A Girl Like You

  When she has finished, Tamura rises from her chair and says quietly, “Yes, that is what it says, then.”

  “How can this man remove us from our home, Mother? Surely he doesn’t have the right, it’s un-American.”

  “He is the president of the United States. We are nothing to him.”

  “Father voted for him didn’t he? He must have trusted him.”

  The shocking news seems too much to be absorbed in one go, but the awful certainty that there is no way out brings them to the edge of hysteria. Something hideous is about to happen to them, something without reason, a horrible thing that they are powerless to stop.

  The questions come, each one prompting another that has no answer.

  “Where will they send us?”

  “What will they do with us?”

  “How will we live?”

  “What will happen to the farm?”

  “We must stay together, whatever happens,” Satomi says. “We mustn’t let them separate us.”

  “No, we must not be separated,” Tamura repeats, while harboring an unspoken terror that even their lives might be in danger.

  In the raw panic that overtakes them, tending the crop seems pointless; even cooking is beyond them. They walk about in circles, the shock the news has brought dragging at their insides. Satomi, as though watching through others’ eyes, sees their pacing as spinning, it’s the nearest thing to spinning, she thinks. By dusk they are tired out. Sliding into static mode, they wait as though on alert for the ice to crack, the sea to swallow them up.

  Sleep is out of the question. Satomi takes herself to her mother’s bed, where they talk and hold each other until dawn breaks and they feel the need for coffee.

  “How will we make coffee at this ‘detention center’?” Tamura asks.

  “I don’t know, Mama, I don’t know the answer to anything. Maybe they will make coffee for us.”

  She watches Tamura walk the tidy house, watches her touch every bit of furniture as though taking leave of old friends. She watches her stroke the curtains, and lock the linen box, and take down the china from the big pine dresser that Aaron had made for her.

  Seeing her mother’s pain, she determines never to love too much the place she lives in, never to allow any building to hold part of her in its fabric. Yet under the eviction threat she can’t help feeling a new love for the place herself.

  After a couple of days the fog in her head clears and memories come flooding as she paces around their property. Memories of Artie kissing her at the side of the log shack, putting his tongue in her mouth so that she could taste the lemonade he had been drinking, sweet and sour at the same time. She recalls his voice as clearly, as though he is standing next to her saying it over again: “Don’t be a tease. Nobody likes a tease.”

  In the packing shed she stands in a shaft of light remembering a day when through her fingers she had watched, with dread in her heart, her father tenderly, one by one, drown five perfect little kittens that had been born in the dark behind the box stack.

  “Two cats are all the farm needs,” he had said, as though speaking of spades or pitchforks. Her father’s certainty seems like something wonderful now, something safe and protecting.

  And how old had she been that long hot summer when she had spied on her parents? Thirteen, she’d been thirteen, and all grown up, she had thought then. The memory of the girlish arc of her mother’s back, her father’s rough work hands, the glowing room, is still crystal clear. Tamura had been happy then. Would she ever be again?

  It comes to her that wherever life is to take her, the Baker place is the only home she has ever known, and that all her memories of her childhood on the farm will come now with a serving of pain. Order 9066 will in her future mark her past, and make it hard for her to call herself an American.

  They shakily go over the list of orders that came with the notice. They are to take with them only those possessions that they can carry themselves. They should include enamel plates, eating utensils, and some bedding. They are not to pack food or cameras. Radios are forbidden, as is alcohol. They must report at ten A.M. They must be on time.

  Tamura begins packing the one small suitcase they own, while Satomi uses the old duffel bag that usually hangs behind the kitchen door, housing potatoes.

  Apart from a few clothes and the Indian blanket from her bed, there is nothing much Satomi wants to take, so Tamura fills the rest of the duffel with things that remind her of Aaron. Mania possesses her as she packs his clothes and shoes, a bar of his shaving soap, an old tobacco pouch. She is not to be dissuaded.

  “I need to breathe him in, I want to breathe him in,” she says, weeping. “And what will happen to them if I don’t?”

  “What will happen to everything here? Just take your own things, Mama, just the stuff you will need.”

  Sick at heart, she watches as Tamura fills the bag, hiding their last small sack of rice in the bottom. The sight of it fills her with shame. They are refugees now, to be herded to God knows where in their own country.

  Elena comes sneaking across the field, hugging the woods’ perimeter so as not to be seen by her husband.

  “I’ve heard they may search your place,” she says. “You should burn anything incriminating. Things will be bad enough for you, no need to bring extra trouble to your door.”

  “We have nothing incriminating, Elena. What could we have?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Tamura. Anything that could tie you to Japan, I suppose. Photographs, that sort of thing.”

  “Photographs? Oh, yes, photographs,” Tamura says, confused.

  She takes Elena’s hand, her eyes stinging with tears. “You are a good friend,” she says. “We will not forget you.”

  “Life’s hard enough on the land.” Elena is weeping too. “You’d think they could leave us in peace to get on with it. You don’t deserve this, Tamura. Look after your mother, Sati.”

  They watch her until she is halfway up the field, watch her dart in and out of the trees, skimming the margin between field and wood. They watch her go, willing her on. If Hal catches her, this time they won’t be around to see bruises.

  Tamura goes to the yard and starts a little fire with sticks and grass. She takes the book of Japanese fairy tales that Satomi had loved as a child, the photograph of her mother standing outside her father’s shop that she had kept hidden from Aaron, and lets the flames eat them.

  “They would prefer us to burn ourselves, I suppose,” she says.

  The day before they are due to leave, they summon up the courage to go to the bank to withdraw the money from the farm account, only to find that it has been frozen. The clerk, polite but juiced up with the power to say no, says that it is the same for all the Japanese.

  “Rules are rules, Mrs. Baker, but you needn’t worry none. I guess it will only be a temporary measure.”

  “Ha! And whose rules are they?” Satomi sneers.

  “Government rules, Mrs. Baker,” he says, ignoring Satomi. “We all have to obey the government.”

  When they are back in the truck, numb with shock, a weary resignation overtakes them. It is becoming a habit to accept. Even so, Tamura is too upset to drive safely. She tries, but her steering is erratic, so that she veers toward the middle of the road, alarming the oncoming traffic.

  “We need gas, Satomi.” Her voice is thin, shaky, she’s on the verge of tears. “Just enough to get us home, no point in getting too much. I’ll pull in and you can drive back. Who cares if we break the rules now?”

  At the gas station, the JAP TRADE NOT WANTED sign brings Satomi back to herself with a jolt.

  “We have always bought our gas here,” Tamura says, shaking her head in disbelief. “I remember when they started up and were glad of our business. How can they do this to us now?”

  “Because they are idiots, Mother. Small-brained idiots, that’s why.”

  “Let’s go, Satomi, it doesn’t matter. We’re the same people; it’s them who have changed.”


  “It does matter, and they should know it.”

  Tamura parks up by the pump with a sinking heart. Satomi holds her hand on the horn, rousing the chained dog to barking.

  “We ain’t serving gas to Japs no more,” the red-faced youth she knows from school tells her. “You’d best try elsewhere.”

  “Who are you to tell me that, Kenny Buchan?” she shouts, getting out of the truck, walking around it to face him. She’s so fired up it’s an effort not to hit him. Tamura slides over to the passenger side, calling to her to let it go.

  “My father died defending this country, defending you.” Satomi pokes him in the chest so that he staggers a bit. “You weren’t worth it.”

  The boy shrugs, takes a step backward. He knows Satomi Baker isn’t above landing a punch, but you can’t hit girls, not even Jap ones, not even the ones who hit you.

  “Don’t make no difference what you say, we don’t serve gas to Japs.” He is on his guard, just waiting for her to make a move.

  Something about the set of his stupid face, the lank hair cut straight above his ears, the hillbilly overalls, makes her want to laugh.

  “Relax, Kenny,” she says. “You’re not worth bothering with.”

  Getting behind the wheel, she winds down the window and calls to his retreating back, “Just a kid doing his mama’s bidding.”

  Five hundred yards or so from the farm, they run out of gas and leave the truck on the single-track road, walking home in silence.

  That afternoon Tom Myers, a greasy sort of man with small eyes and a brain to match, calls at the farm in the bigger of his two trucks.

  “Saw your vehicle a way back,” he says. “We had to shove it into the bank to get past.”

  “We ran out of gas, Mr. Myers,” Tamura explains. “I’m sorry to have held you up.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’ve come to help you out, Mrs. Baker. I’ll give you twenty dollars for everything in the house, and thirty for the truck. You won’t do better anywhere.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Myers, we are not about to sell anything.”

  “It’s cash, Mrs. Baker, and I’m betting you could do with cash. In any case, none of it’s any use to you now. Who knows if you’ll ever get back?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Mr. Myers, I don’t even know where we are going. I do know, though, that I’m not selling.”

  “Well, that’s your choice, of course—not a good one, but yours. At least let me take that old truck off your hands. Left there, it’ll just rust up, and you ain’t getting gas around here anytime soon.”

  “As I said, Mr. Myers, we aren’t selling anything.”

  “More fool you, then, Mrs. Baker. Let me know if you change your mind.” He cracks a mean, broken-toothed smile and swaggers back to his truck. “It’ll all get stolen, you know. You can bet on it.”

  “Only by thieves, Mr. Myers, only by no-good thieves.” A small muscle tightens in Tamura’s forehead; she keeps her shoulders straight. It seems important not to cry in front of Tom Myers.

  Satomi puts her arm around Tamura’s thin shoulders and hugs her. She has never loved her mother more.

  “Your father always said that Tom Myers was so greedy that he would eat the world if he could.”

  It occurs to Satomi that it is a wonderful truth that, no matter who has the upper hand, people like Tom Myers will always make a poor showing against people like her mother.

  The day arrives relentlessly as any other. A while before dawn there’s a spattering of rain, then in the rising sun a rainbow arcs over the house.

  “I used to think that was a blessing, a time for spells,” Tamura says. “What a foolish woman I am.”

  It seems that hardly any time has elapsed in the space between Mr. Stedall bringing the leaflet and this morning. The four days have merged into one so that Satomi hardly knows what they have done with the time in between. Shouldn’t they have already closed the shutters, locked the sheds, checked the rattraps? They need more time, much more time.

  In an act more of possession than of habit, Tamura makes her bed, tucking in the sheets tightly, smoothing the cover.

  “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 seashell 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 mothballs, 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 Japanese, 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 appetite, 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 m
attresses.

  “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.”