A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 10

By the time their bit of the line has reached the bus station's washrooms, the men have been separated off. While the woman watch, they are strip-searched for contraband, for razors, for knives, and for the liquor it is held would drive them to mutiny.

The once-familiar bus station, a place where Satomi and Lily had often sneaked cups of ice from the cooler by the soda machine, has become a place she hardly recognizes. There is no one behind the kiosk bar, no c.o.ke or candy on sale, no familiar drivers to joke with them about being truant from school. A mile or so from home, and they have become non-aliens on American soil. They are beginning to understand what the previously inexplicable words mean. They are politicians' words, sneaky, self-serving, hiding-from-the-truth words.

Quite a little crowd of townsfolk have come to see them off, a few name-calling, but most looking sympathetic. Mr. Beck is there, his face clown-white, his eyes seeking out Satomi in the crowd. When he sees her, his lips tighten and his eyes narrow as though he is in pain. She half expects him to do something dramatic, pull her away from the others, perhaps, and declaim that he must have his pupil back. But he doesn't move a limb, not even to wipe his watering eyes, which he can't blame on an absent wind.

Satomi looks for Artie and finds instead his father, Mr. Goodwin, holding up a hand-painted sign that reads REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR. The slogan has become ubiquitous. It is on stamps, on luggage tags, on belt buckles and lapel pins, it's hard-baked into ice-cream cones. How could the j.a.panese-Americans, of all people, ever forget Pearl Harbor?

It is past four o'clock by the time they are given numbers and their internees' records, which, to add insult to injury, have printed on them the advice that they should Keep Freedom in Your Future with U.S. Savings Bonds.

Satomi scrunches hers and gives it to Tamura to put in her bag.

"Stupid people," she says, too loudly for Tamura's comfort. "How can we buy saving bonds when they have stolen our money?"

Hand in hand, they join the line for the buses. Tamura's hand is warm despite the fact that she is s.h.i.+vering. Everyone is speaking j.a.panese, too quickly for Satomi to make much sense of. She is used to the plainsong of Tamura's slower intonations. With a burning rage that she has no idea what to do with, she bites her lip and moves forward in the line.

Inside the crowded bus the women and children are packed together without their men. They set to wailing when they are told to pull the window blinds down.

"They are going to kill our husbands," one woman shouts. "They don't want us to see."

"Oh, my son," another wails pitifully.

The children, terrified at their mothers' fear, join in, so that the driver has to shout over the racket to be heard.

"Settle down. The men will join you at the other end. The blinds are to keep the sun off you. You don't want to fry, do you?"

Some are still weeping a half hour later when the convoy of buses pulls slowly out of the station to start on the three-hundred-mile journey to a place that everyone fears reaching.

In the gloom of the shuttered bus, Tamura occupies herself with helping an elderly blind lady to settle on the narrow seat in front of her. She places the woman's tiny suitcase under her feet to make her more comfortable.

"I am Mrs. Inada," the old woman says. "I am sorry if my cough disturbs you. My chest is bad, but I will do my best to be quiet."

"I am pleased to know you, Mrs. Inada. My name is Tamura Baker."

"Ah, Tamura is a good name. Do you have a husband, a son, left out there?"

"My daughter Satomi is here with me. My husband is dead."

"Ah, then we are both widows. But at least you have a child. Mine, like his father, is dead also."

"There's no shame, only sadness in it," Tamura says, propping the old woman's jacket behind her shoulders in place of a pillow, touching her hand lightly.

It is the first time Satomi has heard her mother confess Aaron's death out loud. That she said there's no shame in it is rea.s.suring.

"You should try and sleep, Mrs. Inada. You will feel better after a sleep," Tamura says.

The old woman grabs her arm. "You won't forget I'm here?"

"No, I will look out for you."

Satomi releases her window blind and the hazy afternoon sun pools into her lap. She watches the familiar landscape slip slowly away, the pea and strawberry fields, and the sign that reads CROMER'S UNBEATABLE PEAS.

Pressed up against the dusty window, she says a silent goodbye to the cemetery and to the rusty water tower where she had often sought shade. She says goodbye to the clump of self-set blueberries at the edge of the swimming hole, where she and Artie had dipped into the cool water on long careless summer days; days that were full of heat and desire and ignorance. She says goodbye to everything that feels familiar and suddenly unbearably loved.

Temporary Accommodation.

Jumping the steps of the bus in one go, Satomi turns at the bottom to help Mrs. Inada down.

"My case," the old woman cries. "I've left my case."

"I have it," Tamura a.s.sures her. "I am right behind you."

There is joy at being reunited with the men; husbands console wives, and mothers hug sons. Everyone, though, is dismayed at the sight of the long-abandoned racetrack, at the reek of decay, and at the cold officialdom that meets them at their destination. How are they expected to live in such a desolate place?

"It's horrible, nothing but a freezing half stable. How can this place be meant for humans?" Satomi gazes around in disbelief.

A single bulb hangs from the ceiling of their allotted stall, casting a dismal low-watt glimmer. Two Army cots stand against the wall, a thin blanket folded neatly at the end of each, nothing else. No furniture, no means of cooking.

They are told to line up to be issued canvas bags and a measure of straw to make their mattresses.

"I will collect ours, Mother, and Mrs. Inada's."

As the daylight fades to dark, Tamura guides Mrs. Inada into the stall with her.

"You must stay with us," she says. "We will look after you."

She is full of pity for the old blind woman, and everyone has to share. Better her than a total stranger.

An hour or so later, Satomi returns with the make-do mattresses. She has seen unimaginable things in the lines to collect the narrow sacks, grown men crying, women staring as though in a trance, adults obeying orders like children.

Mrs. Inada perches uncomfortably on the iron rim of her cot while Satomi arranges the mattress for her. Through the thin walls an old man's complaints come to them in j.a.panese, his voice shaking with rage. They guess it is his daughter they can hear attempting to quiet him in English.

"America makes much of freedom," he shouts scornfully. "But it has never truly understood what freedom means. They will not have it that it includes the right to be different."

"It's best not to be political, Doctor," a male voice calls from a neighboring stall. "We are in enough trouble as it is."

"Let him speak, it's only the truth," Satomi shouts, and Tamura tsks and puts a finger to her lips.

Satomi wonders if the old man is a medical doctor. It would be a relief to her if he was; Tamura does not look well, her eyes are dark-rimmed and sunken, and there is something febrile in her color. She hasn't taken even the smallest bite of the bread they were given as they left the bus.

"Take just a little, just a taste, Mama," she coaxes, attempting to keep her eyes from the walls that have been so hastily painted that bits of straw and spiders on their run to freedom have been caught up in the wash. What looks to be a mouse tail coils in a ball of fluff in the corner of the room; the floor is beaded with mouse droppings and splatters of whitewash.

With her back to Tamura, Satomi makes a fist of her hand and pushes it hard into her mouth to stop herself from moaning. Her knuckles bruise under the pressure of her teeth, a smear of blood salts her tongue.

It smells as though something has died in the hovel, something bigger than a mouse-a rat, perhaps. She must hold on to herself, try not to be afraid; she has Tamura to think of, after all. But for the moment, at least, Tamura seems to be doing better than her. She is talking softly to Mrs. Inada, covering her tenderly with the Army blanket.

"You will be fine, Mrs. Inada," she says kindly. "You can sit in the sun tomorrow. Everything feels better in the sun."

Satomi thinks that Mrs. Inada is lucky to be blind. She can't see the grim hovel, be disgusted by its filth.

"We should lay head to foot, Mama." She eyes the narrow cot. "It will work better that way."

They take off their shoes and lay down in their clothes. Satomi covers them with her Indian blanket that still has the scent of home on it. She watches Tamura drift into sleep. How has this horrible thing happened to them? This is America, they are Americans.

Unable in her exhaustion to sleep, she lies listening to the noises of the camp, to Mrs. Inada's crusty cough, to the calls of strangers, and to the crying of babies. Misery moves in her, solid and heavy as a brick.

That night, as in the nights that follow, they wake cold from their troubled dreams to a mottled light sieving through the perforated wood of their stable. Tamura's dreams return her to the burning ones she suffered in the month after Aaron's death. They find her falling, pitching into a murky sea, black flames consuming her. Satomi's are of running on hard ground while being pursued by some dark predator.

Tired and defeated, they stand around during the days trying to find a way to be, which seems impossible without even the simplest of utensils, not even a stove to make coffee, a chair to sit on. There is no housework to do, no land to work, only lines to join: lines for meals, for latrines, for showers.

"You could spend your whole day just lining up for things," Tamura says. "Thank G.o.d your father is not here. He was a stranger to patience."

"I'm going to move you up to the front, Mother," Satomi says on their third day waiting in line for their turn in the bad-smelling latrines. "It's only fair. You are too ill to stand for hours on end."

But Tamura won't hear of it. She says there are those who are worse off than her, and claims that she is feeling a little better every day.

Their neighbor in the next stall, Dr. Chiba-not a medical doctor after all, but a geologist with a political turn of mind-has taken to spending time with Satomi. He likes that she is as angry as him.

"We must learn a new language now, it seems," he snorts. " 'mess hall,' 'barrack,' 'issue,' 'latrine.' "

"Don't forget 'halt,' Doctor," Satomi adds.

They are told that they will be moving on. This place that even the guards seem ashamed of is only temporary.

"Where you are going will be better," they say. "Of a much higher standard."

In a welcome turn of events, Tamura, in caring for Mrs. Inada, has recovered the mother in herself. She fusses around the old woman, collecting her food from the mess hall so that she won't have to stand in line, was.h.i.+ng her gently, brus.h.i.+ng her hair, and spoon-feeding her the unpleasant soup that tastes of stale potatoes.

"How can we complain at our situation, Satomi? This old mother is blind, her husband and her only child are dead. She is ill-tuberculosis, I think. We at least have our health."

"Mrs. Inada is lucky to have you," Satomi says, feeling sorry for herself. "You are like a mother to her."

"I am sorry to have neglected you, Satomi," Tamura apologizes. "But I have found myself again, so you are not to worry about me. I will take care of you now."

"We will take care of each other, Mama."

Four weeks in, and things are going downhill fast for Mrs. Inada.

"It's worse than bad," Tamura tells Satomi on their walk to the mess hall. "She needs more than I can give her in this dirty place."

Her efforts, she knows, are merely a plaster on the deep wound of the old woman's disease. Mrs. Inada needs stronger medicine than kindness and thin soup.

"The old lady is very ill," she reports to the most sympathetic of the guards. "She coughs blood and cannot get up from her mattress. You must get her to a hospital or she will die."

And they do, taking Mrs. Inada off on a stretcher, telling Tamura not to worry. "She'll be taken good care of, nursed in an American hospital," they say, as though there were another, less desirable, kind.

"Her home is lost to her forever now," Tamura says, thinking Mrs. Inada close to death. "I wish that I could have done more for her."

"You did your best. It was more than anyone else did for her, Mama."

The few days that they had expected to be here roll through the weeks into the summer months. New inmates arrive daily, bewildered, unbelieving. People begin to get ill, diarrhea, vomiting, and a strange, never-before-seen rash.

"It's most likely the germs from the animal feces we smell about the place," Dr. Chiba hazards. "Couldn't be bothered to disinfect, I suppose. We are only j.a.panese, after all."

Tamura thinks it might be scabies. She saw an outbreak of it once among the sugarcane cutters in Hawaii.

"It's a disease of poor sanitation," she says. "We must keep ourselves clean, no matter how long we have to stand in line for the showers."

Among those without the rash, Satomi hardly has the s.p.a.ce to feel sympathy. Her emotions are personal, her distress reserved for her own and Tamura's condition. Ashamed of their situation as she is, she feels herself an alien among the j.a.panese. Her mother may be j.a.panese, but these people are not her people. There are moments when she is all infant again, all gooseflesh fear, so that if she could find a place to be alone she would howl to the moon. There are other times, though, when her anger consumes her so that she shouts her feelings to whoever will listen, usually Dr. Chiba.

A couple of the men, brought low by their wives' longing for home, had challenged the guards, insisting on being set free. It comes as a shock to everyone when they are instantly put into solitary confinement until their cases can come to court.

Some consider making a break for it, but there is no way to get past the armed guards or over the barbed-wire fences. No way to make a run for home without risking life.

"They can call it what they like. They can call it impoundment, or enclosure, they can call it relocation as if it was our choice, but it is what it is," Satomi rages. "However they try to clean it up with crafty words, we are prisoners."

"Shush, Satomi," Tamura advises. "It's your rages that put people off you, not your white blood, as you would have it. We have hope, at least. The next place will be better, I'm sure."

"I'm not so sure. I wouldn't put it past them to herd us in even tighter, to build the fences even higher."

"I wasn't talking of fences. I was thinking that perhaps it will be warmer and maybe we will have more s.p.a.ce. I would like it to have trees."

Dr. Chiba tells them that he has heard of some j.a.panese who refused to attend what is now being called with black humor "the roundup."

"They left the coast as soon as the notices to quit their homes arrived," he says. "They headed to the interior towns to seek work."

"Good for them," Satomi says.

"Yes, but it didn't work out. They were turned back by local peace officers, or herded out of town by armed posses."

"We might as well live in the Wild West, Doctor."

"I agree. It makes you feel for the Indians, doesn't it?"

"You spend too much time with that old man," Tamura says. "He is fixed in the past, you can't expect him to be optimistic."

"I like the doctor's company. No matter what they do to us, his spirit will never be broken. He is old, but he is not weak."

When the evacuation notices are finally posted around the camp, Satomi reads them with mixed feelings. She wants to go but resents being told where she must live. And then there is the unspoken fear shared by all the inmates since the shooting-dead of the old man who in his dotage walked beyond the barbed wire and failed to halt at the guards' command. Perhaps they are simply being rounded up to be shot.

"We are being sent to Manzanar, Mama. Wherever that is."

"I like the name, Satomi. It has a pleasant sound to it."