The Magic of Ordinary Days (13 page)

Rose and Lorelei kept on sipping their sodas as if nothing had happened. Surely they had noticed. But I didn't know—were they able to dismiss it? Or perhaps had they become so accustomed to prejudices that it no longer found a way to pierce their reserve?

I tried to converse and keep on smiling, but I found myself unable to fathom the source of that man's displeasure. Daily, Japanese evacuees worked diligently and pleasantly in the farmlands around us. I had heard Ray and Hank both comment on the quality of the Japanese interns' work and how much they wished to please. On their occasional days off, those at Camp Amache were allowed to venture away from the camp, and all of them returned voluntarily.

I had often wondered why Rose and Lorelei were staying in the camp and putting up with all of this. The release of some college students from camps had begun as early as 1942. The Nisei were allowed to leave camps and resettle in any of forty-four states if they so chose, the only requirements being sworn loyalty to the U.S. and gainful employment. But the questionnaire required of them contained some tricky wording, and even with war jobs plentiful, most remained in the camps. Now the very thing I had just witnessed gave me my answer. Perhaps the intolerance and prejudice I had just seen kept them in confinement together, in the somewhat sheltered isolation of the camp.

As we leaned against the side of the truck, I found myself studying my friends' faces. So much alike and yet so different, just like my own sisters and me. Lorelei became more beautiful every time I saw her, but Rose's face had become beautiful to me, too. The sunlight danced off their hair like shine on black patent leather shoes. Always their posture was perfect, their exotic faces reflected composure, poise, and grace.

Rose looked back at me in a different way. She set down her Coke bottle and started talking in a changed tone. “I was on my way to take a final in English lit,” she said. “It was in 1941, before Pearl Harbor. A woman stopped me to ask me my views about Emperor Hirohito. And when I told her my views would be no more valuable than those of any other student, that I had never lived under his rule in Japan, she thanked me for my time, and we each went on our own way.”

Lorelei stopped drinking as Rose continued. “It was a pleasant conversation. But for me, it was a preview of things to come, like a prologue to a book I was someday going to have to read, although I'd not have chosen it for myself. She saw me as Japanese, nothing else. Certainly not American.”

“We left school even before the evacuation notices went up,” said Lorelei.

“When they did, I was almost relieved.”

“Well, I wasn‘t,” countered Lorelei.

Now I could see it. Despite the poise, I could see the suffering in their eyes. I tried to think of something to say, but what? The leaders of our country had determined that Japanese American presence in the coastal states posed a threat to national security. Loyalty had been questioned, and with so many lives and secrets at stake, perhaps most people felt that Congress had made a prudent decision. But I had begun to think they had reacted hastily and irresponsibly toward good citizens. After all, except for the American Indians, we were all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

I longed for the right words to explain that for which there was no explanation. “It isn't you they dislike. For some people ...” I thought for a minute. “For a lot of people, it's difficult to separate those of you living and working over here from the enemy overseas. Those people probably aren't naturally hateful, just ill-informed. They tend to group all persons of a certain creed or nationality together in one category. It isn't right, but still they do it.”

“We are the enemy,” said Lorelei.

I sighed. “Of course you're not.”

“We are Japanese.”

“You were born in this country.”

Lorelei shrugged. “No matter. We look Japanese, the same face as the enemy that bombed Pearl Harbor.”

“Look,” I said, “many others believe as I do. That a person's individual accomplishments and personality are what matter. I believe we're beginning to see a shift in this country, starting with our generation. In the future, these problems will get better.”

Lorelei and Rose finished the last of their sodas, whereas mine turned warm in the bottle. As I stood there, new thoughts showered me with sharp pebbles. In Denver, there had been just as many divisions. I had grown up attending an all-white and affluent church, my father's. But in the city, there had also been Negro churches and Mexican churches, and never once did we join together for activities or socials. Soldiers were routinely segregated in the services, and there was even a separate USO for Negro soldiers located in the Five Points area of Denver. Even on the university campus, my friends and I had been a pasty collection who stood for equality for all, but did we really embrace it?

I asked, “Have you ever considered leaving the camp? Have you considered moving to Denver, going back to college, or getting a factory job?”

“We could never leave our parents and grandparents,” said Rose.

“They're Issei,” said Lorelei. “They aren't free to go.”

Lorelei leaned around her sister to look at my face. “Would it be any better in Denver? Would others find us acceptable there any more than they do here?”

“In the city, there are more people of various views.”

Lorelei asked in a louder voice, “But would it truly be any different?”

My shoulders fell. “Probably not.”

Twelve

Later, I drove us away into wisps of dust that never got a chance to settle back to the ground during harvest days. Dirt and grime layered the air and coated the buildings, equipment, and vehicles. Even the trains became smoky phantoms emerging out of the earth, instead of riding the ground above it. The sky-blue engines called the Blue Gooses were as grimy brown as the solid black steam engines of other trains.

That evening, I carried the maternity dress into my room, folded it, and smoothed it out flat inside one of my drawers. Eventually, I realized, I'd be wearing it. After all, my old coverings weren't going to suffice forever.

The next day, Ray and I drove to church in the evening for a “social,” as he put it. I wore the plainest dress I'd brought with me and kept my hair down. Inside the church kitchen, I found women sitting at the table, pooling and trading ration coupons. I realized too late I should've brought my coupons along. Ray raised enough chicken and pork to feed us, so I could have traded our meat coupons for more canned goods, or even for nylons.

Another group of women was trading off vegetables. I started to pull up a chair to listen and watch, but then I heard some of the conversation going on. One woman sitting next to Mrs. Pratt was complaining about women leaving their children at home, working in factories, and simply by their presence wooing married men, and of course wearing slacks. I ended up joining the women who were ripping up worn sheets and rolling them into bandages for the injured. We also filled paper bags with shaving goods, packs of cigarettes, and chocolate bars for men in hospitals. Here the conversation was more bearable. A woman was telling us all about her son, a bombardier with the Fifth Air Force, who was back from combat attending B-29 school. She told us that his uniforms were custom-made in Australia and they were cream-colored, the loveliest she'd ever seen. And apparently the Electrolux man was in town. He had come out to one woman's house and had done all her floors while she was out doing her shopping, just to thank her for buying one.

They discussed making butter and cheese, canning preserves, and making sausage, conversations I couldn't even comment on. Soon I went to the window and looked outside to see what the men were doing. Hood up, some farmer's old car was the center of attention. Leaning in, the men passed tools around and worked together.

Mrs. Pratt came up to stand behind me. “They're fixing the fluid drive on our old Chrysler, but we won't tell the factory.” She pointed outside. “They have to take the drum apart, put in new seals, and get us driving again.”

I watched Ray in the midst of the group leaning over the engine. “Is it dangerous?”

“I doubt it. The factory says you're not supposed to do it, but we have to figure out our own ways, nowadays.” She smiled at me. “Don't worry. He's going to be all right.”

I looked back outside. Children were running around the church building and the broken-down car, engaged in fantasy and games, and I wished I could join them.

That night, long after the interns had boarded the trucks and returned to their camp, I went walking on the farm. I left the narrow roadway and walked out into an open cleared field for the first time. Out in the middle, I looked over the remains of tangled bean vines, overturned stones, clods of dirt, and occasional pieces of trash and leaves blown in by the wind. And stamped down into the soil, I saw hundreds of small shoe prints, many of them as small as children‘s, footprints that could only belong to the Japanese interns.

Once we had talked of shoes. Arriving from the mild climate of Long Beach, Rose and Lorelei had brought with them only sneakers and sandals. Many of the Issei had come to camp with just their Japanese slippers. Rose found it a good excuse to buy boots she'd always wanted, but Lorelei complained about the cold winters. Never before had she felt such cold toes. I recalled an article that had once been published in
Reader's
Digest entitled “One Small Unwilling Captain.” A Japanese man, in a letter to an American friend, had written, “I am a small man. I am an unwilling man. I am a captain in the Japanese Imperial Army, and I do not want to do this.”

Regardless of the view taken and despite the thousands of conflicts I'd once studied in classes, war's effect on the innocent had never come to me so strongly as it did at that moment. It came in the remembrance of that letter and in those footprints pressed down into Singleton soil. As I walked back to the cluster of house and outbuildings, I couldn't shake the vision of those prints. The wind blew in grit that coated my lips and peppered my eyes. Up ahead, I could see that Ray was home but still out working, piling up trash behind the barn. I stopped and watched from a distance.

As I stood there, a chill swept over me. In one instant, I knew what he had done.

I began to run. A pitiful sound came out of me—wail or cry, growl or moan—I didn't know what it was. I didn't even know I was capable of making such a beastly sound, but it came out of me without my will as I tore down the embankment to the barn. At the brink of the pile, I stopped and raked my hair with claw fingers. The trash heap now appeared as nothing but a mass of splintered wood pieces mixed with animal offal and bits of soggy newspaper. Pressure was building in my face.

“What is it?” Ray yelled as he jumped down from the tractor.

“My things. All the things I was collecting. The old tools, the antiques. I was collecting them in that burlap bag.” Now I glared at him. “Did you take it?”

I turned and walked back to the house without waiting for an answer, because I knew it already. Except for Rose and Lorelei, the only things I cared about in this dreadful place were now gone. My few sources of pleasure, and he had gone and destroyed them.

In the house, I cooked dinner, but I kept having a hard time focusing on the pages of my cookbook. Instead, the words kept blurring on the page, and I kept banging pans together as I moved them around. Even my arms were angry. The veins stood up on top of the skin in tightly pulled ropes.

Nightfall came and still no sign of Ray.

At last, later than he'd ever returned before, he clumped up the steps to the house. He came in and stood before me with muddy water dripping down his face and pieces of smelly debris clinging to his clothes. His arms hung at both sides, and in one fist he held the burlap bag, which he set down on the floor.

“It was in the pile but near the bottom. It's still okay.” At that moment, I saw more expression on his face than I'd seen in all the previous weeks we had spent together. What was his expression? Pain? Exasperation? Defeat? Disbelief?

He was struggling for speech. Then his words came out in a desperate plea. “You should have told me you loved them.”

That night we ate in silence. I had tried to bake pork chops but had cooked them too long, making them tough. Cutting into those chops was like cutting into cardboard, and chewing the meat made my teeth hurt.

Ray ate it anyway, then he sat back. “This here's a working farm, Liwy. Everything we keep around here ought to have some use. I was just cleaning things out a bit, and when I saw an old sack, I thought it'd be trash.”

I wouldn't look up. “It's not trash. Besides, that stuff looked as if it had been in the same shed for years. Why did you need to clean it out now?”