Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky (11 page)

“Maybe she would if you asked her to sing,” Tomi said.

“She sings?” Roy asked.

“She has the most beautiful voice I ever heard,” Ruth told him. “She used to sing at church in San Francisco.”

Roy shrugged. “We don’t play church music. We probably don’t play anything she knows.”

“You play ‘Green Eyes.’ I bet she could sing ‘Green Eyes,’ ” Tomi said.

Roy considered that. “You think so?”

“We’ll go get her,” Tomi said.

She and Ruth made their way across the floor to where Helen and Wilson had just stopped dancing. Helen did indeed look beautiful with her face flushed from the dancing. “You’re needed over here,” Tomi said. Before Helen could answer, Ruth and Tomi each took one of Helen’s hands and all but dragged her to the bandstand. “You know my brother Roy,” Tomi said.

“Sure, why?” Helen answered slowly.

“You’ll see.” She nodded at Roy.

He finished a song. Then as people clapped, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a surprise for you. Helen Wakasa, the famous San Francisco songbird, is going to sing ‘Green Eyes,’ her favorite song.”

Helen stared at Roy. Then she turned to Tomi. She didn’t look happy. “What is this?”

“You’re going to sing,” Tomi said. When Helen put her hands on her hips and shook her head no, Tomi added, “You’ll look pretty stupid if you don’t.”

Wilson and Carl ran across the dance floor, grinning at their sister. “Sing, Helen,” Wilson said.

“Yeah, sing,” Carl said.

“You’ll disappoint your brothers if you don’t,” Tomi told her.

So Helen climbed onto the bandstand, and Roy and the Royals began playing “Green Eyes,” Helen’s favorite Frank Sinatra song. Helen started out slowly and softly. But as she began to sing, her voice grew louder. She smiled a little. By the time Helen was finished with the song, she was swaying to the music and grinning.

The crowd of dancers loved her, and someone shouted, “More!”

“You know ‘Slow Boat to China’?” Roy asked, and without having to be coaxed, Helen nodded. Roy started the music, and Helen sang again. People crowded around the dance stand to hear her. Tomi thought Helen sounded good enough to be in the movies.

As Helen sang “Whatcha Know, Joe?” Tomi moved through the crowd to find Mom. “I bet Roy asks her to join the band,” Tomi said.

“And I bet she does just that,” Mom replied.

They were right. After that night, Helen became part of the band and sang at every dance. She was a big hit.

Tomi thought singing would make Helen change her attitude, but it didn’t. Each morning when Tomi stopped
to pick up Carl, Helen would complain about something at the camp. She complained about the apartments and the food and the government.

“I don’t get it. Why isn’t she happy now?” Tomi asked Mom. Helen had just come into the barracks and slammed her door so hard that Tomi could feel the vibration all the way down the hall.

Mom shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve done everything you could. Maybe now it’s up to Helen.”

1943 | CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A CHRISTMAS TREE
for
CARL

THE
week before Christmas, snow fell at Tallgrass. The big flakes covered the ugly barracks and the streets. The snow-covered land looked like Christmas pictures Tomi had seen in magazines. This was her second winter at Tallgrass, and Tomi knew that when the snow stopped, the weather would turn cold and windy. Later, the snow would melt, and the streets would be muddy. But right now, as she stood at the window of the apartment watching the snow come down, she thought the scene was magical.

“It won’t be like Christmas at home,” Mom sighed. “There won’t be a Christmas tree, and I can’t bake cookies. We don’t have much money for presents. And worst of all, Pop won’t be here. Remember how he loved Christmas? It makes me so sad I want to cry.”

Tomi was surprised Mom said that, because she usually kept her sadness to herself.

“Maybe he’ll be here for Christmas,” Tomi said. “Maybe.”

Mom shook her head. “Why would the government have sent him to the camp in California if they were going to release him?” Tomi thought she saw tears in Mom’s eyes. But Mom smiled and said, “At least Santa Claus will come. Santa won’t forget the boys and girls in the camp.”

Tomi turned back to the window and watched as Hiro and Wilson ran down the street. Hiro loved the snow, too. Roy had made him a sled from scraps in the workshop. Now, Hiro and Wilson took turns pulling each other on it. Sometimes they took Carl for rides, and Carl clapped his hands with excitement. Carl could play outside, because Mrs. Hayashi had knitted him a cap as well as mittens and bought him a pair of boots.

Hiro and Wilson stopped to make snowballs. They threw them at three girls behind them, and in a minute there was a furious snowball fight. After the boys tired of snowballs, they lay down in the snow and moved their arms and legs to make snow angels.

Then Hiro and Wilson disappeared, and in a minute, they burst through the door of the Itanos’ apartment.
“We’re going to make a snowman,” Hiro said. “How do you make a snowman, Tomi?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Well, come outside and help us figure it out,” Hiro insisted.

“You have to come,” Wilson added.

Tomi put on her coat and mittens. The boys ran down the hall ahead of her and out the door. She hurried after them, stepping outside. As Tomi stopped to see where the boys had gone, Hiro yelled, “Bombs away!” and the boys pelted her with snowballs.

“That’s a dirty trick,” she yelled. But Hiro and Wilson laughed so hard that Tomi couldn’t be mad at them. Still, she could get even. Tomi grabbed Hiro and washed his face with snow.

“Hey!” he said. “Why’d you do that?”

“To teach you goofballs not to throw snowballs at me.”

Wilson laughed and said, “She got you!”

“And I’ll get you, too, if you hit me with another snowball,” Tomi said. “Now let’s see if we can make a snowman.”

“We’ll put it by our window so that Carl can see it every morning when he wakes up,” Wilson said. “It will make him laugh.”

The three of them started with a snowball, then rolled it back and forth in the snow. They patted snow on it until it was a huge snowball. They pushed it in front of the Wakasas’ window. They made a second snowball that was a little smaller than the first and placed it on top of the big one. Then they rolled a third ball and tried to lift it on top of the two others, but it fell off. They tried again, but it broke apart.

“We’ll just have a short guy snowman,” Hiro said.

“Short like Carl,” Tomi told him. She went inside and took several pieces of coal from the bucket beside the coal stove. Then she pushed them into the top ball to make eyes and a smile. “We need a carrot for the nose. In pictures of snowmen, they always have carrot noses.”

“The only carrots at Tallgrass are cut up and come in cans,” Hiro told her. “I know. We can use a pickle.”

At noon, Hiro took a pickle from the dining hall and shoved it into his jacket pocket. After lunch, the three returned to the snowman and used the pickle for his nose. “He looks like an old man,” Wilson said. “That was a good idea.”

“Maybe not so good,” Hiro said. “Now my jacket smells like pickles.”

“Carl’s going to love the snowman. It’ll make up a little bit for not having a Christmas tree. We always had one. My mother would put it up when Carl was in bed on Christmas Eve. He’d wake up in the morning, and there it would be, all decorated. We couldn’t afford a very big tree, but Carl didn’t care. It was having the tree that counted.”

A few days later, Hiro said, “I wish there was a way we could get a Christmas tree for Carl. He’s a little boy. He doesn’t understand why Christmas is so different here.”

Tomi thought that over. Hiro and Wilson weren’t such big boys either. A tree would make them all happy. She thought for a long time. Then she said, “What if we made a Christmas tree?”

“Jeepers! You don’t make a tree. They grow,” Hiro said.

“I know that. But what if we make a fake tree?”

“Out of what?”

“Roy could get some scraps of lumber from the workshop, and he could build the trunk and branches. Then we could cut out green paper and glue it to the wood for the needles.”

“That would be an awful funny-looking tree.”

“I didn’t say it would look like a
real
tree. But maybe that doesn’t matter. After all, Wilson said it was having a tree that mattered.”

“How would we decorate it?” Hiro asked.

“We could make paper chains and cut out snowflakes. I bet Mrs. Hayashi would make some origami birds.”

“I don’t know how we’d sneak it into their apartment.”

“We wouldn’t. We’d leave it outside their window, just like the snowman.” The sun had come out, and the snowman had already melted to half its size.

When Mom and Roy heard Tomi’s idea, they were enthusiastic. Roy offered to make a skeleton tree with lots of branches. Mom said she would ask one of the cooks for flour to make flour-and-water paste. Hiro and Tomi could use paper to make paper needles and glue them to the branches.

Each evening, they worked on the tree, cutting out snowflakes and making paper chains and hanging them from the branches. Mrs. Hayashi brought a dozen birds she had made from folding pieces of paper into shapes. Ruth even made a paper star for the top of the tree.

Once Wilson knocked at the door, asking Hiro to come
and play. But Hiro had to say he was sick. He couldn’t open the door for fear Wilson would see the tree. It was a surprise for Wilson, too.

The Itanos waited until Christmas morning to set out the tree. They were afraid if they put the tree out earlier, it might snow, and the paper needles and decorations would get wet and fall off. But Christmas morning was clear. Just as the sun came up, they carried the tree outside and placed it directly in front of the Wakasas’ window.

“Carl might not see it, so we’ll have to tell him it’s there,” Tomi said.

“Wait until they’re awake,” Mom told her.

As they passed the Wakasas’ door, however, they heard Carl through the thin wall. “Is it Christmas yet, Helen?”

Helen said something the Itanos couldn’t make out, and they heard her walk across the floor.

“Can I open my present, Helen?” Carl asked. Wilson had told them that Helen had ordered a sweater from the catalogue for her brother.

“They’re awake,” Hiro said, and before Mom could stop him, he knocked on the door.

“Merry Christmas,” the Itanos shouted when Helen opened the door.

“Not much to be merry about,” Helen complained.

“Yes there is,” Hiro told her. “Look out the window.”

Carl rushed to the window and pushed aside the curtain. Then he turned around, a look of joy on his face. Wilson was behind him. He stared out at the tree, then looked at the Itanos. “A tree? You made a Christmas tree for us?”

Hiro nodded.

“Look, Helen. We have a Christmas tree!” Carl shouted, his face beaming. “It’s the best Christmas tree in the camp. Heck, it’s the best Christmas tree in the whole world!” Helen slowly went to the window and put her face to the glass. She stared outside for a long time. When she turned around, tears were streaming down her face. “You made a Christmas tree? For Carl?”