Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

“Sorry Izu late,” Mas apologized.

“No problem,” Tug said, opening the gallery’s glass door.

The pervading color was black, which made Mas feel that he was at a funeral reception. He thought that he had seen a flash of red in a corner, but that was actually a windowpane lit up from the back. As he got closer, he noticed that red raindrops bled down the glass. The artwork was aptly labeled, Blood Rain. Mas, who had seen enough blood on this trip, moved to a ceramic hot dog and bun the size of a small sports car, and then a mound of trash, complete with sanitary napkins and empty beer cans.

“Whatsa point?” he asked Tug about the trash installation. “Dis on every street corner.”

“The guy’s famous, I guess.” Tug read the label. “Selling for three thousand.”

Three thousand? Could pay one third of my new credit card bill. Mas imagined throwing down fresh grass cuttings and a rusty Pennsylvania push lawn mower. How much would these thin hakujin pay for that?

More black clothes, but no sign of Joy. There was an African American woman with a huge wrapped yellow headdress the size of a beehive. And a hakujin woman dressed in an old black kimono cinched at the waist with a piece of dyed blue fabric. Mas grimaced. Although this woman maybe didn’t know any better, the kimono she was wearing was strictly reserved for men and for funerals. And the belt was furoshiki, a piece of cloth that Chizuko had used to wrap around bamboo containers of musubi, rice balls wrapped in black seaweed. When Mas brought that to Tug’s attention, he merely shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t matter, Mas,” Tug said. “This is America.”

Besides Mas and Tug, there was another Asian face-a young woman wearing a pair of monpe pants, the pantaloons, cut at the calves, that Japanese peasants wore in the rice paddies. But instead of straw zori slippers, the woman wore military boots, not that different from the ones Tug had probably had in Europe. Mas feared that Tug was going to try to make conversation with the girl. She must have sensed it, too, because she disappeared in the crowd of black as soon as Tug made eye contact.

Waiters came around often, offering glasses of wine and strange appetizers. As usual, Tug declined the wine, with Mas accepting each one of Tug’s rejects. The same went for the Ritz crackers topped with caviar, sour cream, and avocado. Who would have known such a strange concoction to taste so good?

“Wherezu Joy?” Mas asked.

“I don’t know,” said Tug. His military-trained eyes surveyed the crowd, searching, searching.

The two friends finally landed up in a corner, surrounded by X-rays illuminated by metal light boxes.

“This reminds me of Dr. Hayakawa’s office,” Tug said, referring to a gastrointestinal specialist in Pasadena who had yanked out Tug’s gallbladder last year.

While doctors’ offices always made Mas feel cold and alone, this X-ray gallery felt warm, like a line of fireplaces glowing from the middle of the wall. The X-rays were cut up and brightly colored in fluorescent paint. One light box held a montage of head X-rays, with a negative of a girl in the center.

Mas lowered his reading glasses from his head to his nose. In the photo negative, the girl’s teeth were black, the pupils of the sloping eyes white.

“Who’s dis?” Mas asked.

“It’s Joy.”

One light box after another reflected parts of Joy’s life. X-rays of broken arms, a teenage Joy playing basketball. X-rays of a fractured leg, Joy on the steps of the Medical University of South Carolina. Mas couldn’t look at Tug’s face. He didn’t understand what the X-rays meant and wasn’t sure that he even wanted to.

Apart from the light boxes, there was another feature in Joy’s exhibition. A metal contraption that attracted more people in black to wait in line to peer inside.

“Dat part of it?” Mas asked.

Tug examined the side of the machine. He explained that it was an old-time Mutoscope, similar to ones set up in the penny arcade on Disneyland ’s Main Street. By cranking the side handle of the scope, you could flip through a series of cards, creating a moving picture. A movie screening for a private party of one.

Tug and Mas stood in line behind the African American woman in the beehive headdress. After she was through, she turned and looked over Mas’s head to smile at Tug. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” she said, readjusting her makeshift hat and turning her attention to the wall of trash.

“Go ahead, Mas.”

“No, you go,” Mas insisted. It was Tug’s daughter, after all. They continued like this for a couple more rounds until it dawned on Mas that Tug was afraid. He needed a friend to be the guinea pig viewer.

Mas took a deep breath and then pressed his face against a viewer shaped like an underwater diving mask. He cranked the handle and saw Tug as a boy on the chili pepper farm with his four oldest brothers and sisters. The old photograph was black-and-white, and then suddenly his overalls were colored a bright blue, the chili peppers green and red. Then the static figures became an animated cartoon, the chili peppers thrown in the air and then segueing to an image of Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the landmark peak within the internment camp. Smoking like a volcano, Heart Mountain erupted, spreading thick red and black lava, which carried a photo of Tug in his Army uniform. Lil appeared, so pristine in a white cotton blouse and her hair permed and curled close to her face. In the background was her barrack in Arkansas, a tar-paper shack that transformed into a giant jaguar. Didn’t make sense, but Mas kept cranking. And finally there was Tug again, wearing one of Lil’s full-length aprons and holding one of their carving knives. Lil was next to him, her hands on his shoulder. Thanksgiving dinner, about five years ago, judging from the style of Lil’s eyeglass frames. Suddenly they moved, no more apron or knife, no more turkey. They were ballroom dancing, something Mas wouldn’t dare to do. The dancing couple dissolved into two smiles fluttering like butterflies. Then blank. Mas continued cranking, and the movie returned to the chili pepper farm.

He let go of the machine’s crank and stood up straight. “Nice,” he said. “Real nice.” Tug hesitated and then leaned down to the scope. He was cranking like a madman; he must have viewed the movie two times straight. Mas didn’t know what the short film meant, but somehow it made him feel happy. And on this trip, you had to grab at any kind of remnants of happiness.

The person behind them began to cough, and even Tug realized that his time was up. He removed his face from the viewer. The line had gotten longer, at least fifteen people deep, but Tug had to experience an encore and went toward the end of the line.

“I wait here,” Mas said, opting for another glass of wine by a display of a basketball covered with Barbie doll heads.

Tug was third in line when a familiar voice called out a few feet away: “Dad.” Surrounded by four women, Joy stood by the broken-arm X-ray light box. Circles of her two braids-one hot pink, the other blue-were pinned to the sides of her head. She wore a shimmering light-blue dress with a plunging neckline held together by a circular brooch.

“Hey, we match,” she said, laughing and pointing to her father’s light-blue suit, his tie, and even his round Optimist Club tiepin. Tug got out of line to talk to Joy, but then a group in black walked in between them. Taking another drink of his wine, Mas watched as Tug desperately tried to make his way to his daughter’s side.

When Mas walked into the apartment, his face hot and stoplight red from the successive glasses of alcohol, he was enveloped by a wonderful aroma from a pot boiling on the stove.