Gasa-Gasa Girl Read Online Free

age twelve. Became a multimillionaire in textiles, mostly silk. All after the war.”
    An orphan and a self-made millionaire. This type of man is different from the rest of us, Mas said to himself.
    “But he’s a hard man to deal with.”
    “Naturally,” said Mas. “You make it big, have to be hard.” Especially being Nisei in the 1950s, he thought, but he knew that this giant gardener probably wouldn’t understand.
    “He has his own private group, the Ouchi Foundation, to fund the restoration of the garden and make the house into a museum.”
    “Museum?”
    “It’s going to tell about the Japanese in New York. The garden will come first, and then the museum. Kazzy handpicked me to be the director of landscaping.”
    Mas almost started to laugh. Fancy title for a low-down gardener.
    Lloyd must have noticed Mas’s grin on his face. “No, really. You can even ask Mari. I was working on a special project for the city in Central Park. Mari was there, bringing me lunch. And then this
hapa
man in his felt hat comes over and tells me that he’ll match my salary and more, with full medical benefits, to be his landscaping director. I checked him out, of course. His company, Ouchi Silk, is still in business, but not as big as it used to be.
    “He took me out to dinner and told me about his grand plan: to document the history of Japanese Americans on the East Coast. He said that I was part of the Japanese American community, too, because I was married to Mari.”
    Mas scoffed inside. Why would a
hakujin
person want to be anything other than
hakujin
?
    “Mari even turned down a documentary project to help out on the fund-raising video. Waxley Enterprises and Miss Waxley, Henry’s daughter, have given a substantial amount of money, but we are filing for nonprofit status soon. Mari and I feel really strongly about this project. We’ve even pledged some money ourselves.”
    So they had everything riding on this Japanese garden. Mas was a savvy enough bettor that he would have told Mari never to put your money on such a dark horse. But then he hadn’t been around to tell her and she wasn’t in a place to listen.
    “I look at it as something I’m building for the future. Our future. And Takeo’s.”
    Lloyd was a dreamer, his head not on practical matters. Mas pushed his top dentures hard against his gums. This was not a good sign. With the addition of Mari, there were two dreamers leading the family.
    “We’re supposed to open in a couple of months, but recently there’s been vandalism.” Lloyd went through more photographs, which revealed the half-planted garden full of garbage and splattered in white paint.
    “Teenagers?” Even at Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles, where Chizuko was buried, somebody had knocked down some of the older tombstones, apparently a youngster’s prank.
    “Probably. But the police can’t figure it out. And Kazzy hasn’t been of much help. He’s accused the whole staff; well, he’s fired three of us so far. There’s only the administrative assistant—his daughter, Becca—and myself left. Kazzy said that between the two of us we should be able to take care of the garden, which is crazy. If I could get out now, I would. But with Takeo being sick and all, we need the insurance. Times are tough; it’s not like these jobs are easy to come by.
    “That’s why Mari called—to ask your help. Kazzy doesn’t want to pay for extra workers; somehow we’ve already gone over budget by thousands of dollars. I have friends who might have come out, but we figured that they would get tired of it. We were talking to Mr. Yamada about our problems, and then he mentioned you. Said that he thought you’d be open to helping out.”
    Mas bit down on his dentures. So that explained it. Mari had cried out to him—not to be a father or even a grandfather, but to serve as a common laborer. Only worse, because they wanted him to work for free. And to top it off further, it had all come from