A Pledge of Silence (22 page)

Wade’s manner became grave. “You shouldn’t! You don’t know.”

“I do know! And it’s my choice. It’s the least I can do. I can’t just turn a blind eye.”

“But the guards are dangerous. They’re the dregs of the Jap army, Margie. The officers treat them like animals. They have no regard for human life. Do I have to get down on my knees and beg?” He pulled her close into a protective hug.

Her head against his chest, she could feel the beating of his heart. She said, “Tell me about Mary Poppins. I know someone, but I can’t believe she would … You’ve seen her outside the gate sitting in a limo. How do you know her?”

He checked for unwanted listeners from the window before they sat down at the table. “She hid me after the Japs entered Manila. She runs a call-girl ring catering to Japanese officers. While I was there, she had just a few Filipino girls. They were gorgeous, flawlessly dressed, multilingual, skilled at wheedling out information, and they hated the Japanese. Adele—Mary Poppins—has runners who pass information to the guerillas on Bataan.”

Margie felt her jaw drop.

“She’s shrewd,” Wade went on. “The big bucks the Jap officers fork over for her girls’ company get smuggled into the POW camps. As Kodak said, it’s a nice operation.”

From outside came the sounds of cheering and children’s excited voices. Margie looked out the window. “Santa’s coming in a truck. Those babies don’t even realize …” She turned back to Wade. “That last dispatch of yours from Sternberg. Did you interview Royce Sherman?”

“Dr. Sherman. Big guy? Texas accent? I remember him. The Japanese were two steps from Manila and he was spreading sunshine.”

“What did he say?” she prodded, fishing for any tidbit of information.

“He said he was shipping wounded soldiers out as fast as he could. Most of them were immobile, some unconscious. There was no way he’d get them all out. He didn’t say that, but I knew it. Was he a friend?”

A friend? She felt the urgency of Royce’s last kiss. “Yes,” she whispered, “a friend.” A lump rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down. “Who’s Henry?”

“Another correspondent. He got between me and a bullet.”

She touched his arm. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Maybe someday.” He picked up his guitar and strummed a few minor chords.

New Year’s Day dawned with the cheerless wail of a distant siren, foreshadowing a sad year of steady decline. Prices soared when extra food became scarce: sugar and other foods the internees craved became unobtainable. Babies cried, young children begged, wily teens risked being caught stealing rice from the kitchens. Difficult to repair and impossible to replace, their clothing wore out. The odds and ends of everyday life—soap, toothbrushes, toilet paper—remained in short supply. Many people hoarded, traded, or stole what little was available.

Those who stayed busy fared best. Although always lethargic, Margie and Wade encouraged each other to attend classes and concerts, participate in plays and sports, and to work in the gardens. They read and discussed books obtained from the internee library. Gracie and Kenneth, a professor of ancient history from Chicago, became a couple. The foursome played endless card games, shared meals, argued the finer points of baseball, analyzed the plots of movies seen before the war, rating the actors, directors, and special effects. They sang every song any of them had ever learned, from childhood forward. Wade provided the melodies with his guitar while the others banged and tootled an assortment of improvised instruments.

Gracie sniffed. She had been angry all afternoon, and the poker hand she held wasn’t mollifying her ire. She threw down her cards, announcing, “I’d rather bow to an ape!”

“Is that a fold?” Margie asked.

Gracie scowled. “S’not funny. That dog-breath guard slapped my face because my bow wasn’t up to his standard!”

Kenneth said,

“The Japanese guard,

A louse in the bowel of man

Farts out with a bow.”

Wade returned,

“The Japanese bow,

Sniff as if at a dog’s ass,

Only wanting more.”

Margie whispered,

“Retaliation,

The craved sugar of freedom

Must be provided.”

Retaliation was the intent and was communicated by a wink or a worried look when 23 nurses gathered at the top of the main building’s stairwell. Dressed for work, they wore handmade uniforms, wrinkled, tattered and splattered with old blood. Many carried a five-pound coffee can with braided handles, the latest fashion in totes.

“All right,” Margie whispered. “One at a time. Shh … no giggling.”

Helen left first, trading a bow with the guard at the door.

A few minutes later, Gracie and he exchanged an obeisance.

With Sally, he bowed long and low.

Soon Boots followed.

Ruth Ann kept the guard bobbing …

then Tildy …

and Rosie …

and Louise …

and 14 others …

and finally Margie.

Not seeing the end coming, the guard turned his back.

Discreetly observing the guards, Margie noticed most fit into types: the callow young, the dull-witted, or older, put-out-to-pasture men. Quick to codify Japanese weaknesses, the guard-watchers assigned names like Mighty Mouse, the bully, Nobody’s Home, the dullard, or Quacker, whose frequent rants sounded like Donald Duck. Slap-Slap relished smacking faces. Beetle Bailey played kindly with the children, scratching tic-tac-toe in the dirt and giving the winner a banana or biscuit. Some guards liked to flirt, so Margie played what she knew was a dangerous game, furtively engaging them in Pidgin banter to study their attitudes and learn their habits. A lonely guard cautiously shared with Margie a picture of his wife and baby son.

She recorded her findings on tiny pieces of paper that she rolled up tightly and hid in a hollowed-out cigarette. Wade warned her, “Don’t do this, Margie. You’re too visible. You’re putting Helen in danger too. If you’re caught, death won’t be the worst of it.”

The resourceful residents of Santo Tomas whittled crochet hooks and knitting needles out of bamboo to make their own socks and underwear from twine scrounged from the kitchens and supply docks. Both sexes preferred the cool-to-wear, easy-to-make G-strings. After curfew, sitting cross-legged on their cots in the evening half-light, the women talked as they stitched.

“What are you making, Margie? It looks like it’s getting kind of big.”

“It’s socks for Wade. He’s been a good sport making all these crochet hooks.”

“I think he’s smitten, Margie.”

Margie sniffed to stem the tears that all afternoon had lurked beneath the surface. Smitten. That’s what Dr. Corolla had said about Royce. Hearing “the boy is smitten,” had made her so happy so long ago. Now, she had trouble remembering his face.

“Did you hear me, Margie? I think Wade has a thing for you.”

“I don’t know. We’re good friends. He reminds me of home, is all.”

Tildy called out, “Has anyone worn these socks yet? I wore a pair today, and they killed my feet.”

“Let me see them,” Margie said.

Tildy tossed the offending footwear to her.

“Well, there’s your problem. The twine’s too thick. Unravel the sock and split the twine. They’ll come out softer, and you’ll have two for one.”

As she tossed the sock back, a piercing scream ripped through the soft air, making Margie cower on her cot. The tortured shrieks of three captured escapees had tormented the internees all afternoon and now into the night. Dropping her crochet hook and covering her ears, Margie tried to block out the agonized wails. “All this hell,” she despaired.

The days wore on. Margie drifted into a mental stupor she found impossible to shake as the prime of her life slipped away. She willed herself to get off her cot. Finding a scrap of paper, she wrote,
G: Sidewinder. L2
. Her observations of the guard they called Sidewinder revealed the spinelessness that made him a target for bullies. She suggested Level Two surveillance. As always, she rolled the paper into a tight tube, which she slid inside a hollowed-out cigarette. She put the smoke back into the pack, and left the pack on the table. Later on, she planned to pass the cigarette to Faye Marco’s sister, who worked at the clinic.

She heard the ominous sound of boots tramping as a contingent of guards fanned out through Broadway. Before she could react, two men burst into her shanty and grabbed her roughly. She struggled not to glance at the damning pack of cigarettes. Propelled out the door, she stood with other Broadway residents while guards searched the shanties for contraband. She heard her cot squeak, then the mattress ripping. Pots banged and dishes rattled, followed by an outburst of creepy giggling. Her mouth went dry, and she couldn’t swallow. Helen! Innocent, but the horrors she would suffer if the guards found that cigarette!

The men came out of her shanty, one with her G-string protruding from his uniform pocket. He patted her down, his hands lingering over her breasts and buttocks, the lump in his pants proving his lurid pleasure. The other scrunched her red curls, then unsheathed his knife. She screamed and tried to twist away, but he kept her hair in his grasp. Laughing, he hacked off a lock, then held up his treasure for all to see.

Wade emerged from his shanty with a guard on each arm just as Margie screamed. He lurched out of his escorts’ grip. He ran a few steps toward her before they caught up and hit him with the butt of a rifle. When he fell to the ground, they kicked him until he stopped moving.

Horrified, Margie could only watch.

By the time the guards retreated, Broadway looked like a tornado had hit it, with shanties knocked cockeyed and their contents strewn in the dirt. Her neighbor Harry helped Wade into Margie’s shack. A cut on his forehead bled freely, and his eye was swelling shut. He tried to speak, but could only mumble. Harry whispered, “It’s all right. We moved it last night.”

Together, they cleaned and bandaged Wade’s wounds, while Margie choked back a rising tide of fear. The pack of cigarettes she had left on the table had gone missing. Her ears strained to hear sounds of the guards returning, and her gaze often flitted to the door.

Harry took a bottle from under his shirt and they both gulped a slug of burning liquid. Harry coughed and said, “Come and get me if you need help with him.” He nodded toward Wade, then left.

Relieved by Harry’s departure, Margie searched frantically through the mess the guards had left. She finally found the cigarettes under the table in a corner. Righting a chair, she sat down to catch her breath. “Creeps,” she said aloud. Remembering the G-string hanging from the guard’s pocket, she snorted, “Stupid idiots.”

Her hands shook as she retrieved the altered cigarette from the pack, removed the hidden scrap of paper, and reread the cryptic message. She pondered what to do with it. Sidewinder was an incompetent guard and probably easily bribed, information Faye Marco’s organization would find valuable—at what cost, however, to her safety and that of those closest to her? The scenarios flashing through her mind made her shiver.

Wade moaned and she went to him. Blood seeped through the bandage. He reached to where the guard had cut her hair. His lips barely moving, he said, “Stay away from the guards, Margie.”

She watched his chest rise and fall, his breathing labored. He had warned her the guards could be brutal on a whim, and she remembered the times she teased them to frustration. She shivered again, this time at her own naïveté.

She lit a cigarette to calm her nerves, then used the burning match to set fire to the incriminating scrap of paper and tossed it in the ashtray.

The spring monsoon arrived, inundating Manila with thousands of gallons of rain. High winds ripped a hole in Margie’s shanty’s roof that Wade unsuccessfully tried to repair. Water dripped through it into a bucket, plinking as regularly as a metronome. Outside, ankle-deep mud made walking even a short distance difficult and dangerous.

The Philippines had only two seasons, it seemed—wet-hot and dry-hot. Margie yearned for the cooler temperatures of home, where strawberries would be budding and early green onions and lettuce would be ready for picking. She asked her friends, “Do you still dream about home like I do? We’ve been a year without mail.”

Tildy said, “I do. There’s not a day I don’t think about my sister. She was pregnant when I left.”

Gracie said, “My mama was ill. I didn’t know it until it was too late for me to back out. I always wonder …”

Ruth Ann said, “A year’s a long time. Maybe we’ve been forgotten.”

The others chorused, “No!”

Helen added, “Don’t ever think that! I think that somewhere there’s a warehouse stuffed with letters from home, boxes of cookies, and new pajamas.”

Tildy scoffed, “I think some Nip bugger burned our letters, ate our cookies, and is wearing our pajamas.”

Margie sighed, “Probably so, but I’d give my right arm for a letter.”

As it turned out, she didn’t have to sacrifice a limb, because soon afterward bags of mail got delivered. The letters had been opened and censored, but no one cared. Margie and Helen squished through the mud to their shanty, each clutching two precious missives close to her chest.

Helen said, “Wait! This calls for a celebration.” She poured tea into two cups and burrowed under her mattress to retrieve a peppermint stick she had saved. “Cheers!” she said as they clinked cups.

With tea, candy, and their prized letters, they anticipated an afternoon of pure pleasure. They would read, reread, share, savor, and discuss the letters
ad infinitum
with their friends, opening a whole cherished world through them.

Margie opened the one from her parents. Her mother wrote that she didn’t think Margie was receiving her letters even though she wrote one every week. She and Daddy had contacted the Red Cross, but it offered little information except to say the Japanese had blocked all correspondence from the Philippines. She hoped Margie was safe and well, and prayed every night for her to return home.