Weedflower

December brings surprisingly cold weather, especially at night, and when Ichiro and Bull give their blankets up to Sumiko and Tak-Tak one night, she feels guilty. A barbed-wire fence goes up around the camp to keep the Native Americans’ cows from wandering into camp. Many people in camp complain about the fence, which Sumiko dislikes for ruining the look of her garden. As Christmas draws near, Sumiko has a hard time feeling in the holiday spirit. She feels distant from her family since they’re all busy with their own separate projects and friends. They aren’t working together anymore like they did on the farm. She feels lonely, too, because the other children are so disobedient and mischievous that she doesn’t fit in with them. They often steal things, and Sumiko can’t bring herself to join in.

On Christmas Day, all the children open a present from the pile that a church donated. Tak-Tak opens a wooden car, and the family gives him a stuffed cricket that they ordered. The family gives Sumiko a small mirror, and she sees her reflection for the first time. She’s pleased with her appearance, although her family makes fun of her when she smiles at her image in the mirror. She opens a doll from the donated presents and gives it to one of the younger girls. During the Christmas party, Sumiko finds herself among a group of children who decide to steal a chicken. She runs along behind them as the group leader snatches a chicken and leads them out of camp to the river. They kill the chicken and attempt to start a fire, but when it starts raining, they give up on trying to cook the chicken. Everyone feels bad for wasting the chicken, and when they bury it, Sumiko is called upon to say a few words about the chicken. As Sumiko walks back to camp late at night, she thinks about the farm but can’t picture it in her mind. Her life now feels separate from her time on the family farm.

When Sumiko next sees Frank, she’s both glad to see him and angry with him because of the fence put up by the Native Americans. When Frank hears that Sumiko didn’t ask Bull about meeting with his brother, he grows irritated. Tak-Tak asks Frank outright if he has electricity, and Frank reveals that he has neither electricity nor running water. Frank tells Sumiko he dreamed that she introduced Bull to his brother. Surprisingly, Sumiko also dreamed about Frank: She saw herself floating down the river with him in a raft. Frank wants to see Sumiko’s garden, so they wait until it starts to get dark, and she sneaks Frank into camp to show him. He tells Sumiko that the garden looks like her, and Sumiko feels pleased. A boy spots Frank, and soon Japanese boys surround him and start punching him. Sumiko grabs a tree branch and swings, contacting a boy’s head. The children scatter; Frank is bruised but otherwise unharmed. Frank asks her to bring Bull to the river at 8am on Saturday morning. As Frank walks away, Sumiko feels that now that she has defended him, Frank is officially her friend.

Sumiko goes to see the boy she hit with the stick and brings him some flowers. He isn’t badly hurt and is mostly embarrassed to have been hit by a girl. That night, Sumiko can’t sleep, so she wanders through camp looking at the stars. When she passes the basketball court, she sees the girl who spoke to the Native American boy at the basketball game. The girl is dancing beautifully in the moonlight. Sumiko also notices the Native American boy watching happily from the shadows and returns to her barrack to leave them alone.

Sumiko tells Bull about Frank the next day. She’s worried about how he might react to know that she has a Native American friend, but Bull only replies, “A friend is a friend” (208). Bull agrees to meet Frank’s brother Joseph the next morning. 

At the river, Sumiko is proud to introduce Bull as her cousin, and she can tell that Frank looks up to Joseph. The conversation turns to the camp, and Joseph explains that the tribal council didn’t want the camp to be placed on their reservation. Frank reveals that Native Americans aren’t allowed to vote in the state of Arizona, which Sumiko is surprised to learn. Bull and Joseph walk away to talk about farming, and Sumiko talks to Frank about his brothers leaving for war. Sumiko is hurt when Frank says that his brothers will kill “Japs” in the war (216), but his face is sincere when he apologizes. Next, it’s Sumiko’s turn to feel embarrassed when she wonders whether Frank’s family lives in a teepee. She shares her dream of owning a flower shop, and Frank believes in her dream, even when she expresses doubt. She shares that she’s afraid to leave the camp because if Japan starts to win the war, the US government may take everything away from them again. They see signs of a dust storm coming, and as Bull and Sumiko walk back to camp, the storm catches them. Bull wraps his arms around Sumiko until the storm passes, and they return to camp safely.