The last place I look is Max's study, in his desk, where Cate sits to pay the bills at the end of each month. I push myself over, pull open the bottom drawer, and it's there that I'm surprised to find a beige-colored album among my father's things. I flip quickly through it; the photo I'm looking for is on the third page. It was taken with Max's new Polaroid camera, which endlessly intrigued me as a girl. After he peeled back the outer strip, I sat stone still and watched the picture materialize little by little, like a bit of magic before my eyes.
Only now, as I stare at the photo, all the colors have faded and we appear pale in the bleached background. But there we are, me six years old, sitting beside my smiling father in his beautiful Thunderbird, waving for the camera. He was young and happy, and enjoying the American Dream.
CATE
In the Garden
For most of the morning Hana has been sitting by the window watching me as I work in the garden. I wave and we exchange smiles but she remains there, my small, bird-like creature framed in the large picture window. There's a concentrated expression on her face, as if she's trying to memorize everything she sees. I know she's unsettled this morning and hasn't been sleeping well, even if she doesn't say a word. I can see it in her eyes. After lunch I'll insist we go to the park for a walk, no matter how much she fights me. She hasn't left the house for a week. Today I won't take no for an answer.
Two years ago we went walking along some rougher terrain on a hillside behind the house that Hana could see from her window. "Let's climb up there," she had suggested. I looked out the window to see the hillside ablaze with wildflowers. Against my better judgment I agreed, hoping for a moment of normality. The sharp, sudden animal cry of pain Hana gave as she tripped and collapsed on the ground still haunts me. She lay there in excruciating pain with what we later found out was a broken hip caused by osteoporosis. Dear God, how could I have been such an idiot to let her talk me into taking that walk? What was I thinking as I ran to the nearest house for help? That it takes so little to lose someone you love. That all the years it takes to nurture and learn and grow can end without a moment's notice. That a simple misstep could break bones or stop a heart from beating.
I realized that day as the ambulance carried us to the hospital that I'd learned to alleviate all the minor physical symptoms — the sores, the swelling, the unexpected fevers. What there weren't directions for was how to carry the emotional burden. On good days like today, I can remove myself just long enough to grasp the fact that I'm one of the few mothers who will see her own child grow to old age. I share that burden with her and have to summon up all my strength to make Hana's days as comfortable as possible. On my more frequent bad days, I can't help but curse a God who would have a child grow old and die before her mother.
All the dreams that are lost for Hana settle in my heart like a dead weight. Sometimes at the park I see such sadness in Hana's eyes when she watches a young mother playing with her child, and I can barely contain my own grief. This is coupled with the guilt. and the understanding that much of my grief is for myself, for all the joys that will never be part of my life.
A rush of cool wind whispers against the back of my neck. I push my trowel into the cool earth, bringing up another scoop of dirt that quickly grows into a small mound around the hole I'm digging. In the garden I feel most comforted, most in control, though Mother Nature has a mind of her own. It's something I've learned to live with; a healthy tree suddenly withers and dies, while a small blossom pushes its way out of a crack in a concrete sidewalk.
"The earth can be a most fickle mistress." Max's father once told me. We were walking past one of his greenhouses and he pointed to an area outside where he was trying to grow tomatoes and summer squash. CC I can make flowers blossom, but vegetables refuse to grow for me." He laughed and shook his head, as if surprised every time he told someone about it. While my father was always too busy to garden, and rarely set foot in our small Boston backyard, Henry Murayama saw life come from the earth and he never failed to be amazed by it.
"Look," he said, in his quiet, measured way. He pointed to the rows and rows of white and yellow chrysanthemums that filled his greenhouses. "Life."
Every spring I watch for each new bud as if my own life depended on it. The return of this brief beauty brings me fresh hope. In my garden, I leave problems behind and step into a world governed by seasons. Here, I face the persistence of birth, life, and death. I look up, and a choir of robins and cedar waxwings warbles around me, fluttering from tree to tree. I look down, digging and scooping with a rhythm that warms me through. I pat the last trowel of dirt down smoothly, the surprise underneath covered with dark, rich earth. I dig another hole, and another, planting each with different bulbs of dahlia, calla and day lilies.
"Hello there." A sharp greeting interrupts my thoughts.
I turn around to see old Hank Greenwald walking his dog. "Hi, Hank. Have to get these bulbs in before lunch."
"Hana okay?" he asks.
"She's fine," I say, adding a quick wave before turning back to my work.
Hank shuffles for a moment at the edge of our front lawn, then finally mumbles goodbye and walks on with Taco, his Chihuahua. Hank has known Hana since she was a little girl. When she came back from college and was finally diagnosed with Werner's, he took it upon himself to inform neighbors of her good and bad days. I no longer mind as I used to, when everything was so raw. Now I'm grateful he saves me the effort of having to explain Hana's illness. I usually tell him just enough to satisfy his curiosity. But a conversation with Hank might last a good half hour, and I just don't have the energy this morning.
I hear the birds rustling under the photinia shrubs, staking their claim on a dry, sheltered spot. Overnight, new buds have sprouted into green leaves, while others blaze red like flames from the shrubs. Digging deep into the cool, damp earth has always brought me a calm I wish I could share with Hana, but she never took to gardening. Like Max, she never had the patience to wait for a shoot to sprout from the ground. Hana prefers instant gratification, and who can blame her? A bouquet from the florist reminds her at once of the happy summers she spent with her grandparents on their flower farm.
The first time Hana went to the flower market with them, she returned and told me excitedly, "You have to go next time. Mom. It smells like every kind of flower in the whole world!"
"And what does that smell like?" Midori had asked her, a pleased grin forming on her lips.
Hana thought for a moment and sipped her juice. "Like God's garden."
I shake my head now and smile at the thought. When I glance up again, Hana's no longer by the window.
HANA
Another History
To the right of our front porch steps is the flag holder my father put up when I was just a little girl. Every once in a while, it catches my eye as I look out the window, and I can't help but smile. Every Fourth of July, Max went to the garage, unfurled the flag he kept neatly wrapped in a plastic bag, and placed it in the holder. I loved the way the flag sounded as it fluttered in the wind — the dull slapping of air that reminded me of a balloon bumping against the spokes of a bicycle.
Max was always so proud to be an American, despite what happened to his family during the war. When I was twelve, he began to tell me about the Heart Mountain internment camp, at first saying only that he'd been too young to feel the full effects of his imprisonment. "Not like your grandmother and grandfather," he had said. "It was more difficult for them. The past isn't something they like to speak of. For them, it's best forgotten." He said this to me without anger or sternness in his voice, but I knew instantly that it was a subject I shouldn't bring up with them.
I loved visiting my grandparents and their flower farm in Pasadena, where I enjoyed hours of entertainment as I roamed up and down the aisles of the humid glass greenhouses. I never told Max that my grandmother Midori had already told me about Heart Mountain, that the years she spent there were like a bad dream.
It wa
s the summer I was nine years old. I had gotten up before dawn to go to the flower market with my grandparents for the first time. The air still smelled of night, a smoky richness of damp soil, when my grandfather Henry loaded his brilliant, long-stemmed yellow and white chrysanthemums into the bed of the truck. We sat three abreast, driving down the dark, quiet streets while most of Los Angeles still slept. Even my parents were back at the house sleeping.
My grandmother poured coffee from a thermos and handed it across to my grandfather.
"Hot," she said.
My grandfather nodded and sipped from the cup, steering with one hand down the freeway he'd driven three times a week for almost fifty years.
"Good," he replied.
I noticed how they spoke in a secret code of quick one-syllable words and simple gestures. From another thermos she poured me a half cup of hot chocolate.
"Careful," she said to me with a smile. I held its warmth between my hands and drank cautiously so I wouldn't spill. Tasting chocolate and the sweetness of sugar on my tongue, I was wide awake in the dark.
The flower market was a long;, open building where growers had their own stalls and sold their goods to the retail florists and flower stands all over Los Angeles. It glowed with life in the shadowy early morning light. My grandfather was well known for his chrysanthemums and could easily have had orders sent out from the farm, but he made the early morning trips himself to maintain the sense of community he had established long years before. Many of the growers were Japanese, their businesses handed down from one generation to the next. My grandparents greeted them all as we carried green plastic buckets filled with flowers to our stall It was like stepping into another, more exotic world. "Ohayogozaimasu" good morning, rang out in Japanese, followed by a string of words that sounded like music to me. The vibrant red, yellow, and purple of the irises, lilies, and snapdragons blazed in the hazy white lights. I breathed in the sweet, pungent fragrances of gardenias and lilacs that perfumed the air and made me dizzy. My grandfather hurried ahead of us, eager to get on with his business, but my grandmother lingered with friends at several stalls, bright and talkative in the early morning.
"This is my granddaughter Hana." She introduced me as we passed by.
"Max's daughter?" a woman asked, clipping the ends of long stemmed carnations.
"Yes."
"Kirei."
My grandmother bowed quickly. "She says you're pretty," she whispered to me.
"Do you know everyone here?" I asked.
"Many of us were at Heart Mountain camp together. We know each other very well, good points as well as bad points." My grandmother laughed quickly before turning thoughtful and serious again. "When you live through such a shameful time, you must find a way to survive. We had only each other."
I remember nodding, not really understanding what Heart Mountain meant at the time. I knew it was a place my father and his family had gone to when he was a boy. I was just happy being with my grandparents in that big room filled with so many sounds and scents, seeing them move confidently through a world that obviously belonged to them.
JOSEPHINE
Life Lessons
Today in third period history, our teacher, Mrs. Keller, began discussing a new unit on the Japanese internment camps. I still can't understand how we could have internment camps here in America. "Can you believe what our government is capable of?" I whisper to Annie, sitting next to me. She looks at me quickly with her don't-bother-me-now gaze and stares attentively toward the front of the classroom. Annie has her heart set on going to Yale or Stanford, and nothing is going to stop her. Sometimes I wish I had her direction. Mrs. Keller is saying something about a camp called Manzanar, the full, round sound of its name pulling my gaze back toward the front of the room. All the while, I can't help wondering what the name means.
During lunch, Robert of the "bright light" fame actually nods to me on his way back from the milk line. I watch him walk toward the group of popular kids he hangs out with as they clear a place for him to sit at their table.
"Don't even think you could be part of his group," Annie says. "They don't pay attention to people like us."
I want to say, speak for yourself, but I know that she's just repeating what I already know. Annie and I will always be on the sidelines, watching from the outside, the last chosen to be on any team.
"Just wait until we're grown-ups," Annie says. "We'll show them!"
"Yeah," I say, raising my voice with confidence, but all I really know is that I haven't a clue how I'm going to get any farther than where I am.
When I get home, I look up the word manzanar, which is Spanish for "apple orchard." It's funny how one thought connects to another and triggers something else. I try to picture what it must have been like — fruit once blossoming where there were only rows of colorless barracks waiting to greet all the uprooted Japanese Americans. I close my eyes and try to imagine a ghost wind carrying a sweet cider scent across the camp, reminding them that there was once life there.
CATE
Drunken Birds
I hear a quick rustling of leaves and look up from my digging just in time to see the robins and cedar waxwings flying toward our neighbor's pyracantha bush. Its branches bounce under their weight, the pungent clusters of blossoms quiver, filling my heart with dread. We had a pyracantha in our backyard, its branches laden with berries the autumn Hana turned eleven years old. It was unusually cold that year, and the berries clung longer than usual, fermenting on the branches. The birds flocked to them and became so drunk on the berries that they swooped and dived like kamikaze pilots, straight into the plate-glass window overlooking our deck. It was like a scene out of the Hitchcock movie The Birds.
Life and death lessons come to us at the most unexpected times. This was Hana's first experience with death, and we were both unprepared for it. I was in the kitchen when the first bird slammed against the glass like those sand-filled bags thrown against our window when Max and I first moved to Daring. A chill traveled through my body as I remembered our helplessness. Hana raced downstairs and went out the back door. "Wait!" I yelled at her, but she was already gone. For a split second I was angry with her for not listening. I ran after her, my heart racing, only to see her squatting on the deck, holding the small brown body of a robin, its black bead eyes staring up toward the sky.
We striped the window with masking tape in an effort to divert them, but it didn't work. In the course of that day, four robins and one cedar waxwing broke their necks with hard, flat crashes of their small skulls against the window. Hana watched as their bodies convulsed after impact — thin, dark lines of blood trickling from their beaks as they quivered and fell still. Unafraid, she gently cradled them in her hands, as if she could will them back to life, or at least provide them with a last bit of comfort.
"Why are they doing this?" she asked, her voice tight with anguish.
"It's like drunk driving," I said. "The birds eat the fermented berries and become too disoriented. They see their reflection in the glass and think it's the sky."
We went back inside and spoke in hushed tones and waited with a kind of dread, wondering if it would happen again. Then Hana began to cry, slow tears flowing freely down her cheeks. "What will their families think when the dead birds never return home?"
I shook my head. "I don't know."
Just then we heard another loud impact and the window's reverberation. "Dear God," I whispered.
"What kind of God would let this keep happening?" Hana said, her voice strained. "I hate a God that would do this." She jumped up and rushed out the door to the back deck.
I stood up but couldn't move. It's all part of God's greater plan, I suddenly heard my mother say. It was what she always said when she didn't really have any answer to a question I asked.
We buried five birds in one afternoon. One other bird had just knocked itself silly and survived. It stood motionless for the longest time, its head bent forward as if it had fallen asleep standing up.
And just when Hana was going to go see if it was dead or alive, the bird staggered forward. I grabbed her arm. "Look," I said. It slowly walked the length of the deck, at first barely able to lift its wings. When it finally got off the ground, after several unsuccessful attempts, Hana was ecstatic. "The bird's flying!" she yelled, as if she were witnessing a miracle.
It's going to have one hell of a hangover, I thought to myself.
But this time she came back in carrying a brown robin with a red-orange breast. "It's so small," she said, stroking its downy feathers in the palm of her hand. His head flopped to one side.
"Let's bury him, too." I emptied the matchbox from the shelf by the stove, and she laid the bird gently inside.
"Will this happen every year when the berries get ripe?" Hana asked.
I shook my head, wishing Max were here to explain things in his calm way. My heart jumped with each thud against the glass. Life was too fragile. How could this fit into God's plans?
"It doesn't make sense," she said.
"I know."
We buried the tiny bird among the other mounds of freshly turned earth. Hana made another small cross out of plastic straws, five in all, that looked like a row of addition signs. We stood side by side, and I quickly mumbled something from the top of my head, "We send this bird into the kingdom of God." Hana remained silent, her head bent, her eyes closed. Afterward she turned around quickly and walked toward the toolshed. I went inside to start dinner. A few minutes later, I heard clipping sounds from the yard and saw Hana from the kitchen window. She had taken the gardening shears and was cutting down the pyracantha bush.
I stopped what I was doing and hurried out to help her.
HANA
Laura
In the bottom drawer of Max's desk, I also find my 1975 yearbook from Jefferson Junior High. I open the hard, laminated cover and flip through the glossy pages of smiling kids with braces and long, unruly hair staring up at me from the black-and-white photos. When I come to the dog-eared page with my photo, I study the smiling girl with the full cheeks and long, black hair as if she's someone else. I imagine Max did the same thing as he sat here and gazed at the young me. I flip through the pages and stop when I find Laura's photo, her face smiling up at me like a long-lost friend. It has been over ten years since I've seen her, but I feel her presence here in the room as if it were yesterday. My fingers brush her long, blond hair, the smooth curve of her cheek.