Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (5 page)

H
enry stood in front of the mirror, examining his school clothes. He’d asked his mother to iron them, but they still looked wrinkled. He tried on an old Seattle Indians baseball cap, then thought better of it, combing his hair yet again. Anxiety about Monday mornings was nothing new. In fact, it normally began on Sunday afternoons. Even though he was used to his routine at Rainier Elementary, his stomach would knot up as the hours passed, each minute bringing him closer to his return to the all-white school – the bullies, the heckling, and his lunch duties in the cafeteria with Mrs Beatty. This Monday morning, though, his ritual of serving the other kids seemed downright exciting. Those forty precious minutes in the kitchen had become time well spent, since he’d get to see Keiko. Silver lining?
Indeed
.

‘You one big smile this morning, Henry,’ his father commented in Chinese, slurping his
jook
– thick rice soup,
mixed with diced preserved cabbage. Not a favorite of Henry’s, but he ate it politely.

Henry took slices of preserved duck egg out of his own bowl and set them in his mother’s before she returned from the kitchen. He liked the salty slices but knew they were her favorite, and she never saved much for herself anyway. On their dark cherrywood table sat a lazy Susan used for serving; he spun it back to its original position just as his mother was returning, her bowl back in front of her.

His father’s eyes peeked over his newspaper. The
front-page
headline read:
BRITISH EVACUATE RANGOON
. ‘You liking you school now? Hah?’ His father spoke as he turned the page.

Henry, knowing not to speak Cantonese at home, answered with a nod.

‘They fix the stairs, hah? The ones you fell down?’ Again, Henry nodded, acknowledging his father’s Cantonese, and kept eating his thick breakfast soup. He listened to his father during these lopsided, one-way conversations, but he never talked back. In fact, Henry rarely talked at all, except in English to acknowledge his advancing skills. But since his father understood only Cantonese and a little Mandarin, the conversations came as waves, back and forth, tidal shores of separate oceans.

The truth was that Henry had been beaten up by Chaz Preston on that first day of school. But his parents wanted him there so much that not being appreciative would have been a terrible insult. So Henry made up some excuse,
speaking his American
. Of course his parents didn’t understand – imploring him
to be more careful next time
. Henry did his best to respect and honor his parents. He walked to school each
day, going upstream against a sea of Chinese kids who called him ‘white devil.’ He worked in the school kitchen as white devils called him ‘yellow.’ But that was OK. I’ll do what I have to, Henry thought. But along the way, I think I’m tired of
being careful.

Finishing his breakfast, he thanked his mother and gathered his books for school. Each had a newly wrapped cover – made from folded jazz-club flyers.

After school that Wednesday, Henry and Keiko did their work duties. Emptied the trash in the classrooms. Pounded erasers. Then they waited for the danger to subside. Chaz and Denny Brown were responsible for retiring the flag each day, which kept them around a little longer than usual. But it’d been thirty minutes since the final bell, and they were nowhere to be seen. Henry gave the all clear to Keiko, who hid in the girls’ restroom while Henry scouted the parking lot.

Except for the normal janitorial crew, he and Keiko were typically the last to leave. And today was no different. They walked side by side, down the stairs and past the naked flagpole, dangling their book bags beside them.

Henry noticed Keiko’s sketchbook, the one she’d had in the park, in her book bag. ‘Who taught you how to draw?’ he asked. And draw so well, Henry thought, with just a hint of jealousy, secretly admiring her talent.

Keiko shrugged. ‘My mother, I suppose – mainly. She was an artist when she was about my age. She dreamt of going to New York City and working in a gallery. But she has pain in her hands now and doesn’t draw or paint as much, so she gave her art supplies to me. She wants me to go to college at the
Cornish Institute on Capitol Hill – that’s an art school, you know.’

Henry had heard of Cornish, a four-year academy for fine artists, musicians, and dancers. It was a fancy place. A prestigious place. He was impressed. He’d never known a real artist, except for maybe Sheldon, still … ‘They won’t take you.’

Keiko stopped in her tracks, turning to Henry. ‘Why not? Because I’m a girl?’

Sometimes Henry’s mouth was too big for his face. He didn’t know a delicate way around the subject, so he just said what he was thinking. ‘They won’t take you ’cause you’re Japanese.’

‘That’s why my mom wants me to apply there. To be the first.’ Keiko kept walking, leaving Henry a few steps behind. ‘Speaking of my mother, I asked her what
Oai deki te ureshii desu
means,’ Keiko said.

Henry walked a step behind, looking around nervously. He noticed Keiko’s flowered dress. For someone who appeared so sweet, she sure seemed to know how to needle him. ‘It was Sheldon’s dumb idea,’ he said.

‘It was a nice thing to say.’ Keiko paused, as if looking at a group of seagulls sweeping by overhead, then looked back at Henry, who caught a glint of mischief in her eyes. ‘Thank you,
and
Sheldon.’ She smiled and continued walking.

As they approached Sheldon’s usual corner, there was no music, no crowd, and no sign of the sax player anywhere. He normally played across from the Rainier Heat & Power building, its entrance still covered in sandbags from bombing jitters earlier in the year. Tourists walked by as though
he’d never existed. Henry and Keiko looked at each other, wondering.

‘He was here this morning,’ Henry said. ‘He mentioned that his tryout at the Black Elks Club went well. Maybe he got called back?’ Maybe he’d landed a regular gig with Oscar Holden, who Sheldon said had regular practice jams on Monday and Wednesday nights. They were free, so a lot of people popped in and played or just enjoyed the music.

Henry stood on the corner, looking up at neon signs marking the jazz clubs that lined both sides of Jackson Street.

‘How late do your parents let you play outside?’ he asked, looking at the horizon, trying to find the sun hidden somewhere behind the dense, overcast haze of Seattle’s waterfront.

‘I don’t know, I usually take my sketchbook, so until it gets dark, I guess.’

Henry looked up at the Black Elks Club, wondering what time Sheldon might be playing. ‘Mine too. My mother does the dishes and then relaxes, and my father settles in with the newspaper and listens to the news on the radio.’

That left Henry with a few hours. Still, evenings could be a dangerous time to be walking the streets. Since so many drivers had painted their headlights blue or covered them with cellophane to comply with blackout restrictions, accidents – either head-on collisions or people simply being run over crossing the street at night – were on the rise. Seattle’s thick fog, which slowed down traffic on the streets and made trouble for the ships sailing in and out of Elliott Bay, had become a blanket of comfort, hiding homes and buildings from phantom Japanese bombers or artillery from suspected Japanese submarines. It seemed like there was danger everywhere,
from drunken sailors behind the wheel, Japanese saboteurs, and worst of all, his own parents if they caught him.

‘I want to go,’ Keiko insisted. She looked at Henry, then up the street toward the row of jazz clubs. She brushed the hair out of her eyes, looking like she’d already made up her mind about a question he hadn’t even asked.

‘You don’t even know what I’m thinking.’

‘If you’re going to go listen to him play, I’m coming with you.’

Henry thought about it. He’d already bent the rules by spending time in Nihonmachi, so why not head up Jackson and see the sights, maybe even hear the songs? It would be OK, as long as they weren’t seen, and as long as they made it home before dark. ‘We’re not going anywhere together. My dad will kill me. But if you want to meet me in front of the Black Elks Club at six o’clock, after dinner, I’ll be there.’

‘Don’t be late,’ Keiko replied.

He walked with her through Nihonmachi, the route they always took. Henry had no clue how they’d actually get into the Black Elks Club.
One
, they weren’t black. Even if he replaced the button he wore with one that said ‘I am Negro,’ it wasn’t going to cut it. And two, they probably weren’t old enough, although he thought he’d seen entire families – young kids in tow – go inside. But that was only on certain nights. Like bingo night at the Bing Kung Benevolent Association. All he knew was that he’d figure it out. They would listen from the street if they had to. It was only a few blocks over, a little farther for Keiko, but not too far. Close to home but a world away – from his parents’ world anyway.

‘Why do you like jazz so much?’ Keiko asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Henry said. And he didn’t, really. ‘Maybe because it’s so different, but people everywhere still like it, they just accept musicians, no matter what color they are. Plus, my father hates it.’

‘Why does he hate it?’

‘Because it’s
too
different, I guess.’

As they reached Keiko’s apartment building, Henry waved goodbye and turned toward home. Walking away, he watched Keiko’s reflection in the side mirror of a parked car. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. Caught peeking, he turned his head and cut through the vacant lot behind Nichibei Publishing and past the Naruto-Yu, a Japanese
sento
– bathhouse. Henry couldn’t picture bathing with his parents the way some Japanese families did. He couldn’t picture himself doing a lot of things with his parents. He wondered about Keiko’s own family – and what they might think of her sneaking out to a jazz club, let alone to meet Henry. He felt his stomach turn a little. His heart raced when he thought about Keiko, but his gut tightened just the same.

In the distance, he heard the faint sound of jazz musicians warming up.

W
hen Keiko arrived outside the Black Elks Club, Henry immediately felt underdressed. Basically, he wore the same clothes he’d had on earlier in the day, the ‘I am Chinese’ button still pinned to his school shirt. Keiko, though, had dressed for the occasion and had on a bright pink dress and shiny brown leather shoes. Her hair, which had been pulled back and bobbed with pins and hot rollers, now hung in swoopy curls to her shoulders. She wrapped herself in a white sweater she said her mother had knitted. Her sketchbook was tucked neatly beneath her arm.

Dumbfounded, Henry said the first thing that came to his mind. ‘You look beautiful.’ He said it in English, watching Keiko beam, astonished at how different she looked, only vaguely resembling the silly apron-wearing girl from the school kitchen.

‘No Japanese? No
oai deki te ureshii desu
?’ she teased.

‘I’m speechless.’

Keiko returned his smile. ‘Do we just go in?’

‘We can’t.’ Henry shook his head and pointed to a sign that read ‘No Minors Allowed After 6:00 p.m.’ ‘They’re serving booze. We’re too young. But I’ve got an idea. Follow me.’ He pointed to the alley, where he and Keiko looped around, finding the back door. It was framed with thick glass blocks, but music emanated from the screen door, which was slightly ajar.

‘Are we sneaking in?’ Keiko asked, concerned.

Henry shook his head. ‘They’re bound to see us and toss us.’ Instead he scrounged up a pair of wooden milk crates, and they both sat down, listening to the music, ignoring the pungent smells of beer and mold in the alley. I can’t believe I’m
here
, Henry thought. The sun was still out, and the music was brisk and lively.

After the first fifteen-minute set, the screen door creaked open and an old black man stepped out to light a cigarette. Startled, Henry and Keiko jumped up to run; they were sure they would be shooed away for loitering.

‘What are you kids doing hanging out back here, trying to scare the bejeezus out of this old man?’ He patted his chest above his heart, then sat down where Henry had been sitting. The rumpled old man wore long trousers, held up by gray suspenders, over a wrinkled button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up. To Henry, he looked like an unmade bed.

‘Sorry,’ Keiko offered, flattening out the wrinkles in her dress. ‘We were just listening to the music – we were just about to leave—’

Henry interrupted. ‘Is Sheldon playing with the band tonight?’

‘Sheldon who? We got a lot of new faces in there tonight, son.’

‘He plays the saxophone.’

The old man wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and lit his smoke. Hacking and coughing, he puffed away as if it were a competition and he was the losing team working toward a comeback. Henry listened as the old man caught his breath between draws. ‘He’s in there, doing a fine job – you a fan of his or something?’

‘I’m just a friend – and I wanted to come down and hear Oscar Holden. I’m a fan of Oscar’s.’

‘Me too,’ Keiko added, getting swept up in the moment, crowding close to Henry.

The old man stubbed his cigarette out on the worn heel of his shoe, then tossed the butt in the nearest garbage can. ‘You a fan of Oscar’s, huh?’ He pointed at Henry’s button. ‘Oscar got an all-Chinese fan club these days?’

Henry covered the button with his coat. ‘This is just … my father’s …’

‘It’s OK, kid, some days I wish I was Chinese too.’ The old man laughed a gravelly smoker’s laugh that trailed into a cough, wheezing and spitting on the ground. ‘Well, if you’re friends of
Sheldon the Sax Man
and fans of
Oscar the Piano Man,
I figure Oscar probably wouldn’t mind having a couple little kids from the fan club in his house tonight. Now you won’t tell no one about this, will you?’

Henry looked at Keiko, unsure if the old man was kidding or not. She just kept smiling; her eager grin was larger than
his. Both shook their heads no. ‘We won’t tell a soul,’ Keiko promised.

‘Great. I need you two fan club kids to do me a little favor if you want admittance to the club tonight.’

Henry deflated a bit as he watched the old man take some slips of paper out of his shirt pocket, handing one to each of them. He compared his note with Keiko’s. They were almost identical. Some sort of scribbled writing and a signature – from a doctor.

‘Now you take these to the pharmacy on Weller – you tell ’em it’s on our account, you bring it back, and you get in.’

‘I don’t think I understand,’ Henry said. ‘This is medicine …’

‘It’s a prescription for Jamaican Ginger – a secret ingredient around here. This is how the world works, son. With the war, everything’s being rationed – sugar, gasoline, tires –
booze
. Plus, they don’t let us have a liquor license in the colored clubs, so we do what
they
did a few years back, during the Prohibition. We make it and shake it, baby.’ The old black man pointed to a neon sign of a martini tumbler that hung above the doorway. ‘For medicinal purposes, you all know – go on now.’

Henry looked at Keiko, not sure what to do or what to believe. It didn’t seem like that big a request. He must have gone to the drugstore a hundred times for his mother. Besides, Henry loved to snack on dried ginger. Maybe this was something like that.

‘We’ll be right back.’ Keiko tugged at Henry’s coat, leading him back out the alley and around to Jackson Street. Weller was one block over.

‘Does this make us bootleggers?’ Henry asked, when he saw the rows of bottles through the drugstore window. He was both nervous and excited at the prospect. He’d listened to spy dramas on the radio as the FBI busted up smuggling rings coming down from Canada. You rooted for the good guys, but when you played cops and robbers outside the next day, you always wanted to be the bad guy.

‘I don’t think so. It’s not illegal anymore – besides, we’re just running errands. Like he said, they sell it, but they can’t buy from the white places, so they make it.’

Henry gave up any concern about wrongdoing and headed into the Owl Drug Store, which conveniently stayed open until eight. Bootleggers don’t go to pharmacies, he told himself. You can’t go to jail for picking up an order, can you?

If the skinny old druggist thought it was odd for two little Asian kids each to be picking up a bottle that was 80 percent alcohol, he didn’t say a word. Truth be told, by the way he squinted at the prescriptions and labels with an enormous handheld magnifying glass, he probably didn’t even see much of anything. But the clerk, a young black man, just winked and flashed them a knowing smile as he slipped their bottles into separate bags. ‘No charge,’ he said.

On their way out, Henry and Keiko didn’t even pause to moon over the jars of penny candy. Instead they looked at each other in mock nonchalance, each feeling a little bit older, striding across the street with ten-ounce bottles of liquor swinging at their sides. Small victors in a grown-up scavenger hunt.

‘What do they do with this stuff, drink it?’ Henry asked, looking at his bottle.

‘My papa told me how people used to use it to make bathtub gin.’

Henry pictured the sailors who were known to stagger down the street and cause fights late at night. Stumbling around like their legs belonged to someone else. ‘Jake-legged,’ people called it – from bad gin. Sailors and soldiers from Paine Army Air Field were banned from certain uptown clubs for fighting, so they wandered into the jazz alleys of South Jackson, or even into Chinatown on occasion, looking for a bar that would serve them. Henry couldn’t believe people still drank this stuff. But when he saw the crowds that gathered outside the Black Elks Club, he knew they were here for the same thing he was. They were here to partake of something lush, intoxicating, and almost forbidden – they were here for the music. And tonight, at the front of the building, where latecomers lined up to get in, some were even being turned away. A huge crowd for a weeknight. Oscar sure packed them in.

In the alley, behind the club, Henry could hear musicians tuning up for their next set. He thought he heard Sheldon, tweaking his saxophone.

On the back step, a younger man dressed in a white apron and black bow tie was waiting for them. He opened the screen door and rushed them through a makeshift service kitchen, where they put their bottles of Jamaican Ginger in a tub of ice with other odd-shaped bottles of mysterious properties.

Out in the main room, near a worn wooden dance floor,
their escort pointed at some chairs beside the kitchen door, next to where a busboy was folding a pile of cloth napkins into perfect little white triangles. ‘You sit over there and stay out of trouble, and I’ll go see if Oscar is ready,’ he told them. Henry and Keiko gazed in awe through the dark, smoky lounge, speckled with tall glasses on burgundy tablecloths and jewelry that sparkled on the patrons huddled around the small candlelit tables.

The chatter dimmed as an old man found his way to the bar, where he poured himself a tall glass of ice water, wiping the sweat from his brow. It was the old man from behind the club, the one who’d been smoking in the alley. Henry’s jaw dropped as the old man headed onstage, flexed his wrists, and popped his knuckles before sitting down at the upright piano in front of a large jazz ensemble. Sheldon was perched behind a bandbox with the rest of the horn section.

The old man shucked his suspenders from his shoulders, giving his upper body room to roam, and slid his fingers across the keyboard as the rest of the band fell into rhythm. To Henry, the crowd appeared to be holding their breath. The old man at the piano spoke as he started playing an intro. ‘This is for my two new friends – it’s called “Alley Cats.” It’s a little different, but I think you gonna like it.’

Henry had listened to Woody Herman and Count Basie once or twice on the radio, but to hear a twelve-piece orchestra
live
was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Most of the music he heard vicariously spilling out of the clubs up and
down South Jackson was of the small-ensemble variety, with simple, broken beats. A few musicians playing freestyle. This was a speeding freight train by comparison. The double bass and drums drove the tune while magically cutting away all at once to allow Oscar to take the spotlight with his featured piano solos.

Henry turned to Keiko, who had opened up her sketchbook and was doing her best to pencil in the scene. ‘It’s swing jazz,’ she said. ‘This is what my parents listen to. My mom says they don’t play it like this at the white clubs; it’s too crazy for some people.’

When Keiko mentioned her parents, Henry began noticing the makeup of the crowd. Nearly all were black, some sitting and swaying while others strutted on the floor, dancing spontaneously to the frenetic pace of the band. Standing out in the crowd were several Japanese couples, drinking and soaking in the music, like flowers turned toward the sun. Henry looked for Chinese faces. There were none.

Keiko pointed to one of the small tables where three Japanese couples sat, sipping their drinks and laughing. ‘That’s Mr Toyama. He was my English composition teacher at the Japanese school for one quarter. That must be his wife. I think the other two are teachers as well.’

Henry watched the Japanese couples and thought about his own parents. His mother busy with her housework or community service at the Bing Kung Benevolent Association, where she’d trade in her gasoline coupons for ration stamps – red stamps for meat, lard, and oil, and blue stamps for beans, rice, and canned goods. His father with his ear
tuned to the radio, listening for the latest news about the war in Russia. The war in the Pacific. The war in China. Spending his day leading fund-raising drives to support the Kuomintang – the nationalist army fighting the Japanese invaders across China. He was even ready to fight the war here, having volunteered as a block warden for the Chinatown area. He was one of the few civilians issued a gas mask as a precaution against the impending Japanese invasion.

The war affected everyone. Even here at the Black Elks Club, the blackout curtains were drawn, making the mood feel secretive to Henry. Like a place hidden from the troubles of the world. Maybe that was why they all came here. To escape – running away with a martini made from Jamaican Ginger, chasing it with Oscar Holden’s rendition of ‘I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.’

Henry could have stayed all night. Keiko too, probably. But when he peeked behind the heavy curtain, the sun was setting over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains in the distance. He looked out the window as teenagers, older than he and Keiko, ran up and down the sidewalk shouting, ‘Put out your lights! Put out your lights!’

Inside, Oscar took another break.

‘It’s almost dark, time to go,’ Henry said.

Keiko looked at Henry like he’d woken her from a wonderful dream.

They waved at Sheldon, who finally saw them and waved back, looking happy and surprised to see them. He met them by the kitchen door.

‘Henry! And this must be …’ Sheldon looked at him
with eyes wide. Henry saw the expression; he looked more impressed than surprised.

‘This is Keiko. She’s my friend from school. She’s on scholarship too.’

Keiko shook Sheldon’s hand. ‘Nice to meet you. It was Henry’s idea, we hung out back and then—’

‘And then Oscar put you to work, that’s how it happened, isn’t it? He’s like that, always looking out for his club. Looking out for his band. What’d you think?’

‘The best. He should put out a record,’ Keiko gushed.

‘Now, now, we gotta walk before we can run – bills to pay, you know. OK, we’re about to light it up again for the eight o’clock session, so you two better run along now. It’s almost dark, and I don’t know about you, miss, but I
know
Henry can’t be out that late. Little man ain’t got no brother, so
I’m
his big brother, gotta look out for him. In fact, we look alike, don’t we?’ Sheldon put his face next to Henry’s. ‘That’s the only reason he wears that button, so they don’t confuse the two of us.’

Keiko smiled and laughed; she touched Sheldon’s cheek with the palm of her hand, her eyes lighting up as they met Henry’s.