Free Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky by Sandra Dallas Page B

turn cold and windy. Later, the snow would melt, and the streets would be muddy. But right now, as she stood at the window of the apartment watching the snow come down, she thought the scene was magical.
    “It won’t be like Christmas at home,” Mom sighed. “There won’t be a Christmas tree, and I can’t bake cookies. We don’t have much money for presents. And worst of all, Pop won’t be here. Remember how he loved Christmas? It makes me so sad I want to cry.”
    Tomi was surprised Mom said that, because she usually kept her sadness to herself.
    “Maybe he’ll be here for Christmas,” Tomi said. “Maybe.”
    Mom shook her head. “Why would the government have sent him to the camp in California if they were going to release him?” Tomi thought she saw tears in Mom’s eyes. But Mom smiled and said, “At least Santa Claus will come. Santa won’t forget the boys and girls in the camp.”
    Tomi turned back to the window and watched as Hiro and Wilson ran down the street. Hiro loved the snow, too. Roy had made him a sled from scraps in the workshop. Now, Hiro and Wilson took turns pulling each other on it. Sometimes they took Carl for rides, and Carl clapped his hands with excitement. Carl could play outside, because Mrs. Hayashi had knitted him a cap as well as mittens and bought him a pair of boots.
    Hiro and Wilson stopped to make snowballs. They threw them at three girls behind them, and in a minute there was a furious snowball fight. After the boys tired of snowballs, they lay down in the snow and moved their arms and legs to make snow angels.
    Then Hiro and Wilson disappeared, and in a minute, they burst through the door of the Itanos’ apartment.“We’re going to make a snowman,” Hiro said. “How do you make a snowman, Tomi?”
    “I don’t know,” she replied.
    “Well, come outside and help us figure it out,” Hiro insisted.
    “You have to come,” Wilson added.
    Tomi put on her coat and mittens. The boys ran down the hall ahead of her and out the door. She hurried after them, stepping outside. As Tomi stopped to see where the boys had gone, Hiro yelled, “Bombs away!” and the boys pelted her with snowballs.
    “That’s a dirty trick,” she yelled. But Hiro and Wilson laughed so hard that Tomi couldn’t be mad at them. Still, she could get even. Tomi grabbed Hiro and washed his face with snow.
    “Hey!” he said. “Why’d you do that?”
    “To teach you goofballs not to throw snowballs at me.”
    Wilson laughed and said, “She got you!”
    “And I’ll get you, too, if you hit me with another snowball,” Tomi said. “Now let’s see if we can make a snowman.”
    “We’ll put it by our window so that Carl can see it every morning when he wakes up,” Wilson said. “It will make him laugh.”
    The three of them started with a snowball, then rolled it back and forth in the snow. They patted snow on it until it was a huge snowball. They pushed it in front of the Wakasas’ window. They made a second snowball that was a little smaller than the first and placed it on top of the big one. Then they rolled a third ball and tried to lift it on top of the two others, but it fell off. They tried again, but it broke apart.
    “We’ll just have a short guy snowman,” Hiro said.
    “Short like Carl,” Tomi told him. She went inside and took several pieces of coal from the bucket beside the coal stove. Then she pushed them into the top ball to make eyes and a smile. “We need a carrot for the nose. In pictures of snowmen, they always have carrot noses.”
    “The only carrots at Tallgrass are cut up and come in cans,” Hiro told her. “I know. We can use a pickle.”
    At noon, Hiro took a pickle from the dining hall and shoved it into his jacket pocket. After lunch, the three returned to the snowman and used the pickle for his nose. “He looks like an old man,” Wilson said. “That was a good idea.”
    “Maybe not so good,” Hiro said. “Now my jacket smells like