A Girl Like You

by Maureen Lindley

  Satomi is impressed by the urgency in him, the barely contained animal energy that at Manzanar he has little outlet for. Despite wanting to hold on to him, she longs sometimes to pull apart the barbed wire, set him free, see him run toward the life that he is so certain waits for him.

  Despite that Haru is on alert, the months pass without news of a draft date. She allows herself to relax into the idea that the Japanese boys will never be called to war. Never mind that they had answered yes. It’s all talk, talk to keep them on hold, talk to keep at bay another riot. It isn’t in the government’s nature, she thinks, to trust its Japanese countrymen.

  But then on an afternoon when the air is tender, the spumy clouds shot through with gold, a rosy day when work is finished and there is nothing to do but sit in the sinking sunlight watching Cora running with the Sewer Alley girls, Haru is summoned to the camp director’s office.

  “Time you took Cora back,” he says, not looking at her, already looking toward the battlefield.

  All down their alley the yes boys are pouring out of their doors, linking arms, talking excitedly. Haru joins them. His shoulders are back, his body taut and straight, he might already be a soldier. He is almost free.

  She is late returning Cora, so that the child is hurried in to eat the meal that has gone cold on her plate.

  “You shouldn’t take her out if you can’t get her back on time,” one of the kinder supervisors complains.

  “You won’t report it, will you?” Satomi pleads. “She was so happy playing, I forgot the time.”

  “Favoring Cora hasn’t gone unnoticed, Satomi. Don’t push them to ban you from taking her out at all.”

  On the way back to Sewer Alley she comes across Haru sitting on the ground with Ralph and some of his Citizens League friends. They are smoking and talking animatedly, so primed up that Haru doesn’t notice her at first. When he does, he signals with a brief nod of his head toward Sewer Alley. It’s an order for her to move on, a dismissal.

  “My papers have come. I’ll be drafted in a week or so,” he tells her later.

  He turns from her as he says it, pushing his hands through his thick hair. He can’t look at her, won’t be trapped by her hurt.

  “It’s an all-Nisei combat regiment. Boys are joining from all over. We’re getting our chance at last.”

  The delight in his voice cuts her so that she is too angry to feel sad. “You needn’t look so pleased about it. You are leaving your family, after all.” Leaving me, she wants to sob, leaving me.

  “Look, I’m sorry about it, Sati. You’re not going to cry, are you? It’s bad enough for my mother and Yumi; if they see you crying, then …” His voice is hard, unkind. Kindness might encourage tears, he might make promises, risk the clean break that if he is strong is only days away.

  “I’m not crying. I won’t cry, you needn’t worry. I guess I’ll just go and get your books. You’ll want your books back.”

  “You keep them. I won’t have much time for reading for a while.”

  “I don’t want them. I’ve finished them anyway.”

  “Okay, I get it that you’re angry. Sure, I’m leaving now, but everyone will be out of this place soon. It’s all going to work out, Sati, you’ll see. Once Manzanar is behind you, you’ll find what you want to do in life.”

  “I know what I want. You know what I want, Haru.”

  “What you think you want. Look, forget us for a bit, your mother needs you now. She’s much worse, isn’t she? Give her the best of yourself while you can, you will never regret it.”

  His words sting her. How can he think that she needs reminding of how much Tamura needs her? Death is loitering outside their barrack now, waiting for her mother to welcome it in. Tamura can hardly stand, these days; she has given up making her medicines, given up going to work.

  “Just for the time being,” she says. “Just for now.”

  Every inch of Tamura’s body aches, she can hardly raise her arms, and she is subject to swellings in her legs and feet, to strange pains in her organs.

  “It will pass,” she insists to Satomi. “Don’t make a fuss.”

  On Haru’s last night in the camp, their last together, Satomi walks to the Buddhist workshop early, to be sure of it. The air is damp, speckled with squads of clustered flies, and dark is falling fast. In the noises off in the distance she can hear the crackling of an illicit radio, the ubiquitous low hum of conversation that is a constant in the camp.

  There are always shadows in Manzanar, quick glimpsed movements, whispering in the alleyways. Rumor has it that the camp is haunted, that the ghosts of old inmates wander around trying to find their way home. It’s nonsense, she knows, but still she is pleased when the stars come fast and the moon waxes full.

  In the cupboard under the altar she finds a cloth and a small broom, and suddenly she is tidying and dusting like a housewife.

  When Haru comes he is sulky with her, fed up with women’s sad faces. He has heard Eriko crying in the night, and Naomi looks at him now as if each glance might be her last. He is borne down by the weight of women, the need they have of him.

  “Take your clothes off, Satomi,” he orders, his words as much a surprise to him as to her. “I want to see you naked, to remember you naked.”

  She hardly hesitates. First her dress, then her slip spilling down, then the Sears and Roebuck peach bras and panties saved and longed for, flung now to the floor. She can’t help feeling pleased she had swept away the dust earlier. Shivering a little, she watches him watching her. If he wants her enough to take her now, she won’t be bargaining for their future. She won’t deny him, even if he is already lost to her.

  He comes close, runs his hands from her breasts to her waist, drawing his breath in sharply when he reaches the soft measure of skin on the inside of her thighs. She is perfect and he yearns to be inside her, to take what he wants.

  Dreading a last rejection, she puts her hands around his neck and links her fingers as though to chain him there, keep him close. His hair is damp from the shower, the scent of him sweet and familiar. She buries her face in his neck, the painful rise and fall of hope sinking her.

  Something in Haru tightens and then breaks. It comes to him suddenly that he wants to hurt her, to make her see that want isn’t the same as love. He has had enough of the struggle, enough of wanting, enough of everything at Manzanar. Shoving his hand between her legs, he lets his fingers enter her, pushing hard.

  “Don’t, Haru, it hurts,” she blurts out, pushing him away so that he stumbles against a chair, knocking it over.

  “See, you don’t want it, you never did. It’s good I didn’t take you seriously, Satomi Baker.”

  “Is it?”

  He doesn’t answer; what is there to say? She’s got the message. He is saved.

  “What more could you want, Haru?” she says quietly before he reaches the door. “I’m asking nothing of you. Do you want me to feel ugly for the rest of my life?” Her words sound like blackmail to her; still, she can’t help herself. “I know you want to, just as much as I do.”

  “Put your dress on, Sati. It’s time to go home.”

  “No. You put it on for me.”

  What he had thought of as honor, so long harbored, falls from him in the putting on of the dress. It slips away unnoticed in the pretense, in the dance of him buttoning while she unbuttons.

  Only later, when she looks back on it, can she give it words; hug to herself how it had been, the good and the bad of it, the bloody bit that hurt and the bit that felt like swimming deep, so that when she surfaced, everything shimmered in a beaded light. She had longed for it, thinking it would change everything, knows now that it will not. Haru is the same Haru, unbending as always, while she hurts more than ever.

  Tamura says her goodbyes to Haru from her bed. She would like to have waved him away outside with the others, but her legs have swollen in the night and are too painful to stand on.

  “You are a good son to your mother, Haru,” she
says. “And a good friend to us too. Don’t get yourself killed out there, it is easily done.”

  She is thinking of Aaron, his last wave, that final faraway smile. Men, it seems, are always longing to be gone.

  “Death is not the worst thing, Tamura.” He kisses her forehead. “Even so, best not to look towards it, best to live in the day.”

  Tamura knows that he isn’t talking about himself. She is near the end, although no one will speak of it for fear of attracting death a moment before its time.

  Outside, Cora is with the others, holding Eriko’s hand. She knows all the women are sad, but she is used to sadness, used to seeing people leave, having to leave herself.

  “I’m staying,” she says, letting go of Eriko’s hand, moving to Satomi’s side. “I’m staying, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are staying.” Satomi picks her up, holds her tight. “You are staying, little one.”

  Seeing Haru vault onto the truck crowded with his friends, she is the first of the little group in Sewer Alley to turn away. He looks so handsome, so happy to be leaving. She takes a mental snapshot in case she should forget the look of him, his strong square hands, the soft blush of his eyelids, and the grace that Tamura speaks of. He will always be the one to pattern by now, she thinks. It will take that same reserve, the same taking charge, to stir desire in her. She is not pleased about it.

  “If you don’t count the women, it’s just the old and the young left now,” Mr. Sano observes.

  “I must go to Mother,” Satomi calls to Haru, putting Cora down. “Good luck, Haru.”

  “I’ll write, Sati,” he calls as the truck’s engine starts up.

  The words feel like an empty promise to both of them.

  Eriko and Naomi are weeping. It’s hard to watch their boy leave. He is going to war, after all, and to make matters worse, they know that Tamura won’t rise from her bed again.

  “It’s not a good day,” Naomi says, her old face crumpling as she swallows hard.

  Yumi looks sullen. She can’t bring herself to wave. Who will stick up for her now?

  “Be an obedient girl, Yumi,” Haru calls as the truck speeds up. “Promise?”

  The day is a rare one, cold but bright, so bright and clear that the mountains appear to be hard up against the camp, so that you might reach out and touch them. Sunlight pours through the four tiny windowpanes of the Bakers’ barrack, tracing a pattern of squares on Tamura’s sheet. From outside, Satomi can hear the crows squawking overhead, she can hear Eriko fussing over Cora. It should be raining, she thinks. It should be as gray and cold outside as she feels inside. She could bear it better if the sun wasn’t shining.

  “He is not for you.” Tamura takes her hand and puts it to her lips. “Give your affection to Cora now. That sweet child deserves someone of her own.”

  The advice that comes daily from everyone is constant. “Care for your mother.” “Care for Cora.”

  It’s good advice, but it’s no cure for what she’s feeling. And apart from the ache for Haru, so sharp sometimes that it’s like the stitch in her side she gets from running, she is scared for Tamura, so scared that she can’t deny any longer the truth that her mother will not magically recover.

  Her talks with Dr. Harper are no longer about external events, about her complaints, about how the war is going. They are about practicalities, about helping Tamura, who refuses to leave their barrack, despite that the narrow dusty room is quite unsuitable for someone as ill as her.

  “I won’t finish my days in the camp hospital,” she insists. “I don’t want to be with sick people. I want to be with you, Satomi, and with Eriko.”

  Things have become worse faster than Satomi could have imagined, and now there seems little else in life but sleepless nights and days of listening to Tamura chasing her breath.

  Eriko comes to sit with her friend while Satomi visits with Cora at the orphanage.

  “It is only fair I have Tamura to myself for a bit,” she says. “We have to catch up with our gossip.”

  At the orphanage, Cora, standing alone, twisting her hair in a new habit, runs to her.

  “Will your mother die, like mine did?” she asks.

  Satomi doesn’t answer. She can’t say the words that will give truth to her fears. Cora can’t remember her own mother but knows that she is dead, knows she has lost what is precious.

  “Shall we have a story, Cora? Would you like that?”

  Cora devours stories, lives in them long after the telling of them is over. All the children like the stories Satomi tells, especially the ones she makes up, in which she likes to weave their names, their little habits. She is a good storyteller, and how should they know that they have become characters in such classics as Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island? There is only so much she can invent, after all.

  “You must be proud of who you are,” she says, looking at the mix of them. “Your mothers and fathers were beautiful Americans. And you are all brave little Americans because you are like them.”

  In the telling to them of who they are, she is flooded with gratitude for who she is herself. It is a wonderful thing to be the daughter of Tamura Baker, to have Aaron Baker’s determined blood in her veins. How could she have ever thought otherwise?

  “You teach me as much as I do you,” she tells the children.

  Cora hates sharing Satomi. She sets up camp next to her in the storytelling sessions, and has been known to shove away the children who get too close to Satomi.

  “She is mine,” she says, as though speaking of her little string-tied bundle of possessions.

  “You mustn’t mind that I talk to the others, Cora. It doesn’t change the fact that you are special to me, you silly girl.”

  “Can I live with you when your mother dies, Satomi?”

  “I will ask, Cora. But don’t get your hopes up, they don’t say yes to much, do they? But you can still visit, and I am here every day, after all.”

  She worries that Cora seems agitated these days, more needy than before. The orphanage can be a lonely place despite that it is full of children and loud with the crying of babies. There is too little for the children to do, and they are all suffering from loss of the familiar. Perhaps she shouldn’t have allowed herself to get so close, but it is done now, she can’t desert Cora, she loves her.

  Dr. Harper agrees to ask permission from the orphanage for Cora to live with her, but not, as he puts it delicately, while Tamura is so ill. It wouldn’t be fair for any of them.

  “I can’t imagine they will allow it anyway, Sati. It would hardly be a conventional arrangement.”

  He longs to get Tamura into his hospital, to see her cocooned in clean white sheets where she will be available to him the whole day long. He wants to care for her in her last days, be on hand to ease her pain.

  “She should be in the new hospital,” he tells Satomi. “You can’t look after her properly in the barracks.”

  There is a morgue attached to the hospital, but he doesn’t say that would be more convenient too. Taking the dead from the barracks is bad for morale, it unsettles the inmates. Since the riot and the No No Boys looking for trouble, tearing down the American flag, being insolent to the guards, they hardly need more to unsettle them.

  “She wants to stay at home,” Satomi says, quoting Tamura.

  The absurdity of Manzanar being spoken of as home by her mother is not lost on her. Yet even in the face of the horror of the place she has come to understand that Tamura has experienced something rather wonderful in the camp, something that has restored her to herself.

  Since she insists on staying where she is, there isn’t much that Dr. Harper can do for his favorite patient, except to visit her daily, a pleasure, he thinks, more for himself than for her. He shouldn’t favor patients, he knows, but who could not love Tamura, after all?

  More like a nurse than a doctor, he plumps her pillow, places pans of steaming water nearby, futilely hoping to create a space in her lungs so that she might catch a few e
asier breaths. The science is not good; the hope, though, is a comfort. He has rigged up a line of oxygen, but Tamura doesn’t want it, doesn’t want to prolong things. In any case, it’s hardly more than a placebo at this stage of her disease. Occasionally he takes the unearned liberty of a lover and strokes her hair, caresses her hand.

  “You are pale yourself,” she tells him teasingly. “I recommend lettuce juice twice a day.”

  They laugh together. He wonders if it will be the last time Tamura laughs, he wonders if everything she does will be for the last time. The thought of never seeing her smile again, or push her hair back in the delicate way she does, hurts too much to dwell on.

  “It won’t be long,” she says, as though in apology for putting him to the trouble.

  “I’m not listening,” he replies. “I’m not listening, Tamura.”

  It seems to Satomi that Tamura must be shared with everyone, so that only a small part of her mother is hers alone. The days are taken up with Dr. Harper’s visits, with Eriko’s nursing, and with Naomi, who comes to sit with Tamura, talking to her all the time in Japanese, her shaky old voice full of tenderness.

  Cora comes to visit too, eyes wide with curiosity at the sight of Tamura propped on her pillow. She is not sure what death is, except she thinks perhaps an angel might come to take Tamura away, like in the story she heard long ago but can’t remember where. She has set up her daytime camp at Eriko’s, where she can hear Tamura’s labors through the wall. Eriko and Naomi are kind, but it is Satomi she wants, Satomi she waits for, as she takes Yumi’s fan from the wall despite the fact that she knows that Yumi has forbidden it. She wafts it in front of her face to smell the sweet clean scent of cedar.

  Only at night does Satomi have her mother to herself, lying next to her on the mattress that she has pushed up against Tamura’s bed. She talks quietly until Tamura dozes off, hardly sleeping herself, terrified that she will wake to her mother gone.

  “I know that you will be surprised to hear it,” Tamura says softly, “but I have enjoyed my life here with you.”