Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  The ladies at the door of the latrine ranged in age from a young mother with a baby on her hip to a hunched, elderly crone being supported by a younger woman—a daughter, perhaps, or a daughter-in-law. Lucy strained to hear what they were saying, but the wind prevented her from making out the words.

  “Mother, I have to go,” she whispered urgently.

  Miyako frowned as the door abruptly opened and two women came out, their faces downcast, and hurried down the road in the other direction. Those waiting gave them a wide berth.

  A second later the smell hit Lucy. The women near the door took a step away from it, before one of them resolutely walked up the steps. A moment later, the others followed.

  “Mother,” Lucy pleaded. She was afraid that she couldn’t control herself much longer, that she might urinate right here outside for everyone to see.

  “All right.” Miyako’s voice was thin and worried. They went inside, Miyako never letting go of her hand.

  Inside, the stench was overwhelming, and Lucy’s stomach roiled. On the floor, dark runnels of murky liquid and sewage flowed freely from the toilets, all but one of which had overflowed. The line to use the remaining toilet was a dozen women deep, all of them trying to avoid the waste that seeped across the floor and through the cracks. They stood with their backs to the last working toilet, giving the only privacy they could.

  Sitting on the toilet, an elderly woman was crying, tears running down her cheeks while she tried to shield her face. Her shame was palpable, her misery absolute. Next to Lucy, Miyako gasped.

  Lucy would never forget what her mother did next. Miyako, who couldn’t bring herself to speak to a stranger, who walked past the greeters at church without a word, who never attended a tea or a card game or a club meeting, took the folded cloth and handed Lucy the toiletry box. She walked across the foul-smelling room, ignoring the row of curious strangers, and handed the cloth to the old woman, not meeting her eyes, unable to avoid stepping in the waste. The woman murmured a few words and took the cloth, unfolding it and draping it over her head, obscuring her face completely.

  After that, Lucy and her mother waited their turn with the others. No one spoke; everyone bore the shame of the lack of privacy in silence. When it was their turn, Miyako allowed Lucy to go first. Her relief was immense. Afterward, she washed her hands and waited with her back to her mother. She had never seen Miyako unclothed—even last night her mother had waited until Lucy was in bed to undress. It was dawning on Lucy that all their privacy and modesty was to be taken from them in this place, but she was determined to give her mother all the dignity she could.

  * * *

  The wave of evacuees that swept Lucy and her mother into Manzanar was among the first, but within days, the earliest to arrive felt as though they had been there forever. Each day brought busloads of dazed families. Lucy learned to read in their faces the cycle of emotions as they came to understand what their new life entailed. Astonishment, dismay, horror, desperation...and slowly, slowly, the deadening of the features that signaled acceptance.

  Six families to a barrack, each in a room that measured twenty by twelve feet. Surplus cots and scratchy blankets from the first war. Instead of walls, raw wood dividers that didn’t reach the ceiling. Curtains instead of doors. Tar paper, unfinished wood, gaps and cracks in walls, floors, roofs. Freezing desert nights, impossible blowing sandstorms. Plumbers were recruited from within the ranks of the interned to work on the latrines, but problems persisted, and soon there was a grapevine among the women about which blocks’ latrines were working.

  There were toilet-paper shortages. Food shortages. Staff shortages. Still, as the days wore on, bits of scrap started turning up from the construction going on all over the camp. Boards were turned into shelves. Packing crates were turned into dressers and tables and even chairs; curtains were fashioned from bedsheets; men whittled and women knitted, anything to pass the time.

  In Manzanar, words took on new meanings. Lucy learned to use the word doorway when what she was describing was the curtain that separated each family’s room from the hallway that ran the length of the drafty barrack building. In short order they developed the habit of stamping on the floor to announce a visit, since there was no door to knock on, but they still called it knocking. Even building did not mean what it did back on Clement Street. At first the evacuees thought the barracks were unfinished, with their tar-paper walls and unpainted window casings and plywood floors, but it turned out that these humble edifices were what the government meant for the internees to live in for as long as the war raged on.

  The dirt avenues filled with people, the crowds extending all the way to the razor-wire-topped fence that encircled them. Already Lucy had lost her way to her barrack several times, finally learning to orient herself by the mountain in the distance and the guard towers, entirely too close, in which soldiers peered down at them all day long, and from which searchlights projected at night, crisscrossing the bare dirt streets in dizzying patterns.

  Slowly, people began to absorb the fact that Manzanar was their home for the foreseeable future. Signs of domestic life began to appear: bright garments hanging from clotheslines, children’s toys left on stoops, and all kinds of makeshift innovations meant to turn the tiny cells into homes. Women adorned walls with pictures torn from magazines. Men scavenged bits of cast-off trash to create everything from decorative fences to wooden doormats to aid in the never-ending struggle to keep the dust out.

  After two weeks, Lucy’s paper name tag still hung from a nail above her cot. She saw the way her mother looked at it, in the afternoons when they waited for dinner. Miyako’s mouth got small, her lipstick lips disappearing in a trick where she rolled them inside, and her eyebrows went up until they met the faint line in her forehead.

  Lucy had learned to read her mother’s thoughts through her facial expressions. Manzanar seemed to have turned Miyako even further inward, until she barely spoke at all, spending her time sitting on the edge of her cot, her hands resting lightly on the embroidered coverlet she had brought from home.

  Miyako asked Lucy why she kept the tag, and Lucy said she liked seeing their name, TAKEDA, written out in big black letters on the strip of cardboard.

  After her father’s business was sold, the sign that read TAKEDA PACKING in bold black letters was removed from the building by the new owner. The next time Lucy and her mother passed the building, in a busy industrial area of the city several miles from their house, Lucy cried when she saw that it was missing. Now she wondered if her mother believed she kept the tag because it reminded her of him, but the truth was that, as the weeks and months passed, Lucy’s memory of him was becoming like a drawing, all mustache and spectacles.

  Anyway, this was not why she kept the tag. The real reason was much simpler.

  Before they came to Manzanar, Miyako often reminded Lucy that other children had far less than she did. That she should not talk about her Madame Alexander doll with her patent-leather shoes, or her View-Master or her paints and easel or the jewelry box on the tall dresser in her room, because the other children at her school did not have as many nice things and it would make them feel sad if she talked about them.

  But here, in Manzanar, they had only the things they carried with them. Lucy had her paint box. She had The Mystery at Lilac Inn, because her mother had made her choose only one of her Nancy Drew mysteries and it was her favorite. On Lucy’s bed was the spread that her mother had embroidered with dai
sies. She had a box of colorful hair ribbons. Four things that belonged to Lucy alone.

  The tag made five.

  10

  Word got around that Miyako had no husband to protect her, and she could no longer walk freely in the streets without suffering unwanted attention. Adolescent boys followed her; men made catcalls and rude invitations as she walked to the laundry, the ironing house, the general store. Even the wizened, broken-toothed Issei who crouched under the barracks’ eaves, out of the wind, watched her unabashedly.

  Men had watched Miyako in Los Angeles too, but they were covert about it there, glancing over a hymnal at church or letting their gaze linger too long at Miyako as they held the door for her at the post office. But here in the camp, the conventions of polite society were unraveling. Overwhelmed families were fracturing. Gangs of young men, bored and emboldened, roamed the camp. Men fraternized with each other in the evenings, drinking smuggled liquor and smoking.

  Miyako wore her sunglasses and wrapped her hair in scarves and kept her chin held high, but the strain showed in her hollow eyes, her lack of appetite. She went out less and less, refusing even the invitations from the other women in the block to attend church, to join in efforts to spruce up the barrack, to share precious hoarded tea.

  Aiko came to visit one warm afternoon in April. She had surprised those who knew her by being one of the first to take a job. All the internees were encouraged to work, but unskilled workers were paid eight dollars per month, a sum that made Miyako curl her lip contemptuously since, as she told Lucy, she used to spend more than that on hats alone. Still, most people jumped at the chance of a job, any job at all; former merchants labored as mess-hall workers; artists toiled alongside ministers in ditches and warehouses. Those lucky enough to have a skill that was in demand—doctors, nurses, teachers, dentists—were paid for their labor the sum of nineteen dollars per month.

  Aiko had secured a position in the net factory inside Manzanar, which made camouflage nets for use by the troops fighting overseas. The nets were made by weaving strips of fabric through a large mesh that was suspended from the ceiling twenty feet high, and the workers had to wear masks to prevent the fibers from aggravating their lungs, but the pay was better than most jobs available inside the camp—and more important, Aiko said she liked to stay busy.

  “You need to get outside,” she chided Miyako, as they had tea in Lucy and Miyako’s room. The porcelain tea set that had belonged to Renjiro’s mother was one of the few luxuries Miyako had shipped to Manzanar. “You’re even more pale than before!”

  It was true; most people spent time outside in the sun, from sheer boredom and a desire for a change of scenery, if no other reason, but Miyako stayed in her room nearly all the time. Lucy herself had developed lines where the sun browned her skin below her sleeves from roaming the avenues and building sites from breakfast until dinnertime.

  “You need a job,” Aiko said decisively, ignoring Miyako’s protests. “Soon Lucy will be in school, and then you’ll have nothing to occupy your time at all.”

  The start of school was imminent and unavoidable. Lucy had enjoyed her freedom from the classroom, but already evacuee parents were organizing classes and nursery schools. Each block had a barrack set aside for use as a recreation center, and some of the men were building simple tables and benches for the children to use. There were rumors of classroom materials arriving any day, and donations of used textbooks, paper and other supplies had been made by churches.

  Lucy had no wish to return to a classroom—her final days in school in Los Angeles had left a sour taste. Besides, she was learning to relish her freedom, the ability to leave their barrack in the morning and return whenever she felt like it, sometimes taking her lunch in other blocks’ mess halls. She’d met kids from all over, compared experiences with children whose families fished off Bainbridge Island in Washington or grew produce in the central valley or attended schools in Sacramento much like hers. She moved from group to group with ease, but it was her own company she kept the most, because Manzanar had stoked in her the explorer’s spirit that she had only begun to discover in the weeks following Pearl Harbor.

  As she watched workers put the finishing touches on the auditorium being built near the entrance one day, she noticed a sign posted on the newly constructed façade. It advertised for boys to serve as runners, delivering documents and mail all around the camp. Interested parties should come to the main administrative office.

  “I’m going to the library, Mama,” she said the next morning after breakfast, hoping Miyako would neither notice nor remark upon the extra care she’d taken getting dressed: she was wearing her best skirt and blouse and had rubbed a little rouge into her cheeks and borrowed her mother’s pearl brooch, which she shielded with the strap of her book bag until Miyako shrugged and turned away; then she slipped the bag from her shoulder and left it lying on her bed. She’d mentioned the library because she thought it was least likely to draw an objection—in fact she had been a frequent visitor to the trove of donated volumes ever since a few volunteers had begun collecting and cataloging them in a block rec hall. “I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  Lucy practiced her speech on the walk to the main administration building. Sure, they wanted boys—that just meant that she would have to be particularly convincing in her appeal. In her experience, even allowing for the bitter disappointment of the loss of her turn as lunch monitor, girls were more adept at all the tasks at her old school than boys, who were far more prone to cutting up and slacking off. Here, at least, no one could deny her the job because of her race. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her skirt and collar, tucked her hair behind her ears and went inside.

  A woman wearing half-moon glasses looked up from her typewriter and gave Lucy an efficient smile. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, please. My name is Lucy Takeda and I would like to apply for the job of courier that you are advertising.”

  The lady raised her eyebrows and looked Lucy up and down. “I am sorry, but Deputy Chief Griswold is hiring boys only for that position.”

  At that moment a tall, sandy-haired man stepped out of an office in the rear of the building. “Did I hear my name?” he asked in a friendly voice. “Well, hello, young lady. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yes, sir, I would like a job as a courier. I know that you are looking for boys, but, sir, soon we will be in school and you will need additional help to take care of all the deliveries that pile up during the day.”

  Deputy Chief Griswold’s smile widened. “Is that so?”

  Lucy risked a glance at the secretary, whose fingers were still above the typewriter keys. “Yes,” she said hurriedly. “And also, girls are smarter than boys, and so there is less risk that I will fall behind in my studies if I work for you.”

  The chief laughed out loud, a booming sound that filled the office. “Well, Mrs. Kadonada, what do you say to that? Mrs. Kadonada has a boy about your age who is already working for us.” He winked at Lucy, and for a moment she was afraid she’d just insulted the secretary and ruined her chances at the job, but then Mrs. Kadonada laughed too.

  “I might agree with you sometimes,” she said, not unkindly. “My son is fifteen—how old are you?”

  “I am fourteen. I was in eighth grade in Los Angeles. I made very good marks there.”

  This was not entirely true, but Lucy figured there was no way the administration would know that. Besides, she never had trouble und
erstanding the material; she just got bored and allowed her mind to wander. If she had a job to look forward to—a chance to get outside rather than being cooped up all day—she was sure she could do better.

  “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Lucy Takeda.”

  “And how long have you been at Manzanar?”

  Lucy counted quickly in her mind. “Five weeks and three days.”

  “You know your way around pretty well?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell you what, Mrs. K,” the deputy chief said. “Let’s give this girl a try. See what she’s made of.”

  Already the secretary was reaching into her in-box for a stack of letters. Lucy felt the first stirring of excitement and anticipation that she’d experienced in a long time.

  * * *

  The job was a welcome break in the monotony of camp life. Mrs. Kadonada and the other steno workers gave her memos, letters, packages and signs to be delivered to every corner of the camp: to the various administrative buildings and the staff quarters, the net factory, the warehouses, the motor pool and garages. Lucy delivered papers to every block captain and block recreation center; to the volunteer-built churches throughout the camp; to the theater and fire station and the various makeshift nursery schools and classrooms that were springing up throughout the camp. On the other side of the camp, more than a mile from the administrative buildings, were the temporary hospital and the Children’s Village for the children who came from orphanages in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

  Lucy loved everything about the job, from the neat stacks of papers with their mimeograph smell and purple ink, to the packages and envelopes postmarked from as far away as Washington, D.C. She loved the stamps and ink pads that Mrs. Kadonada sometimes allowed her to use on incoming mail, the small postal scales, the Teletype and adding machines.