A Girl Like You: A Novel Part 9

"Check that you have left your room tidy," she calls along the hall in a thin, breaking-up voice.

"What's the point? Who is there to care?"

"Only us, I suppose. Still, we have our pride."

To please Tamura Satomi plumps her pillow, straightens the sheets, and leaves it at that. The bed looks bare now without the lively colors of her Indian blanket, which is rolled around Aaron's tools in the duffel bag. She has put her seash.e.l.l mirror, along with her schoolbooks, Mr. Beck's gift of Little Women, and the necklace that Lily made her from melon seeds, in an apple box under the bed, and shoved it tight to the wall. It has made her feel better, as though she will be coming back.

"These are going for sure," she insists, bunching up the flour-sack smocks into a ball and throwing them into the trash. A chalky powder rises up and catches at the back of her throat. The smell is worse than mothb.a.l.l.s, worse than anything. There are some things she won't miss.

Tamura doesn't like the waste of it. "Don't get rid of too much," she advises. "Once they discover you are only half j.a.panese, you may be allowed to come home."

"Remember what they said, Mama?"

"No, there's too much going on to remember everything."

"They said one drop of j.a.panese blood justifies profiling-one drop, Mama!"

"My drop," Tamura says quietly.

"Father would have said the best drop, and I agree with him. In any case, it doesn't matter what they say, I don't care if it's one drop or a hundred, I'll never leave you."

To save Tamura from seeing it, she had thrown out the last copy of the Los Angeles Times. It had been jubilant at the announcement of the detention order, referring to the j.a.panese community as the enemy within and stating that "a viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched."

They attempt to make the most of their last breakfast in the house. Who knows when they will eat again? An omelet for Tamura, and two eggs sunny-side up for Satomi. Neither of them have much of an appet.i.te, though.

"Can you believe it, Mama, five eggs this morning?"

"A farewell gift." Tamura manages a smile.

She had gone that morning barefoot on the damp earth to the chicken coop and collected the warm eggs from under her sitting hens.

"How lovely," she told them. "Your eggs are beautiful."

She would have lain down with her cackling chickens if she could. Buried herself in their warm straw, let the world go its brutal way.

Taking a quarter sack of grain that the rats had been at, she made a trail of it halfway up to the Kaplans' place.

"Shush, go." She set them on it. "I won't be stealing your eggs anymore."

"They'll follow it soon enough," she tells Satomi. "Elena might as well have the benefit of them. The cats will have to see to themselves. It is unkind, but what can we do?"

"Cats are survivors, Mama. They will adopt a new family, I'm sure."

"Are we survivors, do you think, Satomi?"

Mindful that her answer might collapse what is left of Tamura's optimism, she answers, "You bet we are."

Knowing it is a drink Tamura always turns to in difficult times, she makes a pot of her mother's green tea and pours them both a cup. As they are sipping it, two dark-suited men walk into the house without knocking. They leave the front door swinging open so that the breeze bangs the back one shut.

"Federal investigators, Mrs. Baker," the bald one says.

"Aren't you supposed to knock, or show a badge or something?" Satomi asks, shaken.

"It's just an inspection, nothing to worry about. Everything legal and aboveboard."

The men set about a search, emptying drawers onto the floor, rifling through the closets, pulling the linen off the made beds to look under the mattresses.

"What's this?" the unsympathetic one says, holding out the pathetic little box Satomi had thought to squirrel away.

"It's trash, have it if you want it," she says, hot with shame.

"If you tell us what you are looking for, perhaps we can find it for you," Tamura says from the floor, where she is picking up the debris from the drawers.

"Any guns in the place, ma'am?"

"One." She nods toward where Aaron's rifle is propped in the corner.

"Hunting man, was he, your husband?"

"Just to keep the crows off the crops, the fox from the hens."

"It's confiscated for the duration."

Tamura watches him pick up the gun, run his hand slowly along the gleaming barrel of it admiringly. It's Aaron's gun and it hurts her to see the man handle it.

"We need to see the farm accounts and the will," he says, laying the gun on the table. Guess your husband left a will?"

"He didn't, he wasn't expecting to die so young, you see," Tamura says in the same voice she had used to refuse Tom Myers the truck.

"Where do you keep your knives, Mrs. Baker?"

She points to a drawer set in the kitchen table, and the bald one, who has been staring at Satomi, opens it and takes out a long carving knife.

"Show me where you keep seed, sacks of feed, and the like, honey." He guides Satomi toward the door.

"Don't push." Satomi shakes him off.

In the barn, with the knife he splits open every sack in the place. Fertilizer and chicken feed spill across the floor.

"Nope, nothing in them. I didn't think there would be, but you never know, girlie, you never know."

"I guess you're gonna sweep up all this mess." Satomi raises her eyebrows and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Not me, honey, not my job. You got a pitchfork in here?"

He takes Aaron's long-handled pitchfork from the rack, beckoning her to follow him outside.

"Best to be thorough," he says, raking through the compost heap, disturbing the worms.

Back in the house, she stands by the chair that Tamura has slumped in.

"It's okay, Mama," she says in an effort to comfort. "Everything will be fine."

"Sorry, Mrs. Baker, but we'll have to confiscate the radio and these binoculars. You'll get them back after the war, though. Everything done within the law eh?"

"So you keep saying," Satomi says.

"She's pretty, the girl, real pretty, ain't she?" the bald one announces to the room in general. "Don't you worry none, honey. Nothing to worry about, you're in America."

"Yeah, we're in America, all right," Satomi agrees.

"No need to be snappy, girlie. It wasn't us who bombed j.a.pan, now, was it?"

"Can we go now?" she asks. "You don't need us here for this, do you?"

The fear has brought on a need to pee, but nothing would induce her to ask the men if she might use her own bathroom.

At the road's edge they turn to look back at the house and see the one who didn't smile pinning a FOR RENT sign on their door. A last check of the mailbox reveals an unsigned note written in pencil on the back of a feed label. Good Luck.

For a brief moment Satomi imagines it came from Lily and instantly feels foolish. Of course it isn't from Lily. How could she have thought it even for a second? Lily has let her go for good. Most likely Lily has a new rule to add to her list by now. No such thing as an American j.a.p.

"It's from Elena," Tamura says. "I guess she didn't want to sign it in case of trouble. They only tenant the berry farm. It's not a good time to take sides, is it?"

As though she is going somewhere nice, Tamura has dressed in her finest. She has chosen her blue-flowered dress to impress, a little felt pillbox of a hat to comfort. She slips the feed label into her mock-leather handbag, snapping the clasp shut with a sigh.

"There are still good people in the world, Satomi," she says. "Good people like Elena."

Every so often along the road Tamura has to stop and put the heavy suitcase down. Each time she does, something holds Satomi there long after Tamura has caught her breath. It is as though she has never seen the road before, never noticed the sweet scent of the pine trees, the little pockets of cattails, or the wild allium shoots springing up everywhere. She wonders briefly if there will be pine trees where they are going. She squats to pee behind some brambles and it occurs to her that like a dog she is marking her territory.

"Give me your case, Mother. I can carry both."

Like Tamura, she is wearing her best too. Her white for-Sundays-only dress, and over it a wool plaid jacket that had been Tamura's. Her shoes, a present for her fifteenth birthday, have inch-high heels that slim her calves and lend her the stance of a young woman. Tamura looks short beside her. She picks up Tamura's case, anxious not to show her mother how scared she is. Along with the farm, along with Lily and Artie, along with everything, she is leaving her childhood behind her.

Tamura is not yet recovered from her Christmas flu, which seems to have permanently stolen her appet.i.te. She is pale still, and too thin. Her once-black hair has strands of gray showing through; her lips, too, have lost color. Despite her mother's rallying moments, Satomi knows that Tamura is crushed, and she fears for her sanity. She has read of such things, of women going mad with grief.

They hadn't been expecting anything good-how could it have been anything good?-but they aren't prepared for what meets them at the relocation point.

"Why are there soldiers with guns?" Tamura says nervously, not really expecting an answer, but needing to give voice to her fear.

The bus station is heaving with j.a.panese families, dressed, like them, in their best. Old men sit on their suitcases, looking bewildered. A huddle of elderly women surround the Buddhist priest, who is clutching his beads to his chest. He looks ancient and tired, too confused himself to be of any help to them. Children are playing in the dust at their mother's feet; they are subdued, silent in their play, as if they know instinctively that it's not a time to be troublesome. A lost child pulls at the hem of Satomi's dress. The little girl has a label big as her hand pinned to her coat, with a number scrawled in black ink across it.

"Where's your mother?" Satomi asks her in j.a.panese, smiling so that the girl won't be afraid.

The child starts to wail, twisting the fabric of Satomi's dress in her tiny hand, stamping her feet in the dust.

Dropping the case and bag to the ground, Satomi picks her up, cradling her in the crook of her arm. With her free hand she clasps Tamura's trembling one.

"It's all right, Mama, we're together, it's going to be all right."

The desire to take to her heels has never been stronger in her. She wants to run as fast as she has ever run-run to the deep woods, where the sweet whispering of the ghost pines will comfort her, lead her back to what she knows.

A frantic mother comes to claim the lost child, relief and fury mixed in equal measure on her face. Tamura thinks she recognizes her but can't remember from where. She says a polite h.e.l.lo. The woman hurries off without a word.

"I am glad that you are not a baby anymore," Tamura says softly, looking around her with horror. "How are these mothers to care for their babies without homes?"

Neither of them mentions it to the other, but they realize at about the same time that fear has a scent, a faint odor that conjures up sweat and p.i.s.s and stagnant water.

"Join that line over there," a civilian with an armband directs them.

"No talking," orders a soldier young enough to be Tamura's son.

"Why do they have guns?" Tamura repeats, wanting an answer now.

"In case we try to escape, I guess."

A man in a civilian suit pulls them from the line and tells them to stand by the back of an open Army truck.

"Who are you? What is your family name?" he barks.

"Our family name is Baker," Satomi barks back.

"Point out your family."

"It is just the two of us, we are mother and daughter," Tamura says.

"You don't look j.a.panese." He looks at Satomi, his tone a touch less harsh than before.

"Maybe not, but I am j.a.panese. j.a.panese enough for this place, anyway."

"Where is your father?"

"He's dead." She stares him down. "He died in the attack at Pearl Harbor."

He pauses for a bit as though trying to work it out, but doesn't comment.

"Put your luggage up here on the tailgate. Open it up."

There is an air of refined brutality about him, something chilling in his pale eyes. Without knowing him, they can tell he is enjoying himself.

"What's all this stuff?" he protests, pulling out one of Aaron's tools from the Indian blanket, scattering his s.h.i.+rts around. "If it is just the two of you, why have you brought a man's things?"

He doesn't seem like the sort of person who would understand that Tamura needed to "breathe my husband in," so Satomi doesn't attempt an explanation.

He finds the rice, and a mean grin spreads across his face as he throws it into the back of the truck. The sack splits open and a shower of grains patter onto the metal floor of the tailgate. Tamura's eyes fill with tears; her hand flutters to her neck.

"I'm sorry," she says. "We didn't know, you see-"

"You were told what to bring, it was clear enough." He sighs and rolls his eyes. "It's all confiscated. You people never learn. Go and join that line over there, you need to be fingerprinted and tagged."