All Good Women (3 page)

‘That's it, ladies.' Miss Fargo's voice cracked above the clatter. ‘Lunchtime. Let's rest those fingers a while.'

The cafeteria was a cold, damp room in the basement. Ann's stomach turned as she considered what might have been boiling for years in the huge tureens. She was disappointed Moira couldn't eat with her. She noticed that several tables were already filled with girls chatting and laughing. They all seemed quite stylish. She looked down at her straight green skirt and plain pumps. Perhaps she should dress up more tomorrow. But it would take more than a colorful dress to fit in. These girls had a carefree verve. Actually, they were probably just as nervous as she. That tall, skinny blond woman at the front of the line looked as if she might die of shyness. What about Miriam Schwartz? Ann wondered. She turned and saw her gossiping with the Lentman girl. Now, how did she know they were gossiping?

‘Excuse me.' Ann had run her tray into the one in front of her. She looked up to see it belonged to the Oriental student. The girl smiled self-consciously.

Ann smiled back. ‘You look familiar.'

Wanda blushed. ‘Aren't you Ann Rose from Lowell High School?'

‘Yes.' Ann looked at her quizzically.

‘Wanda Nakatani. I was the year behind you. My brother Howard was in your class. And I heard you speak at his — rather your — graduation.'

‘Oh, yes, I remember Howard. What's he doing?'

‘Soup or sandwich?' demanded the woman behind the counter.

‘Sandwich,' Ann replied cheerfully. ‘Egg salad please.' She paid the cashier and said to Wanda, ‘Shall we sit together?'

‘Oh, yes, I'd like that.'

Ann thought how much Wanda resembled her brother. Why hadn't she recognized Wanda? Of course seniors didn't talk to juniors. Now she regarded Wanda as a long-lost sister. ‘I remember, you were interested in journalism. And you wrote poetry, too.'

Wanda nodded. ‘Still do. In fact I had quite a lot running through my head during those gruesome typing exercises. Got to do something to preserve your sanity.'

Anna gobbled the rest of her sandwich, surprised at her appetite.

Wanda could barely conceal her pleasure about eating with Ann Rose, the girl she used to admire from a distance. ‘Is your father still at the factory?'

‘Good memory. You'll make a great writer. Yes, but he got promoted to foreman last year. Mind if I smoke? Would you like one?'

‘Go right ahead,' said Wanda, ‘but no thanks.'

Ann watched the smoke rise. She noticed Wanda biting her fingernails. First days were tough on everyone. ‘Who were your friends at Lowell?'

‘Oh, you wouldn't have known them.' Wanda grew shyer, intensely aware of the differences — Ann a year older and the school brain — but she had resolved to be more forthright with people in this new course. ‘Emmy Yamamoto and Sarah Murdoch.'

‘I think. I knew Sarah. Wasn't she in art studio?'

‘Yes,' Wanda said. ‘She knew your friend Carol Sommers. Whatever happened to Carol? I always thought she was going to New York to make it big.'

Ann inhaled sharply. Then she stubbed out her cigarette and looked at her watch. Hell. She thought everybody knew. She considered excusing herself to the lavatory and then caught the panic on Wanda's face. She breathed deeply; if she told this story often enough, she might start believing it.

‘She did go to New York.' Ann could smell the anger in her sweat. ‘And it was very hard for her.' She struggled to hold back the tears.

Wanda wished she hadn't asked.

‘Too hard,' Ann blurted. ‘They found her in a bathtub, with her wrists slit.'

‘How tragic for you.' Wanda reached for her hand.

Ann looked up, startled. No one had really consoled
her
in the year since Carol's death. ‘Such a waste.' ‘So sad for her family.' ‘If we had only known, we might have been able to help her.' But no one had acknowledged Ann's feelings. She was only a friend.

Wanda watched Ann carefully.

‘Yes.' Ann's voice was steady.

‘I remember how close you were.' Wanda forced a smile. ‘I always envied your friendship. The two of you going to football games together. And didn't you have the same coats — dark brown with black collars?'

‘Yes.' Ann smiled, herself. ‘Yes, she was a good friend and I miss her.'

‘I'm sorry.' Wanda pulled back her hand. ‘And I'm sorry I brought it up.'

‘No, no,' Ann began, ‘it's fine. You didn't know …'

A buzzer rang. The two looked at each other. ‘Like being back at Lowell,' they said in unison and laughed.

‘Except that we have the same teacher all day.' Wanda shook her head. ‘What a Lulu.'

Upstairs, they parted for their desks. ‘Lunch tomorrow?' Wanda asked boldly.

‘It's a date if I can bring another girl, Moira.' Ann was cheerful. She had no good reason to refuse — only a nagging sadness about Carol. Well, best to get her mind off that. They would talk about other things tomorrow. Ann had hardly asked about Wanda.

Wanda walked back
to her
desk grinning. She was in the same class with the famous Ann Rose. Howard would be pleased. And Mama would be very impressed. Perhaps this would stop her questions about whether Tracey was the right place. Wanda could hardly believe it. Throughout high school she had wanted to
be
Ann Rose: the beautiful, brilliant girl who didn't know she was the awe of teachers and students alike.

‘Asdfghjkl;qwertyuiop'. What would Mrs Longnecker say when she found out her star writer was taking secretarial lessons? Of course journalists had to learn to type. Wanda felt another pang; how could she tell Mrs Longnecker she was still working at the cannery? She thought she would get a job on a newspaper any day. But one look at her Asian face and editors said, ‘No, that position was filled yesterday … an hour ago … in the last five minutes.' Sometimes the rejection panicked her. Maybe she was crazy — there were few enough women and no other
Nisei
she knew — who became reporters on the mainstream papers. Sometimes the rebuff focused her. She would show them. She would go to college. Meanwhile, the first step was getting out of the cannery and a decent secretarial wage.

Wanda listened to Miss Fargo's slow, precise instructions which made her feel as if she were in the first grade. Had she been especially slow and simple with Wanda?

Relax, Wanda. Tonight you can tell Mama about your suspicions and Papa about the day's adventures. The difference between her parents' temperaments always amazed Wanda — Papa so optimistic and energetic about American possibility and Mama low key, resentful about the broken promises. Maybe it was because Papa, coming from a poor Yokohama family, was used to hardship, while Mama left her middle-class comforts out of love for Papa and hopes of starting a new life. Wanda considered how they had met in a small socialist circle in Japan and carried their ideals across the Pacific. Surely they would never breach their class difference in Yokohama. First in Seattle and now in San Francisco, they held to their beliefs about a workers' state and shared wealth, but they found few
Issei
following such politics. Thus they had made more white friends than many Japanese–American families. They lived inside and outside the
Nihonjin
community. The Nakatanis, Wanda shook her head, were always iconoclasts. Maybe the distinction between her parents was that Mama was more conscious of her children's sacrifices. She had no tolerance for bigotry, yet as a Japanese lady she hadn't built up adequate defenses. Papa saw himself as a pioneer and was prepared for hardship.

Wanda thought about the time Howard came home crying because he couldn't join the same Cub Scout troop as his Caucasian friends. Mama was so furious Howard feared
he
had done something wrong. ‘What kind of democracy is this, Yas, where children are not equal?' Wanda still wondered if Mama would have been exercised about the Brownies. Well, the boy was most important, that was that.

‘What would you have us do, Miné?' Papa addressed Mama in Japanese. ‘Return to Japan before our dreams are realized?'

‘
Our
dreams? You are welcome to them. Yes, sometimes I think it would be better to return to Yokohama. At least we would only suffer poverty — and not this mad bigotry.'

Papa shook his head again. ‘Wait, Miné, you'll see. Our people will become great Americans — scientists, writers, doctors — our own son.'

Mama pursed her lips and returned to the kitchen. She was a dutiful, if sometimes irritated, wife who allowed Papa the last word.

Traditions, it was hard to follow which traditions they would keep. Wanda: her very name was atypical. Most of her
Nisei
friends had Japanese names or at least more sedate Anglo names. But Mama insisted on naming her daughter after a favorite English teacher in Japan. ‘Wanda Nakatani' — sometimes Wanda thought there were too many ‘a's' in the name, that it left her too exposed; sometimes she liked the name's distinctiveness, which camouflaged her own bashfulness.

Wanda marvelled at the way Mama — who thought religion was a wasteful, deluded indulgence — put flowers by her parents' photographs on the anniversary of their deaths. A few Buddhist practices were all right, Mama finally decided; at least she hadn't converted to Christianity like Uncle Fumio. And if English was spoken when Caucasian guests were present, Japanese was the main language between Mama and Papa. Wanda grew up speaking English with Howard and Betty and her friends and almost understanding her parents' Japanese. Her life, like her name, was half Japanese and half American. Half not Japanese and half not American. She was an amphibian, her mobility versatile to compensate for the lack of belonging. All the legacies were contradictory. She inherited from her parents a deep idealism about achievement as well as a grave fear of failure.

Papa had not quite fulfilled the prediction about himself — not yet, he was always quick to say. While most
Issei
in California farmed or fished, Papa still loved lumbering. He loved the sharp scent of evergreen forests and the independent life and the possibilities of fortune. Not until he was forty did he join his brother Fumio at the fish cannery.

Wanda admired Mama. Where would the family be without her? While she wished Mama were softer, she was grateful Mama hadn't imprisoned her in origami and Buddhist practices and a marriage arranged by the
Baishakunin
.
Mama had cleared a way for Wanda to have more freedom than she had. She insisted her daughter make a variety of friends. Sometimes Wanda felt as if she were standing on Mama's shoulders, as if each generation of women in her family were supposed to stretch further. Mama's contribution had been immigration to this strange country. Now Wanda was supposed to make an independent life. But if you led an independent life for your parents, you were not independent. At times Wanda envied cousin Keiko who, although she might feel suffocated by convention, was spared Wanda's own confusion.

‘“As we, as we, as we … ” You should have that down, ladies. Shall we try a longer word? Put your right index finger on the “h”, now the fourth finger of that hand on the “o”, now the pinky on the “p”. That's it. Try “hop hop hop hop”. Then put it together. “As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.”'

Wanda suppressed a smile. Really, if she thought this was embarrassing, how must stern Miss Fargo feel up there dictating to all of them? She didn't look like she had had a good hop in forty years.

She would record this in her diary tonight. Wanda found that as soon as she told her family stories, they lost flavor. The diary was Mrs Longnecker's greatest gift. Wanda had filled the fancy, engraved green book years ago. Now she was on her fourth volume, making sense of things in her own words — her crush on Martin Kogowa; her ideas about Roosevelt. In addition to testing out emotions and opinions, the diary was a good place to meditate. When she was sitting alone in her room with a cup of tea writing, she seemed to leave her body. She lived on the page. Wanda was afraid to feel too good while she was writing, afraid that she didn't deserve the happiness. She told herself she wanted to be a writer because so many social issues needed to be addressed. This was true, but there was also the sheer satisfaction of writing.

Miss Fargo was just two girls behind her now. Wanda tried to relax. She would forget Miss Fargo's original coldness to her. Probably everyone found her too formal. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.' She continued typing at the same, even pace. Miss Fargo stood over each girl and pointed out errors. But, Wanda noted proudly, many of them couldn't get the letters straight while she hadn't made a single error since the ‘
Aw
we hop.' on the first line. Maybe Miss Fargo would overlook that when she saw the rest of the sheet. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.' Wanda continued. She could smell Miss Fargo's carbolic soap now. Of course she wouldn't wear perfume and she would need something strong to remove ink from her fingers. Maybe after class Wanda should inquire about the correct brand of soap. She grimaced at her own eagerness to impress.

‘Miss Nakatani,' Miss Fargo stood over her.

Wanda looked up, absurdly wondering for a moment, whether it was correct military procedure to keep on typing and talk at the same time. Maybe she should type out her response?

‘Your work is indeed very neat. And save for that unfortunate mistake on the very first line, you seem to be doing fine. However,' Miss Fargo bent lower, as if she were being confidential, ‘I wouldn't wear such bright colors if I were you. They create a distraction in an office. I rather suspect you'll want to blend in as much as possible.'

Wanda's cheeks turned the color of her suit. Blend in? Would she say this to any of them or was she saying that, as an Oriental, Wanda should try to be inconspicuous? How should she respond? ‘Yes, Mam'? ‘Thank you'? Her fingers took over typing. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.'