Cherry Blossom Baseball (10 page)

Hiro raced past them, avoiding his mother's attempt to put him to bed.

“Your mother has her hands full,” Mrs. Takahashi announced. “Give me the letters. I will translate them.” She shook a small, fat finger in Michiko's face. “Do not forget your heritage, and never believe the country of your father's birth is as evil as everyone is saying.”

Michiko excused herself and went to her room. She opened Clarence's little blue box and removed the packet of thin blue papers. Then she reached across her desk to her jam jar of paper flowers and chose the paper iris.

When her mother arrived in the living room carrying a tray of teacups, Mrs. Takahashi raised the flower to her nose. “It looks real enough to have perfume,” she said. “Thank you.”

The smile on her mother's face told Michiko she approved of the gesture.

That night, Michiko listened to the gentle murmur of conversation and laughter that came from the living room. As the teacups clinked, Michiko thought how easy it seemed to be for adults to make friends.

SNOWSTORM

T
he
pale light that filled her bedroom told Michiko there was no hurry to get up for the school bus. The heavy snow the weatherman promised had fallen. She pushed her feet into her slippers, wrapped her
hanten
around her, and pulled back the curtains. Michiko pressed her hand against the windowpane to clear a spot through the ferns of frost. Snow sculpted the wooden tripods of the pole beans into soft cones and turned the rest of the abandoned garden into strange shapes. The gladioli fields looked like blocks of tofu. She could see the gnarled branches of the black apple trees clearly against the white.

“Schools are closed,” her mother said as she put her head around the door. “I heard it on the radio. With you here minding Hiro, I'll be able to get a lot done at the big house.”

Michiko sat back down on her bed.
Of course, I will have to look after my little brother. Why did I think I would have a whole day to do what I wanted?

Her father sat at the kitchen table cradling a cup of coffee, which was unusual. Most mornings he was long gone by the time she rose. Michiko reached for a bowl and took it over to the pot of oatmeal that waited on the stove. The thought of no school brought a small sense of relief. She was tired of moving about the building like an invisible person. At least back at the Hardware Store School she had friends to invite home. She had been at Bronte Creek Public School for six months and still had no one she could really call a friend.

Hiro appeared, clutching his kitten. Michiko placed the oatmeal on the table for him and reached for another bowl.

Back in September, Michiko had told herself that friends weren't that important because she had her family, coloured pencils and a sketch pad, and a whole library of books in town, but on a day like today, with all this snow, all she could think of was sliding down the mountain on empty rice bags with Kiko and the snowball fights she and Clarence had with George.

Michiko wanted to get to know the girl she sat beside much better. Michiko liked Mary's polite ways and neat appearance. She had a perfect cupid's-bow mouth, straight white teeth, a small snub nose, and bouncy curls. Mary wasn't perfect in every way, because she was a bit of a scatterbrain, always losing or forgetting things. Most times when the teacher was talking, she was staring off into space. But Carolyn Leahey seemed to be in charge of who made friends with whom in her class, and she had made it clear to all the girls right from the first day that Michiko was to be ignored.

“Did you sleep well?” her father asked.

Michiko nodded.

“I went out like a lightning!” he said, making Michiko smile at his English, like whenever he referred to his “cold feets.”

She placed her bowl in front of her. Then she planted her elbows on either side, settled her face in her hands, and released a great sigh.

“What's the matter?” Her father tilted his head to contemplate her.

“Nothing,” she said. There was no point in telling him how Dorothy winced and waved her hand in front of her nose as if Michiko's odour was too much to bear, or Sharon knocked Michiko's books off her desk. Once, while glaring at her, Carolyn had jabbed the point of her compass into Michiko's new dictionary, making a hole. That gesture was meant to be a threat.

It wasn't any better on the playground, either. A large girl named Leslie loved to yell “Mount Fuji!” and dump snow down the back of her neck.

Her father would only tell her to ignore it, which she tried to do, but it was getting harder and harder every day. Yesterday she'd found a cartoon drawing of a slant-eyed person with large buck teeth inside her desk.

“Everything okay at school?” he asked. He glanced at the calendar posted on the kitchen wall, where
REPORT CARD DAY
was written. “You gonna get good marks?”

Michiko nodded as she lifted her spoon to her mouth.

Eiko appeared in the kitchen, carrying Hannah. “The snow's supposed to stop by noon,” she said, sitting to dress the baby in her woollen clothes. “Have you shovelled a path?”

“Few minutes,” her father said, pulling his coat from the hook by the door. Mr. Palumbo, in his black beret and huge sheepskin coat, was already clearing the snow from his front walk.

After breakfast, Michiko washed their bowls and sat down at the table with her sketchpad. With a few quick strokes she drew the shape of her brother's head, his short cap of hair, and small nose as he looked out the window. Her father cleared the lane with a plough attached to the farm truck. The great piles of snow reminded her of the British Columbia mountains. Michiko stuffed her triple-socked feet into her black boots with their huge teeth-like treads. She would show Hiro how to make a snowman.

Mr. Palumbo crossed the yard just as she was attempting to place the head on top of the other two giant snowballs. With a smile, he took the oddly shaped ball of snow from her arms and positioned it on top. Then he doffed his hat to the sculpture and said, “
Buon giorno
.”

Michiko giggled. “How do you say
thank you
in Italian?”

“
Grazie,
” he replied with a grin that made his big round eyes look doggy.

“
Grazie
,” Michiko repeated with a smile.

She and Hiro found sticks for the arms in the woodpile and wizened apples in the shed for the snowman's face. A large stalk of undersized Brussels sprouts stuck out of the compost heap. Michiko gave it a great tug. Brussels sprout buttons would be perfect. By the time they finished, the snow had stopped falling, red streaks had appeared in the sky, and miso soup waited for them on the stove.

Michiko picked Hannah up from her pink blanket on the floor of the living room. “Come and see our new family friend,” she said. She took her sister to the window to wave at the snowman.
Too bad we can't keep him,
Michiko thought.
But just like all the other friends in my life, he won't last.

The next day, although it was cold, the roads and schools were open.

“You should all be very proud of yourselves,” Mrs. McIntosh said as she passed out the first batch of letters addressed to the Pen Pal Club. “By the look of this pile of correspondence, the boys overseas were more than happy to hear from you.” She stopped in front of Michiko and smiled. “You did especially well,” she said, placing three envelopes on the desk.

One envelope was addressed in large, loopy letters that reminded her of a circus. Another had tall, thin letters that leaned like grass in the wind. The third's writing was small and sloppy, with blobs of ink. She couldn't decide which one to open first, feeling that she would somehow slight the other two with her choice. She picked them up, made a fan, and turned to the girl beside her. “Pick one for me,” she said. The girl looked about the room as if to seek approval, shrugged, and pulled an envelope.

D
ear Millie,
the letter began, only the letters were so thin and tight together, it could have been Molly or Maggie.

I received your letter last week. How kind of you to write to me. This far away from home you sometimes get the feeling everyone has forgotten about you. I can hardly remember when we weren't at war. All last week we had blackened faces and hands as we did night patrols. Every time the moon came out from behind the clouds, the sergeant hissed, “Face down,” and we lay along the brow of a hill. Some guys ended up lying down in the rocky bed of a stream. We had to stay there for some time waiting for cloud cover, and a couple of the guys fell asleep. They got into trouble for that, I can tell you. The patrols paid off, though, because we are moving camp in the morning.

Know anything about baseball? Is it true the St. Louis Browns have a one-armed man on the team? See if you can find out his name, if it's true. The news is so old and mixed up by the time it gets to us, one never knows if it's a joke or not.

I look forward to hearing from you again.

Gerald

Michiko folded the letter along its crease and slipped it back into the envelope. She hadn't heard about the one-armed baseball player, but she knew who to ask. She decided to read them all before answering and opened another envelope. Large, loopy writing filled the pages.

Dear Millie,

I received your letter last week. I'd heard of soldiers receiving letters from strange girls but didn't think I'd get one. The Red Cross said to put our name down, and so I did.

I just got back from having my first haircut and bath in six weeks. We had been camped out in a house that had no windows or roof, which isn't pleasant when it rains. One good thing is that it was out of artillery range, so at least a guy could sleep straight through when not on night patrol. We are not allowed to tell you where we are.

I got a roll of newspapers with this letter and some of the guys are mad at the way the reporters keep saying it's almost over. They shouldn't be telling that to our side, they should be telling the Jerries. One headline said the enemy is short of guns, but if you were here you'd know that wasn't true. Once this show ends, I guess we will be giving it to the Japs.

Michiko gave out a small gasp but read on.
Send me your picture so I can show the guys.

Y
our army buddy, Johnny

Michiko gave a wry smile at the last line.
Send him my picture?
She could just imagine what Johnny and his friends would say to a picture of a Japanese girl, but that didn't matter anyway because she didn't have one. Cameras in the hands of Japanese people had been forbidden for years. Mrs. Morrison had taken the last picture of her family at Sadie's wedding, and if she even had a copy of that photograph, it would mean sending this soldier a whole family of “Japs.” She shivered at the thought of his reaction. Michiko refolded the letter, put it in its envelope, and reached for the last one.

This envelope was spattered with blobs of ink.

D
ear Millie,

The ink blot after the comma was huge. The writer drew an arrow from it to the next line.

This pen is lousy, so please excuse the scratchings and ink blotches. My fountain pen is somewhere at the bottom of the English Channel. This was all that the Red Cross had to offer. So I am stuck.

Is rationing serious in Canada? I haven't seen a steak for months. Clothing is scarce as well, which is why we spend so much time in uniform. Some guys even get married in them.

I don't have a lot to say, but you can write and ask me questions. Don't ask about where I am, though. Even if I try to tell you, the censors will block it out.

Francis

Michiko picked up the fountain pen with the name and phone number of the gladioli farm that sat in the little trough at the top of her desk. Mr. Downey gave them to his customers. Surely he could spare one for a soldier.

“Do you have an extra pencil?” Mary whispered to her the next morning. Her shiny, curly hair seemed to dance about the shoulders of her white angora sweater.

Michiko nodded. She handed one across the aisle and watched it clatter to the floor as Mary dropped it. Michiko picked it up and handed it to her again.

“Thanks,” Mary said. “I forgot mine at home.”

Mary didn't have her arithmetic book either and asked if she could share. Michiko pushed her desk over and opened her text.

“I usually forget to bring it home,” Mary confessed. “Then I forget to bring it back.”

Michiko shrugged.

“I'm staying for lunch today,” Mary whispered, “because of the snow.”

“You can eat with me,” Michiko offered, trying not to sound too eager.

Mary gave a quick glace over her shoulder. She didn't have to say anything else. Carolyn had already made plans for her.