A Girl Like You (28 page)
“You may not believe it, Sati, but you have been my conscience in Manzanar.”
“I think that honor should go to my mother, Doctor, don’t you?”
“No, your mother’s sweetness was a gift to me, but it was your anger that stirred my own.”
She visits Tamura’s grave for the last time.
She’s here beneath my
feet
, she thinks, summoning to mind her last view of Tamura in her freshly laundered dress, blocking from it how her mother’s body must look now. She thinks of the weather to come at Manzanar, of the sweeping winds and the deep snowdrifts, of the cold moon that will for always now shine down on Tamura’s little plot. She won’t ever be able to think of the seasons at Manzanar without picturing Tamura’s grave suffering them. She hardly knows anymore the little girl in her who whispers with a sob, “Goodbye Mama.”
Out of the blue Dr. Harper has offered to drive her to Angelina, to help her with her claim to the farm, and to whatever monies remain in the Baker bank account.
“You will need someone on your side, Satomi. They won’t take a girl of your age seriously. When it comes to money, such people don’t take justice into account.”
His wife is furious with him. She has seen the girl, a pretty enough one for a wife to be suspicious of a husband’s motives. But when she thinks about it, Satomi is not pretty, exactly, she is beautiful, and, strangely, beauty is less of a concern to her than pretty.
Still, he is too old for the long drive. She knows it even if he doesn’t. And he will be gone for days, and for what? To appease some ache in him, some need to feel he is paying an overdue debt to humankind.
“Don’t ask me to go with you,” she says. “It’s a ridiculous idea.”
“It will do me good to see a bit of this country,” he says, hoping she isn’t playing for an invitation. “And the girl needs help.”
“There are plenty of others who need help. Why her?”
“I couldn’t save her mother,” he says, knowing that it’s not a good enough explanation.
“No doctor can save everyone.”
“No, but I would like to save her.”
In the unaccustomed warmth of Eriko’s barrack, Satomi takes her leave of the Okihiros. It is hard to believe that Manzanar is over, that she will never sleep in the barrack again. Despite the heat from the stove, roaring now with its belly full of unrationed wood, she can smell the familiar scent of mold, feel the damp. She squints to keep back the tears.
“It’s painful to part,” Eriko says.
“It’s not too late to change your mind and come with us,” Naomi offers.
Suddenly the offer is tempting, the idea of merging herself into the Okihiro family a comforting one.
“Thank you, Naomi, but I must go to Angelina. I’m determined to get some justice for my parents. They have to pay me the value of my father’s land, allow me the savings he sweated for. They think that giving us twenty-five dollars and a few ration coupons will keep us quiet—it’s an insult.”
“They would like to wipe out our memories of this place,” Eriko says. “Forget that we have been judged, imprisoned without trial.”
“It doesn’t matter what they would like, only the gods can take away our memories,” Naomi reminds them.
Yumi is excited. “We are going home,” she sings.
“I don’t want to think of home,” Eriko says nervously. “Not until we know for sure that we still have one.”
Driving with Dr. Harper in his old Plymouth past the lines of people waiting for the same buses that brought them into Manzanar to take them out of it, Satomi turns her head for a last view of the mountains. Their summits are hidden in the mist, rocks in the wheeling clouds. At their foot the rubble of Manzanar is already being swept away by the winds, buried in the dust, their human stain scoured. The camp has been a grubby aberration on
the map of the twentieth century, but soon it will be as though it never was.
Nausea stirs in her stomach, rises through her body, fills her mouth with a metallic wash. She is all emotion, frazzled, hurt, outraged. And she is leaving Tamura behind and is afraid now of what is ahead of her.
Reminiscent of that first roundup in Angelina, people mill around, sitting on their cases, looking agitated. Children with their family names now, rather than the old hated numbers pinned to their clothes, cling to their parents; old people wait to be told where to go by the soldiers, who have put their guns aside.
As they head toward the gate, they come across the orphanage children being shepherded onto buses. There’s no room for them to pass and Dr. Harper slows the car to a stop and cuts the engine.
Satomi shivers, her skin prickles as she scans the line for Cora, but she is nowhere to be seen. Their leave-taking had been hard on both of them, unsatisfactory. Satomi had expected Cora to sob, but she hadn’t been prepared for her own rising panic. She had attempted calm, hadn’t wanted to frighten Cora with her own fears, but it hadn’t worked.
“I kissed her, hugged her,” she told the Okihiros. “But she isn’t reassured. She thinks that I will forget her.”
She reaches across to the old duffel bag on the backseat of the Plymouth, fumbling around for something.
“I have it,” she says, opening the door and leaping out. “I won’t be long, Dr. Harper.”
The first bus is passing through the gate before she reaches the second already on the move. Cora could be gone, on the road, lost to her. Without hope she bangs on the bus door, holding on to the handle doggedly so that the driver has to stop his vehicle and open up. To her relief, Cora is seated up front behind the driver.
The child’s face is expressionless. She is on the edge of her seat, sitting upright as though ready to take flight. The metal buttons on her felt coat are done up to the neck, she is wearing the yellow mittens that Naomi knitted for her, her arms straining tight around her little bundle of possessions.
“Oh, Cora, you’re here. I thought I’d missed you.”
Cora doesn’t smile, doesn’t say anything as Satomi bends down in front of her.
“Be quick,” the driver says crabbily. “You’re holding everyone up.”
“Look, Cora, see this little bird?” Satomi opens her hand to show Tamura’s carved titmouse sitting in her palm.
Cora nods and touches the little beak.
“He is called a titmouse, Cora. He is sweet, isn’t he?”
“Is it for me?”
“Well, I’m giving him to you for a little while. He was my mother’s gift to me and it hurts me to part with him, so I will want him back when we next meet. Keep him safe, Cora, and I will come for him. It won’t be soon, but I will come.”
She imagines for a moment hauling Cora off the bus, the two of them making a run for it. But she knows that they wouldn’t get far, and what then?
“You getting off or staying for the ride?” the driver says, putting the bus into gear. “Either way, I’m leaving now.”
“Okay. Okay. What difference will a few seconds make?”
She kisses Cora’s cheeks, her tiny lips, touches the collar of her coat. Everything about the child is diminutive, fragile. She is filled with shame. She has failed to keep Cora with her.
“Where are you heading to?” she demands of the driver.
“Back to the relocation camp, we hand them over there.”
“And then? Where are they taken then?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Waving the bus away, she attempts a smile, but her lips tremble, her eyes spike with the tears that come instead. Cora presses her nose to the window, gives a hesitant half wave as her face crumples in distress.
In a futile effort to comfort herself, Satomi sobs, “She’ll be fine. Who could not choose Cora?” Then Dr. Harper is at her side, his arm around her shoulders, guiding her back to the car.
“It’s not fair, Satomi,” he says. “But you will make it right one day. I truly believe that you will. For the time being, though, you must find a way that allows you to remember what is past without spoiling the present.”
He hands her his handkerchief, starts up the engine, and swallows hard. They are all counting what is lost, he thinks.
“It’s so odd to just be driving out, no one to stop us,” she says, drying her eyes with his handkerchief, which smells, like his shirt, of laundry powder.
“Well, then, we’ll play a fanfare to mark the day.” Easing the old sedan into a leisurely roll, he hits the horn in three short playful toots. A guard looks up and tips his hat to him. He feels almost festive.
Near the gate, Mrs. Hamada steps out of a bus line and waves them down.
“I am sorry that you had to leave your home for us, Satomi. Good luck with your life.”
“You needed the space more than me, Mrs. Hamada. Did the children enjoy it?”
“They did. My little Ava said that she could smell roses there. ‘
It smells of roses, Mama
,’ she would say.”
Things look pretty much the same in Angelina, the same stores, the same church, the same crumbling plaster walls on the post office building. Even Mr. Stedall’s dog, gray in the muzzle now, is lying in its usual place by the post office door, waiting for him to finish work.
But it’s not her Angelina anymore. It’s a weird and disorientating place, at one and the same time both strange and familiar. Like a still from some old movie, where she remembers the scene but has forgotten the plot.
Dr. Harper has parked up by the general store and they are sitting in the car gathering themselves after the long drive.
“So, first thoughts?” he asks.
“It’s so much smaller than I remember,” she says.
“Well, that’s the way it is when you visit old haunts.”
“Yes, I’ve read that. Didn’t believe it until now, though.”
It isn’t only about things being smaller, although the schoolyard, immeasurable to her childhood eye, she sees now is merely a yard or two of asphalt, the main street no longer than Sewer Alley. It’s more that she feels herself to be a stranger in the town, a town that she knows fears strangers. Yet the sight of Angelina quiet in the afternoon sun fills her with longing, a longing that she knows it can never satisfy.
“We all experience it at some time,” Dr. Harper says sympathetically. “A yearning to go back to how things were. It’s not so much the place we miss, I think, but our childhoods.”
Out of the car she stands in front of the school, unable for a moment to move. She hasn’t thought of Lily for a while, but now, closing her eyes, her old friend appears in absolute clarity, the scattering of freckles on Lily’s low cheekbones, the wary look in her eyes. A tingle runs the length of her body, makes the hairs on her arms stand to attention. For a second she wishes those old skipping days back. Oh, Lily, Lily.
The wind, the wind, the wind blows high
Blowing Lily through the sky.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She is the girl from the golden city.
She has a boyfriend, one, two, three.
Won’t you tell me who is he?
“Don’t go so fast, Sati, I can’t jump in,” Lily’s voice echoes through her mind.
Mr. Beck is in her head too, staring, ogling her as she skips. He’s a thin, insubstantial figure, hovering with bell in hand. Playtime over.
“I feel sick,” she says, opening her eyes, swaying a little.
Dr. Harper puts his hand to her forehead. “No fever,” he says. “I diagnose time-travel sickness.”
“You’re so smart.” She smiles at him.
He sighs. “Just old.”
As though he hasn’t moved since she last saw him, Mr. Taylor is in his usual place behind the counter of his drugstore, mixing sodas, bagging up candies. He licks his fingers to open the paper bags one by one, lick—flick—open—fill, never missing a beat.
How Tamura had loved those candies, how they had satisfied the sweet tooth that she had been ashamed to indulge in front of Aaron.
She wonders if while they have been incarcerated Mr. Taylor has given a thought to his old customers. Has anyone in Angelina thought about the Baker women?
Dr. Harper orders them coffee at the counter; it comes in thick white mugs that her lips have trouble getting around. She’s used to thin tin, hasn’t drunk from china since that last breakfast with Tamura in the farm’s kitchen.
Why had she and Tamura never ordered coffee? It was too ordinary, she supposes something that could be had at home. Bubble-gum soda had been the thing. She had loved the sweet marshmallow taste of it, but had Tamura really liked the childish drink too? Perhaps she had only ordered it to please her daughter, to share in the fun.
“You’re the Baker kid, aren’t you?” Mr. Taylor says. “You’ve grown a bit.”
Across the street the bank sits shiny in its glossy slick of brown paint. Housed between the general store and the haberdasher’s, it makes its neighboring storefronts look drab. The sidewalk in front of it has been scrubbed, bleached to white, its cleaned-daily windows gleam. If a bank can’t show a good front, then things must be on the slide.
Back in the street, she gets an acrid whiff of smoke from Cromer’s Cannery, it takes her a while to place it. When she does, she thinks of Lily’s cousin Dorothy, of Davey Cromer not wanting to marry beneath him, denying responsibility for the baby. She thinks of Angelina’s unforgiving hierarchy.
Dr. Harper pats her back, gives her a smile, and pushes open the bank’s door confidently. She can tell that he is nervous too. The clerk is smoking behind the polished grille. He’s just like any store
clerk, she tells herself, taking a deep breath. Selling a different kind of stock, is all.
“We’d like to see the manager,” Dr. Harper says.
“Sure, I’ll ask. Want me to tell him what it’s about?”
“It’s private business,” Satomi says.
He looks at her quizzically, puckering up his brow. “You’re Sati Baker, aren’t you? I’m Greg, Artie’s big brother.”
“Oh, sure, I recognize you. How have you been?”
“Got shot up in the war, right leg not much use, but I manage.”
“How’s Artie?”
“Haven’t heard from him in six months. Working at a fifty-cent dance hall in San Fran, last time he wrote. Always fancied the big city, didn’t he?”