Issue date:
May 16, 1997

Dear Ike

Lisa Sakai, Westridge School for Girls, Pasadena, Calif.

You rock back and forth. Your garden is spread out below you. Just a couple of months ago everything looked dead, but now the summer sun is shining and color is sprouting everywhere. Back and forth, back and forth. Your porch is uneven, so each time you rock you make a thumping noise. At first this was annoying, but now it has become a pleasing sound, like the click of a pen or the tick of a clock, like the nervous beating of your foot. You sit there and dream, about things that were and never were. About Masako: That is your name.

You dream about a time when you ran through the fields and forests. You would lie down in the cool grass and look up at the sky and dream about the wonderful things you would do when you got older. The places you'd go, the people you'd meet, and the wonderful, loving family you'd have. Late at night you'd read off the bright light of the moon: Jane Austen -- how you loved dear Jane -- and Dickens and Shakespeare. At school, your teachers were crazy about you. You were the smartest kid there, and the nicest and the prettiest. The teacher wrote letters to your parents, praising you. Because your parents could not read English, you had to translate the letters aloud, which made your face hot with embarrassment and pleasure.

You grow up and graduate from high school. You could go to any school you chose, but decide to attend a school close to home. You make many new friends, among all groups of kids. Your classes are easy. Everyone knows who you are. Then one day, you are introduced to the man you will fall in love with and quit school for, and marry, and it happens just that way, and everything seems so natural.

After you are married, the War comes -- World War II, the only one that will ever mean anything to you -- and you move first to Poston, an internment camp in Arizona, then to Chicago, where you get a job at International Harvester, which makes tanks. Everyone is nice to you. In fact, everyone loves you. You rise quickly to supervisor. Your husband, Ike, also works at IH, and does well. You have two children, beautiful little boys. You move back to California.

There is more, of course. The boys are now doctors, who live in big houses and drive expensive foreign cars and send their kids to fancy private schools. Your house is not as large or well-located as theirs, but it is lovely just the same, the gardens neat and clean and glorious with color. So why, then, does everything seem so drab?

Back and forth, back and forth. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. The afternoon darkens. A chill sets in. You pull the blanket, lying in your lap, up over your arms and bare clavicles. You call out to Ike, but of course he is not here. He died -- when was it now? Four years ago? Five? You shiver beneath your blanket.

When you were young, you worked hard on the farm. You got up in the dark and milked the cows, and after school you worked in the fields with your brothers. You often did not make it to school at all, and, when you did, you were so lost and confused that the other kids made fun of you. They said you smelled like a dairy. You would sit at lunch alone. Even the other Japanese kids wouldn't talk to you.

Of course, sometimes you did wander in the fields and in the forest, but that just made you lonelier. You hardly ever read; you didn't even like to read, to tell the truth.

When you were finally finished with high school, you went to a nearby business college to learn typing and shorthand. No one knew you were alive.

One day your mother introduces you to your second cousin. He is the man that you are expected to marry. He is from Japan, very small, very shy; everything embarrasses him. A few months later, you do marry him and gladly give up school.

The war comes. You spend it in Poston. The heat is awful. You are always sick. Somehow you have two children, who cry and cry. Whenever you look at them, you can think only of one thing: that they have the power to make you miserable and poor.

And often that seems to be what will happen. In Chicago, you are sure they will catch polio and end up in braces, with thousands of dollars of medical bills. In East L.A., where you move in the '50s,' your boys dress up like gang members and start smoking cigarettes when they are still in junior high. They fight all the time. They always want money so they can go out, and when you refuse to give them any, they sit around the house and sulk and watch TV and turn the radio up loud. You are amazed when they get into college, then medical school -- when everyone starts telling you how lucky you are to have them.

Now they are doctors, married to white women who call you Mom. They tell you they love you and thank you for all you've done, but you know better. They think you are ignorant and simple. They resent you for making them grow up in East L.A. They resent you for holding so tight to your money. In fact, they resent you for just about everything.

Sitting alone on the porch, you pull the blanket close around you. You look around and realize it is dark. The sky is black, the air cool. Back and forth. Back and forth. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. You smile, thinking about Ike and the money he left you.

For you are rich now, richer than you ever dreamed of being. Ike, who never made more than $10,000 a year, put away a million bucks before he died. And it has doubled since then. Stocks. You are rich.

You shiver again, and realize how stiff you are, and how late it is. You slowly hoist yourself out of the chair and walk toward your dark house. Once inside, you slide the door shut and turn on the burglar alarm. You go to your bedroom, where you slowly change into your flannel nightgown, even though it's midsummer, and you pull the sheets down and climb wearily into bed. But you are smiling. You are thinking: Ike. Dear Ike.

Each of these students receives a $75 gift certificate for books or software. Sponsoring teachers get $50 gift certificates.