A Girl Like You (12 page)

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 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 Japan, 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 Jap.

“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 appetite. 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 Japanese 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 Japanese, 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 hello. 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?”