“But I’m Japanese!” she said, almost laughing.
“Not ‘pure-blood’ Japanese.”
The words struck her like a hand across the face.
“What?” she said in a small, disbelieving voice.
His anguish, she could see, was genuine. “I’m so sorry, Ruth. I love you. I do. But I must respect my parents’ wishes.”
As tears welled in his eyes, Freddy turned and hurried away.
Ruth felt light-headed, her legs wobbly. She slumped against the brick wall, sank slowly onto the ground, and cried for a long while.
She could not bear to remain at school and risk seeing Freddy again. She went to the principal’s office, told his assistant she wasn’t feeling well and had to go home, and left without waiting for a permission slip.
She walked all the way back to Florin and was exhausted and forlorn by the time she got home.
Papa was working in the fields near the house and asked her why she was home so early. She didn’t answer, just hurried inside without even removing her shoes. Disturbed, Taizo followed her in, and when her mother asked, “Butterfly, what is wrong?”—Ruth turned on the stairs and snapped at them, almost savagely:
“Freddy’s parents made him break up with me. Because I’m hapa. Because I’m not ‘pure-blood’ Japanese!”
She saw the expected shock, pain, and, yes, guilt in their eyes as that sank in. Fine, she thought bitterly. Let them stew in their own juices.
She pounded up the stairs and into her room. When Etsuko came in to comfort her, Ruth would have none of it, telling her to get out. She had never said this to her mother before, and the hurt in Etsuko’s eyes was raw. But so was hers. Etsuko nodded and did as she was asked.
Ruth sat on her bed and cried. She hated being hapa. She hated being Japanese. Why couldn’t she just be herself, like her white friends?
No one would ever want her or marry her because she wasn’t “pure.” She hated her Hawaiian blood. She hated her Hawaiian mother, whoever she was, for giving birth to her, for giving her away. Damn her—why couldn’t she have loved her and raised her so she would have had a normal life? Why?
* * *
She said none of this to her parents, of course. By morning she realized how much that would hurt them and she remembered all the love they had given her over the years. It wasn’t their fault the Kuraharas rejected her—but it still hurt to know that her own parents shared some degree of their prejudice and closed-mindedness. She had always seen them as perfect, and it pained her to realize they were only human, and products of their culture.
She and her parents never discussed the subject again, and when Ruth returned to school she did her best to avoid Freddy. She quit the stupid Drama Club and changed study halls. She made a point of eating lunch with Phyllis or Cricket or some other friend, and if she caught a glimpse of Freddy from across the room she quickly turned her attention elsewhere.
She skipped junior prom and throughout her senior year rebuffed every boy who showed the slightest interest in her. She wanted no more brush-offs, no more goodbyes.
But there was one goodbye she could not avoid.
Ruth was the first to notice, in that winter of 1934, that Mayonaka’s appetite had decreased; all she did was drink water. She was old—exactly how old they didn’t know, but she had been with them for fourteen years. When their veterinarian, Dr. Hoffman, came to treat an abscess on Bucky’s left hoof, Ruth asked him if he would look at Mayonaka; he kindly agreed.
Mayonaka was lying stretched out beneath her favorite window, warming herself in a shaft of sunlight. It did not take long for the vet to diagnose that she was in the final stages of kidney failure. Blinking back tears, Ruth asked what could be done for her.
“Make sure she has plenty of fresh, clean water and a quiet place to rest,” he said. “Looks like she’s already found that. There’s nothing else to do. She may live another few months, or another few weeks. I’m sorry, Ruth.”
Ruth nodded and thanked him.
She nursed Mayonaka tenderly in her waning days, making sure she had enough water, sleeping beside her, stroking her. She held her and told her how much she loved her, as Mayonaka purred contentedly. Ruth marveled at how two souls—two completely different species—could make each other so happy. If you were kind to animals, they repaid that kindness a thousandfold. People disappointed; animals never did.
After Mayonaka had warmed herself in the last of her sunlight, fading away into the night for which she had been named, Taizo cremated her body and sifted her ashes into a small urn. Stanley and Ralph made a makeshift grave marker out of a large stone, writing her name on it in kanji characters, and her urn was buried beneath it. Beside the marker Etsuko placed a vase of flowers, a stick of incense, and a bowl filled with water. The water was traditional for Japanese graves, but it seemed especially fitting here and brought a small smile to Ruth’s face. Etsuko chanted a sutra and thanked Mayonaka for the joy and grace she had brought to their home. The incense was lit, the sweet scent of sandalwood lofted on the wind.
Ruth thought: Goodbye, my true and tender friend. You will always be loved, and never be forgotten.
* * *
Released from the crippling debt that had hobbled the farm’s fortunes, Taizo and Jiro felt unfettered, weightless with freedom. The money that had gone each month to Sumitomo Bank could now be spent repaying other creditors like Mr. Noriji as well as on improvements in irrigation and even a good used truck. Fruit prices and market demand remained low, but Dreesen, as their landlord, provided feed and other supplies, and so by the end of the first year of their arrangement the farm had made a modest profit. Dreesen seemed satisfied. These days no farmers were getting rich, but thanks to Japanese farmers’ intensive farming techniques they were at least faring better than most in the nation, where one out of every four farms was failing, or—as violent windstorms raked away topsoil in the Midwest, reducing entire farms to blizzards of blinding dust—simply disappearing.
Now a portion of the Watanabes’ income could be saved for their children’s education. Horace, Taizo’s firstborn son, was content to stay on the farm with Rose and their two toddlers, so Stanley, next in line, was able to study engineering at Sacramento Junior College. Ralph also chose to remain at work on the farm, while Ruth had decided that she wanted to become a veterinarian. On his next visit she told Dr. Hoffman of her plans.
“Well, those are good intentions, Ruth,” he said, “but being a vet’s a pretty rough and tumble job. You’ve got to be able to lift ninety-pound hogs, treat cattle and horses that weigh hundreds of pounds—holding these big critters back while you treat them, keeping them from hurting you or themselves. Women just don’t have the body strength for that kind of work.”
Ruth was crestfallen. “Aren’t there any women veterinarians?”
“If there are I don’t know of any. I’m sorry, but those are the facts.”
Ruth was disappointed and angry. She met with the school’s senior advisor, Mrs. Householder, who presented her with the frankly limited career options for a Nisei girl in 1934. Teaching was a traditionally female occupation, and nursing or midwifery was a possibility, as was business school. Maybe she could become a bookkeeper, or a secretary. Assuming she could even find a job with eleven million people out of work in America.
Nursing came closest to being a vet—but when she raised the subject with her parents, her father became unaccountably vehement. “No! Absolutely not,” he declared. “Nursing is not a—a ‘clean’ profession!”
“‘Clean’?” Ruth repeated, without understanding.
“There is the danger from germs, disease—I will not allow it!”
Even her mother looked startled by how frankly emotional Papa seemed to be on the subject. “Otōsan,” Etsuko said gently, “things in medicine have changed a great deal since—”