A few minutes later, Rose and Lorelei came walking up. They smiled and spoke to the guard, then took me inside, down rows of barracks, and finally to the quarters assigned to their family. Outside I saw a carefully laid out rock garden with stones arranged together by color, size, and even by shapes. They had transplanted some native cholla cacti, sage plants, pincushion cacti, and prickly pears in among the rocks and smooth stones, making it into something neat and attractive. They had turned useless stones and ordinary plants, waste to most of us, into a garden of spare beauty.
Rose gestured out to the desert. “Our father borrowed a wheel-barrow, and we hauled these rocks in from all around.”
“I thought he would kill us in the process,” Lorelei whispered and then laughed.
“It’s lovely. It was worth your effort.” But it couldn’t have compared to the green gardens they had left behind in California.
Once inside the door to their home, even Lorelei became quiet. The first thing that struck me was how small it was—the space assigned for four adults to live in, their “apartment,” as they called it, couldn’t have been more than twenty by twenty-four feet. But just as they had done with the outside garden, they had transformed it. The interior was a cheerful, tidy home. It looked as if they had put up walls, then painted and papered them. They had also carved out some niches in the corners and added shelves lined with family photos and built Japanese-style screens to cover the windows. From my readings, I had learned that each internee had been allowed to bring only two bags of belongings to camp and no furniture, but despite that, the Uma haras had managed to furnish this home with pieces made out of crates and scrap wood, the end result as neat and comfortable as humanly possible. In one corner was a table covered with a yellow-and-red-flowered tablecloth and tucked under with chairs. Along the wall sat a dresser and a double-decker bed. The room was lit with two shaded lamps. One corner held a folding screen framed with carved wood and decorated with a Japanese scene.
The furniture, the lampshades, even the floors were spotless, as if just recently polished, dusted, and swept out with a broom. This camp and the land around it was a place of endless sand and dust, much drier even than the farm where I lived, yet they kept it more than habitable. I could see no running water in the room and only a coal stove for heat, yet the room felt warm.
Rose and Lorelei spoke in hushed tones as they introduced me to their father, Masaji, and their mother, Itsu, who were both well dressed in American garb, both smooth-skinned, short of stature, but strong in appearance.
They nodded to me as we met. “What an honor that you have come to our home,” said Masaji. His shirt was purest white and pressed.
Itsu offered me hot tea, which I accepted, then she began pulling out pinstriped, gray wool fabric already pieced together using broad hand stitches. As she held the garment up to me, I saw the only sign of her age—tiny vertical lines on her upper lip. The rest of her skin was unmarked, and her hair was as black as her daughters‘, long, pulled back, and coiled at the back of her head. As she worked, I noticed three majorette uniforms decorated with gold braid and brass buttons hanging on the wall. Lorelei told me later that her parents were making the uniforms for the camp’s high school band. Itsu ushered me behind the screen, then all four of them left the “apartment” so I could try on the garment in privacy. As I was slipping myself into the pieced suit, as they waited for me beyond the door, I wondered about their sense of privacy. All four of them, after all, slept inside the same room.
After I was dressed, Rose, Lorelei, and their parents returned to work on the fitting. Itsu and Rose were the only ones to touch me in any personal way—they took the measurements along the hem, across my breasts, and my enlarging waist, whereas Masaji held back and gave them quiet directions, sometimes in English and sometimes in Japanese. Rose and Lorelei had told me before that their parents came to this country as children after having already learned the Japanese language and customs. Their parents’ parents had been friendly for years, had come across the ocean at approximately the same time, and the two children had always been friends, had always seemed destined to marry.
It was their mother and father who had suffered most from the disparity between cultures, Rose and Lorelei once told me. As Itsu pinned the fabric for a perfect fit, I remembered. Because they weren’t born in this country, they couldn’t become citizens, although they had lived most of their lives in the U.S. When Rose and Lorelei were born on this soil, they purposefully chose for them first names common in America, taught them English at home, and sent them to public schools, where they were expected to excel. Obviously Masaji and Itsu had hoped to provide better opportunities for their daughters than had been afforded to them.
As they continued to work on the fitting, I studied the family photos on the shelves across from me. Beside them was another photo of Masaji standing and smiling with a celebrity whose face I recognized but couldn’t name. I remembered Rose and Lorelei once telling me that their father had made suits for famous people in Los Angeles.
Later, from the compartment next to theirs, Rose and Lorelei’s maternal grandparents came over to meet me. They spoke little English, but instead bowed to me and smiled; then we sat and shared a cup of hot tea. Their grandmother was one of the tiniest women I’d ever seen, with small flitting eyes like those of a bird. She wore a long, silky kimono and cork-soled slippers that slapped silently on her soles as she walked.
Afterward, Rose and Lorelei led me away for a walk about the camp.
“Your suit should be ready for the holidays,” Rose said.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.” If only I had a place to wear it.
We looked inside the mess hall where Lorelei said they ate their meals. At an empty table, an older woman was teaching a group of younger women an art form called bon-kei. Rose told me the woman had learned it in Japan. Sand was a vital ingredient and because sand was in no short supply at Amache, word had spread throughout the camp, and the old woman had ended up with many new students of the art. We stopped to watch for a few minutes as the students worked on creating miniature landscapes inside a tray—some of them of mountain, desert, or beach, and many of them of imaginary scenes in Japan. Each one was different. In another area of the mess hall, high school students were working on their yearbook pages.
We walked back out into the sunlight. “It mustn’t seem like much of a problem, but I don’t have enough to do on the farm,” I said to Rose as we left. “Would the bon-kei teacher allow someone from outside the camp in her class?”
“She would,” Rose replied. “She would see it as an honor.”
“Perhaps I’ll join a class, then.”
Lorelei said, “Our mother can teach you ikebana, Japanese flower arranging.”
“It would honor her, too,” Rose added.
They looked at me in a new way, expectantly. They had asked so little of me before and given so much. “Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll learn flower arranging instead.”
Rose’s face glowed. “We’ll tell our mother.”
Even Lorelei looked pleased.
A moment later, we walked onward and Lorelei said, “I understand what you mean, Livvy. We’re bored here, too. The high school kids call it ‘waste time,’ and we’ve too much of it.”
Rose spoke up. “Not all of us are bored. I’m taking advantage of the free time and learning the tea ceremony from our grandmother.”
Lorelei shot me a sideways glance. “Even though she doesn’t really want to.”
Rose turned to me. “It’s different for us. We can’t refuse the wishes of our elders.”
“We must please, that’s true,” Lorelei said. “But I’m never quite pleasing enough.” She looked away, out to the softly blowing desert.
As they guided me onward, I began to notice the same thing I’d noticed in Trinidad—the lack of young men. I saw some high school seniors holding a war bond drive, and plenty of young boys running around playing cowboy
s and Indians. Young girls played with dolls, older men engaged in hobbies or worked, and older women joined groups of quiet conversation over knitting. But the young men had vanished from this place. Rose told me that since 1943, Nisei men had been able to enlist in the all-Nisei 442nd Regiment, now engaged in the fighting in Italy and France. Camp Amache had the highest percentage of eligible males inducted into the armed services, their cousin among them. Plenty of Japanese American young men were anxious and ready to prove their loyalty to the U.S., even with their lives. Already highly decorated, since October 15, the 442nd had led the rescue of the famous “lost battalion” and were then on their way to Germany.
Now I could clearly see the reason for Lorelei’s longing for male company. She and Rose were surrounded by older parents and grandparents and by much younger people still in school, but by few others their own age.
Rose showed me to the latrine after I told her I needed to find a bathroom. I entered a community building where toilets sat rowed out next to each other and pieces of plywood had been put up by shy women to afford some bit of privacy. I sat at the last toilet and covered my nose against the odor.
Years later, I would remember that smell. It is odd the things we remember in our older days. From that day onward, I would also remember other things about my first visit to Amache. The endless arc of a sky bigger than earth, the taste of dust on my teeth, rocks arranged in rows, hushed conversations, and the gentle laughter of shy women. Not all of it bad or unpleasant, but all of it was tamped with a sense of isolation and restriction.
How dreadfully their lives had changed.
Moments later, as I readjusted my clothing and prepared to exit the latrine, a sickness, disbelief turned into nausea, came over me. I’d left myself somewhere else and wasn’t really in this camp anymore. That way, Rose and Lorelei and their sweet family couldn’t be here, either.
Eighteen
In 1944, the winter came quietly. Instead of raging storms, we had heavy, silent snowfalls that covered the dry grasses and the overturned fields with miles of powder.
One of the reasons untouched snow is so breathtaking is that it‘s, by nature, so fleeting. Even the act of making those first tracks mars it; then on the warmer days in between storms, it gets icy, later slushy, then eventually melts away. But on those mornings when it spreads away, velvety white and sparkling, nothing’s finer.
During my childhood, often my family would drive up into the Rockies after the first storm, and there we found ourselves quite alone, as most of the tourists were long gone by that time. We explored the quiet roads back in the days before the bans were placed on pleasure driving. We listened to empty echoes, trudged down roads and out into meadows, seeking out the deer and elk herds that would have to survive the winter season most likely with little food. On Berthoud Pass, we strapped on oak skis to glide down the slopes. And for once, I excelled in something other than studies, and my sisters did not. My father, who skied better than us all, would take off, fast-gliding down the slopes, and only I could come close to keeping up with him. I remember how he would look back over his shoulder at me as I tried to gain on him, and he’d shout out, “Bravo, girl!”
On the morning after about a foot of new snow had fallen, I bundled into my coat and stepped out on the porch. Winter on the plains came as a surprise to me. Our previously bare fields now spread out like a linen cloth on a table sprinkled with sugar. The sun had already burned the clouds away, but the air had yet to begin to warm. Each of my breaths did a smoky dance show before me. All was so silent I could hear the soft whisk of a sparrow hawk as it circled overhead.
Ray came outside to join me. He slurped loudly on his coffee and disturbed the silence. Looking out at the snow, I asked him, “Are you finished with your work now?”
He took another loud sip. “I got plenty of other things that need tending to besides the fields.” He gestured beyond the porch. “This snow’ll melt off. Usually before Christmastime comes, we’ll get some warm days and even some rain.”
I still hadn’t adjusted to all the talk of weather. Even women and children often discussed the changing conditions of the high prairie at long length. After church, in the town, over supper, and in the stores, it was the favorite topic of conversation of everyone around me.
Ray pointed down the roadway that ran between fields, the same one where I had first met Rose and Lorelei. “I got to grade the ruts out of that road before the ground freezes. Then I need to work on the fences.”
I looked back at the snow. So he wouldn’t be spending any more time at home after all. I had thought that after harvest and seeding the winter wheat, he would be around more often.
“Last winter, I worked the midnight shift at the sugar beet factory.” He took another sip. “But I won’t do that this year.”
I said, “Thank you.” It would be a bit spooky, out so far and by myself at night.
The silence between Ray’s slurps was deafening. Finally, he said, “I want to thank you for being so friendly with Martha.”
Ray never ceased to surprise me. “Why wouldn’t I be friendly to Martha? She’s a wonderful lady, Ray.”
He smiled into his coffee mug. “It wasn’t easy for her growing up the only girl in the family, with two brothers for bad company.” Now he laughed to himself. “When she was a teenager, Daniel and I were ‘long about six and ten years old and up to no good at all times. We’d put grasshoppers in her bed and pry open her hairpins, just for sport.”
Our quiet house full of childhood romp and antics? I couldn’t imagine it. “Tell me more.”
“The first time she went out on a date, that ole boyfriend of hers drove all the way out here to pick her up. I tell you, he was dressed in his best, and so was Martha. Daniel and I hid right here, under this porch.” He pointed down to the planks beneath our feet. “And while that boy was inside getting drilled by my dad about his intentions, we poured maple syrup on the porch steps. They came out and stepped down in it. For the whole of that date, they were having to stop and kick off grass and pieces of trash and paper that got stuck and dragged off their shoes.”
These were probably the most words Ray had ever spoken to me at once, and he had me laughing. “Poor Martha. You and Daniel were brats.”
Ray was still smiling. “That ole boy never did come around again.”
“Was Martha heartbroken?”
“No,” Ray scoffed. “Well, not so much as I know. Like I said, she grew up keeping pretty much to herself. Our mother was awful busy, and Martha liked her own company best of all.” He turned to me. “But she sure does like you.”
Martha, the matriarch of their family, had treated me as finely as I could have ever wished. Although she knew the real reason for my marrying Ray, she had welcomed me into the family, and Ruth, her oldest daughter, openly wanted to emulate me. I took my thoughts forward in time, to the day when the baby would come early. Ray had said no one would speak unkindly to me, but still, they would know. They would wonder what had happened to make a good girl fall so far.
Franklin came bounding out of the barn. When that old hound first hit snow, he stopped, sniffed, took another step, sniffed again, and then started to pounce into the powder with both front paws. You’d have thought he’d never seen snow before. Now he was diving into it and chopping it up with all four legs. Ray laughed aloud, and even I smiled. A minute later, Franklin saw me and started crossing the ground between the barn and the house, making a new path of churned snow along the way. Then he was galloping up the steps to the porch with chunks of snow spraying away behind him.
“There, boy,” I said as he came up to me, tongue out and panting. I rubbed the top of his head and the soft folds of hide on the sides of his neck. I sank down to my knees so I could get closer to him.
“Careful,” Ray said, and I was. Normal daily movements that once I had taken for granted had become not nearly so easy. I felt heavier by the day and more uncomfortable with my own body and sense of balance. My arms and
legs remained thin, but my breasts were larger, and my abdomen had turned into an upside-down bowl.
I continued to pet and scratch Franklin and made a mental note to let Ray see me thoroughly wash my hands before I made breakfast. “Isn’t it possible, Ray, that he could freeze in the worst of the winter?”
“Not in the barn, he won’t.”
“But now he’s getting older.”
Ray slurped again. “He’s been out there for years.”
I continued scratching until my legs began to ache. I drew back to my feet, and Franklin took off for more romping in the snow. I followed him with my eyes. “You see, I always wanted a pet.” What was coming over me? “My father never let us have a pet, not even a rabbit.” I hadn’t cried in front of anyone except Abby and Bea and wouldn’t do it now. Crying made men cringe. “I’m sorry I let Franklin in the house. I didn’t realize what an insult it would be to you.”
“Livvy, it’s okay.”
I strained to see out into the sunshine.
“With all the other animals gathered in there, that dog’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be okay now. Trust me,” he said.
We stood together watching Franklin paw at the snow in a search for life, for something to respond back to him. Now a goat was high-stepping its way out of the barn and into the snow, too.
Ray’s voice changed. “Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d been the one to go away. Daniel would be alive now.” He looked out at the animals and took another sip of coffee.
“Ray, you can’t ask yourself those questions. You’ll only torment yourself.” I stared away. “Why did Daniel enlist?”
“He didn’t have to,” Ray said. “The Draft Board put us 3-A, because we were the only ones left to run this farm, and farming is essential business nowadays.”
“It is.”
“But Daniel knew war was coming. Even before Pearl Harbor, he knew we were going to have to join the war in order to win it. Lots of local boys joined up on their own and left the farms to be run by their fathers. I was older. Maybe I should’ve talked him out of it.” He paused. “But most of the time, I don’t question it. Maybe I was just making a point.”
The Magic of Ordinary Days Page 13
