He remembered reading about cherry saplings that had arrived in Washington, D.C., gifts from Japan to President Taft’s wife—two thousand trees in all. Most had been blighted with some type of disease, the damage had spread, and now all the young trees had been dug up and destroyed before they took root.
Pity, Ernest thought. The young trees in Seattle were marvelous to behold, finally coming into their own, a season away from bearing fruit. They reached toward the sun, potential waiting to be fulfilled.
“What’s the surprise? That you’re going to try to be the next Gibson girl?” Maisie asked. “You told bigmouthed Rose, so now everyone knows your plan. Word’s probably spread all through the neighborhood, all the way to Aberdeen by now.”
It was only a matter of time, Ernest thought, frowning.
Fahn had been practicing her Japanese tea routine for months. And she always managed to work, clean, and polish the silver within close proximity of the upstairs girls, hoping to improve her already formidable social skills. Fahn had taught herself to charm and flirt, following Jewel around and borrowing her books, like The Evolution of Modesty by Henry Havelock Ellis.
“Tut, tut.” Fahn brushed away the comment, parroting Madam Flora. “A lady does not confirm or deny idle gossip; doing so is like wrestling with a pig: you both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it.” Then she revealed an apple she’d stolen from the cart down the street and took a nonchalant bite. She offered the purloined fruit to Ernest and Maisie, who both declined, frowning. They waited for a convoy of Sternberg trucks to pass, then a trolley, and then they crossed the street.
“No matter,” Fahn said. “We’re almost there.”
As they trundled up the sidewalk, Ernest felt bad for stepping on so many delicate buds that dotted the pavement. But he quickly forgot his worry when they rounded the corner and saw the shining brickwork and polished windows of the hotel that had been named after America’s latest international adventure—the Panama Canal. Workers from Seattle—and everywhere for that matter—had been shipped out to carve a channel from the Pacific to the Atlantic, battling malaria and jungle rot the whole time. Ernest had read in the newspaper that many scientists were worried that the balance of life in each ocean would be forever disrupted when the two systems met. The idea seemed familiar to Ernest, a mixed-breed boy in China, a half-breed in Seattle. He wondered if Fahn ever felt the same way. If so, she never showed it. He also wondered if Maisie felt out of place in this part of town, which Fahn called Nihonmachi.
“Here we are,” Fahn said, out of breath from marching up the steep hill of Sixth Avenue. “Welcome to the Panama Hotel.”
“And…what exactly are we doing here?” Maisie asked, slightly winded.
“Don’t be such a Friday face, I didn’t bring you all the way up here just to show you the hotel. I brought you here to show you what lurks beneath—the Hashidate-Yu, the finest Japanese bathhouse in Seattle.” Fahn made a grand flourish with her hands, like a magician revealing a stage-crafted mystery, then pointed to a set of steps that led below the street.
Ernest had walked past the steam baths in Pioneer Square that the Scandinavian sailors from Ballard all favored, as well as the other Japanese baths whenever he’d run errands to this part of town—the Shimoju, the Naruto, the Hinode. But he’d never dared enter—he wasn’t even sure what a public bathhouse was, or how it worked.
“Goodie for you, Fahn, but what are we doing here?” Maisie asked, her expression a mixture of displeasure and wariness. “Are we even allowed?”
“That’s the beauty of the sento,” Fahn said. “Everyone’s allowed—men and women, the rich and the poor. Follow me. I came here when the hotel first opened last month. I wanted to share it with you; it’s lovely and feels wonderful. I used to go to an onsen bath each week when I was a little girl in Japan—this is almost as good.”
Ernest followed the two girls down the stairs and through the double doors. He felt a rush of steam and humidity hit his face, making his shirt feel damp and heavy. He inhaled the scent of soap and fresh laundry as he paid twenty cents to get in and took the bath towel and washcloth he was given. He removed his footwear at the behest of a sign. There were a handful of Japanese patrons milling about.
“You’re sure about this?” Maisie asked.
“Maybe you two should go without me…” Ernest mumbled.
“Relax. There are separate tubs for men and women, boys and girls,” Fahn said. “Just do what everyone else does, wash first, then soak in the giant pool. If you sit near the wall, we’ll be right on the other side, okay?”
“Got it,” Ernest said, but his heart beat warily. From when he was a toddler, he remembered people from Jiangsu frequenting the public bath, but he and his mother had never been allowed. They were too poor. Like most in their village, they bathed in the same cold, muddy river where they washed their clothes, upstream from where people poured their buckets of night soil.
Ernest reluctantly followed an older Japanese man through a curtain into the male side of the bathhouse, to a row of wooden lockers. A half dozen elderly patrons were in various stages of undress, some toweling off, some soaking, one sitting on a stool scrubbing himself with a wooden brush. Another sat in the corner near a laundry window, wearing a towel around his waist, drinking a Rainier beer and wiping his brow with the cool bottle. Ernest felt self-conscious about his relative youth as he watched the elderly men move slowly, taking careful steps on the wet, tiled floor.
Through the wall he could hear Fahn explaining the rules of the bathhouse to Maisie, and the chatter of older women talking, laughing.
Having watched the other men do the same, Ernest took a tin pan and scooped out hot water from the large bath, then sat on a stool and lathered up with a bar of soap, scrubbed with the washcloth. Afterward, he scooped up another pan of hot water to rinse, again and again until he was clean, his olive skin steaming. Then he stood on the marble riser that surrounded the enormous pool. He slipped over the edge into the water, inch by inch, until he was all the way in and found a seat next to the wall. The clear water, which seemed hot enough to boil an egg, leveled off just below his chin. The heat was incredibly soothing, relaxing, and there was something about the purity of the bath, something magical about soaking in such a finely appointed tub. It made him feel less self-conscious about the shriveled old men who sat across from him, eyes closed, as though sleeping or meditating, or sobering up from a long night of drinking.
Ernest felt the water moving, like the rocking of a cradle. He noticed that through a small rectangular opening in the wall, no larger than a shoe box, water could pass freely between the men’s and women’s soaking tubs.
That’s where he heard Fahn’s voice.
“Are you in yet?” she asked him.
“I’m in. Does it have to be so hot?”
“It’s just the time of day. The water is at its hottest in the morning. That’s when all the old people come to the sento. Then after school, mothers bring their children, and then men show up in the evening, after work, and before going out on the town. Late at night, people come here to freshen up before bed. The water gets cooler as the day stretches into night. So what do you think?”
“It’s okay,” Ernest said. “I guess.”
“I haven’t bathed with other girls since I was a toddler” came Maisie’s voice.
“Try to relax,” Fahn said. “Clear your mind.”
Ernest closed his eyes. The water felt soothing. He heard light splashing as the other men left the pool, dried off, and began to get dressed. Soon he found himself alone in the large room. Then he heard whispering, the sound barely audible over the dripping tub and the gurgling drain.
“Fine,” Maisie said to Fahn, in response to something. “Close your eyes, Ernest.”
“They are closed.”
“And you keep them closed,” Fahn added.