Forgiveness (18 page)

On the train, she had been a prisoner. Off the train, she was a slave.

A farmer by the name of Oscar Johnson took her parents, Mary,
Susanne, and Pat. He was a large Swedish man in overalls with a round face and ruddy cheeks. He told them they were going to his farm in Coaldale, ten miles outside Lethbridge.

Soon after that, a farmer with a wide gait slowly made his way towards Mitsue. He was staring back and forth between her and the paper he held in his hand.

“Youse Sakamatos?”

“Sakamoto family,” Hideo said, waving his finger to indicate them.

“Okay. I’m Mr. Rutt, and you are all coming to work for me.”

Hideo nodded and picked up the rice box. He nodded to everyone else to do likewise.

That was it. They had all been claimed and would soon be on their way to their new homes. They were given ten minutes to write down where their friends and family were going. They all ran around exchanging P.O. box numbers on scraps of paper.

Where are you going?

Barnwell.

Where are you going?

Taber.

Where are you going?

Raymond. It is south of here.

Where are you going?

Picture Butte. It’s across a ravine, only it’s dry so they call them coulees.

They were loaded onto the backs of farmers’ trucks and transported to these unknown destinations with only the clothes on their backs and their bags. Mitsue, Hideo, Hanpei, Wari, and June all bounced around in the back of Rutt’s big old truck. It was full of manure. She tried to hang on and not fall into it.

The last few miles were bumpy and Wari was still very sore on her left side. It was a lingering pain from a fall in Vancouver. Hideo tried to keep her still. The truck took a sharp left onto a laneway and Mitsue could see a big barn and an old farmhouse. It was a desolate-looking place. Rutt hit the brakes hard, jolting everyone forward, and they stopped with a thud. Wari moaned.

Mitsue’s teeth were clenched from stress as they gathered themselves slowly. Hideo was off first and he helped everyone down from the truck. The ground was muddy and Mitsue’s heels sank. She felt silly for having worn those shoes, but she had wanted to make a good impression on the people whose custody they would be in. She wanted them to know that her family were decent and civilized. That they were not enemies, they were not animals.

“Your place is behind the barn. Unload your stuff and I’ll come by to show you around.”

They each picked up a bag and made their way towards the barn. Mitsue stepped carefully around the muddy patches. The dirt path was only a hundred yards or so, but it was the longest walk of her life. Mitsue’s body became more tense with each step. She hoped that the house behind the barn would be decent. The barn itself was not a good omen. It was a rickety thing that needed paint. Through the wooden slates she could see a few horses moving around.

They had to follow a trail along the side of the barn. Hideo was leading the way, so he saw the place before anyone else. Mitsue was ten paces back. She noticed a few wild prairie flowers growing alongside the barn before looking up to see Hideo stop suddenly, looking straight ahead.

Mitsue tightened her grip on her bag and took her last ten paces with dread. As she stood beside Hideo, she saw a chicken coop. There were no chickens in it. Attached to it was an old shack. It looked like an outhouse, only bigger. There were no walls or windows, just wooden slats nailed together. As with the barn, you could see through them. The roof was made of planks as well. The hut was surrounded by mud and prairie wild grass. She thought that the grass in front might be a pasture because of the cow droppings.

Mitsue stood beside Hideo in shock. Nobody said a word. They just stared at the old shack. Wari set her bag down on a dry patch of grass. Nobody wanted to open the front door. They stood there for some time. Finally Mr. Rutt came out of his house and opened the shack door for them.

Mitsue ducked her head to avoid a big cobweb and took her first step in. There was a dirt floor. There was one bed in the corner of the room and a small wood stove beside a decrepit wooden table held together by rusted nails. Everything was filthy. Everywhere they looked they could see outside through the gaps in the walls. The wind whistled right through the shack.

What were they supposed to do with the place?

Mr. Rutt was apologetic. He explained that he had cleared out the chickens and patched up the roof so the rain wouldn’t get in. The shack had only been used in the summer months for migrant workers. It had never needed to be insulated. He promised he’d get to it before winter came around.

Before winter?
Mitsue couldn’t think about staying here for one more minute. She wanted to run.

Mr. Rutt said he hadn’t realized that there would be five in the family. He said that he would bring another bed that could sleep Hideo and Mitsue. June would have to sleep with Hanpei and Wari. Mitsue looked around again and realized that they would all be sleeping, cooking, and eating in the one room. Her ears were ringing, her heart pounding. Mr. Rutt left to get the bed and closed the door behind him.

They stood there in silence, the women in their Sunday dresses, purses in hand, the men in their coats and hats. They didn’t know where to begin. They could hear and feel the wind blow through the shack. The sunlight came in through the cracks in the walls. In the stillness, they watched the dust floating in the air around them. Dirt, dust, grime, wind. They were in Alberta. They were home.

Shikata-ga-nai.
They got on with it.

First things first. June and Mitsue changed out of their shoes so that they could help unload the boxes from the truck.

Their water source was a dugout one mile to the west of the shack. The water had to be boiled because the cows and horses drank from it, walked in it, and excreted into it. Mr. Rutt gave Hideo a few pails to cart up to the farmhouse hose to fetch drinking water.

Rutt returned with another bed, a single.

That night Mitsue lay as still as she could. Hanpei was snoring. She tried not to shake and wake up Hideo. But she had to let it out. It just had to come out. She cried all night long.

The next morning, Hideo was up first. He had already lit a fire and was making tea they had brought from Vancouver. The familiar smell made everyone feel a little better. Mitsue wondered if her parents were faring any better. She went to the dugout and got some water for washing. Scooping it up from the muddy bank, she examined the pail, picking out a few leaves. The water was dirty brown.

Walking back into the shack, she saw Hideo inspecting June’s back. There were red marks all over her. Hanpei was just getting out of the bed and undoing his
yukata.
His shoulder was covered with red marks too. Wari—still sore—stayed in the bed. Mitsue walked over to her and saw red marks on her neck. They’d never seen bedbug bites before. Hideo and Hanpei took their mattress outside, leaned it against the side of the shack, and beat it with sticks to try to get the bugs out. It didn’t do any good.

Those first few weeks, they were scavengers, looking for everything and anything: food, utensils, furniture, a mirror, coffee cups, and coffee beans. By the second week, they had completely run out of the food they had brought, except for the tinned box of white rice. They still had plenty of that. Slowly, they accumulated what they needed, mostly from scraps that they got from Mr. Rutt.

They also started to work.

Rutt had about ten acres directly behind the shack. The west side of his land was lined with big poplar trees and long grass. It was empty, just earth and sky. For about half an hour Mr. Rutt showed them how to work the land. It all seemed simple enough. Everyone grabbed a hoe and started from the northwest corner. They had two days to seed the whole field.

On Mitsue’s first day of manual labour she felt like a sentenced
prisoner. The sun beat down on her and the hoe soon became heavy and burned her hands. By the third hour, everyone except Hideo was exhausted. Wari was very weak—her side was still hurting. Hanpei could still work but he was an old man. June was only fourteen, her frame too weak for such labour. Hideo picked up everyone’s slack.

The sun was relentless. They took turns walking to the far end of the field to sit for a few minutes underneath the trees. The mosquitoes attacked. Dust packed their nostrils, dirt got entangled in their hair, grime jammed into their fingernails. Their throats were dry, their hands were welted, their backs ached.

But Mitsue didn’t complain.

That night they ate rice with a little chicken they got from Mr. Rutt. Everyone collapsed in bed after the dishes were done. Mitsue fell asleep dreaming of bedbugs crawling over her.

Every day after that was just like the last. They were suspended in a dustbowl of a terrible dream. There was no waking from it.

As the spring days turned to summer, the sun became their primary torturer. They’d wrap up in scarves to block it. That made them hotter, but it prevented sunstroke. That was the most important thing—sunstroke would keep you out of the field for at least a day. That cost money, money they needed. A bag of rice was five dollars, so they’d all work from dawn to dusk for a bag of rice. It was survival. Every single cent gave them life. Not a nice life, just life. They all had to survive this ordeal.

The work was backbreaking. As summer wore on, the days got longer and hotter. There wasn’t a cloud in the prairie sky. The temperature rose to forty degrees. They were paid by the beet weight, not the hour, so they always had to be on the go. They only stopped for water. Even then, Mitsue would have to call hard-working Hideo in from the field at the end of the day. She’d often have to yell to make him hear her, he was concentrating so hard on what he was doing and, as he always did when he was working, he whispered her name over and over, as if to soothe himself: “
Mits … Mits … Mits … Mits …
”

Those summer days hit Wari hard. Her left side just kept getting worse. There was no doctor in Coaldale, so she and Mitsue had to take a day off and go to Lethbridge in Mr. Rutt’s truck. Nobody had an Alberta licence, so a farmhand had to drive them. Lethbridge had banned Japanese people within the city limits, so before they could get to a doctor, Hideo had to go to City Hall and obtain a special permit.

Wari and Mitsue left with the farmhand early one morning. The old truck had bad shocks and it was a very rough ride. Wari moaned all the way. Every bump was a fresh blow. When they pulled up to the hospital, the farmhand seemed glad to see them leave. Mitsue escorted Wari to the front desk, where they waited for a long time. A dozen people went through before them. Finally, a nurse came out and called them in. It was Mitsue’s second time in a hospital. The Lethbridge hospital was much smaller than the one in Vancouver where Toru had passed away.

The doctor walked in with his nose in a chart.

“Name?”

Mitsue spoke for her mother-in-law

He looked at Mitsue.

“What’s the problem?”

“She has a very sore left side. We are not sure why.”

“Okay, I’ll give her something for that.”

And that was it. He didn’t even touch her, just wrote something on his prescription pad, handed it to Mitsue, and was out the door.

They got the medicine. Mitsue dropped off Wari in their shack and went back to the fields.

That very night, Mitsue was staying up a little later to read when Wari sat straight up from a dead sleep. Mitsue turned up the kerosene lamp. Wari sat as straight as a board. She didn’t move her head, she looked straight ahead. Her eyes were wide open. After a moment, she slumped back down without saying a word; she was gone. She was only forty-nine years old, but her body could not take the conditions. Her heart had given out.

Mitsue woke everyone up and they all said goodbye to Wari in the cold of the night. They buried her the next day in a small graveyard just down the road from the shack. The wooden headstone was the only one with Japanese writing on it.

They went back to work that afternoon. They were to weed that day. Mitsue cried as she picked at the earth. Hanpei spent much of the day leaning on his hoe, shivering and shaking. June went to get water more often than usual, to cry in private. But Hideo worked all afternoon. He worked harder that day than Mitsue had ever seen him work before. The harder he worked, the less likely it was that Wari’s fate would befall anyone else in his family.

If Wari’s death was an ending, the shack saw a beginning too. Mitsue was pregnant. She was surprised that she felt thrilled. Despite all the hardship there was one constant: family was the most important thing.
Because
of the hardship, family was the most important thing.

Mitsue wasn’t a branch anymore. She was becoming part of the trunk. She had to be steady and sturdy. It was her time to support the branches. It would be tough. They didn’t even have running water. There were still holes in the walls. Bugs could fly right in. The shack was no place to raise a baby. But she had to live her life. The tree had to grow. In spite of it all, everyone had to grow.

Mitsue spent the next three months hoeing and throwing up. Life couldn’t stop because she was pregnant. The family needed the money she made, so every day, even on the worst days, she was out in the hot, dusty field, thirsty and sick to her stomach. Those were the hardest days of Mitsue’s life. Despite it all, she was excited to know she would soon have a baby of her own. She knew that despite everything that was happening around her, she could be a good mother.

Mitsue knew she needed some light in her life. Just like teaching Bible stories to the children of Celtic had helped her through Toru’s death, she decided, showing a baby love and warmth would bring those things into her own life. The shack was always so
quiet. Everyone was bone-tired, morning and night. They spoke in orders.
Do this. Take that over there.
It felt more like a work camp than a family. Mitsue thought a baby might change that. Maybe being close to new life would remind them all just what life was supposed to be. Mostly she hoped having a baby would make their condition more bearable. But for the next few months, it just made her existence even harder.