Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

“Security’s coming,” reported Seiko, appearing from the kitchen, not a strand in her chawan haircut out of place.

Mari placed her business card on the couch and pulled at Mas’s jacket sleeve. “We didn’t mean to cause any problems,” she said. “But call me if you change your mind.” They quickly walked out the apartment into the hallway. Mari rushed to the elevator and furiously punched the Down button. Luckily there were two elevators, and the one that opened first only had a woman with a child in a stroller. They slipped in, and as the doors closed they heard the next elevator ring to announce that it was on its way.

They had effectively eluded the sole security guard and practically ran to the bus stop in the open plaza. Fort Lee looked nothing like its name, but Mas felt that they had dodged some serious bullets at the high-rise. He had no intention of coming to Fort Lee again.

The ride on the bus back to Manhattan was quiet. Mas dozed off as soon as he settled in a seat next to Mari. Transferring to the crowded subway at Port Authority, Mas and Mari had to grab on to a pole and stand. It was obvious that Mari had been thinking this whole time.

“I have a friend, a professor, who helps out at the Seabrook museum.”

Mas tried to follow Mari’s thinking. “You think this Seabrook has sumptin’ to do with Kazzy?”

“Well, I’m going to e-mail him when we get back to the apartment and see if he knows anything about Anna Grady.”

Mas was dead tired by the time they got home. He didn’t bother to take a bath or change out of his jeans and sweater. He was, in fact, dreaming of cats, the Japanese kind with no tail, when he felt something pull on his shoulder. “Huh-” He looked up from the couch to see Mari in a flannel nightshirt. “Whatsamatta?”

“My friend already e-mailed me back.”

Mas made two fists, one with his good right hand and the other with his bandaged left hand, and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Sumptin’ on Anna Grady?”

“Nothing on her, but listen to this: Kazzy went to the Seabrook museum six months ago, asking to see some documents on Asa Sumi.”

“Who dat?”

“Seiko Sumi’s mother.”

“Huh?”

“Anna Grady’s roommate.”

Mas’s mind couldn’t catch up with Mari’s words.

“I don’t know what’s going on with those two roommates, but it’s worth looking into. Do you know if Tug still has his rental car?”

Mas sat in the back of Tug’s rental car with a Triple A map spread out over his knees. He didn’t bother to fasten his seat belt, although Tug had asked him to before they left the curb of Carlton Street at nine o’clock in the morning. But that was two bathroom stops ago, and Tug had apparently forgotten to reissue his gentle reminders.

Tug was in the driver’s seat, and Mari was in the passenger’s. She had her own map, but said she didn’t need it, because she had been to Seabrook before, to film the reunion. “It was a few years ago,” she said to Tug. “It was organized mostly by Japanese Americans, all celebrating when they first came to work at Seabrook Farms in 1945.”

Mas shook his head. The Nisei were always celebrating this, celebrating that. When Chizuko was alive, she and Mas were invited to their share of twenty-five-year wedding anniversaries. Usually they took place in the back of a Japanese restaurant, where they were served limp tempura and rolled sushi with rice a little hard from being left out too long. In front of each place setting was usually an origami crane or a dollar bill folded up like a stiff kaeru, frog, the symbol of luck among the luckless Nisei and Sansei.

But it didn’t stop with wedding anniversaries. There were yakudoshi celebrations, so-called bad-year birthdays (thirty-three for girls, forty-two for boys), and then those events when sixty-year-old fools dressed up in bright-red caps and vests to prove that they were born again.

And then there were those camp reunions. Why did they want to remember being locked up together during World War II? Mas had wondered. Tug explained to him that most of the organizers for these reunions had been young, teenagers in camp. Their memories were much sweeter than those of their parents, who were now gone.

“So, whatsu dis Seabrook, anyways?” Mas asked. He could barely find it on the map. New Jersey was shaped like a flattened boxing glove, and Seabrook was located on the bottom tip, right underneath PHILADELPHIA, a city in all capitals.

“There’s nothing much there anymore,” explained Mari, who pushed her sunglasses up on her nose. “But it once was one of the centers of the vegetable canning industry. They called this Charles Seabrook the Spinach King.” Mari went on to describe Mr. Seabrook’s grand scheme of workers on the run from the Great Depression, Stalin, communists, and, of course, American internment camps.

“Knew some guys in the service who had family over in Seabrook,” commented Tug. “Mr. Seabrook and his staff recruited them right out of camp. Even if they worked long hours, it was better than being behind barbed wire, I guess.”

Mas knew what kind of deal that was. Work like a dog for nothing. He looked out the window and saw great empty spaces, tilled land ready to give birth to green vegetables. Accumulated water stayed still in the furrows, and now and then Mas saw a lone creek or marsh. The gray skyline was held up by lines of trees, their bare branches resembling a witch’s gnarled hair. Now that they were away from the hubbub of New York, Mas thought that he would be relieved. But instead his stomach felt on edge, as if there would be no place to go in case of trouble.

They continued on the New Jersey Turnpike until they hit a smaller highway and then eventually transferred to Route 77. More trees and then a lone white building, looking prim and proper like something from America’s pioneering days. Mas noticed a Japanese motif on the front of the building.

It was as if Mari had read his mind. “Yup, that’s the Buddhist temple,” she said. “A lot of the members are non-Japanese, I think. Even had a hakujin woman minister once.”

Mas pursed his lips. Everything took on another angle here on the East Coast.

“The church must have been established around World War Two, when all the Japanese came,” Tug said.

Mari nodded. “A lot of the Japanese have moved out to New York and other places,” she explained. “But they do have a JACL chapter here. Their annual chow mein dinner sells out every year.” Japanese Americans and Chinese food, the traditional combination. Funny remnants, here and there, thought Mas. One big shot recruits workers, and look what happens. Buddhist temples and chow mein fund-raisers. People and cultural practices that were being transplanted like weeds stuck on the blades of a lawn mower.

Mari then gave Tug more directions-“Turn right, then left”-and finally they parked in an open lot next to a brick building with a yellow steeple. The steeple was boxed in by a fancy fence and topped with a weather vane.

Before Mas could ask, his daughter said, “This is the city township building, you know, like their city hall. And also the location of the Seabrook museum.”

This was what they had driven more than two hours for? Mas asked himself.

They piled out of the rental car. Like a roll-away bed, Mas hunched over to get out of the two-door sedan and then straightened up in the parking lot, pounding his sore back with the back of his right hand.

“It’s down here.” Mari pointed to the side of the building, where stairs led down to a yellow door. One by one, they entered: first Mari, then Mas, and finally Tug.