A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 12

Ralph's mother is dead, and his father, thinking him to be at summer school, didn't miss him at first. It came as a shock to learn that he had joined the j.a.panese students, his fellows from Belmont High, as they had boarded the buses to Manzanar.

His sister wrote often after they discovered where he was, pleading with him to come home. Ralph, though, insisted that he wanted to stay with his buddies. Eventually his father gave him permission to remain in Manzanar.

"They must be proud of you, Ralph," Satomi had said when he'd first told her his story. He had given one of his smiles and shrugged.

Word of his act was hot news for a while in the camp. It's no wonder, Satomi thinks, that he is so popular, or that he has become a Manzanar celebrity.

"How wonderful that he should do this for us," it's said.

"Ralph Lazo will be spoken of long after we are all dead."

Despite that it's summer, the dust storms are as promiscuous as ever. There are mornings when they wake in a shroud of grime covering them from head to toe.

"We will make this place ours," Tamura determines, doing her daily sweep. "If we care for it, we need not feel shame."

Satomi raises her eyes to heaven, wonders if her mother has gone quite mad.

Their neighbor to the left of them, Eriko Okihiro, Haru's mother, is of the same frame of mind as Tamura.

"My mother lives with us," she told Tamura with a wry smile at their first meeting. "I don't want her to feel ashamed of my housekeeping."

The Okihiros, all four of them, jostle for s.p.a.ce in their barrack, which they have divided in two with a piece of sacking.

"We are two widows, a boy, and a girl," Eriko explained with pride. "We are used to better, of course."

Eriko, along with her old mother Naomi and her sulky daughter Yumi, sleep on one side of the sacking divide, her only son Haru, head of the household since his father's death, on the other.

Haru strides about the camp and the girls sneak sideways glances at him, blus.h.i.+ng when he looks at them. Satomi is no exception, although she affects disinterest. He has to duck his head when going through doors, which embarra.s.ses him and delights the girls. He is dark-skinned, dark-haired, too serious for his age.

"There's a bloom about him," Tamura says. "A pleasing sort of energy."

At seventeen years and one week old, Haru likes to remind people that he is in his eighteenth year.

"He's at that halfway stage," Eriko muses. "More man than boy, and proud, you know?"

It seems to Satomi that when she stands near Haru all she can hear is the sound of her blood rus.h.i.+ng to her head, swis.h.i.+ng around in her brain like weir water churning. It's mortifying. The first time he spoke to her it was as if he had stood on her heart, stopped its beating. She loses herself when she's close to him, finds it impossible to think straight. She can't stop the heat that rises in her face, the dreadful feeling that she is on the boil. The side effects of being near Haru feel at once horrible and delightful. She admires his reserve, which has nothing of humility in it. If she has a criticism at all, it is that there is little give in him.

She looks for failings in him like those she had seen in Artie but can find none. He is nothing like Artie. He isn't a show-off, for one thing, and somehow his bossiness is rea.s.suring.

"You should listen to Ralph," he says to her. "School would do you good."

She puzzles over the fact that there is something familiar about him, as though in some unexplained way she already knows him. He is interested in her, that's for sure, but she senses his disapproval too, his irritation with her. He is always quick to criticize.

"You should work on those manners," he says. "It costs nothing to be polite."

It feels preachy to her, but it could be his way of flirting. He's hard to read.

The Okihiros came direct to Manzanar from Los Angeles. In their previous lives they had run a fabric shop in Little Tokyo, and there is something of the city in the way they talk, in their quick step. They seem to s.h.i.+ne brighter than those that came from California's farmlands.

"You would have loved our cottons," Eriko tells Tamura. "We had striped and gingham-and silk too-well, special orders of silk-so beautiful-so ..." Her voice trembles with the memory of it.

After a while she stops speaking of her old life. It is too painful to go on boasting about what you have lost, what you may never get back. And just thinking of the fabrics, their vibrant colors, the clean glazed crispness of them, tops up the hurt in her.

The Okihiros spend a lot of time sitting on the steps of their barrack, beside which they have made a miniature rock garden. Its elegant simplicity has inspired others to do the same, and now in Sewer Alley stone gardens are quite the thing. Such refinements, though, are not for the Sanos, who live on the other side of the Bakers-they think the effort a pointless exercise.

"Might as well put a dress on a monkey," Mr. Sano says.

Mr. Sano, a wizened little man, is in the habit of touching his wife in public, pulling her caveman-style into their barrack in the afternoons so that everyone knows what they are up to. Never mind their daughter-in-law, or their grandchildren, who are billeted with them.

Mrs. Sano finds it hard to look people in the eye in case she should meet with a disapproving stare. She feels too old to be the object of her husband's copious pa.s.sion; besides, his behavior is not the j.a.panese way. But then, her husband has always taken his own path, lived in ignorance of others' sensitivities. There is nothing to be done about it.

"A monkey in a dress could be cute," Satomi says to Tamura, causing them a fit of the giggles, which turns for Tamura into a bout of coughing.

Despite that Tamura and Satomi are treated by their fellow inmates with a measure of reserve, Eriko is pleased to have them as neighbors. She has befriended them enthusiastically, thinking Tamura delightful, a kind and modest woman in need of a friend.

"She is shy, I know, but charming, don't you think, Mother? I liked her from the first."

"She's too thin," old Naomi says pragmatically. "Ill, I think."

All the Okihiros glow with health, notwithstanding the unappetizing diet at Manzanar: canned wieners and beans and watery corn that tastes only of sugar. The women agree, though, that it is getting better. Sometimes now there is miso, and even on occasions pickled vegetables.

Eriko's hair grows thick, her teeth are long and white, and her face has a rosy flush even when she isn't exerting herself. Her five-foot-three frame is built so squarely that she appears to have no waist at all. She is energetic for a woman of her weight, and strong too. She can pick Tamura up without effort.

"You're hardly an armful," she tells her.

In comparison to Eriko's bulk, Tamura's slight frame appears sweetly girlish.

"She's so pretty," Eriko remarks to her mother.

"Hmm," Naomi grunts, thinking that unless things improve with Tamura, her pallor will soon be a match for the mold that is inching its way up their walls.

"We are lucky to have Eriko and her family as neighbors," Tamura says. Some would have turned their back on us."

"Plenty did, Mama, some still do."

Those who came to Manzanar without family, the old and the bereaved, the paralyzed, even, have to bear the indignity of sharing with strangers. One poor woman, for reasons no one can understand, was separated from her husband and billeted with strangers. Now her husband shares with six men, and she is told that nothing can be done about it.

All of them, though, had resisted being housed with the j.a.panese woman and her half-caste daughter. Things are bad enough without the shame of that. Just by looking at the girl you could tell she'd be trouble.

Every time it seemed likely that one or the other of them were about to be paired with the Bakers, they had stepped aside and joined another line, leaving Tamura and Satomi standing on their own. The guards got the message eventually and didn't push it. You had to choose your battles.

"I'd share with you any day," one of them wisecracked to Satomi. "Just let me know when you get lonely, sugar."

"You've been lucky," Haru says. "Most likely you and Tamura would have had an old woman forced on you. You would have had nothing but complaints. And if it had been an old man you would have ended up doing everything for him. And just think of it, you have a room all to yourselves."

"I guess. Mother is a very private person, so she appreciates the s.p.a.ce." She is thinking of Tamura's shame at her cough, her night cries.

"Yes, she is a fine lady," Haru says.

"She's a bit like you, Haru. She looks for the good in things."

"And you look for trouble where there is none. Anyway, I was thinking of asking your mother if she would let me use your room to study. Only when you are out, of course. My grandmother thinks that I can read and talk to her at the same time. I find myself going over the same paragraph again and again."

"Ask her. I guess she won't mind. I'm surprised you were allowed to bring books in, though."

"I only have a few, not enough for what I need. It bothered my mother more than the guards. She thought I should have used the s.p.a.ce for more practical things. But if you think about it, books are more practical than dishes and bedding. Dishes and bedding can't promise a future, can't make you forget that you are not free."

"Would I like your books, Haru?"

"You? Well, maybe you would, I don't know. Did you enjoy reading at school? The cla.s.sroom books, I mean."

"I guess I did."

"Well, it's good to read. We won't always be in this place. We should use the time here to make our future better, not let it slip through our hands like sand."

"Perhaps I'll borrow your books sometime. Okay?"

"Maybe. But are you sure you want to?"

"I do, I really do."

"You would have to be careful with them."

She can tell that he's unwilling, that he doesn't trust her with his precious books.

"It doesn't matter. It's fine with me if you don't want to share them." She can't keep the irritation from her voice. "I hear there's to be a library here soon, anyway. You're not the only one who wants to read, you know?"

"I know that." His voice is full of apology. Look, I've just finished This Side of Paradise, you can borrow it if you like.

"Oh, Fitzgerald, I've read it," she lies.

"Really! You've read the whole thing?"

He sounds just like Mr. Beck.

Taking her lead from Eriko, Tamura divides their barrack using the silk b.u.t.terfly robe that Aaron had loved her to wear. She threads a stick through the arms, balancing each end on a rusty nail so that it hangs suspended, a pink quivering scarecrow.

"Oh, Tamura," Eriko enthuses. "It's beautiful, not real silk, of course, but beautiful just the same."

Tamura looks at the garment with disbelief-it is a design from ancient times, a piece of history that surely belonged to a different woman than the one she is now. What had induced her to pack such a thing? At the sight of its brilliance in dusty Manzanar, her thoughts turn to images of geishas, of obedience, of Aaron. Why had she allowed him to keep her in the last century? Why had she attempted to fix Satomi there with her?

"I would never wear such a thing here!" she exclaims to Satomi. "It would look ridiculous. I will never wear it again. You need some privacy, I can't think of a better use for it."

Fingering the robe, Satomi has to swallow hard to keep the tears at bay. Her saliva seems to have dried to sand. The silly, pretty thing is the very trinity of Aaron, Tamura, and her childhood self.

It isn't much privacy, a roughly hung gown that moves in the drafts as though alive, but she is grateful for it. She rests behind it stretched out on her iron cot, one of Haru's books in hand, imagining him doing the same on the other side of the thin divide between them. Her hand goes to the wall, where she holds it as though she can feel his warmth heating her palm. Sometimes late into the night she hears him turning the pages of his book, sighing.

Behind her pink screen she can deal discreetly with her monthly bleeds, while on the other side of it, Tamura, hawking up the muck from her lungs, indulges the idea of privacy too.

Tamura has quickly let go the expectations she had of Manzanar, and has settled to making the best of it. Satomi, though, along with half of the camp, is on alert, waiting. Waiting for news that their confinement has been a mistake, waiting to hear that the war has ended, waiting perhaps for something more terrible. Wherever people gather at Manzanar, hope and fear are the text of their chatter.

"Have you heard anything?"

"There seem to be more guards, don't you think?"

"Did I imagine a shot in the night?"

The slightest change in routine takes on meaning, unsettles everyone. And the rumors, like the dust storms, appear to arrive out of nowhere.

"We are all to be shot."

"I heard only the men."

"A guard told me we are to be s.h.i.+pped to j.a.pan."

Being sent to j.a.pan, for the Nisei generation, seems almost as bad as being shot. They are native-born Americans, after all, pumped with the notion of s.a.d.i.s.tic yellow b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and murdering j.a.ps. Why would they fare better in j.a.pan? j.a.panese-Americans are a different breed than their ancestors. They are democrats, modern citizens, proud of the American way.

But some of the young men have begun to challenge this view. They call themselves the "Kibei" and welcome the idea of returning to j.a.pan. It's their homeland, they tell each other, the land of their fathers, after all, they would not be imprisoned there. They go around in gangs, not listening to their elders, causing everyone problems. They challenge the guards by hanging around the fencing, and running through the alleys at night, calling out wildly to each other.

"They are nothing but trouble," Haru says. "They make things worse for everyone.

"At least they have spirit," Satomi argues. "You have to give them that."

"Ha, spirit, is that what you call it? Their spirit tars us all with the traitor's brush."

To help counteract their influence and show his loyalty to America, Haru has joined the American Citizens League. League members have asked to join the American forces. Haru, for one, can't wait to fight for his country, to go to war in its name.

But even his loyalty is challenged when a hundred and one orphans are rounded up and brought to Manzanar. The all-to-be-shot rumors gain momentum for a while. Why else would they imprison babies, what harm are they capable of?

Manzanar's director, Mr. Merrit, has been ordered by the Army's evacuation architect, Colonel Bendetsen, to confine the children to the camp.

Bendetsen has ignored the frantic pleas of the adopted families and the Catholic missions who have been caring for them to let the children remain in their care.

"They are our family."

"Only children, after all."

"How can it harm, for them to stay with us?"

Deaf to their pleas, he insists against reason that the children might be a threat to national security.

Some come to Manzanar from the white families who adopted them, grieving a second time at the loss of yet another set of parents. There are babies as young as six months old, the children, it's said, of schoolgirl-mothers from the other camps; there are toddlers taking their first precarious steps, and confused six-year-olds.

The babies, sensing change, cry for attention. The older ones gather together in silence, frightened at the deep pitch of the guards' voices, the dull metal gleam of their guns.

Manzanar's inmates are disturbed by the sight of the children. Seeing such innocence lined up feeds the sense they have that the madness has no limits.

"Why else would they be taken out of white homes, if not to kill us all?" they say.