A Girl Like You (21 page)

With her kind nature and generosity in sharing her concoctions, Tamura, as ever, draws people to her. Her warmth lends forgiveness to Satomi’s off handedness.

“It hardly seems possible the girl is Tamura’s daughter,” most say.

“She grows on you,” a few reply.

There is a softening toward her, but Satomi will never be one of them and they judge her for it, ignorant of the fact that they too have their prejudices.

In return for Tamura’s medications, presents come that it would be bad manners to refuse. No one wishes to be in debt, after all. A three-legged stool made from scrap lumber, flowers fashioned from paper, a vase formed from a discarded corn tin, and best of all a saucepan with a well-fitting lid.

“The water won’t evaporate when we boil it now,” Tamura says, thanking the giver delightedly. Water rarely reaches more than a low simmer on their lukewarm stove.

“Hmm, if you can get the wood for it,” he says.

In gratitude for Tamura treating his children’s boils with her soot-and-spider’s-web paste, Mr. Hamada, who works clearing the land for the new farm project, brings a selection of the little wooden birds he carves in his spare time, for her to choose from.

“He is a true artist,” Eriko remarks at the sight of them. “They may not have blood or organs, but there is life in those little creatures.”

Tamura takes a long time choosing.

“They are all so beautiful, Mr. Hamada. How can I decide?” In the end she opts for the smallest unpainted one, it seems to beckon her.

“It’s a titmouse,” Mr. Hamada says. “In life they are gray, with an eager expression.”

The little bird sits in the cup of Tamura’s hand, its wings half open, bringing to mind billowing clouds, wind in the grass, memories of birdsong.

“I love it more than anything,” she says gratefully.

With these gifts, their room, like many others in the camp, has
taken on a character of its own so that the word “home” has regained its meaning.

“Even in Sewer Alley people have pride,” Haru says. “Pride in how you live is an ancient Japanese virtue.”

The proof of the pride he speaks of is to be seen all around them. There are hobby gardens where flowers grown from seed bloom in splashes of welcome color, furniture made from scraps of wood, jewelry from chicken bones and the newfangled dental floss that sometimes comes free with toothpaste. Brushes hang neatly in line on exterior walls, and small rough-hewn benches are placed by scrubbed steps. Someone has positioned the splayed limb of a dead pear tree as a sculpture by their door.

“It’s very pleasing,” Naomi says.

“Fine now, maybe,” Mr. Sano sneers. “Come winter it’ll be better burned for firewood.”

Everyone, it seems, is busy with some sort of crafting. Haru has made his mother a set of drawers from discarded cardboard boxes. And Naomi, with her failing sight, her arthritic hands, knits mittens for the orphans. She likes to feel useful.

“When I was young,” she boasts, “my needles went so fast the wool crackled.”

“Sparks flew,” Eriko confirms.

Eriko has fashioned curtains for their one small window from a flowered skirt that the ever-expanding Yumi has grown out of.

“They look so pretty,” Tamura says.

“Playing at doll’s houses, I see,” Mr. Sano remarks on his way past.

Longing to indulge her dressmaker’s love of frills and bows, Tamura makes aprons for the orphans out of the factory off-cuts. She wishes she could have afforded better, pink and white gingham, perhaps, plaids with red in them. She would like to treat the girls, indulge herself in lovely things.

With Naomi’s mittens, Tamura’s aprons, and Lawson’s toys, Satomi rarely goes empty-handed to the orphanage, where she spends the best part of her days caring for the babies, reading to the older children, letting them, to the superintendent’s disapproval, clamber all over her. She tries to be even-handed with them but can’t help favoring the serious little four-year-old, Cora, who is always at her side. The child, who she thinks resembles Tamura a little, has worked her way into her heart so that she can hardly wait to see her each morning, to pick her up, kiss the smooth cheek, the rosebud lips.

“Oh, Mama, you can’t help loving Cora. She just melts your heart.”

Cora has blue-black hair cut short, with bangs that frame her doll-pretty face. She is quick and bright, a frightened, brave little girl who knows how to please.

Satomi wonders what experiences have given Cora the extraordinary ability to sense what adults require of her. She is quiet when they want her to be, always helpful, and a little mother to the babies, quite capable of changing diapers and warming bottles.

As far as anyone can make out, and judging from the way she crosses herself at prayer, she must have come from a Catholic orphanage. Her papers have been mislaid, and when questioned she says she lived in a big house with other children. They guess her age to be about four, they would have said five, six even, if she hadn’t been so small. She is certain, though, that her name is Cora. The superintendent says that it’s not a Japanese name, unless Cora herself has mixed it up with
Kora
, the Japanese demand for,
Listen, you.

“She is a sweet child,” she says. “If only they were all like her.”

Joining in with the remaking of Manzanar, the orphanage has planted a lawn, and built a wraparound porch to unite its three
barracks. They plan flower borders, a swing for the children if they can find someone to make it.

There are no curbs or sidewalks in the camp, no stores, but if the barbed wire and the gun towers were suddenly to disappear, Manzanar these days might look, through forgiving eyes, much the same as any small American town. The American dream of hearth and home, although battered, seems to be recovering. Yet somehow Manzanar looking more like home only serves to highlight the fact that they are not free.

Frustration boils away under the surface. There is always the sense of waiting in the air, humor is more often than not dark, and irony has replaced optimism. The tension between the Citizens League and the Kibei is a constant, and to add to it, gangs of youths loyal to neither strut about the camp, less willing to please than their older siblings. The feeling that Manzanar’s internees have that they are being unfairly, even cruelly treated, that they have lost something precious that can never be regained, refuses to fade.

Riot

In the freezing air of December when no one is warm enough and everyone is hungry for the food of home, a riot erupts in the camp seemingly out of nowhere.

Settling down for the evening, and far from the heart of it, the residents of Sewer Alley are among the last to open their doors, to listen and try to make out what the distant rumble of feet, the shouting, are all about.

Dr. Harper comes to advise Tamura to stay in their barrack.

“The military police have arrested three men for beating up an informer,” he tells her. “They took him from his bed and almost killed him. We have him in the hospital. Everyone is angry at the arrest, and there is a crowd demanding their release. I don’t think they are going to settle anytime soon. Please stay home, Tamura, keep out of it. And put your light out, no point in attracting attention.”

“It was kind of you to come,” Tamura says, blushing at being singled out by him. “We are all grateful, Dr. Harper.”

“No need for gratitude, Tamura. I am concerned for you, that’s all.” He fights the urge he has to stay, to keep by her side, to protect her. “Well, remember the light,” he says, hovering at the door. “I’ll be in the hospital all night if you need me.”

Hearing Dr. Harper’s advice through the wall, Naomi asks
Eriko to leave their light on. “The moon’s on the wane and I can’t bear to sit in the dark. It makes the cold seem worse somehow.” Her voice is wispy, shaking a little.

Naomi has had enough of the cold. Her hand is still bandaged from where it stuck to the barrack’s frozen doorknob, pulling the skin from her palm as she tugged her hand free.

“It’s stubborn to heal,” she complains. “Old age makes the body stubborn.”

She can hardly move these days, and knitting now is out of the question. The bones in her fingers are stiff, frozen into immobility.

Haru, on his way to Sewer Alley, stops Dr. Harper on his own way to the hospital. “It’s nothing much, is it, Doctor? It’ll all blow over soon, won’t it?”

“Hard to say, could go either way, boy.” He puts a hand on Haru’s shoulder. “Look after them,” he says, thinking in the moment only of Tamura.

Haru paces the alley, not knowing what he is looking for, his eyes tracking every movement. He guesses that the informer is a member of his own American Citizens League.

“Japanese Uncle Toms,” the Kibei accuse league members.

“Traitors to America,” the league members retort to the Kibei.

Haru thinks the Kibei mad, troublemakers, out to spoil.

As he paces, the news spreads. Mothers begin appearing at doors, calling their children in from play, worrying about where the older ones might be.

“Have you seen Toru?”

“Where is Yukio? He should be home by now.”

Lights go out, people stop calling to each other. Sewer Alley, lit only by a thin portion of moon, looks dim and ghostly.

Eriko pleads for Haru to come inside, but he doesn’t want to hide indoors like a coward.

“What could this informer have told them that would create all
this trouble?” Tamura asks him on her way to Eriko’s. “They already know there is gambling and liquor, they have always looked the other way.”

“It’s more likely to be that he has given them the names of those Kibei who call themselves Japan’s underground. You must have heard their talk, Tamura, seen the way they stir up trouble.”

“Yes, but they are only boys trying to be men.”

“Maybe, but they are not harmless.”

Tamura joins the Okihiros in their room, where Satomi finds her on her return from the orphanage. She has been running and is out of breath.

“I was worried about you. You are very late, Satomi.”

“I came the long way around to avoid the fights. That show-off boy who works with Haru at the school asked me if I was with them or against them. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“Is the crowd dispersing?” Haru calls through the open door.

“I don’t think so. I heard them shouting and chanting. I tried to find Lawson to ask him what was going on, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.” She is more excited than afraid, thrilled by the drama, the change of pace in the day.

“We must stay together,” Eriko says. “There is safety in numbers.”

“Yes, and at least only one stove will need feeding,” Tamura says, looking on the bright side as usual.

For once Satomi approves of her mother’s optimism. It’s good to be near Haru, who at his mother’s pleading has reluctantly come inside.

“Just for a moment, just to get warm,” he says.

As they sit close, she attempts nonchalance, as though the salty scent of him, the warmth of his body against hers, isn’t sending a run of pleasure through her. It hurts to love him so much, to be
the one who loves more. If only he would lose the desire to reform her she might in turn try harder to please him.

“I wish I could bring Cora here,” she says. “Keep her safe with us. She was so sweet today, clinging to me, not wanting me to leave.”

“She is safer where she is,” Haru says. “No one is going to bother with the orphanage.”

They hear the rioters trawling the camp, seeking out the
inu
, a word that Satomi has never heard before.

“It’s a special word,” Eriko says. “It means both dog and traitor.”

“Oh, yes, I had forgotten it,” Tamura says. “I have forgotten so much.”

There are bangs and shouts and the sound of running feet, and Mr. Sano comes to tell them that the rioters are smashing up property and beating up those they have named as traitors to their race.

“We are herded here like animals,” he says. “Our administrators have been black-marketing our meat and sugar, and still there are informers, traitors. Damn stoolies, no wonder people are mad.”

“Are they traitors or just good Americans?” Haru is getting more agitated by the minute. “It’s not enough just to say that we are loyal, Mr. Sano. We must prove it.”

Mr. Sano stares at him scornfully. “It’s the young who will be the death of us,” he exclaims, raising his hands in exasperation. “Their blood is always hot, their passions ridiculous.”

Eriko and Tamura can’t meet each other’s eyes for fear they may laugh.

Shortly after Mr. Sano leaves, two wild-eyed young men with baseball bats burst through their door, shouting something about freedom before running off toward the new drainage works by the cemetery.

“We should have listened to Dr. Harper and put the light out,” Yumi says reclaiming her child’s voice. She is shaking with fright.

The shock of the intrusion, along with the rush of cold air entering their barrack, has brought them to their feet. Eriko puts out their light.

“What’s happening now?” Haru shouts after the men. “What’s the latest?”

“We’re taking control, you bonehead,” one of them shouts back. “We’re going to smash up the waterworks. Come with us.”

“I’m frightened,” Eriko tells Haru. “Your sister and grandmother are frightened. You must stay with us, Haru, please don’t go out.”

She thinks that Mr. Sano is right about the young. They want to be warriors, and Haru is no different. If he leaves their barrack, she fears that she might never see him alive again.

But he has had enough of being among the women, and when a burst of gunfire brings a few seconds’ silence in its wake he makes for the door.

“I’m going to find out what is happening. I’ll be back soon.” He pulls his arm away from Eriko’s hold on it. “Let me be a man, Mother,” he insists, and she releases him.

“I’m coming with you, Haru.”

“No, Satomi, stay with your mother. Your place is with her.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I want to see for myself.” She is out of the door before Tamura can say anything.

He begins to run, long strides that put a distance between them, making it hard for her to keep up. He wants to be with his friends from the league, he wants to find Ralph and talk it over with him. It’s too shameful having a girl tagging along. But when she falls behind he gets worried and stops, looking back to see if she has turned for home.