A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 19

"Things will be better here for everyone once we men are in uniform," he says.

"Ah, yes, men in uniform," she says sagely. "My father said the same when he went to fight for America."

All their conversations now are unsatisfactory and usually end on a quarrelsome note. It's hard for her to claim a calm moment in her day, one when the thought of losing Haru is not niggling there in the background, sucking the pleasure out of everything.

Tamura has noticed her distraction, the anxiety in her, the way her fingers drum on the covers of the books that Haru has listed for her as required reading.

The t.i.tles taunt Satomi. The Last of the Mohicans. The Touchstone. She is fed up with romance, with made-up lives. She is thinking of giving up reading altogether. These days happy endings seem just another thing designed to wound her.

"My heart hurts for her," Tamura tells Eriko. "But she has her pride still, I hope."

Eriko sighs. "We must trust Haru not to be foolish."

"We can't," Haru insists. "You're too young, I'm leaving. You don't know what you would be giving up."

"I'll be eighteen in a month. It's old enough."

"Stop it, Sati. Remember whose daughter you are."

He can't claim to have been a saint himself, but it's different for men, after all. He started young with white girls, real pretty ones who went all the way, girls who would eat you up if you let them. With j.a.panese girls, though, he has always felt a reserve, the need to respect, to think of their families. It is hard to know where to stand with Satomi. She's neither one thing nor the other. He guesses that if it hadn't been for Tamura, he would have taken her long ago.

"I know exactly what I would be giving, Haru. Don't treat me as a child, I'm not Yumi."

"No, you are more daring than Yumi, more willing to take risks. Your nature is a dangerous one."

It thrills her that he thinks her dangerous, hurts her too.

"Why can't you trust me? I'm not who you think."

"You have no idea who you are, Sati. I know you better than you know yourself."

"I can be who you want me to be, Haru. I can change."

"Then I would have killed who you are."

When it's too painful to kiss, to hold each other, they lie on the floor of the little workshop mute and motionless, a ruler's width between their bodies, each feeling the other's heat, the other's regret.

If ever they talk of the future, it is always about Haru's. In his company she lets go of herself, it is him that matters, he is everything. Only the smallest part of her asks, But what of me?

She tells herself that if she could have Haru she would let go of ambition, the desires she once harbored for her own life. She would meld herself to his shape, conform to his manners, and consider being a dutiful wife. She fears the loss of him more than the loss of herself.

Haru stretches out on the workshop floor, eyes closed, listening to the drone of the traffic beyond the wire fences. The fences they had been made to put up to imprison themselves. Eight hundred j.a.panese volunteers built Manzanar, the barracks, the latrines, the hated mocking fences. Somehow the thought of it adds insult to the injury of the place.

"They're there to protect you," Lawson says.

"Then why do they turn inwards at the top?"

"I don't know, Satomi, just the way they're made, I guess."

It's the same with the guns. It bugs her that they are trained into the camp, since no matter what Lawson says everyone knows they are there to keep internees in, not free men out.

"For me it's not so much the fencing and the guns that make it hard to be here," Haru says. "It's the waste of time. I want to get on with my life, join the Army. I want to go to college, to be a teacher. I want to do something I can feel good about."

His long silences irritate her, but against her nature she has learned when to be still, learned when not to speak. She takes her pleasure in lying next to him, hearing his breathing, imagining the life she might have with him. With surprise she thinks that she must be more like her mother than she had thought. She too is capable of sacrifice for the man she loves.

Sometimes, when the grind of a truck takes the rise of the road, Haru will jump up and pace the room.

"Listen to that, people coming and going as they please, living their lives free as birds just yards away."

He had seen a dog once sauntering by on the outside of the wire, tail up, wandering at will. Even the dogs, he had thought, even the dogs.

Satomi is impressed by the urgency in him, the barely contained animal energy that at Manzanar he has little outlet for. Despite wanting to hold on to him, she longs sometimes to pull apart the barbed wire, set him free, see him run toward the life that he is so certain waits for him.

Despite that Haru is on alert, the months pa.s.s without news of a draft date. She allows herself to relax into the idea that the j.a.panese boys will never be called to war. Never mind that they had answered yes. It's all talk, talk to keep them on hold, talk to keep at bay another riot. It isn't in the government's nature, she thinks, to trust its j.a.panese countrymen.

But then on an afternoon when the air is tender, the spumy clouds shot through with gold, a rosy day when work is finished and there is nothing to do but sit in the sinking sunlight watching Cora running with the Sewer Alley girls, Haru is summoned to the camp director's office.

"Time you took Cora back," he says, not looking at her, already looking toward the battlefield.

All down their alley the yes boys are pouring out of their doors, linking arms, talking excitedly. Haru joins them. His shoulders are back, his body taut and straight, he might already be a soldier. He is almost free.

She is late returning Cora, so that the child is hurried in to eat the meal that has gone cold on her plate.

"You shouldn't take her out if you can't get her back on time," one of the kinder supervisors complains.

"You won't report it, will you?" Satomi pleads. "She was so happy playing, I forgot the time."

"Favoring Cora hasn't gone unnoticed, Satomi. Don't push them to ban you from taking her out at all."

On the way back to Sewer Alley she comes across Haru sitting on the ground with Ralph and some of his Citizens League friends. They are smoking and talking animatedly, so primed up that Haru doesn't notice her at first. When he does, he signals with a brief nod of his head toward Sewer Alley. It's an order for her to move on, a dismissal.

"My papers have come. I'll be drafted in a week or so," he tells her later.

He turns from her as he says it, pus.h.i.+ng his hands through his thick hair. He can't look at her, won't be trapped by her hurt.

"It's an all-Nisei combat regiment. Boys are joining from all over. We're getting our chance at last."

The delight in his voice cuts her so that she is too angry to feel sad. "You needn't look so pleased about it. You are leaving your family, after all." Leaving me, she wants to sob, leaving me.

"Look, I'm sorry about it, Sati. You're not going to cry, are you? It's bad enough for my mother and Yumi; if they see you crying, then ..." His voice is hard, unkind. Kindness might encourage tears, he might make promises, risk the clean break that if he is strong is only days away.

"I'm not crying. I won't cry, you needn't worry. I guess I'll just go and get your books. You'll want your books back."

"You keep them. I won't have much time for reading for a while."

"I don't want them. I've finished them anyway."

"Okay, I get it that you're angry. Sure, I'm leaving now, but everyone will be out of this place soon. It's all going to work out, Sati, you'll see. Once Manzanar is behind you, you'll find what you want to do in life."

"I know what I want. You know what I want, Haru."

"What you think you want. Look, forget us for a bit, your mother needs you now. She's much worse, isn't she? Give her the best of yourself while you can, you will never regret it."

His words sting her. How can he think that she needs reminding of how much Tamura needs her? Death is loitering outside their barrack now, waiting for her mother to welcome it in. Tamura can hardly stand, these days; she has given up making her medicines, given up going to work.

"Just for the time being," she says. "Just for now."

Every inch of Tamura's body aches, she can hardly raise her arms, and she is subject to swellings in her legs and feet, to strange pains in her organs.

"It will pa.s.s," she insists to Satomi. "Don't make a fuss."

On Haru's last night in the camp, their last together, Satomi walks to the Buddhist workshop early, to be sure of it. The air is damp, speckled with squads of cl.u.s.tered flies, and dark is falling fast. In the noises off in the distance she can hear the crackling of an illicit radio, the ubiquitous low hum of conversation that is a constant in the camp.

There are always shadows in Manzanar, quick glimpsed movements, whispering in the alleyways. Rumor has it that the camp is haunted, that the ghosts of old inmates wander around trying to find their way home. It's nonsense, she knows, but still she is pleased when the stars come fast and the moon waxes full.

In the cupboard under the altar she finds a cloth and a small broom, and suddenly she is tidying and dusting like a housewife.

When Haru comes he is sulky with her, fed up with women's sad faces. He has heard Eriko crying in the night, and Naomi looks at him now as if each glance might be her last. He is borne down by the weight of women, the need they have of him.

"Take your clothes off, Satomi," he orders, his words as much a surprise to him as to her. "I want to see you naked, to remember you naked."

She hardly hesitates. First her dress, then her slip spilling down, then the Sears and Roebuck peach bras and panties saved and longed for, flung now to the floor. She can't help feeling pleased she had swept away the dust earlier. s.h.i.+vering a little, she watches him watching her. If he wants her enough to take her now, she won't be bargaining for their future. She won't deny him, even if he is already lost to her.

He comes close, runs his hands from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her waist, drawing his breath in sharply when he reaches the soft measure of skin on the inside of her thighs. She is perfect and he yearns to be inside her, to take what he wants.

Dreading a last rejection, she puts her hands around his neck and links her fingers as though to chain him there, keep him close. His hair is damp from the shower, the scent of him sweet and familiar. She buries her face in his neck, the painful rise and fall of hope sinking her.

Something in Haru tightens and then breaks. It comes to him suddenly that he wants to hurt her, to make her see that want isn't the same as love. He has had enough of the struggle, enough of wanting, enough of everything at Manzanar. Shoving his hand between her legs, he lets his fingers enter her, pus.h.i.+ng hard.

"Don't, Haru, it hurts," she blurts out, pus.h.i.+ng him away so that he stumbles against a chair, knocking it over.

"See, you don't want it, you never did. It's good I didn't take you seriously, Satomi Baker."

"Is it?"

He doesn't answer; what is there to say? She's got the message. He is saved.

"What more could you want, Haru?" she says quietly before he reaches the door. "I'm asking nothing of you. Do you want me to feel ugly for the rest of my life?" Her words sound like blackmail to her; still, she can't help herself. "I know you want to, just as much as I do."

"Put your dress on, Sati. It's time to go home."

"No. You put it on for me."

What he had thought of as honor, so long harbored, falls from him in the putting on of the dress. It slips away unnoticed in the pretense, in the dance of him b.u.t.toning while she unb.u.t.tons.

Only later, when she looks back on it, can she give it words; hug to herself how it had been, the good and the bad of it, the b.l.o.o.d.y bit that hurt and the bit that felt like swimming deep, so that when she surfaced, everything s.h.i.+mmered in a beaded light. She had longed for it, thinking it would change everything, knows now that it will not. Haru is the same Haru, unbending as always, while she hurts more than ever.

Tamura says her goodbyes to Haru from her bed. She would like to have waved him away outside with the others, but her legs have swollen in the night and are too painful to stand on.

"You are a good son to your mother, Haru," she says. "And a good friend to us too. Don't get yourself killed out there, it is easily done."

She is thinking of Aaron, his last wave, that final faraway smile. Men, it seems, are always longing to be gone.

"Death is not the worst thing, Tamura." He kisses her forehead. "Even so, best not to look towards it, best to live in the day."

Tamura knows that he isn't talking about himself. She is near the end, although no one will speak of it for fear of attracting death a moment before its time.

Outside, Cora is with the others, holding Eriko's hand. She knows all the women are sad, but she is used to sadness, used to seeing people leave, having to leave herself.

"I'm staying," she says, letting go of Eriko's hand, moving to Satomi's side. "I'm staying, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are staying." Satomi picks her up, holds her tight. "You are staying, little one."

Seeing Haru vault onto the truck crowded with his friends, she is the first of the little group in Sewer Alley to turn away. He looks so handsome, so happy to be leaving. She takes a mental snapshot in case she should forget the look of him, his strong square hands, the soft blush of his eyelids, and the grace that Tamura speaks of. He will always be the one to pattern by now, she thinks. It will take that same reserve, the same taking charge, to stir desire in her. She is not pleased about it.

"If you don't count the women, it's just the old and the young left now," Mr. Sano observes.

"I must go to Mother," Satomi calls to Haru, putting Cora down. "Good luck, Haru."

"I'll write, Sati," he calls as the truck's engine starts up.

The words feel like an empty promise to both of them.

Eriko and Naomi are weeping. It's hard to watch their boy leave. He is going to war, after all, and to make matters worse, they know that Tamura won't rise from her bed again.

"It's not a good day," Naomi says, her old face crumpling as she swallows hard.

Yumi looks sullen. She can't bring herself to wave. Who will stick up for her now?

"Be an obedient girl, Yumi," Haru calls as the truck speeds up. "Promise?"

The day is a rare one, cold but bright, so bright and clear that the mountains appear to be hard up against the camp, so that you might reach out and touch them. Sunlight pours through the four tiny windowpanes of the Bakers' barrack, tracing a pattern of squares on Tamura's sheet. From outside, Satomi can hear the crows squawking overhead, she can hear Eriko fussing over Cora. It should be raining, she thinks. It should be as gray and cold outside as she feels inside. She could bear it better if the sun wasn't s.h.i.+ning.

"He is not for you." Tamura takes her hand and puts it to her lips. "Give your affection to Cora now. That sweet child deserves someone of her own."

The advice that comes daily from everyone is constant. "Care for your mother." "Care for Cora."

It's good advice, but it's no cure for what she's feeling. And apart from the ache for Haru, so sharp sometimes that it's like the st.i.tch in her side she gets from running, she is scared for Tamura, so scared that she can't deny any longer the truth that her mother will not magically recover.

Her talks with Dr. Harper are no longer about external events, about her complaints, about how the war is going. They are about practicalities, about helping Tamura, who refuses to leave their barrack, despite that the narrow dusty room is quite unsuitable for someone as ill as her.

"I won't finish my days in the camp hospital," she insists. "I don't want to be with sick people. I want to be with you, Satomi, and with Eriko."

Things have become worse faster than Satomi could have imagined, and now there seems little else in life but sleepless nights and days of listening to Tamura chasing her breath.

Eriko comes to sit with her friend while Satomi visits with Cora at the orphanage.

"It is only fair I have Tamura to myself for a bit," she says. "We have to catch up with our gossip."