A Girl Like You

  “Seems you have, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Not me, Satomi, not me. In any case, you’ll get justice, you’ll see.”

  “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”

  “I guess, maybe. Anyway, I’m pleased to see that you are all right, at least. How are you doing for soap?”

  “Nothing against you, Lawson, but I won’t be taking soap anymore.”

  The dissent in the camp has been revealed. Bones have been broken, blood spilled, to say the least. She doesn’t know on which side to stand, but it would be wrong now to accept gifts from Lawson. Things will never go back to how they were. No doubt the dead will be buried, the wreckage of the battle cleared, but the riot has already left something less tangible than bodies and debris in its wake, a postscript provoked by outrage. The Japanese inmates are no longer sheep to be herded.

  By the time she reaches the alleyway that is the cut-through to the orphanage, the bells have stopped ringing. A short tolling for two short lives, she thinks, surprised that death comes so unexpectedly to some.

  And then the picture flashes into her mind again, the twisted head, that pathetic hand, the black blood in the dust. She pauses for a moment, looking back, trembling a little. It is very cold, the air quite still, for once. Apart from two old men sitting around a tin-can fire at its far end, the alleyway is empty. People are at work or behind the safety of their closed doors. Better to keep your head down on such a day. They should have known that, since Pearl Harbor, December is a dangerous month.

  How can she go to work as though nothing has happened, resume her routine as easily as Tamura and Eriko seem to have done? She is so tired that if it wasn’t for Cora she would return to Sewer Alley and sleep the day away. But Cora will be anxious, looking toward the door for her, and she wants to see the little girl, hold her close. Tears come streaming, she is suddenly filled with sympathy for the world, for the dead boys, for the look now in Yumi’s once-innocent eyes, for the hurt that is Cora.

  The desire for a cigarette comes as it often does, but she has none. She pictures herself setting the match, drawing deep, the familiar catch in her throat as the smoke snakes through her. Why had she let Haru talk her into giving them up?

  “You don’t have the money for them anyway, Sati.”

  “I could share yours.”

  “No, it’s horrible to see a girl smoking. I can’t bear the smell on you.”

  Halfway down the alley, as she stops to knot her scarf against the cold, her eyes are drawn to movement at an open doorway. Two boys of around Haru’s age are joined together kissing. She stands stock-still, staring, her mouth open, her bottom lip pendulous. In the middle of the kiss one begins to unbuckle the other’s belt, laughing as their lips part. They move in a secret primitive language, boy against boy, slim on slim, no curves, equal strengths.

  It seems to her a nonsensical scene, like something out of those dreams that you feel shame for when you wake, as though you had conjured them out of the dark bit inside you that nobody knows about. The riot must have created a mad sort of electricity in the air, turned things on their head.

  The one whose buckle has been undone catches sight of her staring, but she can’t look away, she might as well be rooted in the frozen mud beneath her feet. His body stills for a moment, but then he returns her stare, exaggerating the incline of his head, raising his eyebrows in a sort of challenge that she has no idea how to meet. With a half smile on his face, he shrugs and kicks the door shut.

  She doesn’t mention what she has seen to Haru. Will never, she thinks, mention it to anyone. She feels sure that she wouldn’t be believed.

  After that day, whenever she thinks about those boys, their lean embrace, it seems to her that she has witnessed a wonderfully rebellious, entirely independent act. It’s all wrong, of course, surely not what nature intended, but it pleases her to know that she isn’t the only outsider at Manzanar.

  She scans the newspapers that Dr. Harper gives her for reports of the riot and finds none. It’s as though America has forgotten their incarcerated fellows. There is news of German U-boats harassing shipping on the East Coast; news of the movie actress Carol Lombard who has died in a plane crash, on her way back from a tour to promote the sale of war bonds. A radio station called the Voice of America has begun broadcasting, and the British have asked their citizens to bathe in five inches of water to help the war effort. There’s a new drink called instant coffee and Glenn Miller has sold a million copies of “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” Gas has gone up to fifteen cents a gallon, and Joe Louis has taken the heavyweight title in one. The world outside of Manzanar is in those pages, the world that interests America.

  “What has happened to the American conscience?” Ralph asks Dr. Harper. “It’s shaming that under pressure we have forgotten that we are a democracy.”

  “They may have reasons for censoring it,” Dr. Harper suggests.

  “Not so much censored as ignored, I bet,” Satomi says. “I guess as far as news is concerned we’re not worth the print.”

  The three of them sit in silence for a while musing on it.

  The riot’s fallout takes its effect. Everyone is on edge, captors and caught alike. The guards aren’t so ready anymore with their smiles, and they don’t call greetings from the gun towers as they used to. The known leaders of the Kibei are being segregated, ready to be sent off to the Tule Lake camp in northern California, where, droved together, it will be easier to control them. The meaner guards have their fun with them, telling them they are being rounded up for the firing squad.

  “You creeps are gonna pay the price now,” they taunt.

  Haru is ordered to join a line to sign the new loyalty oath that will distinguish loyal Japanese from potential enemies. Signing your name on the yes form confirms that you are loyal to America, and if you are a male of the right age, you will be drafted into the Army.

  “I’m happy to do it,” he boasts to his friends in the line behind him as he signs with a flourish.

  Ralph Lazo is not required to sign the loyalty oath, but he walks the eight miles into Lone Pine to register with the local draft board.

  “We’ll see those Germans off, eh, Ralph?” Haru says when Ralph returns.

  “Sure thing.” Ralph smiles. “Only hope I can stay with my buddies.”

  Those who refuse to sign are nicknamed the No No Boys. They are full of bravado, singing “Kimigayo,” the Japanese national anthem, at the top of their voices. Not sure if they are to be deported or culled, they stand up straight, waiting.

  The elderly Issei, who were born in Japan, have the toughest decision to make in the signings. If they autograph the yes paper, they automatically abjure their allegiance to the emperor of Japan.

  “What are we meant to do?” Mr. Sano says in despair. “We are not allowed American citizenship. It will render us stateless.”

  It is the same for Naomi, who is more sanguine about it than Mr. Sano. “What difference does it make?” she says. “They do what they like with us whether we are citizens or not.”

  Joining Up

  “Are you sad?” Cora asks Satomi. “Yes, I am, Cora.” It seems that little can be kept from the child. “I will lose a friend soon, you see.”

  “Not me?”

  “No, not you. You’re my special girl,” she comforts.

  She doesn’t want to think about losing Cora, it’s enough that Haru will be gone soon, that Tamura is fading by the day. Her love for the little girl has grown until it seems to her like a mother’s love. She’s touched by everything about the child, the feel of her hand in her own, her sweet silvery voice, and her eyes so clear, so honest that it hurts sometimes to look at them.

  “You won’t ever lose me, will you, Satomi?” Cora asks, subject herself to the fear of yet more loss.

  “I will try not to, Cora.”

  It would be wrong, she thinks, to make promises. Lately Cora’s nerves are getting the better of her. She has taken to sleeping under her bed with on
ly her thin Army blanket for cover. Since security has tightened up, she is frightened by the guards patrolling past the windows, by the searchlights sweeping the dormitories at night.

  “There are ghosts,” she tells Satomi. “They want to take me away.”

  She keeps her few possessions with her, while she sleeps, in a small string-tied bundle so that in an emergency she can grab it and run.

  “It’s a responsibility,” Tamura says when hearing of it. “You are like a sister to her.”

  The Bakers and the Okihiros in their evening routine sit bunched together on the wooden steps of their barracks. They drink tea and chat companionably. Not, as Naomi frequently remarks, that it can be called tea, really. Tea tastes quite different than the twice-used dregs that if you are quick enough can be had from the mess hall’s kitchen.

  “Hardly better than dust,” she complains. “Still, it satisfies the habit.”

  Long after Naomi and Yumi have gone to bed, Tamura and Eriko stay talking in the dark, reminiscing about their childhoods. They won’t admit it, but they can’t settle until Haru and Satomi return from their walk. Since the riot it’s foolhardy to be out in the dark, but the young won’t listen. They worry that their children don’t have sense enough to stay out of trouble. They worry that since the riot the guards have become trigger-happy, they worry now about everything.

  “Haru is a man now,” Eriko says. “Yet I fret about him as though he were still a boy.”

  “It’s hard to let them go,” Tamura says. “I expect our mothers felt the same.”

  “I have never spent a day of my life without my mother in it,” Eriko says. “You must miss yours, Tamura.”

  “I try not to think about her too much. Although I long sometimes for the flavor of her food, a spoonful of her plum oil. You should have tasted it, Eriko.” Tamura adds to her tea a shot of the potato spirit she brewed with a cure for chest complaints in mind. “Just the scent of it made my mouth water with anticipation.”

  “My mother is a poor cook,” Eriko whispers out of earshot of Naomi. “Her rice is too sticky.”

  “Still, you are lucky to have her.”

  “This is your best medicine yet,” Eriko compliments her, topping up her cup until it becomes more alcohol than tea. “It never fails to make me feel better.”

  By choice, Haru and Satomi on their evening strolls would have walked by the stream that tracks the north boundary of the camp, but the searchlights pick them out there as though for the guards’ sport. They have been lit up more than once for everyone to see and know their business. Lately, though, they have found a place to be together in one of the Buddhist workshops that is never locked.

  The priest, a trusting man, blind to the new order taking place around him, thinks more of the soul than of practical matters. He believes that filial duty is still the order of the day in Manzanar. What point would there be in going to the bother of replacing the lost key? There is little to steal, and not, he believes, even one thief among his congregation.

  They dart into the hut separately, dodging the searchlights, bending their bodies low to the ground to cast a short shadow. Other couples use the workshop too, but it’s first come, first served. No one wants to share.

  If it wasn’t for the reserve in Haru’s nature that reminds her not to show herself reckless, Satomi would give her all and not care for the consequences. Haru must be the one in charge, it seems. While she might go against him in other things, she finds herself cautious in this. They are inching forward, but stubbornness and pride in his strength of will tortures them both.

  “Nobody likes a tease,” she mimics Artie, not understanding herself why since the riot she feels the urge to be the pursuer, to break the pattern of stop and start.

  “Don’t speak like a whore, Sati. You sound like the worst kind of white girl.”

  The touch of her tongue on his lips, her dress half open in invitation, is causing him problems. He wishes that she had been a whore, that she wasn’t Tamura’s daughter.

  It’s odd, he thinks, that she is not the one. He guesses that when the time comes he wants a daisy, not an orchid, for a wife. Satomi has been urging him on since he signed the loyalty paper. Her nature is sensual and he has only to go there, to take without asking. It’s getting so that he can’t trust himself. He’s ready to run.

  He longs more than anything now to have the chance to prove himself, to show America that he is made of the right stuff. He’s determined to go to war, to be out in the world free of Manzanar and of Satomi’s expectations.

  For Satomi the thought that she is about to lose him translates into the strangest pains. She feels them in her lungs when he is near, a coiling twisting thing, and in the bowl of her spine, which aches when he touches her, and in her head, which throbs dully in her absent moments when his image lopes across her mind.

  “So it’s certain you’ll be drafted now.” She can’t look at Haru, doesn’t want him to see her pain.

  “Looks that way,” he says. “They won’t take our loyalty for granted, so we have to prove it. I’m glad of the chance.”

  “Can’t wait to go, can you?” The words are out before she can stop herself. They sound so self-pitying she would take them back if she could, swallow them whole.

  “I haven’t lied,” he says defensively. “You knew I was going to join up first chance I got.”

  “So that’s it, then, you’re off?”

  “Yes, it’ll be soon, I think. Don’t try to make me feel bad about it, Sati.”

  He has never promised her anything, after all. Why should he feel guilty?

  “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 titles 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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.