Hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet: a novel by Jamie Ford

Author:Jamie Ford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical - General, Asian American Novel And Short Story, American First Novelists, Japanese Americans, Evacuation and relocation, Historical, Widowers, Fathers and sons, Fiction - General, Seattle (Wash.), General, Psychological, Historical fiction, Japanese Americans - Evacuation and relocation, Fiction, Cultural Heritage, 1942-1945
ISBN: 9780345505330
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-01-27T10:13:51.239000+00:00

Camp Harmony

(1942)

Henry pretended he was sick the next day, even refusing to eat. But he knew he could fool his mother only so long, if he was fooling her at all. He probably wasn't; she was just kind enough to go along with his manufactured symptoms. As well as the excuse he'd employed to explain away his black eye and bruised cheek, courtesy of Chaz. Henry had told her they were from “bumping” into someone in the crowded streets. He hadn't elaborated further. The ruse was effective only if his mother was a willing accomplice, and he didn't want to push his luck.

So on Thursday, Henry did what he'd been dreading all week. He started preparing to go back to school, back to Mrs. Walker's sixth-grade class. Alone.

At the breakfast table, Henry's mother didn't ask if he was feeling better. She knew. His father ate a bowl of jook and read the newspaper, fretting over a string of Japanese victories at Bataan, Burma, and the Solomon Islands.

Henry stared at him but didn't say a word. Even if he'd been allowed to speak to his father in Cantonese, he wouldn't have said a thing. He wanted to blame him for Keiko's family being taken away. To blame him for doing nothing. But in the end, he didn't know what to blame him for. For not caring? How could he blame his own father, when no one else seemed to care either?

His father must have felt his stare. He set his newspaper down and looked at Henry, who stared back, not blinking.

“I have something for you.” His father reached in his shirt pocket and drew out a button. This one read “I'm an American,” in red, white, and blue block lettering. He handed it to Henry, who glared and refused to take it. His father calmly set the new button on the table.

“Your father wants you to wear this. Better now that the Japanese are being evacuated from Seattle,” his mother said, dishing up a bowl of the sticky, plain-tasting rice soup, placing it hot and steaming in front of Henry.

There was that word again. Evacuated. Even when his mother said it in Cantonese, it didn't make sense. Evacuated from what? Keiko had been taken from him.

Henry snatched the button in his fist and grabbed his book bag, storming out the door. He left the steaming bowl of soup untouched. He didn't even say good-bye.

On the way to school, the other kids heading to the Chinese school didn't tease him as they walked by. The look on his face must have carried a warning. Or maybe they too were shocked into silence by the empty, boarded-up buildings of Nihonmachi a few blocks over.

A few blocks from home, Henry found the nearest trash can and threw his new button on the heap of overflowing garbage—broken bottles that couldn't be recycled for the war effort and hand-painted signs that forty-eight hours earlier were held up by cheering crowds in favor of the evacuation.

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