Free After Alice by Karen Hofmann Page A

the bottom land,” Sidonie says. “Mother bought cucumbers there; it was too hot at our place for growing cucumbers. I remember the soil, so black. It still is, isn’t it? And the Chinese farmers with their conical straw hats. We called them Chinamen.”
    In the playground, a little ditty: Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, see these . There were accompanying hand gestures, of course. On “Chinese,” you pulled the corners of your eyelids up; on “Japanese,” you pulled them down. On “dirty knees,” you touched your knees, and on “see these,” you plucked out the front of your blouse or shirt with the thumb and index finger of each hand, so that you made tenty little breasts there. The ditty was considered objectionable, but not for the racial stereotyping.
    Where had the Chinese farmers gone? There were only Japanese family names by the time she was in her teens.
    â€œThe Japanese assimilated better,” Hugh says.
    What does that mean? How much loss behind that word? She thinks, then forces herself not to think, about Masao.
    Photos of themselves as children: dressed up for Hallowe’en, perched in boats, posed for comparison against newly-planted saplings. In one early photo, Graham, Hugh, and Alice are lolling, apparently naked, in a large tin washtub. Alice, in the centre, is looking directly at the camera. Her fair hair falls over her shoulders; her chin rests on her knees. Her gaze is assured, evaluative. Sidonie is standing beside the tub, holding onto — possibly holding herself up by — the rim. She is very small, and is wearing a diaper and sunbonnet. She is howling.
    Hugh says, “Is there a picture in which you are not howling?” He says it affectionately, as though it is a natural and pleasing thing that Sidonie should be always in extremis, and himself always ready to rescue. To be gallant.
    Photos of school concerts, of plays: children in costume. Class photos: the fair and red-haired children, the dusky. All varying shades of grey in these photos, of course. She and Hugh identify most of the children. Hugh gets the ones that she doesn’t. In the earlier photos, the von Tälers, the Inglises, the Clares, all stand at the back, taller, with better haircuts, clothes that, even in these old photographs, look like they fit better, are of better cloth. In later photos, the others have caught up in size, though. They are indistinguishable by appearance.
    â€œA history of immigration and assimilation there,” Hugh says, surprisingly.
    A snapshot of a group of children in shorts and button-down shirts, all wearing kerchiefs tied in square knots at the throat. “The hiking club,” Hugh says.
    Sidonie turns the photo over. On the back is written in ink faded to the colour of tea: Rainbow Hill Hiking Club . “Yes,” she says. “You browbeat half the kids of Marshall’s Landing into learning how to find edible roots and track antelope in the dark.”
    Hugh says, “I think I must have been a tyrant. Did we have badges?”
    â€œYes, badges. Not armbands, at least.”
    A badge, sewn of layers of felt and embroidered by hand: Rainbow Hill Hiking Club. That sort of thing was popular then: children were always starting clubs.
    Hugh’s hiking club: Hugh of course, Graham, Alice, Masao, Sidonie. A couple of others? Walt, later, definitely. His brother. Children from their side of the hill, from the few square miles or so that encompassed Beauvoir and Sans Souci and the smaller orchards around.
    â€œWe all had to wear hats and carry rucksacks with water canteens — mostly jam jars,” Sidonie says. “Though you and Graham had real tin ones, with olive canvas carriers. . .”
    â€œAnd rations,” Hugh says.
    â€œWe were soldiers,” Sidonie says.
    â€œWe were at war,” Hugh says, “against all of the newcomers. It would have been, what — 1953 or so, when this photo was