Cherry Blossom Winter by Jennifer Maruno

Author:Jennifer Maruno
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2012-08-08T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

SAYONARA

Michiko put her feet on the cold linoleum floor and tip-toed to the window. The lacy frost on the glass shone like silver. Dense snow clouds covered the sky.

“It’s freezing,” she complained to her mother when she entered the kitchen. She couldn’t count the number of times the cold had awakened her by making her legs and feet ache.

But her mother wasn’t at her usual place in front of the stove. She sat on her bed, her back ramrod straight, staring at the wall. Her eyes sagged, her sorrow too deep for tears.

Michiko stood in the hallway with her arms about her waist. Her mother turned to her but didn’t get up.

“This is the best I could do,” Sadie said, entering the room holding two hats. “All I could find is some black feathers and netting.” Her sadness gave her face the look of a china cup.

Michiko had no fancy hat to wear. Her navy straw hat blew off the day they rode in the back of Bert’s truck. She had to be content with her mother’s head scarf over her toque.

“What about Uncle Ted?” she asked.

Sadie looked up from adjusting the netting. “I hope he makes it before the snow hits,” she said, furrowing her brow. “With all this wind, there will be huge drifts.” Sadie put the two hats down and took Eiko’s hand.

Michiko wandered into the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cold porridge. Within minutes she washed her bowl, dried it, and put it back in the cupboard.

“He has to come,” Michiko heard her mother say. “He can’t miss his father’s funeral.”

“Ted will do the best he can,” Sadie assured her. “But he is a long way away. We don’t even know if Mrs. Morrison’s telegram reached the lumber camp.”

When Ted first told the family he was making shiplap, Michiko thought he was back to work in the shipyard. “Not ships,” he corrected her. “Shiplap is the rough wood siding they use for houses around here. But I’m going to convince them to branch out into windows and doors.”

Eiko’s eyes brimmed with concern. “Will it be safe to drive in this weather?”

By noon the snow smothered the street. The drift at the back door was so large they were unable to open it. They went through the drugstore to the front door, where a new hand-printed sign hung over the doorknob: CLOSED FOR FAMILE FUNERAL. Her father had misspelled the word family but Michiko wasn’t going to tell him. His cardboard MERRY CHRISTMAS sign in the window, spelled out in cotton balls, was perfect.

Outside Michiko lifted her little brother to her father’s decorated window. Green crepe paper draped the window like an awning. Red net stockings filled with candy lay against boxes of chocolate-covered cherries and peanut brittle. Small tinfoil Santa statues stood in the centre.

Tomorrow she would take Hiro to the General Store. In their window a mechanical Santa Claus moved up and down, holding a pickaxe. All around him lay candies wrapped in silver foil.

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