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Cover
Dedication
For Erin Jane Travis
Chapter One
APRIL 1943
“Michiko,” her mother called up the back staircase, “please come down.”
Michiko put down the piece of paper she was trying to fold and glanced at her little brother’s body curled on the sofa. Looking at his bowl-shaped hair she wondered how much longer he would sleep. Should she leave her origami or take it with her?
“Michiko,” Mrs. Minagawa called out louder with hint of impatience.
It must be important, Michiko thought. Her mother was not the type to raise her voice.
“Coming,” she replied. She lifted the pillow of the chair and placed the half-folded paper beneath it, hoping Hiro wouldn’t wake and find it. She raced down the steep back stairs of the drugstore. As she skipped across the black-and-white squares of linoleum, she gave each one of the red stools in front of the soda bar a spin. Three rows of sparkling ice-cream glasses waited in front of the mirrored wall.
Two women stood with her mother beside the cash register. The younger was pretty in a pale, bony way. The bobbing bunch of brown curls on top of her head fascinated Michiko. Even if she twisted a lock of her hair around her finger as hard as she could, it would always slip right back into straightness.
“Michiko,” her mother said, “these ladies would like to see what you are wearing.”
“What?” Michiko asked.
Her mother frowned.
“I mean, pardon me?” she said in a softer voice.
The women smiled. Their faces told Michiko they were probably mother and daughter.
The younger woman waved her hand about in a circular motion. “Turn around, Michiko,” she said. “Show us your dress.”
Michiko twirled in the candy-striped cotton dress with large, deep pockets that her mother had made for her tenth birthday. The skirt spun like a top.
The older women caught the hem. She wore light grey, skin-tight kid gloves that closed with a tiny pearl button.
Michiko noticed there were little holes along the seams and the button on the other glove was missing.
The woman examined her mother’s tiny perfect stitches. “Your work is so fine,” she said. “The stitches are difficult to see.” She let it drop.
Her mother smoothed Hiro’s car coat out on the counter. The younger woman examined the small hood and felt her way down the sleeves.
“That’s my brother’s coat,” Michiko informed them. “My mother made it from my father’s old one.” Looking at it, she realized how much her brother had grown since leaving Vancouver.
Both women nodded.
“We make do with what we have,” Michiko’s mother said.
Eiko Minigawa was the master of making do. She recycled, remodelled, and repaired everything. When they moved into the apartment she washed the empty rice bags in bleach and hung them in the sun to make rice-bag curtains. She then took down the apartment curtains and made each of them a blouse. The blackout material from Vancouver became her father’s shirt.
“That’s exactly why we are here,” said the older woman. “Edna Morrison told us your mother is the finest seamstress she has ever known.”
Eiko put her fingertips to her lips. With her other hand she waved away the compliment.
“Mrs. Morrison is right,” Michiko said. “Did she tell you about the quilt?” Michiko turned to her mother. But her mother flashed her eyes and shook her head.
Michiko had forgotten — she wasn’t to suppose to discuss the quilt with anyone outside of the family. But she wanted to brag how clever her mother had been to fill the squares with paper money. All of their savings came with them before the government closed the Japanese banks.
A bang at the back of the store made them all turn. Michiko’s father, Sam Minigawa, staggered in under the weight of several cardboard boxes. Michiko ran to hold the door.
“Can I offer you a cup of tea upstairs?” Eiko said to the two women, moving out from behind the counter. “It is black,” she added, knowing that they probably wouldn’t appreciate the tiny green sticks and leaves of cha, as her family did.
“That would be lovely,” the older woman said in a whispery voice. “I could do with a nice cup of tea.” She turned to Michiko and gave a smile that crinkled the fine skin around her pale watery eyes. “Thank you very much, young lady.”
Michiko watched them pass. There was no clothing store in town and if you bought from the Eaton’s catalogue you looked like everyone else. The women would talk about dressmaking and look at patterns. Best of all, they would be upstairs when her little brother awoke. Now that Hiro was walking, he was yancha: very naughty.
Her father dropped the boxes at one end of the counter. He removed a small folding knife from his back pocket and cut the string. Michiko knew he would add it to the ever-growing spool that he kept under the counter. Right now it was the size of a baseball.
“Ready to help?” he asked with a smile.
This was Michiko’s favourite part about living above the drugstore. Not only did she sleep above a soda fountain, she got to help stock the shelves.
Geechan, her grandfather, came in next from his morning walk. He rested his hand-carved stick against the wall. With it he poked under hedges and pushed aside branches and grass. Her grandfather never returned empty-handed. Michiko loved the fleshy fan-shaped mushrooms, the tight green, hairy coils everyone called fiddleheads, and the wild strawberries he collected from the woods. Today his brown weathered hands carried several small wooden pegs.
Geechan removed his large black rubber boots and slipped into well-worn woven slippers. He shuffled toward them, rubbing his hands and grinning. “Comics come?” he asked. They were the only things he read these days, since Japanese newspapers were forbidden.
“No comics today,” Sam replied. He turned to Michiko. “Looks like Geechan will have to wait a little longer for Popeye the Sailor Man.” He carried one of the boxes over to the magazine rack. “Personally, I like Joe Palooka.”
Michiko smiled. It was wonderful to have her father back with them. Just before her ninth birthday, the government sent him away. All men born in Japan had to go far from the coast. He didn’t talk a lot about working in the mountains of Alberta, building roads, but she knew he didn’t get a lot to eat and was always cold.
Their whole life changed because of the stupid war. It made her burn with indignation when she thought about it. Her mother, baby brother, aunt,
