Strawberry Yellow (28 page)

“I’ll find you a lawyer, Minnie,” Oily said. “We have a good one at Everbears.”

“I don’t know if a corporate lawyer would have the expertise to handle something like this,” Genessee said.

Nobody said anything for a moment. Outside, a garbage
truck making its weekly rounds beeped its warning signal.

“What do you think, Mas?” Minnie asked. Both she and Genessee looked up at him, expectedly.

Mas thought about Shug, the kind of man that he was, at least before the Masao. That man believed in justice, that if you did something wrong, you needed to pay for it. Maybe letting Mas take the fall for the theft of the lizard statue had been a thorn in his side. Since he mentioned it to Oily so many years afterwards, Shug apparently still felt guilty even for a little thing like that. He would want whoever killed Laila, no matter how dear, to face the consequences. Mas’s chest heaved as he took in a big breath. “I thinksu Shug would want to be dug up.”

Mas felt bad leaving Genessee in the hands of his friends, especially Evelyn. He did, however, have some business to tend to.

Chiquita bonita
, the gardener who was at the mortuary on the day of the funeral had said. Pretty girl. And then he added,
Chinita
. Chinese. Mas knew that for the gardener
Chinita
was the end-all word for anyone Asian. And he knew that one person in their circle that would fit that description.

On this drive, Mas took the long way. He completely avoided Hecker Pass; even though Jimi was gone and he was in a new car, Mas didn’t want to tempt fate.

She didn’t seem surprised to see Mas in the doorway of her dorm room. In fact, sitting at her desk next to her long
twin bed, she looked relieved.

The circles under her eyes had gotten darker.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The police.”

“They’su not here.”

Alyssa got up in her bare feet to look down the hallway. Completely empty. She pulled out a chair at another desk. “You can sit down.”

Mas was surprised by this newfound hospitality. He wasn’t going to turn it down and entered the small room. Most of the facing wall was full of windows, so the afternoon sun poured in, causing him to squint as he faced Alyssa, who was back at her desk. Neither of them said anything for a while. Alyssa played with one of her pencils, twirling it around in circles on a blank yellow pad.

“How come I’ve never seen you before Grandpa’s funeral?”

“Haven’t been here long time.”

“You like L.A.?”

“Itsu
orai
.”

“I have some cousins there. In Orange County. On my mother’s side.”

“Orange County, nice place,” Mas lied.

Alyssa twisted her hair up in a bun, securing it in place with her pencil. “I wasn’t that close to Grandpa,” she finally admitted.

“Oh, yah?”

“I think he liked boys better. He spent more time with Zac, I think.”

“You’zu close to your auntie.”

Alyssa put her hands in her lap and swallowed. “I used to be close to my dad.”

The sound of the hallway door opening and closing. Feet padding the floor. They both waited as a nearby door was unlocked and then shut.

Alyssa was apparently done with small talk. She went right to the core of her anguish. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I know how lame that sounds. Like every TV show, right? But I didn’t mean to. It happened so fast. One second we were arguing there in the greenhouse. She was being so mean to me. Saying I was a no-good daughter, that I was making my dad feel bad by not talking to him. How does she get off telling me that I’m not a good daughter?

“So I called her some names. Really bad names. And then she starts insulting Grandpa. The night before his funeral. She says that I’m just a kid; that Grandpa was involved with weird stuff and everyone’s going to find out about it soon. I couldn’t stand it anymore. So I just reached over for that bat. Zac and I used to play with that bat all the time. It was like the bat was placed there, right next to me. I just wanted her to shut up. So I took it and swung. And it was finally quiet.”

Alyssa pulled her left leg up onto her chair. “I was going to tell Aunt Robin right away. Brandon and I were staying over at her place. I wanted to. But she was out like I was, trying to find Dad. That’s how this all started, you know. Laila came to Robin’s house, all crying, a total mess. She and Dad had been in a fight, and he took off. Drinking and driving. So Robin goes in her car to look for him. I don’t want to be alone with her. Laila. Actually she’s the last person I want to
be with. But Robin asks me to. She can’t do her job if Laila’s with her. Laila’s so antsy; I can’t stay in that house with her, so we decide to drive around, too.

“Going to the Stem House was my idea. I knew Dad goes over there when he gets stressed out. I wasn’t planning to hurt her. It just happened.”

“What about your brotha?”

“Zac? Oh, he slept through the whole thing.” Alyssa rolled her eyes. “But Robin knows. I told her after the funeral. I was going to tell her in the morning, but she got that call to go to the Stem House. I was freaking out. I took the bat with me early, before the funeral. I didn’t know what to do with it. I cleaned it real good in Auntie’s laundry room. I was planning to maybe burn it or drive it to the dump, but there wasn’t enough time.”

Alyssa put the side of her index finger next to her lip. “I figure Grandpa’s casket was the best place. We were supposed to leave things there for him, anyway. I thought he was going to get cremated, but I guess Grandma had changed her mind.”

“They’su gonna open up the coffin soon.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard.”

Mas was surprised that the news had reached her already.

“My fingerprints are all over that bat.”

Clouds moved in front of the sun, causing the light in the room to soften.

“My aunt’s on her way to pick me up. I’m going to tell the police what I did to Laila.” The girl covered her face with her hands. Each fingernail was painted a different color. “I’m so, so scared,” she said. “What are they going to do with me?”

Mas felt awful, just sitting there while the girl cried. He remembered one day Shug asking him out of the blue: “Mas, just how bad was it?” They were helping a Salinas farmer haul some tomatoes; dried seeds shaped like green teardrops were all over their clothes.

“Huh?” Mas didn’t know what Shug was talking about.

“Hiroshima. The A-bomb.” Shug removed a rolled-up magazine from his back pocket. It was old, a 1946 issue from three years ago. A publication called
The New Yorker
that had devoted its whole issue to Hiroshima.

His hand on his hip, Mas watched as a couple of produce men examined the crates of tomatoes. He was surprised that Shug was bringing this up for the first time after living under the same roof for a year. But something seemed to be on his second cousin’s mind those days. He tended to go off on his own for long walks or drives. Mas didn’t know what to tell him. “A lot of friends dead.”

“You don’t seem worse for wear. Never hear you
monku
.”

“You no
monku
, too.”

Shug let out a laugh, which actually sounded more like a hacking cough. “Maybe that’s the Japanese way. But Mas, sometimes when I think about my dad and mom and all they lost during the war, this anger comes out, out of nowhere. And sometimes, I hate to say it, I get mad at them.”

“Whatchu mad at?”

“Not sure, really. Not that they could have done anything. I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with the anger.”

Mas had no advice to give. He felt like he was always running from one place to another. Working in the hot sun
and sweating. That seemed to help, too. But that didn’t seem to be the solution.

Mas, now looking at Alyssa, didn’t know what to say.

He wouldn’t lie and say that everything was going to be all right. Because there wasn’t any guarantee about that. But she was young, just like Mas and Shug had been. There was time. Time was on her side.

Genessee was staying at Minnie’s house, but Mas tried to keep out of there as much as he could. Through everything, Minnie was still unflappable, offering fresh coffee to guests while her world continued to fall apart. Funny thing was, the girl’s mother, Colleen, had come out of her rabbit hole as soon as she heard that Alyssa needed her. Her stripe of gray hair had gotten wider, but she seemed more vibrant. It was as if her daughter’s predicament had energized her with new purpose.

Billy, on the other hand, seemed to withdraw some, disappearing at odd times in his truck. Mas suspected that guilt was eating away at him—that if he hadn’t had a relationship with Laila, maybe his daughter would be with them instead of sitting in a holding cell.

It was past nine in the evening when Mas parked the Impala across from the Stem House. Someone was there already. Billy in his pickup truck.

They both got out of their vehicles and laughed for a moment underneath a light by a telephone pole. It was funny that the Stem House, no matter its current state, was their elixir during dark times.

“Came from the jail,” Billy said, “to see Alyssa. Her arraignment is tomorrow. The attorney thinks we can get her out on bail.”

Mas didn’t know what to say.

“We had a good talk. We hadn’t spoken to each other like that in, I don’t know, years.” Billy bent over and Mas could see silvery tears hang onto his eyelashes, like dew on blades of grass.

Billy didn’t even bother to wipe his eyes. “I made a mess of everything, Mas. I don’t know if I can make it right.”

They remained silent for a few moments and then Billy walked toward the small plot of land by the greenhouses. Mas followed.

“You know, after Dad died, I thought about going back to Sugarberry. But Mom told me not to. She said I had to find my own way in this industry. As long as I worked for Sugarberry, I’d be seen as Shug’s son.”

They stopped before a barren patch of dirt where an earlier generation of the Masaos had been growing. For a moment, Mas thought about asking him about Clay Gorman and his relationship with Laila. But then he reconsidered.
Why? Why put a wedge between Billy and his Everbears boss?
Laila was gone, so what was the use?

Billy knelt and patted the ground. “After the press conference, Linus was fired. Sugarberry’s going to be hiring a new hybridizer. A young guy, he’s in his thirties and has been working in Florida. He’s actually the son of a woman who works in the packing shed. You might have been packing clamshells with her.”

Mas pictured the brown faces of his co-workers.
Everything came full circle.

“We’re going to cremate Dad now. They have the bat as evidence and now we can do it right. It’s the way Dad would have wanted.”

A seagull, most likely lost, flew above the Stem House.

“I never really talked much to him. Mostly on our fishing trips. One time he told me that we needed to be one step better than everyone else. Because our last name was Arai. Because we were Japanese. I think by making the Masao, he truly thought he would be helping people. Pushing something to the next level.”

Billy looked up at Mas. “What I’m trying to say is I don’t think my father was using you. I think he honestly felt that he was creating something to honor you.”

Mas wondered if that was true. He wasn’t sure, but decided to believe it. That was the best thing that a friend could do.