A Thousand Stitches (9 page)

“I love ‘Se-man-o-vich,'” Yamamura-sensei said with a smile.

“We used to think it was a difficult name, and the Japanese kids used to tease him with, ‘
Nihon katta, Rosha maketa,'
even though we really didn't know what it meant.”

“Ah
,
that old playground rhyme. It's from when I was a student. Well, now, if you believe the government, we're winning everything, and we always will.”

“Yes,” I said, hesitantly, but he didn't give me time to continue.

“Keep going.” I knew he wanted to hear his favorites and repeat some of the names.

“Esther Gimbel, Stanley Crowe, Arthur Miyamoto, Clarissa Peters, Nicholas Johannsson.”

He played, as he always did with “Clarissa,” trying and re-trying to get his tongue around all the slippery sounds. Again, as part of our ritual I said, “
Sensei
, that sounds like ‘Chris.' We had no one named
Christopher
in our class. It's
Cla-RISS-ah.”

“Fine. Let's hear the rest.”

“Bobby Walsh, Billy Wong, Samuel Fujita, Evelyn Quinn.”

“Ah, yes, Miss
Queen
.”

“Quinn
,
Sensei. Quinn.
She was definitely not a
queen
or even a
princess,”
I said, enjoying our best joke.

“Susie Da Silva, Tommy Maida, Frankie Falucci, Joey MacNamara, Julie Shimamura, Kevin O'Rourke, Juan Chavez, Kathryn Kalsen, Terence Tanaka, Charles Kawabata.”

“The San Francisco League of Nations. Thank you Isamu. I love to hear all those mixed-up names. But it's time to go back now.”

When we stood, we saw Father on the other side of the orchard, on a path angling through the paddies. He waved and called, “Good to see you again,” to Yamamura-sensei.

“My son here still making all that awful noise under your tutelage?” Father asked as we met at the edge of the orchard. Despite Father's jokes, I knew he was proud of my musical skills and happy that I retained my English. We all turned toward the house and walked together through the vegetable garden.

“Ah, Mrs. Imagawa,” said Yamamura-sensei. “I'm so glad to see you.” Mother was standing just outside the back door, bowing.

“
Sensei
, I'm so sorry I missed you. I was taking our neighbor Mrs. Ishizuki some cucumbers from the garden. Please come in and stay for dinner. I see that my husband had a successful afternoon by the river.”

Father grinned and held up a string of fishes. It didn't look like much to me.

“Thank you, Mrs. Imagawa, but my wife is waiting for me. I know she's preparing dinner at home.”

“But, oh,
Sensei
, please take some of these cucumbers. It's impossible for us to eat so many.”

Yamamura-sensei walked back to his scooter, and he and Mother tied a
furoshiki
full of cucumbers on its back. As he said his farewells, he told Mother and Father, “It's really commendable that the two of you have encouraged Isamu to keep up his English. It will be so important for him. The future will be internationalism. That's the world all our young people will live in.”

“Yes, and I hope that world comes soon, without too much more blood shed in vain,” said Father.

Mother smiled and waved as Yamamura-sensei pulled away.

The next
week—in mid July—my friend Masao, who had left to study at the Naval Academy, came home for a visit. I was happy to see him, but at the same time I was a bit intimidated. He seemed stronger, tougher, and somehow smarter. Maybe it was just that he was more confident. And he looked wonderful in his uniform. He was a cadet, which gave him semi-officer status. His uniform had a waist-length tunic top. His stand-up collar had gold bars. Their shine matched that of the gold dagger flashing at his waist. He was full of stories about his training and how much he was learning. I listened, rapt, as he speculated about which ships he might ultimately be assigned to. Oh, I thought, a career! One that would be right for me. Every day that I spent time with Masao made me more certain. I was sad to see him go, but happy that his visit had shone such a bright light on my future for me. I now had a purpose.

Mother and Father quickly squashed that dream too. When I went to them after Masao had gone back to the Naval Academy, I had all my arguments marshaled. The Naval Academy was just across the Seto Inland Sea, only a four-hour ferry journey. My education would be at government expense. Their refusal was immediate, absolute, and shocking. Perhaps they saw my request coming; my fascination with Masao must have been obvious. “No,” Father said.

“We're not ready to offer your life to His Majesty yet,” Mother said.

The matter was closed. I kept telling myself that. It's closed. Mother and Father had to be respected. They had the final word. Now I had to figure out something else to do with myself. It was back to Matsuyama Higher School or Matsuyama Commercial College. I sighed the first day I sat down to study for the entrance exams. As the summer passed and autumn arrived, I kept studying and kept sighing. I knew my time at Matsuchu was coming to an end, but couldn't imagine what would come next. Sometimes I thought of my experience coming to Matsuyama. That too was a time of great uncertainty, but I had been a baby then, and in the hands of my mother, my aunt and uncle, Miss Tatsukawa of Bancho, Yamamura-sensei, and even the Grahams. Now things were different. I was facing the great unknown of the future alone. I wasn't a little boy in short pants anymore. I had to go meet the next part of my life, without any idea of what I wanted and no certainty that I was equal to the task.

Late in the fall, Mother was conscripted. She was assigned to the Naval Reserve Corps and stationed three hours away at Zentsuji. She was still on Shikoku Island, but far away from us, closer to Takamatsu. All the patterns of everyday life changed as Father and I adjusted to Mother's absence.

We stumbled through the winter. Father had a new job, at a machine tool factory outside the city. Because the factory was past Ishii Village, we moved to our house there and rented out the Yanai-machi house. I had a long walk to school every day, and even from Ishii Village, Father had a long bicycle ride to the factory. We didn't do well at keeping the house neat or clean, but Father somehow got us up and out the door every day. In the deep winter, we were getting up, dressing, and leaving in the dark. Father didn't work on the factory floor—he worked in the office, keeping the accounts and tracking shipments. He had had several jobs like this since we had returned to Matsuyama. He was recruited for this new job because he knew the president of the company, who persuaded Father that he needed his help. That was certainly true. Father worked long hours because production at the factory had been stepped up to meet the demands of the military. But he somehow managed to make me dinner every night and prepare my lunch for the next day before he fell into bed exhausted.

Mother came home for the New Year holiday, but only for two days. As we had our small celebration at home, she chided me, telling me that I needed to pull myself out of my doldrums. She told me that she was sure I would do well on the exams for Matsuyama Higher School, which is what we had all decided was my first choice. On New Year's morning, she brushed the lint off my jacket as we got ready to pay a call on Aunt Yoshie and her family. When she finished brushing my back, she spun me around, held me with her arms on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Isamu, you will do well. This year will be a good one. You have a bright future here in Matsuyama.”

I took the exam in February and failed. I regretted not trying for Matsuyama Commercial College as well. I would have nothing to do the next year. I would be a
ronin
, a student without a college to attend, adrift for at least a year. Everything before me was bleak. My days at Matsuchu came to an end. I found myself dreaming about the Navy again. One Sunday when Father and I were fishing in the river beyond the fields that stretched behind our house, I talked about the Naval Academy again. He let me talk, and over the next few weeks, I was able to persuade him to at least let me try. I'm not at all sure things would have been the same if Mother had been home, but Father on his own was a soft touch. The night he consented the light at the table was low as we sat after dinner for the few moments we had together before he had to get to sleep to be ready for the next day. “You make a good argument,” he said. “It's not what I've ever wanted for you, but you're right, there are few alternatives at this point.”

The Naval Academy exam was in November. I buckled down and started studying again. Now I made our simple dinners and packed Father's lunch for him. I saw him off early in the morning and sat down to study. I didn't allow myself a break until mid-afternoon. Often I would walk into town even if I didn't even have any errands to run. One day I found myself in front of Bancho. Soon, it became my routine to go there every day. I had to prepare for the Navy's physical exam too. I ran around the track and practiced jumping and climbing on the jungle gym. I wanted to be tough enough to meet the Navy's exacting standards. Then I walked back to Ishii and studied again until Father got home.

On
my way out of Bancho one day, I saw Mrs. Graham walking down the street. Her face was twisted in sadness, but when she saw me, I watched her sweep it all aside. “Isamu, my dear,” she said, “how wonderful to see you. A friendly face is just what I need. Come in with me and have some tea. Morgan's out this afternoon, but Reverend Graham will be delighted to see you.”

“Darling,” she called as she stepped into the
genkan,
“I'm back, and I have Isamu with me.”

The Reverend came to the entryway. He smiled at me, but his eyes were on his wife as he said, “Sam, great to see you. Come in.”

“I need some tea,” said Mrs. Graham, “and I've persuaded Isamu to have some with us.”

“Excellent! Darling, I'll help you in the kitchen. Sam, why don't you go sit in the parlor?”

I went to the familiar room and sat on the piano bench, fingering the keys.

“It was absolutely beastly hot queuing today,” Mrs. Graham said in response to her husband's inquiry. I could hear most of what she then went on to tell the Reverend. She had stood in the ration line for a long time as the sun beat down on the dusty road. She was talking about Abe-san, the grocer in their neighborhood. He was now the assistant rations officer. She said he sneered when he saw her and made a great show of looking up her name on his list, mispronouncing it, and then giving her a receipt with her coupons that had the word “
FOREIGNER
” scrawled where her name should have been. I heard her voice break. “Richard, everyone else just looked away. No one would catch my eye. These people have been our neighbors for fifteen years. They laughed and cried with us and watched our children grow. I thought they cared for us. What has all our work been for?” I thought she might be crying.