Within These Lines

by Stephanie Morrill

  The echo of hammering as another guard tower is erected.

  The soaring beauty of the Sierras overlooking all the ugly dustiness of this prison.

  I cannot decide which detail is the most shocking as I stand in the administration building at Manzanar War Relocation Center and stare out the window.

  The guard lumbers over to me and looks out the window as well. “Sorry to make you wait, miss. The camp is a big place. It can be hard to track down residents.”

  My jaw has been clenched tight as I hold in tears and fury. Somehow I manage to say in a light, conversational tone, “How big is Manzanar, exactly?”

  He hitches his thumbs in his pockets. “One square mile.”

  “Is it fenced all the way around?”

  “We hope it will be by the end of July, miss. It’s extremely secure.”

  My throat seems to close off at that statement. The door swings open, but it’s a middle-aged couple who comes in, not Taichi. They smile and bow to the Caucasian husband and wife who have also been sitting here waiting.

  “Good afternoon, folks,” the guard greets them. “Visits are restricted to forty-five minutes today, and I’m unable to let you leave the room.”

  The Japanese American couple bow in acknowledgment, which makes my stomach tighten, and then they sit at a small, round table with their friends. Their voices are low and warm, and something about the pitch of them makes me want to burst into tears.

  The guard turns his attention back to me. “We only have the restrictions sometimes. I’m not sure why, but they’ve been stricter this week. Unless you’re visiting one of the Caucasian families inside the fence, of course.”

  “There are Caucasian families here too?”

  “Sure. The administration and all their families. Eventually there will be Caucasian teachers too, but we don’t got the school built yet. We—the MPs—don’t live inside the fence. We’re out south of the entrance.”

  He nods southward. He doesn’t look old enough to be military police, with his round face and short stature. I imagine he tires of hearing that.

  “Do you interact with the residents much?”

  “Only if they’re too close to the fence or something.” The guard shrugs. “They kinda keep to themselves.”

  My head whirls with angry retorts. Gee, really? What options do they have besides keeping to themselves, considering they’ve been fenced in and you’re holding a gun?

  The door squeals on its dry hinges, and a boy calls a gleeful, “Found him!”

  My gaze zooms to Taichi, and the breath whooshes out of my lungs as his eyes meet mine. These last twenty minutes, I’ve paced this room feeling fury and outrage and hurt over Taichi not telling me the truth. All of those thoughts slip away at the sight of him.

  “Good afternoon,” the guard says to Taichi. “I already told your friend, but visits are forty-five minutes today, and you can’t leave the room.”

  Taichi’s gaze slips over to the guard—“Thank you”—and then finds me again.

  I had thought when I saw Taichi, I would run and jump into his open arms, but with the guard watching us, I feel like we’re fish in a bowl. My skirt is creased from the drive here, and my curls are a mess from the windy walk from the sentry post, where I left my mother, to this building.

  Taichi recovers first. He gestures to a table near the window. “Here.”

  I sit in the chair he pulled out for me, and I smooth my skirt over my crossed legs. Taichi takes the chair next to me, and beneath the table, his knee bumps mine. We look at each other, and I swear I can hear the seconds ticking away, faster and faster.

  His face is several shades darker and thinner. His hair longer than I’ve ever seen it.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here.” His voice holds awe.

  I can’t get mine to go above a whisper. “Me neither.”

  “When you didn’t come yesterday, I thought I wouldn’t see you.”

  “I know. I didn’t think so either. My mother is the one who made it happen.” I realize I’m fidgeting with a curl, and I clasp my hands in my lap. “My father hasn’t been feeling well. Starting yesterday, he didn’t have much energy and couldn’t keep food down, so we stayed around the cabin. He wanted one more day to recover, but said he didn’t want us just sitting there staring at him all day today. Said he was just going to be reading, and that we should get out and enjoy the scenery.”

  My fingers are in my hair again—why am I such a nervous wreck?—and I again knit my fingers together in my lap. “I had talked to Mama before we left about how close we would be to you, and she said to Daddy this morning, ‘Evalina noticed that we’re pretty close to where the Hamasaki family is living now. If it’s fine with you, I think we’ll drive over and pay them a visit.’ He said that was a fine idea, and he sends his love.”

  Taichi just looks at me. Why doesn’t he say anything?

  I have to again take my hands out of my hair. “He would have liked to see you too, but didn’t feel up to travel, of course.”

  “I’m sorry he isn’t feeling well. Especially on a rare vacation. But Evalina . . .” His face is strangely blank of emotion as he says, “You couldn’t have been close enough for it to truly make sense to drive all this way.”

  That’s classic Taichi. It’s okay for him to inconvenience himself for me, but never the other way around.

  I press my knee tighter against his. “You don’t get to make those kinds of decisions for me.”

  His mouth flickers into a warm smile, the first I’ve seen since April. “So your mother is here too?”

  I nod. “They wouldn’t let her come in because her name isn’t on the guest pass. The guard acted like he was doing me a favor by letting me come in, even though the pass expired yesterday.”

  “Yes, I’m a little surprised they let you in. They like their rules.”

  My throat tries to close, and I swallow. “I didn’t realize it would be like this.”

  Guilt shows in Taichi’s eyes. He seems to consider a moment before saying simply, “I know.”

  “How could you . . . ?” Tears prick my eyes. I stop short of accusing him of lying. I don’t want to spend our precious minutes fighting.

  Beneath the table, he holds one of my hands between his. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Again, it’s okay for him to worry about me, but heaven forbid my thoughts be preoccupied with the suffering of him and his family. “I understand. But, Taichi, I want to know what your life is really like. I want you to trust me with that.”

  “Of course I trust you, I just . . .” Taichi trails off, but grips my hand harder. His shirt is one I’ve seen before, but now it’s fraying at the collar. What state are his shoes in? Is there a place to buy clothes here? Should I send him some?

  “It’s really not so bad here, Evalina. We get along fine.”

  If we were at home, that would be enough to send me into a fit of yelling. Stop lying to me! People who love each other are honest. I want you to confide in me, not push me away!

  But we’re not at home. I pitch my voice low. “Just the view from the window is enough. This looks just like it did at Tanforan.”

  My brain ticks through the list of horrible things the Bishops had reported from their friends who had been sent there. Toilets and showers with no partitions. Living in poorly constructed houses with strangers, and nothing but blankets to hang between you. Long waits for every meal, every load of laundry, every shirt ironed.

  “We only have a short while together,” Taichi says. “Let’s talk about more pleasant things. Tell me about Yosemite.”

  “I can tell you that stuff in letters. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me. It makes the outside world seem not so far away.”

  The silence that falls between us is thick with the pressure to make the words count, to make the visit meaningful. But every word I speak feels clumsy, knocking into topics and sensitivities that I don’t intend.

  I swal
low away my accusations and questions. He’s right. We don’t have to have that conversation right now. “Yosemite is really beautiful. I knew the mountains would be big, I just didn’t expect them to be so big. Kinda like here.”

  We both look out the window at Mount Williamson and her neighbors. Dust swirls by.

  “Is it always this windy?”

  He hesitates. “Yes.”

  Had he been considering telling me no? I’ve always thought of Taichi as being someone whom I can totally trust. I hate that our conversation is shrouded in questions about whether he’s telling me the truth or not.

  I blink away the tears that are trying to gather. “I had a letter from Diego before I left.”

  Taichi’s gaze slides over to me. “Oh?”

  “You probably did too. It didn’t say much. That he misses home but is doing okay at basic training. It’s hard, but he likes it. That sort of thing.” I fidget with the hem of my skirt. “He probably told you that he and Ruby split?”

  “He did.” Taichi sounds as though he’s choosing his words carefully. “Said she didn’t want to continue long distance.”

  “That’s what he told me too.”

  “What do you think of that?”

  I blink at him, caught off guard by the question. “Well, it’s not exactly easy, is it? But nothing worthwhile ever is.”

  Taichi is silent as he continues to stare out the window.

  There’s a tension between us that I can’t decode. That I don’t have time to decode. I steal a glance at the clock. How have twenty minutes ticked away already?

  “How is Aiko doing?” I ask.

  “As strange as it may sound, she seems better here than she did at home.” Taichi’s gaze loses its far away quality, and he again looks directly at me. “She likes her work at the hospital, and she’s pretty popular at the dances. She’s been seeing this fellow who works with her. He’s her first boyfriend my parents have approved of. That’s a nice change.”

  Something inside me twinges. “There are dances?”

  “Yep. Much as I try, I can’t seem to escape them.” Taichi’s smile is wry. “Back home, I could skip and people assumed you had other stuff going on. But here they know that you don’t. My buddy, James, would go to a dance every night if he could.”

  I try to scrub away the image of Taichi dancing with cute Japanese American girls. I don’t want to say anything that makes me sound completely jealous. “And do you dance with lots of girls?”

  Well, that failed.

  Taichi blinks at me. “Of course not. I go sometimes, but I don’t dance.” He studies my face for a beat of silence and pitches his voice low, “How can you not know that I would never do that to you?”

  I’m pleased . . . but hasn’t he been asked to give up enough? Should he really have to give up a simple pleasure like dancing just because I’m being silly and jealous? I shift on the hard chair. “It’s just a dance, Taichi. I would understand.”

  His smile is tender. “I hate dancing. I certainly don’t mind using you as an excuse.”

  My heart warms even more. “You use me as an excuse?”

  He squeezes my hand. “I do. I tell them my girl is vicious, and it would be dangerous for anyone to dance with me.”

  A giggle escapes me, and Taichi grins back. For a smidge of a moment, everything feels blissfully normal and happy.

  “Five minutes,” the guard says, and I jump. To us he adds, “For them. Ten for you.”

  I grip Taichi’s hand. In ten minutes this will just be a memory. What do I say to ensure that it’s a good memory? That we used our time the best we possibly could?

  We look at each other. Will we ever be able to communicate the way my parents do, with just their facial expressions? Will there ever be children of ours to be mystified and annoyed by it? That there could ever be anything besides this—Taichi stuck within these lines our government has drawn for him, and me stuck outside—feels impossible in this moment.

  The other friends are saying their goodbyes. Deep bows and hugs. I can’t start crying because my handkerchief is in my handbag, which is with my mother. My jaw trembles from how hard I clench my teeth.

  “How long until you get home?” Taichi asks conversationally, but his voice wavers.

  “We drive back across the park tomorrow, and then set off for home after that.”

  Taichi’s gaze tracks the families, who exit through separate doors, and he crushes my hand. “Who’s running the restaurant while you’re gone? Mr. Esposito?”

  “Yes. My father has never been away this long. The first few days of our trip, he kept saying things like, ‘The lunch rush should be starting now. I hope Franco remembered to slice the mozz.’ But he seems to have stopped thinking about it so much.”

  “I’m sorry he had to spend vacation time in bed.”

  With the other families gone, I feel as though the guard is sitting at the table with us. “Today is the only day it really altered plans, and . . . well. That’s not so bad.”

  Taichi’s smile seems self-conscious. “Tell your mother thank you for me. This was incredibly kind of her.”

  “If we’d known we were coming, we would have brought something. Can we send you anything?”

  “No.” He drops his voice even lower. “Seeing you was more than enough.”

  I look at him, words eluding me.

  Taichi stares back. He opens his mouth.

  “Sorry, you two.” The guard calls from behind his desk. “Time’s up.”

  We stand, and Taichi offers me a slight bow of his head, the way he used to back when I was just the restaurant owner’s daughter and he was the farmer delivering our produce. “Thank you for coming.”

  The same generic phrase I say to all our guests after they’ve dined at Alessandro’s. Not exactly the parting words I want from Taichi.

  The guard approaches with my yellow visitor’s pass in hand. This is it.

  I throw my arms around Taichi’s neck and squeeze. He hesitates a moment, and then his hands fall light on my waist. “I love you,” I whisper fiercely into his ear. The words tumble out again as I squeeze him one more time. “I love you.”

  We release each other. The guard and Taichi are both blurry, and when I wipe the tears from my eyes, I wish I hadn’t. The guard looks stunned, and Taichi looks embarrassed.

  I embarrassed him. My own face burns.

  The guard clears his throat. “You go this way.” He points to Taichi’s door, and then shoves my pass into my hand. “The sentry will need to see this.”

  “Travel safely, Evalina.” Taichi offers a polite smile, and then turns and walks straight to the door the guard pointed him toward.

  “Tell your family I say hello,” I call. “I’ll . . . I’ll write.”

  At the doorway, I turn for one more glimpse of Taichi, but he’s already gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Taichi

  She drove all the way here for that.

  I drag my feet—Mother would scold me for stirring up so much dust, like it can be avoided here—as I meander along the fence near the entrance. Is Mrs. Cassano in one of those cars in the parking lot? Is she in another building? What must she be thinking as she looks around? Surely she no longer buys that Evalina and I are just friends. Did Evalina tell her parents about us? After seeing how far my family has fallen, how could they ever approve of the match?

  And what am I going to say to my family? That it was a case of mistaken identity? That the visitor was really here for someone else? My mother would see through that in an instant. Not only that, but Manzanar is too small a place to keep a secret. I was seen with Evalina. I will have to tell the truth.

  I look through the fence just in time to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Cassano and Evalina in the parking lot. Her navy-blue skirt shimmies in the wind, and she leans heavily on her mother, who has an arm around her shoulders.

  That’s what time with me does. It burdens Evalina with sadness.

  I loiter until their
vehicle has pulled away, and then I dawdle back to my block. There’s an aching hollowness inside like I haven’t felt since that guard pulled her away from the bus back in April. I had forgotten how much being away from her hurts.

  When I open the door to our apartment, I find Mother and Father seated on stools built from scrap lumber. Their heads are bent toward each other in quiet conversation.

  Father pats the edge of my cot. “Come have a seat, Taichi.”

  I do as I’m told. I’ve always done what I’m told, with one giant exception.

  I look at them, and they look back. With the sun high in the sky, the barrack is dark and unusually quiet. A rare moment when all the other families are out.

  “Who came to visit you?” Father asks.

  I had hoped to lie. The truth pours out. “Evalina Cassano. She was . . . in the area.”

  Mother and Father look at me with steady, unsurprised expressions.

  “She was at the station to tell us goodbye, and now she came here to visit you.” Father speaks slow and soft. “And why did she do this, son?”

  They’ve both already guessed. I can see them bracing for the confirmation.

  “Because we’ve been seeing each other.”

  Mother’s gaze drops to her lap. Father winces.

  The barrack creaks under a gust of wind while I wait for them to respond.

  “This is not like you, Taichi.” Father’s voice sounds bruised with disappointment. “From Aiko, I might have expected this, but you . . . You have always been our good boy.”

  “I’m sorry I lied.” I bow my head low. “Please, forgive me.”

  “Miss Cassano is a nice girl,” Mother says. “You cannot do this to her.”

  The words are a punch. Even to my own parents, I’m something bad for Evalina.

  “I really care about her.” I can easily imagine the panic that would strike their faces if I used the word ‘love’ to describe what I feel for Evalina. “This isn’t like it was with Aiko and Dennis.”

  Mother flinches at his name. We never use it.

  “That does not make this okay, son.” Father rubs at his arthritic knuckles. “You know it is unfair to both of you to stay in a relationship that cannot lead to marriage.”