Cherry Blossom Baseball

For Ruby Jane

AUGUST 1944

M
ichiko
had been making tea for her mother and her aunt for so long, she could do it in her sleep. She filled the chipped enamel kettle, placed it on the electric element, and turned the knob. Then she pulled the metal caddy from the shelf, removed the lid, and scooped
cha
into the blue porcelain pot.
Half gone
, she thought with a smile as she looked at what was left in the caddy. The lower the level of bits of green leaves and tiny twigs, the closer they were to leaving the apartment above the drugstore.

“We already gave this place a spring cleaning,” Sadie said, entering the kitchen. “Your mother is far too fussy.” Michiko's aunt removed the coloured kerchief tied around her head and gave her shiny, straight, black hair a toss. Her nail polish, lipstick, perfume, and earrings made her, in Michiko's eyes, the most modern woman in the world.

Michiko nodded as she placed the little blue cups with no handles on the table. It wouldn't be long before the cups would be packed with the other dishes in the wooden cartons stacked next to the sink. When Michiko had suggested they make tea in the cups and pack the pot, her mother had frowned. “Tea made in a cup does not have the same taste as from a pot,” she'd said. “The teapot will be the very last thing to be wrapped.”

The whistle of the kettle brought Michiko's mother, Eiko, into the kitchen.

“I'm parched,” she said as she slumped into the wooden chair. “I'd better stop, it's almost time for the baby to wake.”

Michiko poured each of them a steaming cup of pale green liquid. “There really aren't a lot of things to take,” she said.

“When I think of all we could have brought when we first came to this ghost of a town …” Sadie said in a quiet, sad voice. “You had curtains, carpets, and bedspreads. There were pictures on the wall, china, and silverware.” She put her head in her hands. Her razor-sharp hair fell across her cheek. “And I had a closet full of clothes and a whole tower of hat boxes.”

“Stop it,” Eiko said, putting down her cup. “What are a few hats and dresses compared with meeting the man of your dreams?” Her oval face and almond-shaped eyes were almost an exact copy of Sadie's, only more serious. “Always remember, ‘Every reverse side has its reverse side.'”

“You sound just like Geechan,” Michiko said as she sat down.

“I know,” her mother said. “His old sayings fill my head these days.”

“Odd you would say that,” Sadie said. “Sometimes I think I can hear his voice.”

“Sometimes,” Michiko said with a sigh, “I hear him in the garden.” She looked toward the back window, remembering her beloved grandfather patting down plants with long, thin fingers. His face and hands were always brown, with lots of wrinkles, just like a chestnut. When he wasn't hoeing or weeding, he was out walking. Every day he took a new route, smiling at neighbours, talking to dogs and children, always on the lookout for the right-sized rock for his garden's pathway. He had even spelled out the word
WELCOME
in small white stones across the flowerbed in front of the store. There was talk his garden could be on a postcard.

“Look what I found,” Eiko said as she drew a small packet of blue envelopes and paper from her apron pocket and put it on the table. “They were taped to the back of the bureau.”

Michiko undid the string that tied them together and lifted the tattered sheaves of passport papers from the top. She unfolded them to see the photograph of a young man in a dark peaked cap and high-collared jacket. “How old was he in this picture?”

“Sixteen,” both women said at the same time.

“Only five years older than me?” Michiko sat back in amazement. “He was so young.”

“He came to Canada, like so many others, to make his fortune,” Sadie said. She took a small sip of tea. “Everyone in Japan told stories about the land where gold washed down the river.”

“And Geechan was going to return with a suitcase full of it,” Michiko said, repeating the tale she had heard her grandfather tell so many times before.

“He was very proud of his passport,” her mother said. “It was the kind that allowed him to stay in Canada.” She pulled a small, worn card from the pile.

“What's that?” Michiko asked, taking it from her mother's hand. “
Inspection Card
,” she read out loud, “
Yokohama, Japan, May, 1923
. That's funny.”

“What's funny?”

Michiko ran her finger across the numbers along the bottom. “They stamped it but forgot to circle the number of his cabin.”

“That's because he didn't have a cabin,” Sadie said. “He travelled steerage. All he got was a bunk in the hull of the ship.”

Michiko pulled one of the thin, almost transparent sheets of blue paper from its envelope and examined the rows of elegant black characters. “What do they say?”

“Just a lot of old news from old friends,” her mother responded with a sigh. “Stories of people who died, people who married, and babies born.”

Michiko slid the paper back into the envelope and turned it over. “It looks like an address on the back,” she said. “Maybe we should write to tell them that Geechan has …” She stopped, unable to bring herself to say, “died.”

“There is no guarantee anyone would still be at the same address,” her mother said, straightening the small stack. “These were sent long ago, before the war.”

“And,” Sadie said, “mailing letters to Japan will only arouse suspicion.” She raised her teacup to her sister for more tea and added. “Don't forget why we are all here in the first place.”

“Because we are all spies,” Michiko said in a flat, dis­interested voice. She put the card back on the pile of papers.

Sadie turned to Michiko. “Do you remember Geechan's toilet story?”

Michiko couldn't help but smile as she remembered her grandfather telling them that they did not have toilets in Japan like the ones in Canada, and he had almost washed his face in the large white porcelain bowl when he first came to Vancouver.

“Remember he wanted us to bow to his picture of the emperor whenever we passed it?” Sadie asked Eiko with a grin.

“That was the day you told him the emperor had a funny nose,” Eiko said. “He was not happy about that.”

Michiko recalled the picture of Emperor Hirohito that hung in her grandparents' apartment in the tall wooden building on Powell Street. But her grand­father's house and their own brick bungalow on the other side of Vancouver were just faded memories. “Geechan never asked me to bow to the emperor's picture,” she said, turning the envelope toward her.

“That's because you were Canadian-born,” her mother said.

“But you were born in Canada too,” Michiko said. “Why did he want you to bow?”

“It doesn't matter now,” her mother said in an exasperated tone that signalled the end of the talk. She gathered up the passport and letters and put them back in the pocket of her apron.

Michiko thought about the imposing emperor standing as stiff as a scarecrow in his embroidered robes and enormously thick wooden shoes. Shoes had been on her mind a lot these days. The straps of the black patents she'd worn for her aunt's wedding already pinched her ankles. Her father had punched a new hole in the tip of the thin, pointed straps, but there was no room for another. She was so tired of polishing over the scuffs on the white leather saddle of her shoes. Michiko was desperate for a pair of running shoes, but her mother told her that not only did they not give enough support, they also looked shabby.

“Your clothes don't have to be expensive, but they do have to be presentable,” her mother said, time and time again. “They tell the world who you are.” She still shook her head with disapproval when she talked about the family whose children had worn dirty canvas shoes to the Sato wedding. Ever since then she'd had a strong dislike of runners.

Even so, Michiko wrote down the page number and their cost on a piece of paper and attached it to the front of the catalogue, just in case her mother changed her mind. In weeks, Michiko hoped she would be slipping her feet into brand new running shoes, ready to race from first base to home plate in seconds.

“Yoo-hoo,” a familiar voice hollered from the bottom of the back stairwell. Mrs. Morrison, their long-time friend, called up to them. “Are you ready?”

“Coming,” Sadie called back. She turned to her sister with concern. “Why don't we wait for the baby to wake up?” she whispered. “It's a perfect day for a walk.”

Michiko knew there was no point in expecting her mother to visit Geechan's grave. She hadn't visited it since he passed away. Every night, as Eiko prepared dinner, tears rolled down her cheeks in long, silent lines. Her mother pretended it was the onions, but Michiko knew it wasn't. Like all the Japanese people in this poor, abandoned town, her mother tried to make their problems invisible by hiding her feelings.

“I have to feed her,” Eiko said. “You go ahead.”

Sadie took a few minutes to wrap a rice ball in a piece of wax paper.

Michiko grabbed the red baseball cap with the large white “A” from the hook at the top of the stairs and shoved it on her head. It used to belong to her Uncle Kaz when he played for the Asahi team, but he had given it to her as a birthday present. It was a bit large, but she didn't care. She raced down the stairs to join the woman who waited in their back vestibule.

Mrs. Morrison's big, red, freckled arms clutched a bunch of daisies. Her wide-brimmed straw hat and floral dress with its puffy skirt made her look like one enormous bouquet. Her thick beige stockings made Michiko smile, thinking of her aunt's earlier story.

“Instead of stockings,” Sadie had explained, “the movie stars wear liquid makeup.” Then she leaned back in her chair and lifted her bare leg in the air to demonstrate the application of a Helena Rubinstein leg stick. “It gives your leg a smooth, stocking-like sheen.”

Michiko had covered her mouth with her hands and giggled. And they'd laughed out loud when Sadie lost her balance and ended up on the floor.

“You're looking very happy this morning,” Mrs. Morrison said, seeing the wide smile on Michiko's face.

“I was thinking about new shoes,” Michiko said.

Mrs. Morrison looked down at her own worn ones. “Suppose I should think about a new pair as well, but these are just so darn comfortable, I hate to give them up.”

She pulled three of the flowers away from the bouquet and handed them to Michiko. “Take these upstairs for your mother,” she said. “She likes to arrange a … you know, what she calls her vase for your grandfather.”

“A
tokonoma
,” Michiko said, supplying the Japanese word. “She will like that.”

Michiko knew her mother would use her special pair of short, sharp scissors to trim the stems. Then she would wind them with thin wire to keep the flowers straight and tall before placing them into the small cluster of pins that rested in the well of the square ceramic tray.

At the cemetery, Michiko picked up the pickle jar they used for a flower vase on her grandfather's grave. She removed the dead flowers and dumped the sour, murky water over the roots of the small cherry tree behind the gravestone. Then she carried the jar to the metal tap that stuck up out of the ground. Michiko remembered how angry Sadie had become when she'd found out there was running water for the cemetery, but not for the little huts where the Japanese people lived. But that had changed. All the wooden houses had water and electricity now.

“I wonder if Geechan can see the flowers we bring?” Michiko said.

“I think so,” Sadie said. “I think he can smell and hear, too. He just can't taste and touch,” she said as she placed the small rice ball on the cement stone.

“So why did you bring food?”

“So he can smell it,” Sadie said. “The smell of good food always made him happy.”