California, 1932

When I was ten years old, my grandmother planted a tree for me. It was nothing more than a sapling then, and she’d staked a post in the ground to support its meager limbs. I’d stared at the bare bark, the bending trunk for several minutes, certain I was missing something.

“Bachi, tell Obasaan thank you.”

I smiled politely and thanked my grandmother. My mother was pleased; she pinched my cheek and told me to wait out here; the cake was almost done baking. I’d seen it earlier that day, the body of the cake light like a cloud, the frosting my mother was working on the soft delicate color of a rose petal. We didn’t eat any yougashi, let alone many sweets at all save for birthdays and holidays. My father said they rotted teeth, and my mother, always one to save money, had agreed. 

“You will grow to love it.”

I turned to my grandmother. She was smiling but her eyes looked tired, as they had more and more of late. Her back was bent, like the tree, and I held her hand, sensing , somehow, that this was one of the last chances I would have. “I do love it, Obasan. I do, Grandmother.”

But my grandmother and I shared the same heart, the same mind. When one was unhappy, the other was. When one was disappointed, the other was too. 

“You’ll see,” she said, her voice a thin thread against the balmy spring winds. “It will grow with you. And like you, it’ll get more beautiful each year.” She stroked my cheek. “Someday, it will blossom. And the earth will be covered with its beautiful petals. “

I closed my eyes, imagining it, imagining the ground covered in pink petals from my very own tree. My eyes fluttered back open and I turned to my grandmother eagerly. “When, Obasan? How long will it be?”

And then she laughed, holding my hand again. “It will grow with you,” She repeated. 

“Will there be blossoms next spring, Grandmother?”

She shook her head, suddenly somber. “Beauty takes time, my love. When the time is right, when it has matured—“ She squeezed my hand. “Then you will see petals, my  magomusume. Part of the beauty is waiting. It is patience.”

I stared longingly at the bare tree. “But how do I know if it will ever blossom?”

“That,” she told me, “is called faith.”

My mother came out, her face flushed from the heat of the stove, her apron still knotted around her small waist. “It’s ready.”

But I had forgotten about the cake, and the anticipation that had come along with it. My own tree, I thought. One day it will have petals and Grandmother and I will look at it.

I had to tell myself this, because, truth be told, I did not know if I believed it. I did not se4e how something so plain, so weak, could one day be strong and beautiful. I did not see how those branches could burst with color and life when now they were dark and bare. Even then, I did not have my grandmother’s faith. And she knew. 

We ate cake and I opened a present from my mother and father. It was a journal, one that I had peered at behind the glass of the store in town, day after day. But when I held it, it was somehow not as special. As I ran my fingers along the embroidered pages and began to pen my name in the front, it was not the wonderful thing I’d imagined. It was a journal, like my father had always said, and nothing more.

When the sun set, my grandmother told us she must be going. She didn’t like to be out much after dark, and she’d been getting tired earlier and earlier. But she didn’t leave when she said she needed to. She stayed and talked with my parents and sisters and me. We drank lemonade on the porch, watching the golden sun slip behind the clouds and listening to the night as the early insects hummed and came to life. 

When at last my mother insisted she leave, she bade us farewell. My parents went inside to clean the house and prepare for the week ahead of us, but I stayed outside, watching as her silhouette sank into the shadows of the night.

I will always remember when she turned around, at the last minute. The moon struck her silvery hair, and cliché as it is to say, she almost looked angelic, standing by the fence post. 

“It will grow. You’ll see.”

I nodded, a promise.

And that very next year, my father lost his job and we were forced to sell our home. And the next time I walked by our old house, the sapling had been chopped down. It must have been mistaken or something worthless. 

It never did have the chance, even, to blossom.

But I did not know that these almost-flowers would haunt my dreams. Those ghosts of their sweet perfume would find me when the war started, when the bombing tore our country apart. When families were taken from their homes to internment camps, when all beauty left in the world was stripped away.