LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Three

      Ella

      I was already awake and still wrapped in my horse blankets when Mama came in this morning wearing slippers. Being from Minnesota, Mama doesn’t understand walking barefoot. Even in the house. She wears socks when it’s cold and Japanese slippers when it’s hot, the kind with velvet straps and woven straw where your foot goes. I’m her little native, she says, because I hate wearing shoes. A lot of the Japanese kids from the plantation don’t even get to choose because they’re so poor. For them, an umbrella is more important. It’s one or the other. Rain comes down in buckets here, so the umbrella wins out.

      I pretended I was still sleeping because I worried there might be another air-raid drill at school. The noise sets something off inside me. We always have them on Tuesdays. So even if there was a surprise one yesterday, it could happen again. Half the time, I wet my pants. I guess I forgot to mention that earlier. Talk about embarrassing. It smells up the room and everyone turns to me. Sally Botello and Gina Chang pinch up their noses and fan their faces like they’re dying. Even Mrs. Hicks looks at me with such pity I want to ask her to please leave the classroom and head over to detention. Teachers should know better. At least the Japanese kids ignore it.

      From halfway across the floor, Mama smelled like cinnamon and morning sun. When she shook me, I acted groggy, but she was wearing a huge smile as she sat on the edge of my bed. Snowflake, who showed up last night wet but alive, turned on her purr even louder. It’s almost like someone put a little motor inside her throat. I call it a purr-box.

      Mama smoothed down my hair. “Good morning, sun blossom.”

      She calls me weird names. Jean started it. And in case you’re wondering, I call Jean Jean, not Aunt Jean or Miss Quinlan. She said if we’re going to live together, I might as well save my breath. Which was smart, because I have less breath than other people. But I do also call her Honey Jean, mainly because honey is her favorite word. I called her it once and the name stuck.

      “I have good news,” Mama said.

      “School is canceled?”

      She laughed. “Something even better.”

      Nothing would have been better. My eyes stung with the coming of tears. I cry a lot for no reason. But the doctor says this is normal behavior for someone who has been through a difficult situation. Which I have.

      “What?”

      “Takeo said you could start Japanese school today! You’ll be the first non-Japanese in the school.”

      Now, this was news. If I could have picked one thing to do in life, it was go to Japanese school, especially now that it was just fun stuff. Before Pearl Harbor, they taught them to write and talk Japanese. Not anymore. No one wants the kids to be spies.

      Somehow, being white made me feel like an outsider, like the only piece of corn in a barrel of rice. Mama said we’re corn people, being from Minnesota. But I consider myself Hawaiian, or even partly Japanese. If you spend even five minutes around them, you will know that Japanese people are smarter, neater and more interesting than us. They also don’t talk as much, and are probably good at keeping secrets. Sometimes I wonder if I should tell Umi what I know. About my dad.

      “For real?” I asked.

      Mama pulled out a small wooden box and handed it to me. “You’ll need this, to write with.”

      I sat up and opened the box. Thin bamboo brushes and bottles of ink were neatly packed in on top of white see-through-looking paper. I held it up to my nose and sniffed. It smelled of tree bark mixed with some kind of chemical.

      A thin smile crept onto my face. The first one in a while. After the incident with Papa disappearing, it took about a hundred years before I smiled again. At least it seemed that way. Mama, too. Neither of us had anything to smile about, and I think we were both afraid to let ourselves have any kind of happiness. Then, about seven months later, I heard laughing in the kitchen. When I cracked open the door, I heard Jean telling jokes. I don’t know where she gets them, but she always has new ones.

      “What’s the difference between an orange and a matter baby?” she asked.

      Mama sat at the table with Betty Crocker opened in front of her. “What’s a matter baby?”

      “Nothing, honey,” Jean said, in a sweet syrupy voice.

      A laugh came out of Mama, and from then on, I knew laughing was allowed. We were moving on. But that was a lot easier said than done.