The Reverend Mother finds herself hoping that her Mary is not their Cora. If she is, she will not, she thinks, be brought up in the faith. And after all, it’s not as if they have a blood claim on the child. But the promise of Joseph Rodman’s astonishingly generous check if she is the child they are looking for is surely a gift from God, a benediction. They could expand, take more children, build a schoolhouse, the possibilities are endless.
And the Mother House, their spiritual home is expecting to receive a good portion of the money. It is only through donations, after all, that the order survives, that it can fulfill its calling in the world, where there is so much human misery to alleviate. One small child in exchange for so much, how can she say no? Mary’s soul is not in the balance, after all. Their bishop, on hearing that the child may have found a home, had hurried to confirm her in the faith so that her soul is already saved. And the Blessed Virgin Mary, the child’s namesake, has her in her sights.
“We have given the children extra playtime in honor of your visit,” Sister Amata trills on her return. You will be able to see Mary at play, make your decision without the child knowing.”
In the yard the children dart about. Their cries are distracting and it takes time for Satomi to start singling out the girls one from another. Some of them are at hopscotch, some skipping, but Satomi hardly looks at them. She thinks that Cora will be standing alone, indulging in the lonely child’s habit of watching, but she is nowhere to be seen.
“She’s there, right there.” Eriko grasps Satomi’s hand and points out Cora, who is next up to play hopscotch.
Dr. Harper and Eriko are smiling, there’s no mistaking that it’s Cora. She hasn’t grown that much, legs a little longer, and her hair too, but she is still a narrow child, small for her age, pretty as ever.
At the sight of her, Satomi draws in her breath, her hand flies to her mouth, tears stab in her eyes. There’s no mistaking that it’s Cora, and she can’t quite believe it. She finds herself yearning for Tamura. That blue-black hair, the girlishness, the bow perched as precariously on her head as one of Tamura’s hats.
“Oh, Cora, little Cora.”
After all her imaginings of running to the child, their joyful reunion, she is suddenly afraid, can’t seem to move. Sister Amata puts her hand on Satomi’s shoulder and propels her forward.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” she says, and Satomi nods.
Slowly, as one by one the children stop to watch the visitors, Satomi moves toward Cora.
“It’s Satomi, Cora. Do you remember me?” She is trembling, her voice not her own.
Cora takes a step backward, hangs her head, and looks at the ground.
“No,” she says quietly.
“From Manzanar, Cora. I’m Tamura’s daughter. Your friend. You know me, Cora.”
Cora has pictures in her head of the camp, of Tamura and Eriko, and especially of Satomi. They are, she thinks, the people of her dreams, the people she suspects she has made up. It’s scary to see them now in the flesh, not knowing what they have come for.
“You will have to forgive me for taking so long to come,” Satomi says. “I’m sorry, Cora, so very sorry.”
She longs to kiss the child’s sweet tilting lips, hug her to herself, but she doesn’t want to frighten her.
“I want to take you home with me, Cora. We have a lovely house to share. We will be like sisters. Will you come with me?”
Cora doesn’t answer; she just stands staring at Satomi, her body swaying a little, her hands clasped tightly together.
“Speak up, Mary,” Sister Amata says. “You must answer the lady.”
“Don’t hurry her,” Satomi snaps. “Give her time.”
Cora narrows her eyes, she is thinking, figuring things out. She recalls now her time on a bus, the way she had watched Satomi standing in the dust, waving and crying. And now Satomi is crying again, it’s strange to see a grown-up crying. Satomi’s not her mother, but she knows now she belongs to her in some way, some good way.
“Do you remember me?” Eriko can’t resist.
Cora looks at her and nods. Splashes of memory are filling her head. She does know Eriko somehow. Even the man with the white hair is familiar. She remembers rooms made from wood, she remembers playing in the dust and the glimmer of kindling burning in a stove. It’s all connected with the things that she keeps in a bundle under her bed. She gives a faint smile, then turns suddenly and runs back into the house.
“I’ll go,” Sister Amata says, raising her hand in a gesture for them to stay where they are. “She is frightened, I think.”
But before she reaches the house, Cora comes flying out the door, rushing past her. Her face is flushed, she is excited.
“I have it,” she says to Satomi. “I have it here.”
The little wooden titmouse sits in the middle of her open palm, rocking as though it is breathing. Silence gathers as they all stare down at it. Dr. Harper is the first to move; he reaches out, gently touching its wing, connecting himself for a moment to Tamura.
“You have it, Cora,” Satomi whispers. “You have our sweet bird.”
Cora puts her hand into Satomi’s. “You’re real,” she says. “I thought that you were from a story.”
Satomi takes Cora’s hand and turns toward the gate. She is thinking of their white-shingled home, where there is fresh linen on the beds and there are puzzles and dolls waiting for Cora, cookies in big glass jars, and the shiny brown chocolate box with its trinkets of hope.
Tamura would have approved of the dresses hung behind the door in Cora’s bedroom. Against her own taste, she has bought the prettiest she could find. And best of all there are books, Gulliver’s Travels, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, stories to nourish the child’s soul.
Cora will play at the edge of the ocean in the clean air, with the water licking her feet. She will collect shells and ammonite pebbles, make sand castles. And she will run shrieking from the scuttling crabs, hear the whales sounding out in the bay. There is still enough of childhood left to turn the tide.
And for herself, whiskey in the kitchen cupboard, fresh-ground coffee, the big-bellied stove that works like a dream, and no shortage of wood. If happiness can be willed, she will set herself to the task, make it hers and Cora’s.
She will open Dr. Harper’s archive boxes and go through them with Cora. They will relive their life at Manzanar together, so that Cora will know her own life’s journey.
She will make an index of the archive, write her own story of the camp, and, when the time is right, show it to the world. And surely the time will be right soon. So much depends on good timing.
She thinks of the sea at the Cape, the way it laces itself around the caterpillar of land at Eastham, turning at its end in the shape of a question mark. And the East, she thinks, is the place, the place where Pilgrims landed, where seasons have their time, where the sun rises.
Acknowledgments
It is such a pleasure to thank all the friends and colleagues who have helped me with the writing of A Girl Like You.
My heartfelt thanks go to my editor, Alexandra Pringle, for thinking me worth the risk, and for sticking with me through the difficult times. And thank you to Erica Jarnes at Bloomsbury UK, for her insightful suggestions and calming presence. I am grateful to Nikki Baldauf, Lea Beresford, and Dave Cole from Bloomsbury USA for a great job in overseeing the American production of the book.
So many thanks to the talented Gillian Stern for her outstanding guidance. Gillian gives 100 percent at all times, as well as a master class in “less is more.” I’m grateful to my agent, Robert Caskie, who saw the potential of the story in the brief outline I presented him with, and enthusiastically took it to Bloomsbury. May he always be so successful. As always my thanks go to Clive Lindley, for his invaluable advice, his knowledge, and his generous help. I would like to thank Roy Kakuda from the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, a child of the camps, who shared his time and memories with me. I am indebted to Ri
chard Gregson for his invaluable help with the first draft. Thank you to Jenny Clifford for Oahu cemetery. Those others who helped with read-throughs, with research and in so many helpful ways, were Lucy Dundas, Isabel Evans, and the ever encouraging “shedettes.” I would also like to thank Trina Middlecote for keeping the technology working.
A Note on the Author
Maureen Lindley was born in Berkshire and grew up in Scotland. Having worked as a photographer, antique dealer, and dress designer, she eventually trained as a psychotherapist. Her first novel, The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, was published in 2009. She lives in the Wye Valley on the Welsh borders with her husband.
By the Same Author
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel
Copyright © 2013 by Maureen Lindley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lindley, Maureen.
A girl like you : a novel / Maureen Lindley.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-60819-453-7
1. Japanese American families—California—Fiction. 2. Japanese
Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945—Fiction.
3. World War, 1939–1945—Japanese Americans—Fiction.
4. World War, 1939–1945—California—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6112.I49G57 2013
823'.92—dc23
2012035081
First U.S. edition 2013
Electronic edition published in June 2013
www.bloomsbury.com
A Girl Like You Page 35
