In Chow-Chow Part 1, Worthy One sat alone on the front steps, his ceramic dish broken, his family gone. The Yoshidas began a years-long struggle inside the barbed wire of a Japanese American internment camp.
Some people are crushed by trauma. Others, like Mrs. Yoshida, bear it differently, turning it into trinkets to drop into their nest for their families.
What will a person do with the good and the bad things that happen to them? Will they make their life—all the different experiences—into something sweet, spicy, tart and nourishing to be relished?
Mrs. Yoshida kept her growing nest cared for. Two months after Howard boarded a ship and sailed for Europe, another baby girl joined Betty and her toddler. Mrs. Yoshida kept her eyes focused and clear on them all, waiting for the day when she might reap a harvest from their sorrow. Waiting for the time that would become known as Postwar America.
Postwar America for Ike and Jerry Dale Gibson went like this. They married in 1947. Worked hard. Planned. Thrived. They built a little house and, after years of anxious waiting, had a baby girl they named Priscilla.
It was late August in Dixon. The town was wilting under a weeklong heat wave. The swamp cooler on the little Gibson house was losing to the 100-degree temperature. All the cool air it could generate wasn’t enough to defeat the heat.
Ike and Jerry Dale Gibson’s house sat on a small lot between the townhomes of a cotton farmer and a rancher. Both houses were imposing, compared to the little house sitting in the middle with the humming swamp cooler. On the big corner lot to the west, separated from the Gibson house by a vacant lot that was home to a sizable population of horny toads and all the dirt a little girl could need for mudpie batter, was the Hudson home. It had a red-tiled roof that covered easily three times more square footage than Ike and Jerry Dale’s house. To the east was the Caldwell home. Their white brick home was bigger than the Gibson house by twice. Both houses were quiet, shuttered against the summer heat. But the little house in the center was alive with activity.
The kitchen was crowded with women, sweltering in what had essentially been turned into a steam bath. Two big pots sat on the stove. Steam from boiling water rose from one. Fumes from a boiling vinegar-and-sugar solution rose up from the other. Jerry Dale Gibson, her four sisters, Neva Gayle, Maryjo, Lynette and Barbara Jane, and their aunt, “Auntie,” were making Chow-Chow.
When they were kids, every single one of Jerry Dale’s sisters—and Jerry Dale herself —had been surprised to learn when they wrote their first letter to their aunt that Ainey was not her given name. Ainey was how their family—and just about every other family from around there—pronounced the word Auntie.
Auntie was only there on a visit, but it was her fault they were all slaving away in the heat. There in Jerry Dale’s formerly spotless kitchen, Auntie was in control. The sisters were powerless.
The sisters took turns standing in front of the air conditioner duct, letting the cool air dry their armpits and dripping upper lips, blow their hair. They were miserable.
Auntie lived way out in far West Texas on a ranch in the Big Bend, it was called, where the Chihuahuan Desert spreads from Mexico into New Mexico, Texas and part of Arizona. A couple of times a year, she came to visit her family in Dixon, and she thrived on orchestrating projects that got the whole family involved. It was on the long drive from the Big Bend to Dixon that she came up with the idea of making Chow-Chow.
Chow-Chow. The spicy, sweet relish. Everyone loved it, spooned it on top of pinto beans, black-eyed peas, cornbread. It was a practical use of vegetables this time of year, late summer when the harvest was coming in—the harvest that brought an abundance that must not go to waste. Chow-Chow was born of practicality. Jars of it lived on pantry shelves all year long.
Jerry Dale was not drawn to canning at all, but Auntie was going to have her way.
Auntie was the younger sister of Jerry Dale’s mother. Like any difficult relative, family members coped with her the best they could.
As a child, she was jealous and unhappy. As an adult, she could display kindness and warmth, but she quickly and easily turned perverse and mean. She was hefty with enormous burdensome breasts. Her dark curls that had been soft and pretty as a child had become wiry and unmanageable as an adult. The hairs grew out of her head in coarse Medusa-like corkscrews. She was born with a right hand that consisted of a thumb and a nub where opposing fingers belonged—but it was her personality more than her hand that was malformed.
Evelyn Maxwell trained as a nurse. She felt it was a dutiful calling. And duty, for her, reaped financial rewards. On the job, she had a pleasant, personable manner. She cultivated a great deal of affection and loyalty from her patients and employers. Her services were sought after.
It was with her family that her mean-spirited nature came out. Duty carried over, but the family paid an emotional price.
When she was young, Evelyn looked for work that took her away from Dixon. In Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, she cared for a blind widowed woman until her death. That assignment led to similar ones. She worked as a private nurse for wealthy clients in Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso and Wichita Falls. She enjoyed room and board and vicarious affluence in fine homes and prestigious neighborhoods. And a few years before her sister Maudie—of whom she was especially envious—died, she took a job on a remote ranch in the Big Bend.
Evelyn was hired to care for the frail wife of a fourth-generation rancher in a part of the country that represented the last bastion of the open range. The land was a place of pure enchantment for her. The rancher’s wife was as sweet as anyone could be—undemanding and easy to care for. It gave Evelyn leisure time. And with time on her hands—the normal one and the malformed one which had never been an impediment to her—she figured she had made inroads for herself way out there on the Big Bend.
There wasn’t much Evelyn couldn’t do. She was stout. Strong. She was in her prime, although you couldn’t tell it. Her ruddy, weathered face and thick body had made her look 40 when she was 20. She’d always looked older than her years. She could sew anything—dresses, coats, even men’s suits—she could unstop a drain, install a shower, chop wood, plumb a house, kill rats, raise chickens, hunt quail and change the oil in a car all while cussing and chain smoking.
And she could really cook. She made three huge meals for five hungry men every day. She smoked beef briskets over mesquite coals, fried quail and dressing, biscuits with venison sausage and gravy, and a special chocolate cake she flavored with coffee. She did all that and had time to read and write poetry, lose herself in Zane Grey novels and ride a big sorrel horse the rancher had given her out where the desert kept her company. Daily, she watched the sun set behind cliffs she’d ridden beneath for hours alongside the Rio Grande, right where it took its namesake big bend, just where it defined the border between the U.S. and Mexico. She learned how to avoid stepping on a nesting whippoorwill or a stinging scorpion or getting snakebit or caught up in cactus while hiking the rocky trails. She got acquainted with roadrunner pairs, watching them run down lizards, spiders, tarantulas and even poisonous snakes for a meal.
Early in the evening after supper, she liked to play pinochle or dominos with the ranch hands. At night, with the Milky Way distinct in the black sky, she’d play Solitaire at the kitchen table, a cigarette hanging from her lip, her old dog Trixie sleeping at her feet. She’d listen to the coyotes yip, javelinas snort close by. If the moon was full, she could see the giant eyes of brazen deer that had come around to eat the buds off rosebushes she’d optimistically planted alongside the house. Sometimes the horses would neigh and buck in the corral, and she’d keep a lookout to spot a stealthy mountain lion. She might sit for an hour, rifle on her lap, Trixie at her side, waiting until the horses were settled, everything calm and quiet except for the toads croaking and the whippoorwill’s night song.
She was happy. It benefited her to make herself indispensable. So indispensable that when the rancher’s wife died, he married Evelyn. She knew it was most surely out of convenience, but she was married just the same and the wife of a wealthy man. She was satisfied to stay out on the Chihuahuan Desert, the Big Bend country for the rest of her life.
She and the rancher visited Dixon together just once to see her sister, her nieces and nephews. It was a short visit. Soon, she was ready to get home.
Then two things happened that changed everything. Her husband met a young, willing woman and asked Evelyn for a divorce, and Evelyn’s sister Maudie died. That is when Auntie came back to Dixon. Came back to Dixon to care for the Griffin kids.
Red Griffin had the best of intentions when he accepted the offer his newly divorced sister-in-law made. The death of his children’s mother left an immense chasm. Options had been suggested—separate them, send them off to live with relatives—unthinkable options. The Griffin kids were excited to see Auntie. She took hold of their lives. They didn’t know she carried a load of baggage into their midst—a lifetime of jealousy and resentment of their mother.
The kids were spellbound by the stories she told about ranch life, the poems she recited, the cowboy and adventure novels she read to them while they sat cross-legged on the floor in a circle around her. She thrived on it, too—the attention they paid her. But over time, her dark side surfaced. These children weren’t hers. They belonged to another woman, the pretty sister, vivacious Maudie.
A dark curl coiled around her ear, flicked its tongue, whispered, “Red Griffin is your sister’s husband—he’ll never be yours.” She read the books, recited the poems, combed the seven heads of hair—the redheads, two little blondes and one brunette. And as she did, she studied each face, assessed the individual weaknesses and vulnerabilities. She was at the top of a cruel pecking order, and the children were helpless. She exploited the soft spots with harsh remarks, mean observations, criticisms and lies about their dead mother. The sweet mother the youngest ones did not even remember. She pecked and pecked. Auntie left gashes on these already wounded children, gashes that never healed.
But again, she was replaced with another woman. Red Griffin brought home a wife. Auntie was no longer needed.
By midday on that blistering August day in Dixon, Jerry Dale’s kitchen was buzzing.
At 5 a.m., Auntie and all five sisters had packed into Jerry Dale’s Studebaker to drive out to a truck farm to pick produce, all the ingredients they would need to make Chow-Chow. The only good thing about leaving at 5 a.m. was at least it was still cool.
Yoshida’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand was the place to get produce. People in town called it the Jap Farm.
The racial slur tripped off tongues so easily, so offhandedly, as if no one recognized the offensiveness of it. The Yoshidas had been welcomed when they came to Dixon late in 1946. Ike Gibson came to Dixon the same year. He arrived stateside with skin that looked almost bleached from lack of sunshine, from his usual warm brown to a wan beige. Ike had been in Europe since 1943. He’d barely seen the sun the last few months in rainy England.
The war was over, and for a lot of people, it was time to make a life in a thriving town on the plains of the Llano Estacado.
It was Postwar America.
When Howard Yoshida saw the ad “Truck Farm for Sale,” he didn’t hesitate. But when the Yoshida family arrived at the town on the High Plains and saw nothing but a flat landscape with little besides scrubby mesquites and a few yuccas, Betty balked. Even Howard’s mother, Mrs. Yoshida, began to doubt. Until her clear eyes spotted it. An enormous tree—the only tree for what seemed like miles—stood with a green canopy of serrated leaves. It had big roots that spread above ground a ways before disappearing into the rich soil.
Mrs. Yoshida knew him. She recognized Worthy One. Mrs. Yoshida knew this was their home.
In Dixon, the Yoshidas recovered much—their livelihood and their liberty. Things that for three desperate years they feared were lost to them forever. The Jap Farm? The Yoshidas tolerated the racial slur as the least of things they had endured.
Jerry Dale, her sisters and Auntie picked three bushel-baskets full of green tomatoes, bell peppers, red cayenne peppers, cabbage. Little Priscilla was riding in one of the baskets, the one with the cayenne peppers, and by the time they left the farm, her little legs were blistered from the hot peppers.
Yoshida’s Fruit and Vegetable Stand sat just off the highway and was presided over by Old Mrs. Yoshida, as everyone called Howard’s mother now. Old Mrs. Yoshida was practically legendary around Dixon. She drove Howard’s big truck and delivered Yoshida produce herself, her head barely bobbing above the steering wheel, her skinny legs sticking out of the pantaloons she had created when she pulled her skirt between her legs and tucked it into her waistband.
Howard lined up the bushel-baskets with the Chow-Chow makings close to the stool where his mother always sat under the shade of the huge elm tree. She favored the tree. When no one was around, she praised the tree. She told her Worthy One how proud she was to see how he’d grown. A century’s worth of growth.
Old Mrs. Yoshida wasn’t old. Not as old as she appeared. She was depleted from the years in Manzanar, years she gave herself so much less so her family could have more. But she had regained her life. Life as it should be. She sat on her stool. Listened to her radio. Took her customers’ money and gave them sage advice.
Old Mrs. Yoshida liked to sing along to the Gillette Razor theme song and listen to the Yankees games. She idolized the Yankees. She used catchphrases from her new favorite Yankees announcer, Red Barber. “Don’t get into a rhubarb,” she might yell out if her granddaughters started arguing. After a good day at the fruit stand, she might say, “We’re sittin’ in the catbird seat.” And if it was an especially good day, she’d say, “We’re tearin’ up the pea patch!” She bid goodbye to her customers with the lyrics to the Gillette Razor theme song. “Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp.”
As she looked over Jerry Dale’s bushel-baskets, Old Mrs. Yoshida pulled Howard aside. He obediently brought over an already-picked basket of black-eyed peas, two bushels of late summer peaches and a burlap bag of onions. She told Jerry Dale, “Here, I want you to can these peas. You’ll be glad to have ‘em this winter. And pickle those peaches. And you’re going to need these onions for that Chow-Chow.” Jerry Dale didn’t argue. She blew a sweaty red curl away from her face.
As Jerry Dale paid Old Mrs. Yoshida, she didn’t notice Auntie standing there, shooting sideways glances at the scrawny Japanese woman who seemed to think her word was law.
Jerry Dale squeezed into the front seat next to Neva Gayle, who was wet with sweat and smelled like dirt. The Studebaker kicked up dust as they pulled out. Old Mrs. Yoshida exclaimed, “We’re tearin’ up the pea patch!”
They rode back to town with the car windows rolled down. It cooled them off some but whipped their hair into tangled messes. Jerry Dale looked down at the knees of her mint-green pedal pushers and saw ground-in dirt she was sure would never come out. She whispered, “Shit fire.” Jerry Dale pulled into the driveway, took a deep breath and threw open the car door. All those vegetables had to be washed, peeled, seeded, chopped and ground up.
On her way into the house, Auntie lit a cigarette, coughed, farted and said, “Where’s your food grinder?” Jerry Dale had to think before she dragged the yellow stepstool over to the front of the icebox and climbed up to search the nether regions of the cabinet where she kept all the things she might someday need and secretly hoped she wouldn’t. There in the unopened box was the cast iron food grinder, a wedding gift from Auntie. Auntie jerked up the grinder and screwed the metal clamp right onto Jerry Dale’s new dining table. It left a mark on the stylish blonde wood finish.
By noon, Jerry Dale had renounced her policy of clean-as-you-go and was plowing through her purse looking for a nerve pill. Lynette had tears streaming down her face as she peeled and chopped onions. Barbara Jane made the mistake of sticking her nose over the boiling pot of noxious vinegar and sugar and keeled over on one of the new dining chairs. Neva Gayle was red-faced and dripping with sweat. Her blouse was stuck to her back, outlining her brassiere in relief.
The only one of the five sisters who was nowhere in sight was Maryjo. She finally emerged from the bathroom, wearing a cool, crisp, white cotton sleeveless blouse with ruffles down the front. She had it tucked into a pair of black short shorts that showed off her small waist and shapely legs. She was picking out her curls with a rat-tailed comb and complaining that she wasn’t able to get decent reception on the radio. Jerry Dale came out of nowhere, snatched the comb out of her hand and replaced it with a funnel and ladle. She swung Maryjo around, positioned her in front of the stove and said, “Now get with it!”
Auntie was at the end of the production line sealing jars. Ashes dropped off the cigarette hanging from her bottom lip, barely missing the jars. Some may not have missed, and at this point, nobody would have cared.
Jerry Dale called the beauty shop right after it opened the next morning. Judy couldn’t work her in until after four o’clock. Jerry Dale walked in, deposited a jar of Chow-Chow on the counter and melted into the chair. Judy pumped her foot on the lever, raising Jerry Dale way up so she could get a good look at her. Her usually lively mane was flattened against her head, strands of it laying heavy on her neck and shoulders. Judy’s face froze in an unconvincing smile. Jerry Dale’s eyes met hers in the mirror, and she said, “Cut it.” Judy kept her eyes locked on Jerry Dale’s eyes. “You sure?” “Yes, I’m sure. Cut it”. Judy got busy and created a new hairdo for Jerry Dale. It was the first time she’d had the chance to try out that precious Italian cut like the one Audrey Hepburn got in “Roman Holiday.”
Ike barely recognized his wife when she walked through the door late that afternoon. And after the weekend she’d had, he thought it wise not to comment about her hair, yea or nay.
Auntie had fixed supper. She brought a plate of fried pork chops to the table, set it down next to the bowl of blackeye peas, the pan of cornbread. Ike reached for the jar of Chow-Chow sitting in the center of the table and started to spoon some of it on his peas when Auntie said, “Oh, I just about forgot to tell you, Jerry Dale. Judy called from the beauty shop right after you left.” Jerry Dale said, “Oh? What did she want?” Auntie ground out a cigarette. “She said to tell you that old woman out at the Jap Farm died.” Jerry Dale and Ike said at the same time, “Mrs. Yoshida?” Jerry Dale repeated, “Old Mrs. Yoshida died?” Auntie answered, “That’s right.”
Auntie interrupted their silence. “Ike, pass me that Chow-Chow. It turned out pretty good.”
Aki Yoshida sat down under the shade of the big elm she favored and turned on her radio. She was tired. She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she was gone. It was not quite autumn, but the huge elm tree turned loose of every one of his leaves, blanketing her in his respect. Then Worthy One wept.
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