Weedflower (3 page)

Jiichan didn’t notice. He went back to attacking his food, slurping a piece of meat into his mouth as if it were a noodle. Jiichan’s lean face fascinated Sumiko. If she hadn’t known him, she would think he was angry all the time. His cheekbones jutted
out, and he scowled even when he was joking. He’d come to America because he was a second son. Among the Japanese, a father left everything he owned to his first son. So Jiichan had always struggled for money, and some people thought he was bitter. But Sumiko was glad he was a second son, because otherwise, he never would have come to America and she and Tak-Tak would have been born in Japan.

Now he took out his teeth again and studied them as if they were a crystal ball. “Someday Bull be as strong as I once was,” he predicted. He put his teeth back in.

Sumiko and Tak-Tak giggled. Food splattered out of Tak-Tak’s mouth as he tried to hold back full laughter.

Auntie looked at Uncle, which meant that Uncle was supposed to say something. Uncle finally came up with, “Children, no giggling at the table.”

Auntie frowned at Tak-Tak, and Jiichan frowned at Auntie.

Uncle and Auntie were in their late forties, and their faces were lined and dark from working in the fields all their lives. But Uncle smiled more than Auntie. Auntie did not have a sense of humor, or at least that’s what Jiichan said when they were cross with each other one day.

All during dinner Sumiko’s legs swung and shook
with impatience. She wanted to finish so she could study her dresses. Toward the end of dinner even Auntie seemed impatient. The whole family watched Jiichan chew slowly. Dinner was never over until he stopped chewing. Every time he seemed about to stop, he would frown thoughtfully at the table and refill his plate. Finally he frowned thoughtfully at the table … and didn’t fill his plate! He pushed his chair back and looked warningly at everyone. “Need digestive peace now.” He ambled away, no doubt to sit in his chair and digest.

After Sumiko washed the dishes, she rushed to her bedroom so she could study her dresses. Her crisp blue dress had been worn only once. But her mint green school dress was her favorite dress ever. And once when she was wearing it, the boy who worked at the grocery store had said it was pretty. She pulled the blanket divider closed so she could think about the dresses in private. If she’d had a mirror, she would have tried them on.

But when she heard Tak-Tak climb into his bed, she went around to tuck him in. He lay in bed with his glasses on and his cage of pet crickets on his pillow.

“Can I take off your glasses?” she said.

“But what if I get up in the middle of the night and can’t see anything?” That was a big fear of his lately.

“I’ll be right here.”

“Okay,” he said reluctantly.

He sat up, and she took off his glasses. Whenever she took them off, a ridge from the band jutted out from his hair.

“I’m putting them right here on the nightstand,” she said.

“Uh-huh.” He pulled his blanket over his head without saying good night.

“Do you want me to put the crickets on the table?”

“Okay.”

She set the cage on the table. “They’re right here,” she said. He didn’t answer.

Sumiko turned off his light. Then, after she got in bed, he called out to her, “Do you think they’ll kill us if war breaks out?” His voice was muffled, so she knew he still lay under his blanket.

“Uncle will protect us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

And she was sure. She’d heard similar rumors for almost as long as she could remember. She trusted Uncle a lot. He wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

Sumiko looked out the window. In the fields the tattered pieces of cheesecloth rippled like ghosts. Far away she could see the flower fields of their
neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Ono. Mr. Ono believed in the future, and he liked to say that inventions were the foundation of the future. His own newest invention: lights he’d hung over his fields to try to force some chrysanthemums to bloom early. Other farmers used lights too, but he said his lights were special. He also had developed a special strain of chrysanthemums that was much in demand at the market.

The lights twinkled like low-hanging stars above his fields. A few years ago he had tried to keep his fields warm in the winter by burning tires. The smell reached all the way to Sumiko’s house. Her family had needed to keep their windows closed the whole winter. Now Sumiko opened the windows to let the cool December air waft into the room.

Tak-Tak’s pet crickets chirped loudly, a sound Sumiko loved since crickets were good luck. The chirping seemed farther away than usual. Sumiko’s mind was already drifting to thoughts of Saturday’s party. The party was the only thing that seemed real. Marsha Melrose wasn’t the most popular girl in class, but she was definitely popular. Sumiko could already imagine Marsha’s house and how beautiful it would be. Marsha’s father was a city councilman, and her mother was a real, true exballerina. Originally, the Melrose fortune had come from a magic elixir that Marsha’s great-grandfather
had invented during the pioneer days. Jiichan said it was not elixir, but “a bunch of crock.” Only he pronounced it more like “clock.” Sumiko lay back and pulled her blanket around her.

The crickets chirped and chirped.

3

B
EFORE BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING
S
UMIKO PUT
on two sweaters over her work clothes and went out to disbud the carnations. The carnations and stock emitted a similar scent. In the mornings the air was thick with it. Sumiko blew on her hands to warm them. Everyone else was already working.

Disbudding was women’s work—on a couple of occasions when Sumiko was sick, her uncle had hired local girls to disbud. Later she’d felt a little jealous when he’d said they did a good job. But then he’d told her that she worked faster than the other girls. Disbudding required quick judgment, because you needed to decide which bud was the strongest on a
plant. You pinched or clipped off the weakest buds in favor of the one strong bud, so as to end up with one beautiful, strong flower. Sumiko used a special knife that she’d gotten for Christmas last year. Every year at least one person in Sumiko’s class asked her, “Are you Buddhist? Do you celebrate Christmas?” Sumiko was Buddhist, but actually, every Buddhist she knew celebrated Christmas by getting a tree and giving gifts.

Uncle had painted the handle of her knife yellow and then had painted
SUMIKO’S PROPERTY
on one side of the handle and
DO NOT TOUCH
on the other. She always cleaned and sharpened her knife after she disbudded.

She moved quickly down the row of flowers. Every so often she spotted a flower and just
knew
it would be the best flower. Other times she needed to make a quick decision about which would be the best. She liked how she needed to work and think at the same time to be a really good disbudder.

Auntie called out, “You’ll miss the school bus!”

Sumiko jumped up without finishing the row, because Auntie got irate when Sumiko missed the bus and had to be driven to school by a neighbor.

She just managed to change clothes, grab her books, and run like mad to the road before the bus braked to a stop at her house. Sumiko preferred to sit at the front of the school bus. Sometimes some of the boys taunted her for being Japanese, but if she sat in front, they didn’t bother her unless they were in a
mean mood. Today she sat right near the driver. Her stomach gurgled in hunger because she hadn’t had time to eat breakfast. She looked out the window. A few of the flower growers also grew vegetables. Before her parents had died, they had leased a celery farm twenty miles away but she couldn’t remember any of that no matter how hard she tried.

“Sumiko!”

Sumiko jumped to her feet. “Yes; Mr. Johnson.”

“I said, name a major export of the West Indies.”

West Indies! Sumiko had thought the class was discussing India, not the Indies. She’d been thinking about the party again and about how she hoped she would remember enough details about it to satisfy her family. She glanced down at her book. She wasn’t even on the page about India, but about Venezuela. She blurted out, “Tractors!”

Mr. Johnson looked pained. He rubbed both sides of his forehead with his palms. It wasn’t personal; he did things like that whenever anyone got a wrong answer. Tractors—what had she been thinking? She felt her face grow hot.

Sometimes Mr. Johnson took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes as if he were crying. Now he shook his head sadly and walked to the blackboard and wrote
Sumiko—P
. They were playing P-I-G. Mr. Johnson asked everybody geography questions, and then every time a
student got a wrong answer, the student got a letter. The first one to get “P-I-G” was the loser. Everyone got to call the loser “pig” all day.

Sumiko sat down.

“Susan, name a major export of the West Indies.”

Susan jumped up. “Bananas, Mr. Johnson.” Susan smiled and sat down. Susan was one of Marsha’s best friends. Neither of them had ever been “P-I-G.” Neither had Sumiko, but she’d gotten “P-I” twice. During class she often found herself worrying about the farm. Once after a strong wind some of the cheesecloth had fallen down and crushed the carnations. Another time Tak-Tak got stung by a wasp, and first his arm and then his head swelled up. Sumiko wasn’t there, but Uncle had described it in detail because he knew Sumiko would want to know exactly what had happened. She liked to know every important thing that happened to Tak-Tak and every important thing that happened on the farm.

Now, she was thinking about how Uncle had told her he would buy a present for Marsha on the way home from the flower market.

“Sumiko!” shouted Mr. Johnson. She jumped to her feet again. She knew it was her lucky day because Mr. Johnson said, “Name a major export of Venezuela!”

She glanced down at her book and then said, “Oil.” She sat down happily.

The school bus passed a bunch of
Nikkei
kids on bicycles. They were probably headed for Japanese school. Sumiko didn’t attend Japanese school after regular school because her family needed her too much on the farm. They’d tried sending her to Japanese school for a while, but she’d ended up falling behind in her regular school. Sometimes she thought she might have more friends if she attended Japanese school.

The bus passed Nori Muramoto on his shiny bike. He got a new one every year. His father owned a carnation empire. Once Nori had called her “Weedflower” like an insult. She’d called him “Uglybrain” and gotten grounded for a week. She never went anywhere anyway so getting grounded didn’t affect her much.

On Friday after school the bathwater was “ripe” to use Auntie’s word. But Sumiko didn’t drain it because on Saturday, Bull was going to break up horse manure for fertilizer, and she would drain the water after he washed up from that. Bull had manure duty because he was the youngest working male. When Tak-Tak was a few years older, he would have to spread the manure. Sumiko and Auntie never bathed on the days the manure was spread because no matter how well Bull sponged off beforehand, the water still stank after his bath. Tak-Tak bathed anyway. He loved the
smell. Sometimes when Sumiko lay in bed making up lists before she went to sleep, she thought of TakTak’s four favorite things or animals:

1. Baba
   
2. Crickets
   
3. Goo
   
4. Bad smells
   

That evening they waited fifteen minutes at the dinner table for Uncle to appear. He finally hurried in—his face shining—from his special room in the shed. Nobody was allowed in his special room. Uncle was trying to develop new strains of carnations and stock in there. Jiichan liked to joke that Uncle was a mad scientist.

“I think I’ve almost got it,” Uncle said. “We’re going to have the best carnations in Southern California.”

Auntie frowned. “You’re late for dinner.” She began spooning rice into his bowl and mumbling, “Best, second best, what’s the difference? How can a flower be best?” She gasped as her eyes fell on Uncle’s hands. “Look at those nails! At my dinner table!”

Sumiko noticed Bull and Ichiro immediately slip their hands underneath the table. Uncle looked like Tak-Tak getting caught doing something he shouldn’t. Auntie shooed Uncle away to clean his nails. Jiichan
laid his hands on the table, as if daring Auntie to say something to him. She didn’t.

Uncle returned from the kitchen and immediately began eating. At dinner each Friday Uncle liked them all to tell of anything special on their minds. When it was Sumiko’s turn, she planned to talk about the party. “Why don’t you start this week?” Uncle said to Tak-Tak. “What’s on your mind?”

“Are they going to kill us?” Tak-Tak asked.

Uncle set down his chopsticks and leaned forward. “Nobody’s going to kill us.”

Jiichan tapped Tak-Tak’s arm as if knocking on a door. “I beat up anyone who try! I beat up three man once!”

Auntie frowned at Sumiko. “Aren’t you taking care of your brother?”

“I am!” Sumiko said. “I told him nobody is going to kill us!” But Auntie had already looked away.

Uncle said, “Bull, anything on your mind this week?”