Clark and Division Read online

  What my mother always said about completing tasks, though, was true. I did feel a sense of accomplishment after making the arrangements for Rose’s funeral, despite the harrowing and disappointing encounters in the police department and the mortuary. Maybe these Chicago institutions had momentarily knocked me off my feet, but in a few minutes, I would be sitting in a restaurant, which I hadn’t done in more than two years.

  As I entered the diner, a server near the door handed me a small box of Milk Duds. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with it and stood there like a silly goose until Roy called me over to one of the front booths.

  “They handed me this.” I held the yellow box in front of Roy.

  “It’s a Greek tradition to receive something sweet before a meal.”

  I slipped into the booth across from Roy. He was wearing a tie and some of his hair had gotten loose from the front of his oiled pompadour. I didn’t waste any time and popped the Milk Duds, one after another, in my mouth. They were the medicine I needed, transforming me into the Aki that Roy had known before all this had happened.

  We both ordered coffee and after much prompting from Roy, who said this was his treat, I added pancakes, my favorite. The pancakes in camp were so doughy that I almost choked on them; as a result, I’d sworn them off for the past two years.

  “What’s in the package?” he asked, as I carefully placed it next to me on the vinyl seat.

  “Rose’s clothing and belongings from the police.”

  “What the hell, Aki? What are you doing, carting around her things all over Chicago?”

  “I came straight from the station. And the mortuary.” I didn’t want to relive my encounter with Officer Trionfo and chose not to get into the details. “The service is the day after tomorrow at eleven. So can you spread the word?” I figured that the crowd would be small because most people would be working, but Roy assured me that he would be there.

  “She’ll be cremated,” I announced, my voice getting shaky again.

  “That’s no surprise. No hakujin cemetery wants a Jap body. Same as Los Angeles.”

  “I thought Chicago would be different.”

  Roy snorted in response.

  “I’m supposed to contact the Japanese Mutual Aid Society to store her remains at their mausoleum.”

  “It’s at Montrose Cemetery. You’ll be able to keep her there for a while.”

  “Is it far away?” I couldn’t imagine leaving Rose too far from us.

  “It’s pretty far north. A German fellow bought some prairie land for it. But it’s still in Chicago.”

  “Is that close to Evanston?”

  “Why, you planning to go to Northwestern or something?”

  “That’s where Tomi lives.”

  Roy frowned.

  “You know Tomi, Rose’s old roommate.”

  “Why do you want to see her?” Roy’s voice sounded unnecessarily harsh.

  “To ask her about Rose.”

  “I don’t think she’ll know much. She and Rose didn’t talk much recently.”

  I didn’t know why Roy was pouring cold water on my plans. My face must have revealed my irritation because he pushed a large box across the table. “Here. This is for you and your family.”

  It was a box of chocolate-and-caramel logs, twenty-four of them, according to the printing on the box.

  “Did you steal this?”

  Roy started laughing and I started to do the same. I hadn’t heard Roy laugh since before the war. “You know that I work at a candy factory, don’t you?”

  My pancakes arrived and I felt like crying. They were perfect brown discs, steaming hot with a big pat of butter melting on top. I kept pouring the maple syrup atop the stack until Roy told me to stop. “You’re acting like you’re a hobo off the street.”

  “I don’t care what anyone thinks,” I said. My mother had always chided me for unladylike behavior, and I was tired of people telling me to rein in my natural inclinations.

  In between bites, I told Roy about my visit to Rose’s old apartment and the discovery of her diary.

  “I didn’t know Rose kept one of those. She didn’t seem the type.” He brought his coffee mug to his mouth and before taking a sip, asked, “Did she write anything about me?”

  “No,” I lied. I needed more time to pore over her diary, but I knew Roy was mentioned several times. “At least nothing much.”

  Roy drummed the surface of the Formica table with his fingers. Was he nervous about what Rose could have written about him? If the coroner’s assessment was true, someone had gotten Rose pregnant. And Roy was the one male that Rose was the closest to in Chicago.

  “I’d like to see that diary someday,” he said.

  I kept dabbing at my sticky lips with my napkin. I had no intention of showing Rose’s diary to him. “Most of it was everyday things. Traveling within Chicago. Getting her hair done at the Beauty Box in the Mark Twain Hotel. Regular Rose stuff.”

  “So mostly about her.”

  I ignored Roy’s insult. “From her diary, it didn’t seem like she was depressed. I don’t believe that Rose would commit suicide; do you?”

  Roy ran his fingers through his hair. “Being out of camp does things to you. You’re finally free but you’re not. It’s like there are invisible bars caging you in. You do something you’re not supposed to do and you hit a wall.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like asking for a promotion because you’ve been working harder than any other man on the line.” Roy’s jaw tightened. “If it weren’t for my mother, I would have enlisted by now.”

  I remembered the fate of Harriet’s brother. “But you might be killed.”

  “I’m no namby-pamby jellyfish. I know what people are saying.” Roy’s family was depending on him, especially in communicating with the men—Roy referred to them as vultures—who had taken over the Tonai produce market. Roy’s father was still being held in an alien detention center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There was little chance that the government would approve an early release for him, so the female Tonais decided to stay in camp, at least for now.

  The waitress came to take away my empty plate. I had completely devoured every crumb and drop of syrup.

  Two Nisei women who had entered the diner stopped at our booth. The taller one was pulling at the arm of the shorter one to prevent her from addressing us, but it didn’t work. “It sure didn’t take you long, did it?” The woman’s voice was scratchy like a smoker’s. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, accentuating the round shape of her face.

  Roy shaded his eyes, as if he didn’t want to look directly at the women. “This is Rose Ito’s sister. Aki.” The two women fell silent.

  I exchanged greetings with them but only retained the shorter woman’s name, Marge. “I didn’t know Rose had a sister,” she rasped. The taller one, who wore a pair of cat-eye glasses, gave me a once-over.

  After awkwardly excusing themselves, they took refuge in a booth on the other side of the restaurant.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  Roy pulled at the front piece of his hair. “I dated one of their roommates. Things didn’t work out so well.”

  “How about you and Rose?”

  “What about us?”

  “You know.”

  “We were friends, Aki. Friends from back home. Only that. She was actually a lot nicer to me here in Chicago. Probably because you and your folks weren’t around. There was no one else she knew from Los Angeles.”

  “Did she have any boyfriends? Did she go on any dates?”

  “You know Rose.” He stared into his empty coffee mug. “She was always surrounded by people, but no one really knew her. No one could get close. Maybe you were the only one who knew the real Rose.”

  This whole conversation was a dead end. For all the years that I had
known Roy and the Tonais, could I trust him? Rose had obviously had a relationship with someone, and if it hadn’t been with Roy, then who? I was annoyed that he hadn’t shed any light on what had been going on in Rose’s life. I let Roy pay because I didn’t have enough cash to cover my pancakes. He promised to take me to a Chinese restaurant next to eat chop suey.

  Before we went our separate ways, I told him, “Remember the day after tomorrow. Rose’s funeral.”

  My legs were tired from all the walking, so I hopped on the subway, even though I would ride it for only one stop. It was getting to be rush hour and I was almost crushed in the movement of men in scratchy suits and women in high heels. Hot air pressed through the train car and at certain moments I felt nauseated as I inhaled the stench of the brown evidence package. My stomach had always been weak, too responsive to my emotions. Before I knew it, the stationmaster was calling out, “Clark and Division,” and my heart leapt. My eyes filled with tears as I clutched Rose’s things. I had intended to scrutinize the activities on the train platform where Rose could have been standing the evening of May 13, but instead I was pushed forward by a stream of people, as if I was completely uprooted and unmoored.

  Chapter 6

  Some girls found a job at a bra factory. I thought that might be fun if we get free samples. But it turns out that you have to work in a room without any windows and the bras are pretty cheaply made, with hooks that dig into your back.

  My roommate Tomi works at the big candy company in town and said that there may be an opening for me. I interviewed with a round man with a waxed mustache, the kind that you see in Westerns. I was trying to keep from laughing, so I think I might have been smiling the whole time. I got the job.

  To prepare for the funeral, my mother and I went out to get our hair done. It had only been a week since we had gone to the camp beauty parlor in Manzanar to make sure that we looked presentable for Chicago. Now we needed to be chanto, in perfect order, to say goodbye publicly to Rose.

  I took us to the beautician inside the Mark Twain Hotel. It was close and Harriet had recommended it, but the real reason was that I knew Rose had gone there.

  We left Pop alone in the apartment, reminding him that the iceman was on his way. As soon as we walked outside, we felt heat rising from the concrete and soaking us in a messy, sweaty stew—and it was only mid-May. I never thought that I would look back longingly at our summers in the Owens Valley, where the blinding and unrelenting sun darkened our faces, arms and legs if we didn’t cover them. But at least it was dry there, not humid like this.

  Compared to our apartment, the Mark Twain was grand, stretching out on the corner like a bird in flight. It was at least five stories high. It even had a lobby with a couple of workers behind the desk. One looked like a Nisei; he had a wide chest with a head of curly hair. As we passed, he didn’t smile or ask us any questions, simply stared, as if he knew that we were fresh out of camp.

  The Beauty Box was toward the back of the first floor. There were a couple of tall chairs facing round mirrors and drawers. “We don’t have appointments,” I apologized to the Nisei proprietor, who was getting paid by a client, a hakujin woman who looked like she was walking around in a pink nightgown and robe.

  “No worries, no worries. The rest of my afternoon is open.”

  The beautician, who introduced herself as Peggy, surveyed my mother’s hair. “Your hair is so healthy and black. You must eat a lot of nori.”

  Mom smiled, the first time in a long time. She did pride herself on her hair. “I am Yuri,” she said, careful not to mention our last name. “And this is my daughter, Aki.”

  “Yuri and Aki. Those names are easy to remember. And are you new in town?”

  We both nodded. I wanted so much to ask her about Rose, but I knew that Mom wouldn’t want me to bring her up with a stranger.

  Peggy didn’t ask us a lot of questions about our background. We did tell her that we had come from Manzanar, and that was all she needed to know. She took Mom first, expertly taming the cowlick that sometimes made her look like a cockatiel. She put Mom under the salon hair dryer and then studied me.

  “You might look good with a shorter hairstyle. It’ll be easier to take care of in this Chicago humidity.”

  I don’t know how Peggy figured out that grooming was one of my weaknesses. Or perhaps it was painfully self-evident. I had kept my hair shoulder-length, because that’s the way Rose kept hers.

  “Ah—”

  Mom lowered her head from the vroom of the dryer. “Yes, Aki-chan, cut. It will be sukkuri for the summer.”

  I didn’t care how refreshed I looked. “Don’t make me look like a boy,” I said in a soft voice to Peggy.

  The beautician laughed, a peal that was as delightful as wind chimes. “Even if I shaved your head, you would still look like a girl. But trust me, you’re in good hands. I’ll make you pretty as a picture.”

  As Peggy clipped away, I felt pampered in a way I hadn’t felt in . . . maybe ever. She put my hair in curlers and then sat me under the dome of the hair dryer, too. When she removed the curlers, she rearranged my hair with a fine-tooth comb with a sharp tail that could have poked my eye out. In the mirror my face transformed from a less attractive version of my sister’s into someone I had never seen before.

  “Oh, why are you crying? Do you hate it?” Peggy pulled out a couple of facial tissues from her drawer and held them out to me.

  During this time, Mom had been watching me like a bird of prey. I knew what she was thinking. Don’t you dare say anything. Keep your mouth shut.

  I dabbed at the wetness. “I’m a crybaby. It usually takes more time for people to find out.”

  “Oh, you’ve been through so much. Coming from camp to this big city. It’s a shock to your system. It was to mine, too.” She went through the drawers in her station and dug out three hair rollers that she said I could have for free. “Just put these on when you go to bed.”

  “Aki-chan, we are going to be late,” Mom said, even though we had no pressing appointments. She settled the bill and practically dragged me from the chair.

  In the hallway she murmured to me in Japanese, “Our family business is our business. No one else needs to know.” Tomorrow, though, we were having a funeral, and everyone would know that Rose Ito had died.

  My parents didn’t expect many people at the service. The weather reports predicted a thunderstorm later in the day; in Chicago showers seemed to come out of nowhere and threatened to drench our beautiful hairdos because we still hadn’t purchased umbrellas.

  The mortuary attendant, who had given us the coroner’s death certificate in an envelope, told us to sit in the first row of the funeral parlor, in front of the urn that held my sister’s ashes. Since Rose’s world in Chicago had been such a mystery to me, I opted to stand at the door and greet every person who entered, to gather information about who she could have had a relationship with. My parents, on the other hand, followed protocol, my father slumped over in his suit, while my mother kept looking behind her to see what she was missing.

  I was genuinely shocked to see how many people came in for the late-morning funeral. First of all, it had been pulled together in only forty-eight hours. And also, it was right in the middle of the day, when the Nisei should have been working in factories or at desks pushing papers. Back in Tropico, we made sure to have the funerals in the evening, after the produce workers had completed their shifts and had time to take a bath.

  Funerals, even more than births or even weddings, were absolutely mandatory to recognize. Back in California, we made sure to place cash called koden in envelopes to leave with the receptionists before we entered. Although its roots are in Buddhism, almost every old-timer, regardless of religion, gives koden in the Japanese community in the United States. If someone dies, the community rallies around and gives money to the deceased’s family members to pay for the funeral costs. And i
n return, when the time comes, the survivors will pay the same exact amount to those who gave them koden during their time of need.

  So far, Klaner’s had had very few funerals for the Japanese. It made sense as most of us were young and relatively healthy. Pop, in fact, seemed like one of the oldest. The head mortician had told me that the German and Polish immigrants also have a tradition of mutual aid for funerals, but nothing as prescribed as koden for the Japanese. I asked the attendant for a lined accounting sheet and told him to make sure each envelope had the name of the giver and a return address.

  Roy was one of the first to arrive. He came with his roommate, Ike, a tall Nisei with thin, hooded eyes. Although Roy’s hair was neatly combed back and he was wearing a tie, there was something about his face that didn’t look right. His eyes, usually clear, were terribly bloodshot, and his lips seemed thick, as if they had been stung by a mosquito. He offered to be an uketsuke, a receptionist for the koden money, even though before the war that job was usually assumed by young women or old men. I told him that a mortuary worker was handling that responsibility. I’m not sure why I was suddenly concerned with appearances, but I didn’t want Roy to look weak in any way. I hoped that he would sit up front near my parents, but he chose to sit in back to keep his eye on me, as if he was expecting trouble to walk into the funeral.

  A steady stream of people began arriving shortly thereafter. Even Louise and Chiyo, wearing brown and navy dresses, respectively, were a welcome sight. I accepted Chiyo’s bear hug and Louise’s tight elbow squeeze. A hakujin woman about our age with flaming red hair and a couple of men in perfectly tailored suits and hats sat with Roy. I assumed that they all worked together at the candy company. A few hakujin people even showed up.

  Ed Tamura arrived with his wife and an older man wearing a minister’s collar. Harriet was right behind them.

  “I didn’t expect you all to come,” I said.