!’
Even through the music he knew the voice was hers. He looked around the crowd, lost for a moment before spotting her sitting on the hillside, the high point of Kobe Park, looking down on the street performers, waving. Henry walked up the hill, his palms sweating. Oh I decky tay ooh ree she day sue. Oh I decky tay ooh ree she day sue.
She put down a small notebook and looked up, smiling. ‘Henry? What are you doing here?’
‘Oh-I-decky-tay …’ The words rolled off his tongue like a Mack truck. He felt a wisp of perspiration on his forehead. The words? What was the rest? ‘Ooh ree she day … sue.’
Keiko’s face froze in a smile of surprise, interrupted only by her occasional wide-eyed blinking. ‘What did you just say?’
Breathe, Henry. Deep breath. One more time.
‘Oai deki te ureshii desu!’ The words came out perfectly. I did it!
Silence.
‘Henry, I don’t speak Japanese.’
‘What …?’
‘I. Don’t. Speak. Japanese.’ Keiko burst out laughing. ‘They don’t even teach it anymore at the Japanese school. They stopped last fall. My mom and dad speak it, but they wanted me to learn only English. About the only Japanese I know is wakarimasen.’
Henry sat down beside her, staring at the street performers. ‘Which means?’
Keiko patted his arm. ‘It means “I don’t understand” – understand?’
He lay back on the hillside, feeling the cool grass. He could smell the tiny Japanese roses everywhere, dotting the hill with patches of yellow stars.
‘Whatever it was, Henry, you said it beautifully. What’s it mean?’
‘Nothing. It means “What time is it?”’
Henry glanced at Keiko sheepishly and saw the look of suspicion in her eye. ‘Did you come all the way over here to ask me what time it was?’
Henry shrugged. ‘A friend just taught it to me, I thought you’d be impressed, I was wrong – what kind of notebook is that?’
‘It’s a sketchbook. And I am impressed, just that you’d come all the way over here. Your father would be mad if he knew. Or does he?’
Henry shook his head. This was the last place his father would expect to find him. Henry normally hung out at the waterfront on Saturdays, with other boys from the Chinese school, haunting places like Ye Olde Curiosity Shop out on Coleman Dock – looking at the real mummies and genuine shrunken heads, daring one another to touch them. But since he’d begun attending Rainier, they all treated him differently. He hadn’t changed, but somehow, in their eyes he was different. He wasn’t one of them anymore. Like Keiko, he was special.
‘It’s no big deal. I was just in the neighborhood.’
‘Really? And which neighbor taught you to speak Japanese?’
‘Sheldon, the sax player on South King.’ Henry’s eyes fell to the sketchbook. ‘Can I see your drawings?’
She handed him her small black sketchbook. Inside were pencil drawings of flowers and plants, and the occasional drawing of a dancer. The last one was a loose sketch of the crowd, the dancers – and a profile of Henry from the host of people below. ‘It’s me! How long did you know I was down there? You just watched me the whole time. Why didn’t you say anything?’
Keiko pretended that she didn’t understand. ‘Wakarimasen. So sorry, I don’t speak English.’ Joking, she took her sketchbook back. ‘See you Monday, Henry.’
Bud’s Jazz Records
(1986)
H
