A Girl Like You (20 page)

“Well, it’s your own fault, you never try to please. And what does he want in return for the soap that only you receive?”

She doesn’t like the question. It is her business, after all.

“He never asks me for anything. Ralph says that Lawson is kind to everyone, that he’s a people person and likes to talk.”

“Well, you won’t have time to talk when you are working at the orphanage. You’ll be too busy with the little ones.”

“I’m looking forward to it, Mama. Don’t be cross.”

“And you are good with children,” Tamura says, softening. “People will see that and like you better for it.”

Remedies

The orphanage barracks have their own running water and a small block of toilets for their own use. That in itself is enough to recommend them to Satomi, without the warmth that opened her heart to the children on her first day there.

“They’re sweet and naughty,” she tells Haru. “And they smell like kittens.”

The babies, in their ignorance of desertion, cry as babies will, but they are more easily comforted than the older ones—a clean diaper, a bottle of warm milk soothes quickly enough. The others, though, suffer the feral instinct of wariness and hold themselves back from consolation.

“Oh, Mama, you should see them. So frightened of everything that they wet the bed and think they will be beaten for it. Some are like me, of mixed blood, you know. There’s a red-haired child, and two or three with golden hair. There’s a little boy who says he’s Mexican. He speaks Spanish and only knows a word or two of English.”

“Perhaps you will find who you are among them,” Tamura says mysteriously.

Arriving at Manzanar with their tiny carrying cases, the children have everything taken off them. Clothes are sorted into piles by age rather than ownership. There are dungarees, little felt jackets,
knitted hats and shoes set in a line by size. It’s easier to store their possessions together, to jumble them up, so that no one knows who came with what. Some came with nothing anyway, not even identity papers. Too young to speak their names, not knowing where they came from, no information can be coaxed from them. Satomi gives them names, guesses at their ages.

The few who have toys are made to share them, to watch, heartbroken, as a loved grubby doll, a tin car, is taken off by another child. One little boy has started a collection of empty bean cans, no one but him wants them, they are his alone. Another holds on tight to a small handkerchief, sniffing at it, rubbing it against his cheeks.

“It’s not right,” Satomi tells Dr. Harper. “They need families, people of their own.” She is thinking of Mrs. Hamada’s brood, their easy smiles, their confident fights, the love that bolsters them.

There are days in the orphanage when, despite the strict rules, chaos takes over, when it is hard to make yourself heard above the children’s howling. The naughtier boys who misbehave have to run the “swat line.” They dodge and dive between the legs of the children who need no encouragement to whack their fellows’ hides. Whackers and whacked make a game of it, minding more the cross word than any physical punishment.

“They get bored,” Satomi tells Haru. “There are hardly any books or toys. They can’t think of anything to do but fight.”

“You must be firmer, Sati. Bring order.”

“They have so little, Haru. I can’t bear to punish them.”

“They have you, Satomi. They have food and a roof over their head. It’s not a family, but nothing in life is equal. They cannot be allowed to run wild.”

She hears his words as a reproach, hears his disappointment in her. If only he would stop lecturing and take her side for once. If only he would kiss her more often, hold her, tell her whatever
she does is all right with him. She has competition for Haru, she knows. There are plenty of girls trying to catch his eye, girls who play better to his wanting-to-be-in-charge nature. She feels more challenged, though, by his view of the world, the formality in him, the way he thinks a woman should be.

“You have forgotten what it is like to be a child, Haru.”

“You are right, I suppose. I think more like a father these days.”

Soothed by the act of giving, the guard Lawson begins to bring gifts for the orphanage children, marbles, and crayons, his old baseball and glove, his daughter’s discarded dolls. He is a man full of guilt for what he has to guard. His left-the-nest daughter is only a few years older than Satomi and according to him not unlike her in looks.

“She married a no-gooder,” he says. “Lives five miles away, but we never see her.”

Lawson’s wife has Indian blood. “A quarter Shoshone,” he says. “Although she is fierce enough for it to be Apache.”

“He can hardly be accused of bigotry,” Satomi defends him to Haru.

No matter what anyone says, it’s fine by her if Lawson finds relief in giving the children presents, in giving her soap.

“You take it, honey, I know you girls like to smell good.”

She doesn’t like upsetting Tamura, getting on the wrong side of Haru, but where should she take her friends from in this place? The girls of her own age are wary of her, and so much duller than Lily ever was, for all her sneakiness.

“You don’t give them a chance, Satomi. You don’t give anyone but Dr. Harper and Ralph a chance. If you’re unpopular it’s your own fault,” Tamura says.

If only Tamura knew the truth of it, how it is the other way around. How she is ogled by the men in the camp in a way the full
Japanese girls are not. How the one who is always offering her mother his place in the noontime lunch line had, in the alley that is the shortcut to the mess hall, exposed himself to her daughter. The sight of the sallow thing hanging there hadn’t shocked her in the least, but she had kept the information to herself, not wanting Haru to know and feel obliged to do something about it.

“Oh, put it away, you fool,” she had said dismissively.

“Sorry,” the old man faltered, scrutinizing her face. “It was an accident. Everyone has accidents.”

It had struck her as a pointless thing for the old man to do, like showing someone your snot.

And he isn’t the only one to pester her. Without the inhibitions they would have been subject to at home, a few of the old men in their humiliation look around with their faded eyes and see her, the girl who is not really one of them, but lush and full of sap, with that American cocksureness about her. It’s a mind-easing sport, tormenting the
movie star.

“Hey baby, hey baby,” they call in exaggerated jazz-speak. “You wanna help us out?”

She brushes aside their stares, the sight of their open mouths and their odd, quite terrible smiles. She tells herself they are beneath noticing. Quick to take offense, they feel insulted to be so ignored.

It would have surprised her to know that Haru sees it all and is angry with her for attracting the attention. He despises the old men. If they had been young he could have fought them, but the young men who pursue Satomi seem in better control of themselves, they have their pride, and their pursuit is only natural, after all. As it is, he has to content himself with the fact that his elders are not always his betters. When his world is made whole again, he hopes to forget the many disturbing ways in which Manzanar has altered it.

He should act honorably himself, he thinks, give Satomi up. It’s only fair, but the feel of her as she melts into him in the dark places they find together, the scent of her skin, their long kisses, keep him wanting, keep him unsure. He tells himself that if he is certain of one thing, it is that he fears the life he would have with her more than he fears losing her. She will always try to pull him her way, refuse to be led, and she is a stranger to humility. She is too much for him, all heat and desire, lacking the rod of reserve he expects in a woman.

“Are we or are we not going steady, Haru?”

“There’s no going steady here, Sati. Things are too unsettled to commit ourselves. We don’t have to give our friendship a name, do we?”

“I was going steady with Artie before I was fourteen.”

“That was just kids’ stuff.”

She wants to slap him at the same time as kiss him. “So this is nothing special, then?” she says, as though it hardly matters to her.

“We can’t let it be. It isn’t going to last.”

Consequences hang over him, will trap him if he isn’t careful. With luck he will be drafted soon, he can’t wait to go, but it gnaws at him that Sati will have no one then to rein her in.

“You’re too independent for your own good,” he says.

“That’s the American in me,” she taunts. “Thought you liked everything American.”

“Why doesn’t she make friends among the girls?” he asks Eriko. “It’s not natural, surely, to always be in the company of old men and boys.”

“The girls bore her,” Eriko says. “She’s a swan among ducks, I suppose. Satomi goes her own way, you know that. Don’t think that you can change her, Haru, you never will.”

“It’s unsuitable,” he persists. “Dr. Harper is far above her in position, yet she challenges him at every turn. Things are bad
enough with Yumi, without Satomi’s example of do-as-you-like next door.”

He complains, but the pull of her is getting stronger, he can’t hold out for much longer, no matter his mother, no matter Tamura. She is at the root of his sudden awakenings in the night, the selfish need in him. His head says no, his stirred-up body doesn’t want to hear. Sometimes when he looks at her, at her radiant skin, the waves of her dark hair breaking over her shoulders, he marvels at her interest in him. When she gives him that white smile, he sees her all bright and shell-clean and falters in his resolve. He desires her, but he doesn’t love her, not enough to compromise his plans for, anyway. He takes refuge in criticism.

“You are upsetting your mother, you know, taking cigarettes and soap from Lawson. Your ration would last if you didn’t spend so long in the showers.”

“I’m just washing away Manzanar, Haru. In any case, the soap issue doesn’t lather, you know that. It smells of disinfectant. What’s wrong with wanting to be clean, to smell nice?”

She is prepared to take his disapproval. It is worth it if only to smell good for him, she so loves to smell good for him. And those few minutes when she stands under the water soaping her hair, rinsing it until it is squeaky clean, are heaven. Water alone doesn’t cut it, it’s the soap that satisfies.

“I will buy you scented soap,” Tamura says. “What do I work for, if not to care for you?”

“Buy yourself things, Mama. Don’t fret about me.”

In summer the shower block, pleasantly warm for a change, presents her with a new problem. A colony of black horseflies have set up camp in the dank building, hovering over the scummy water that pools in the cracked floor, landing on her as she dries herself. She hates their popping eyes, their swollen blood-filled bellies. Everyone is disgusted by them. The ugly things refuse to
be swatted away until they have drunk their fill of blood. Their bites leave great red swellings that take a week to subside.

The throbbing bite that Satomi suffered on her eyelid encouraged Tamura to find a remedy that would soothe it. It occurred to her that an infusion of tea and nettle might calm things down. When it did, she set about making other remedies.

Just as once she had sent Satomi to the woods in Angelina for mushrooms, now she sends her to pick the coarse mountain mint that grows at the west perimeter, to rummage in the mess hall trash for sprouting potatoes that she can plant around her barrack’s steps.

People marvel at what Tamura gets out of the dry soil. She grows drills of radish to remedy sluggish circulation, makes onion poultices for flu, and in the summer months lettuce juice to clear the blood of infection. She has even found a use for the hated sagebrush that grows everywhere, poking itself rudely through the holes in the latrine walls, reminding them that they have left civilization behind.

“Mrs. Sano says that she makes a tea from it to cool fever,” Tamura tells Eriko.

“Doesn’t seem to be doing much for her husband’s,” Eriko says dryly.

“It would be hard to cure him of his burden, Eriko. It seems to work on others, though.”

There is no science to it. Tamura goes on instinct, on childhood memories of her mother’s concoctions. Some things work, most don’t, but the word spreads, and often in the evening she has a line of patients at her door in Sewer Alley. There is comfort to be had in feeling that at least you are being treated, that you don’t have to stand silent in the doctor’s line. How can a doctor understand as Mrs. Baker understands? Her smile alone can cure.

Satomi complains that now she has no privacy at all. But it is a
good excuse for her to spend more time with Haru, walking and kissing, and dodging the sweeping searchlights that at night hone in on their slightest movement.

Nothing that Tamura makes, though, touches her own cough or stops the hateful night sweats that soak her bedding, chilling her to the bone. Satomi lies feigning sleep, hearing her fighting for breath. It upsets Tamura to disturb her daughter’s sleep.

“Go back to sleep,” she says, when Satomi pulls aside the robe. “There is nothing you can do. It will be better in the morning.”

And it always is a little better when the light comes, although she is fooling no one. Her ashen face mirrors her illness for the world to see, her breath has taken on the peculiar sweet-damp smell of blood and mucus.

“I feel better standing,” Tamura says, relieved, when dawn comes. “I breathe better when I’m active.”

“It’s amazing that she keeps on working,” Satomi tells Haru. Let alone that she stays up half the night mashing and blending, thinking up new remedies.”

“You should learn from her,” he says, unaware of how stern he sounds.

Tamura never fails to tend her little garden, or clean the barrack, even though Satomi has assumed the task to save her the effort.

“You do not even see the dust in front of your eyes,” Tamura says. “In any case, I like to do it.”

Eriko says that her friend’s determination to keep going is something wonderful.

“Your mother is a most remarkable woman, Satomi. How proud of her your father must have been.”