Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky by Sandra Dallas Page B

make adesign. The women agreed that was a good idea.

    The following week, the artist, whose name was Ethel, came to the quilting class. She brought drawings for the quilt. Most American quilts were made up of squares and triangles and rectangles pieced together in a pattern. Ethel’s design was abstract, a series of strips of different sizes and shapes. The women smiled when they saw it.
    “The design is the sky over the camp late in the afternoon, when it turns so many shades of blue. See, one of the pieces of fabric had a bit of red in it, just the color of sunset.” Ethel said. “When it is finished, I will embroider it with lines of silver-white thread, like edges of clouds,” Ethel continued. “We will call it ‘Tallgrass Sky.’ ”
    “Oh,” the women said together, because they knew such thread was expensive and impossible to buy in the camp. Ethel must have brought it with her.
    “Such a quilt will be too pretty to put on a bed,” someone said.
    “Then it will be a wall hanging, a piece of art,” Mrs. Hayashi told her. “A very special piece, so we mustannounce the winner at a very special event.”
    “A Bon Odori,” one of the women said, and the others nodded their agreement. Bon Odori was a festival held in the summer. Women danced in their blue-and-white cotton yu kata , as summer kimonos were called, while girls wore colorful silk. Tomi remembered Mom saying once that immigrants brought their traditions with them when they came to the United States, that America was made up of cultures from all over the world. You could still be an American and celebrate Bon Odori.
    “But if it is to be a quilt for our American army, shouldn’t the winner be announced at an American event?” Mom asked.
    “Since it will have red, white, and blue in it, how about Fourth of July?” Tomi blurted out.
    “That would be perfect,” Mom said. “We will have almost six months until July 4, so there will be time to finish the quilt. And to sell the tickets. The camp newspaper has agreed to print tickets for us. We will each take a few and see if we can sell them.”

    Tomi and Ruth were the best ticket sellers that spring. Each day, they made the rounds of the tables in the mess halls, selling raffle tickets. They sold so many that people held up their hands or shook their heads when they saw the two girls approach. “I already bought one,” they’d say.
    “I guess we’re done,” Ruth told Tomi one evening after they had sold only two tickets at supper. “Everybody already has them.”
    Tomi thought that over. “Everyone in the camp has a ticket, but what about the people in Ellis? Remember what the lady said in the quilt class. People in Ellis don’t make quilts like ours. I bet we could sell a bunch of tickets in Ellis.”
    “I don’t know. Do you think they would want to win a quilt made by ladies in the camp?”
    “Sure, since a ticket costs only a nickel.”
    Ruth wasn’t so confident, but she agreed to go into town with Tomi and find out.
    The following Saturday, the two girls got passes and walked out of the Tallgrass gate, past the guards, who waved at them, and down the dirt road to town. They had been to Ellis before. Sometimes they ran errands for their mothers, purchasing things that weren’t available in thecamp store. At first, people hadn’t wanted the Japanese in town. There’d even been “No Japs” signs like the ones Tomi had seen in California. But they were taken down after Ellis residents got to know the evacuees. Some of the Tallgrass men worked on the sugar beet farms. Not many of the townspeople paid attention to the Japanese anymore. But a few still didn’t want them around.
    Tomi felt self-conscious as she reached Ellis. A woman standing on a porch with her hands on her hips stared at the two girls but didn’t say anything. A man drove his car too close to them, and they jumped. He laughed as he drove on. They stopped first at a hardware store, where a girl about their