A Girl Like You (7 page)

He has thought better about showing a photograph of Tamura around. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to tell his so-called shipmates that his wife is Japanese. They wouldn’t understand, and he  can’t bear the thought of exposing Tamura to their crude comments.

Some of the guys stick pictures of their wives on their lockers, and then have to take the jokes, the wolf whistles and the mockery that the good-looking ones will soon be sending “Dear John” letters. Let them think him secretive, he’ll sail through his time, let the wind take him, keep his family to himself.

In the moments before sleep he closes his eyes and imagines himself working his fields. He summons up the cool fragrance of
green tomatoes as they ripen in the sun. It’s a source of pride for him that he can tell what stage his crop is at simply by the smell. First comes the sharp trace of green in the flower, the scent of cologne, then as the fruit buds a smell as close to pickle as you’ll get, and then the ready-for-picking, full-blown peachy perfume that fills the packing shed for days.

Finding it hard to take orders, to have his days dictated by time sheets, he begins sending his own orders home, long lists of instructions for Tamura and Satomi, lists that comfort him and irritate them.

Make sure you clean out the rain barrels right down to the bottom. The water will turn brackish if you don’t. And Tamura, I know you don’t like it but the traps must be set in the packing sheds. We’ll be overrun if you don’t. Get Satomi to do it and tell her to be sure to get rid of the dead ones. And don’t forget to order the fertilizer in good time, and …

Once a letter is stamped and posted, his mind empties for a bit, and he feels at ease. But a day or so later he has thought up a whole new list of things for them to do. He dreads the idea of returning to the farm and finding it neglected. You can’t blame them, but women aren’t up to the job, they won’t see what’s needed, and Tamura has never been strong.

Encouraged by the tone of the headlines in the
Los Angeles Times
, the folks in Angelina figure that war with Japan is a surefire thing. The men are already being called up, and those who haven’t received their papers are rushing to volunteer before they are summoned. No one wants to be thought unwilling, unpatriotic.

The town seems half empty without them. Old men see their sons off with fear in their eyes, young fathers leave their families
with trepidation. The land is left to the ministrations of grandfathers, schoolboys, and the women.

The old men gather together in the farmers’ cooperative, feeling themselves in charge, half alive again. War is the main topic of conversation. The threat from Japan is changing things, taking away the routine of their lives, their ease of mind. Angelina’s Japanese take the brunt of their anger.

“The whole damn lot of them got a secret allegiance to Japan.”

“When push comes to shove they can’t be trusted.”

Lily, on the lookout for an excuse to ditch Satomi, is half sick with having to make-believe that Satomi is her best friend. She doesn’t share her home-packed lunches with her anymore, refusing Tamura’s fish and rice balls that she is usually greedy for.

“Can’t stomach fish anymore. Guess I’m allergic or something.”

Lily’s mother has warned that Japs can’t be trusted not to put something in the food. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

“That’s a shame, you loved them so much,” Satomi says without sympathy. She knows what’s going on with Lily, all right.

“Yeah, well, things change, I guess.”

“I’m the same person, Lily.”

“I know that, Sati.” Lily stares her down. “I’m only talking about fish balls.”

Despite that Lily is being weird, despite that she’s getting a rougher ride at school, Satomi is enjoying life without Aaron around. It’s easy now to get her own way, tempting to take advantage of her mother’s gentle nature. She likes home better without her father in it, that’s for sure. She can hardly remember his rules now, smoking as she does without a thought to being caught, leaving her hair down, getting behind with her chores. Every now and then, though, she hears Tamura sigh in her bed, and she suffers the loss of Aaron herself, the fear that life is shifting too quickly.

Things with Artie are still on, although she never knows where
she stands with him these days. He is off hand with her at school, making out that things have changed between them, but full-on with her when it is just the two of them.

“No point in us riling people up, they’re doing enough of that themselves.”

“They are morons, Artie, all of them.”

“Yeah, well, fuck ’em, eh?”

Artie likes it better with Aaron away too. He calls at the farm with the excuse that he has come to help Satomi and Tamura with the chores.

“Now that you don’t have a man around,” he preens.

He sits around the place, watching Satomi pile the wood up in the lean-to, clean out the sheds, and stack the tomato boxes, talking to her all the while. He doesn’t mind releasing the dead rats from the traps, though.

“Girls shouldn’t have to,” he says as he practices flinging them across the fields, seeing how far he can make them fly.

In the seed store that stinks of the rats, a thicker sort of mousy, he kisses her, long, passionate kisses, the way he thinks girls like to be kissed. He gets a kick from the risk that Mrs. Baker might come looking for them, see his hands all over Satomi. He likes to think he might be a man with the power to shock. He pushes Satomi up against the wall, his hands wandering under her dress, wanting it so bad that he thinks sometimes of forcing her.

“Come on, Sati, don’t hold out. Let’s do it now.” She is driving him crazy, getting him hot, and doing it on purpose, most like. “When are you gonna say yes, plenty of girls would have by now.”

“I guess that I’m not one of them, then. Take your ring back, if you want, give it to someone else.” She is tiring of Artie, if she’s honest. She doesn’t like the way he ignores her at school, thinks it cowardly.

“Who knows, maybe I will.”

“Fine with me, Artie, just say the word.”

Christ, he could have any girl he wants, why does it have to be Satomi Baker? If only she would say yes, they could do it and maybe he could forget about her, move on. Lily, for one, is panting for it.

Tamura makes them lemonade, laughs at Artie’s jokes, and is kinder to him than Satomi is. She likes having him around the place, he livens things up, makes her feel that they are still part of the world, part of Angelina. She watches Satomi and Artie dance on the scrub of earth outside the kitchen door, to the records that Artie brings over, “In the Mood,” and his favorite, “Down Argentina Way.” Artie has rhythm, she thinks, that free vulgar sort of American rhythm. He spins Satomi into him, pushing her away, pulling her near, showing off his fancy footwork. He can boogie with the best of them.

“Come on, Mrs. Baker, give it a try,” he offers.

She longs to but always refuses. She is too shy, contained in the way that Japanese females are. Modest, her mother would say. And what would Aaron have thought? He wouldn’t approve of her entertaining Artie, that’s for sure. She doesn’t have the heart or the energy to forbid his visits, though. Artie is fun, and Satomi needs someone of her own age around. Lily, it seems, has deserted. She hopes, though, that Artie isn’t the one for Satomi. There is nothing of Aaron’s steel in the boy.

While her mother sleeps, Satomi stays up in the moon hours, driving the old truck over the farm, parking up behind the sheds, smoking and gazing at the skating stars. She imagines that if she concentrates on them long enough, their energy, which seems to her to be in some mysterious way linked to her own destiny, will somehow enter her bloodstream and a different kind of life will begin.

The waiting for that different life would be fine if only the
thought of war didn’t prey on her mind so much, if only she didn’t fear Japan. The schoolyard talk is full of lurid descriptions of the cruelties that the Japanese
bastards
will inflict if they get the upper hand. Panic rises in her chest when she thinks about
the yellow peril.

The occasional blink of a plane’s taillight heading off into the night sets her to imagining foreign lands, lives lived more excitingly than her own. One day maybe something wonderful will happen and she will be on that plane. She will see deserts, and beaches with pink sand, and all the places Mr. Beck has told them about in geography.

“You’re not the only one who wants to get out,” she tells Artie. “I’m not going to get stuck in Angelina for the rest of my life. I want to see the world too.”

“We could go to Los Angeles,” Artie offers. “It’s got to be the best place on earth.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, people talk, things get around. No place on earth like Los Angeles, they say.”

“You don’t want to travel far, then, Artie?”

“No need.”

In the space when she is not thinking about letting Artie go, or of the Japs coming to get them, she takes the time to notice that the house is unpleasantly quiet without Aaron, that the fields are weedy at the edges, that her mother is filled with sadness.

Tamura has become listless, as though while waiting for Aaron’s return she has gone into slow motion. She works the land every day, exhausting labor even with Satomi’s help. Yet without shirts to wash and boots to clean, she feels at a loss. Being a creature of habit, she cooks the same meals, serves them on the same day of the week that Aaron had insisted on. But she can’t be bothered with the finer details and the meals seem flavorless to Satomi.

“No more soba noodles, please, Mama. You don’t like them much, I hate them, what’s the point?”

But as though bad luck will follow if she doesn’t, as though some link between her and Aaron will be severed, Tamura goes on making the noodles that only Aaron likes. The velvety dough sticks to her hands, little flecks of it settle in her hair like snow-flakes. It’s a messy business, familiar and somehow comforting.

“Fat white worms, horrible soft gloopy things,” Satomi complains to Artie. “I just can’t bring myself to swallow them. Can’t think why Father likes them so much.”

She longs for hamburger, for steak, but never asks for them.

Used to having Aaron to guide her, Tamura turns to Satomi for confirmation of every decision she makes. It seems to Satomi that overnight mother and daughter roles have been reversed. Tamura is letting go, happy for her to be in charge.

When she notices that her mother has started squinting, she has to force Tamura to town for the sight test with the visiting optician. The steel-rimmed prescription glasses that Tamura receives a month later make her look older than her forty years.

“I won’t wear them in front of your father.” She grimaces into the mirror. “They make me look like my mother.”

“Well, your mother sure must have been pretty,” Satomi soothes. “Was she?”

Tamura doesn’t answer. Since Aaron left it seems more important than ever to her to stick to his rules, to the pact they had made all those years ago.
The old families
, as Aaron has labeled them, as though they are some long-lost ancient dynasty, must remain in the past.

With twenty-twenty vision restored, Tamura sets about polishing.

“Why didn’t you tell me things were getting so dusty?”

“I didn’t notice, Mother.”

“Oh, Satomi, what kind of wife will you make?” she despairs.

Lily hasn’t been herself of late. She’s been moody and more than a bit off hand with Satomi. Satomi’s not taking her moods seriously. Lily will come around soon enough. Angelina being on alert must be as upsetting for Lily as it is for her. They’ll ride the troubles out, still be friends when everything settles down.

Since they had smiled at each other on day one of first grade, their friendship has been steady, unbreakable, she thinks. So everything that happens on a Sunday morning in Miss Ray’s after-service needlework class, as she blanket-stitches around her piece of patchwork for the wall hanging of GOD SEES ALL, comes as a shock.

Lily had talked her into joining the class in the first place, so that Miss Ray, who likes to save souls, would see that she was doing her best to bring Satomi into the fold.

“Everyone should do their bit for the church,” Lily had coaxed. “And you get grape juice and a pretzel twist, two if you’re lucky. You should really be a churchgoer, but I guess Miss Ray will let you off on account of your mother being, well, you know.”

Satomi did know, but as usual with Lily she didn’t push it. Lily didn’t mean anything by it, it was just her way. The class wasn’t so bad, it got her out of chores for a bit, and she never saw Artie on a Sunday anyway, what with his family being holy-rolling-religious.

“God and duty first,” was Mr. Goodwin’s fatherly advice to Artie. “Good Christians go to church with their people on Sundays.”

“Yeah, good boring Christians,” Artie complained. “Nothing but Bible reading and silence, it drives me nuts.”

Just before it’s time to return their needles and cottons to the pine chest marked PATCHWORK, Mr. Beck, dressed in his black Sunday-best suit, reels through the big pine door.

“Miss Ray, Miss Ray,” he repeats at full volume on his way up the aisle, letting the door bang loudly behind him.

“Careful, Mr. Beck.” Miss Ray extends her arm uselessly as he rushes toward her, knocking over the pattern stand, sending her book of patchwork pictures flying.

The class erupts in laughter as Mr. Beck cups his palm against Miss Ray’s cheek and whispers something in her ear.

A note lands on Satomi’s lap. “Pass it on,” a voice whispers.

He loves her. Pass it on
, it says.

They can tell the news is big by the way Miss Ray’s eyes widen and go dark. Mr. Beck sure has the jitters about something. His body is shaking, his mouth twitching nervously, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, which flutter about like the big white butterflies that come every year at pea-cropping time. He places one of them on Miss Ray’s shoulder as though to steady her, to steady himself.