by Ruth Hayashi
“We used to push the toilet paper out of the knotholes in the horse stall walls so we could peek through…”
Because I grew up on the estate of my parents’ hakujin (white) employer in Berkeley, I didn’t have many playmates. One of the best things about Topaz was that I had friends.
We used to push the toilet paper out of the knotholes in the horse stall walls so we could peek through! It went “poop” when we popped those holes! I don’t know if the people we spied on knew. I never had this much fun in my life! One time, I did get caught. I told my mother, “Everyone else is doing it.” She told me, “You don’t have to copy!”
When there was a dance, we were too young to attend, so we would take wooden crates from the mess hall and stack them up so we could peek in the window to see who was dancing. The girl on top looking in had to know who the people were so she could report to the others. I didn’t know who the people were who were dancing, so I always ended up at the bottom, steadying the crates. But sometimes I would say, “Let me see!” and then we took turns watching.
My mother scolded me for this kind of behavior. “Hazukashii,” (“Shame on you!”) she chided, trying to impress on me how ashamed I should feel for acting this way. But I didn’t feel shame; getting into mischief with friends was too much fun.
About the contributor: Ruth Hayashi grew up on the Berkeley, CA estate called “Cedars,” where her father worked as a chauffeur-gardener and her mother helped in the household. She was in the second grade at Topaz. After the War, she and her mother returned to Cedars, where her mother became her former employer’s caregiver. Ruth graduated from Berkeley High in 1951.
Copyrignt 2017, Ruth Uyeda Hayashi. All rights reserved.