Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  Mrs. Miatake, the mother of a girl in the third grade, had declined this way, spending several months in agony in her family’s cramped quarters before being finally transferred to a hospital in the town of Independence, fifteen miles to the north, to be treated. But her stomach cancer was too advanced, and her family had not even been allowed to go see her before she died a week later. Now she was buried in the Manzanar cemetery, under an arrangement of rocks and a thin white wooden cross. Lucy could not stop thinking of her.

  When she finally gathered the courage to ask her mother if she was going to die, Miyako only laughed bitterly and turned over in her bed, muttering that dying might be better. Lucy lay awake for a long time, trying to guess how much pain it would take before you would prefer death. She pinched her skin as hard as she could, first her thigh, then the sensitive skin under her arm, which brought tears to her eyes, and finally the soft flesh under her chin. That hurt terribly, but Lucy could still not imagine longing for death.

  But maybe her mother knew things that Lucy didn’t. It was clear that Miyako was not going to part with any of her secrets. Lucy could think of nothing else; she stopped doing her homework at night, and told Mrs. Kadonada she couldn’t work because she was so far behind on her schoolwork. But the extra hours meant only that she watched and worried and came no closer to understanding the dark cloud that had lodged over her and Miyako.

  One morning a few days later, her mother got up only long enough to go to the latrine. When she returned, her skin was ashen and she had vomit in her hair, but she went back to bed without attempting to clean herself.

  “Go by the factory on your way to school, please, suzume,” she murmured, already half asleep again. “Tell them I’m too sick to work today.”

  Something had to change. Lucy would go to the factory as her mother asked—but then, instead of going to school, she would find someone who could help.

  20

  There was far more commotion at the net-making operation than there had been at the dress factory. Dozens of workers streamed into each of the three long buildings, the women’s hair tied in kerchiefs, some of them wearing trousers. Lucy could see the huge nets hanging from the ceiling, waiting for camouflage material to be woven through the knotted hemp before the nets were shipped to the front lines.

  “Excuse me,” she said to a pair of middle-aged women walking up to the entrance together. “I am looking for Aiko Narita. She works here... Can you help me?”

  The pair conferred a moment before deciding that they might know Aiko, and when Lucy followed them inside, she could see the reason for their confusion: there had to be more than a hundred workers on the line already, many of whose faces were obscured by the masks they wore to keep the hemp fibers out of their lungs.

  “Wait here,” they told Lucy, and she watched the workers while she waited, trying to imagine the faraway regiments of American soldiers who the nets would help to protect.

  “Lucy!” Aiko rushed toward her, her mask hanging from the elastic around her neck. “Is everything all right?”

  Lucy nodded, but when Aiko put her hands on Lucy’s shoulders, she realized she was crying. “I’m sorry.” She sniffled, ashamed.

  Aiko put her arm around Lucy’s shoulder and led her outside, away from the din and the crowds. Across the street were the warehouses, and at this hour of the morning they buzzed with activity, trucks making deliveries and carrying away finished goods.

  “Not here,” Aiko said. “We won’t be able to hear ourselves think.”

  They walked down D Street to Block Three, where the residents had built a pair of benches facing each other over a tiny gazing pond. A young mother dandled a baby on one bench, but the other was empty, and Aiko led Lucy there and patted the seat.

  “Now sit and tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s my mother,” Lucy said miserably. She managed to stay dry-eyed as she confessed her fears, describing Miyako’s strange behavior, the sickness, her refusal to get up that morning.

  “Oh, Lucy, your mother is going to be fine,” Aiko said when Lucy finished speaking, brushing the hair off her brow.

  “No, she isn’t.” Lucy couldn’t bear to be lied to. “Please, Auntie, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Your mother...” Aiko began, and then she stalled, searching for the right words. “She has not had a lucky life. She tries hard, though, Lucy. You know that, right? There is nothing in this world that she loves more than you.”

  Lucy tried to control her impatience. Of course she knew these things already, but they did nothing to clarify what was wrong with Miyako. “She is sick a lot, Auntie. She doesn’t eat. She sleeps all the time. Does she have what Mrs. Miatake had? Is she going to die?”

  It was only because Aiko looked genuinely startled that Lucy believed her. “Your mother is dealing with some things, but she is going to be all right. I’ll talk to her, Lucy. I’ll come see her tomorrow. Okay?”

  Lucy was reassured, but it wasn’t enough. “You have to tell me what’s wrong with her,” she pleaded.

  Aiko sighed and squeezed Lucy’s hand harder. Up close like this, Lucy saw that Aiko’s face was lined with a web of fine wrinkles that she didn’t remember from before. Her lipstick was smudged and there were flakes of dust in her hair.

  “There is nothing wrong with your mother that she won’t recover from,” Aiko finally said. “The important thing is that it isn’t her fault. Nothing is her fault.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Lucy, I can’t tell you everything. You just have to trust me. I’m going to do what I can. There are good people here. All you need to do is look after yourself. That’s your job right now, Lucy, to take care of yourself. And let us do the rest.”

  “But, Auntie Aiko, what’s going to happen?” Lucy asked in a very small voice.

  Though Aiko said all the right things, Lucy knew that she was lying. There was nothing Aiko could do. In the end, Miyako would continue to wither.

  Eventually they got up from the bench, and Aiko patted Lucy’s hands. “I will come visit tomorrow. It will all be okay.”

  Lucy walked slowly back through camp toward Block Fourteen, not realizing until she was nearly there that her feet had carried her by force of habit. She had already missed the start of the school day, and for a moment she considered going into her barrack and checking on her mother.

  But in the end, she didn’t go inside. She turned around and walked in the direction of the school, too afraid of what she might find.

  * * *

  The next day brought record cold, the windows laced with frost on the inside. Miyako seemed to be feeling better. She came back from the shower with color in her cheeks, and ate the toast Lucy brought her.

  “I’m still so tired,” she said. “I think I’ll stay home from work one more day.”

  Before Lucy left for school, she piled all the extra blankets on her mother’s lap and around her shoulders. The oil stove burned day and night, but it couldn’t heat the entire barrack, and Miyako only stopped shivering when she was bundled up.

  Lucy stayed late at school to make up for being late the day before. When she got back to Block Fourteen, it was already dinnertime, so she ate quickly and went through the line again to get a plate for her mother.

  But when she got to the room, Aiko was visiting. She was still dressed for work, her hair tied in a scarf, an old blouse covering her clothes. Miyako was wearing a clean dress and a bit of makeup. She
had made tea and set it out on the little table between the beds, but it looked untouched.

  “Lucy, why don’t you run along now,” Aiko said, after greeting her. “Your mother and I need to talk. Just for a little while.”

  The last thing Lucy wanted was to go out into the cold again, especially since night had fallen fast and it was already dark. But Aiko had kept her promise, and Lucy was grateful. She made a show of stomping back out of the room, opening the barracks door and letting it slam shut. Then she tiptoed back to eavesdrop.

  “We can’t talk here,” Lucy heard Aiko saying softly. “But I know a place. We’ll need to bundle up.”

  Lucy had to hurry to get outside into the frigid night before they spotted her, holding the latch of the door with her index finger as it closed, slipping it slowly into place without a sound. She waited around the corner, out of view; after a few minutes the door opened and her mother and Aiko came out.

  It wasn’t difficult to follow them. They walked slowly, Aiko’s arm around Miyako, supporting her thin frame. The cold had kept everyone inside, so Lucy waited until Aiko and Miyako had gone a block down D Street before setting out after them. On either side, the lights inside the barracks made little yellow squares in the inky night; up above, the lights in the guard towers competed with the starlight.

  It didn’t take Lucy long to figure out her mother and Aiko were headed for the net factory. Tomorrow it would be teeming with extra shifts again, but for the moment it was dark and shuttered. Lucy wondered if Aiko had been given her own key—she had been promoted to supervisor—but she and Miyako bypassed the front door and continued around to the back.

  There, between the first and second buildings, a shelter had been constructed for workers to take smoke breaks. The small wooden hut had tar-paper-covered walls for wind protection, and gaps at the base and roofline for circulation; someone had dragged chairs inside. Lucy cautiously approached, and she could hear the scrape of the chairs against the plank floors as her mother and Aiko settled in for their talk.

  The cold was a small price to pay for precious privacy, but for Lucy it was another matter, since she’d left the barrack with no hat or scarf. She huddled close to the hut, sheltered from the wind, but already her fingers and ears ached. When she pressed her cheek against the wall, she could hear their voices clearly.

  “We’ll find a way.” Aiko’s voice was soothing. “We have a little time. We will make our case.”

  “There is no case to make,” Miyako protested. “Not if what you say is true. When will the charges be filed?”

  “Not until Monday, and they won’t meet to rule on them until later in the week. It will have to go in front of the judicial commission.”

  “But if they decide to prosecute, I’ll be taken to Independence. And if it really was George who accused me—”

  “It was him, Miyako. I am so sorry.” In Aiko’s voice Lucy heard echoes of the afternoons the two women had spent together back in Los Angeles, in their kitchens, two wealthy widows whose lives spun out before them with no greater hardships than monotony and loneliness. For a second Lucy allowed herself to wish that things had never changed, that she could close her eyes and return to the kitchen on Clement Street, her mother pouring tea from her great-grandmother’s porcelain pot, serving the little dumplings they bought at Paris Bakery.

  But then Miyako’s voice dragged Lucy back to the present. “If it was George, then there is no hope.”

  “Miyako...there is something you should know. He apparently has witnesses tying you to the theft.”

  “But I’ve never even been in the warehouse!”

  “I know, but he has people who will testify that they saw you there.”

  “Oh, Aiko...”

  “Don’t think about it now,” Aiko said soothingly.

  “I’ll be found guilty for sure. No one will come to my defense. And when I’m found guilty, they will separate me and Lucy.”

  Her mother’s words stunned Lucy. Why would Rickenbocker accuse Miyako of stealing? And how could they take her away when she had done nothing wrong?

  It had never occurred to Lucy that they might be separated. How would she survive without her mother? How would Miyako manage to take care of herself?

  “Listen, Miyako,” Aiko said hesitantly. “There is one thing we haven’t tried. If someone could go to George and speak to him about the baby. Appeal to his sense of responsibility, of—”

  “No,” her mother interrupted, her voice breaking. “No.”

  But Lucy barely heard her mother, caught up short by Aiko’s words. Baby. Lucy turned the word in her mind, and as she did, a dozen other pieces shifted and slid into place, and the mystery of her mother’s illness faded. The dream she’d had of her mother suddenly made sense, her body shriveling to a skeleton, the life leeching from her, only her stomach growing, grotesque and distended. The smell of vomit and despair, faint blue lines in her mother’s skin, tea growing cold in the cup.

  Her mother was pregnant, and George Rickenbocker had made her that way—and now he was trying to send her away, to get rid of the evidence of their sins. No wonder her mother’s behavior had changed. It wasn’t that Miyako had refused him, as Lucy had assumed—but Rickenbocker, once he found out about the baby, no longer wanted her.

  Lucy pressed her hands against the cold, splintered wood of the building, the bile roiling in her gut. Her mother was pregnant with a child who would be half Lucy’s brother or sister and half the tainted, poisonous issue of George Rickenbocker. And now he had turned away from Miyako and his hungry, foul eyes had found Lucy.

  “After everything I did, I tried so hard to protect her,” Miyako mumbled. “I thought that if I just went along, I could outlast him. That the war would end, and if he had me, he would never go after her.”

  “Miyako, no one is going to hurt Lucy,” Aiko said. “She’s just a child.”

  “I was only a child!” Miyako whispered fiercely. “That didn’t stop them.”

  “That was different, you have to see that. You were alone—there was no one around to help. Here, there are people everywhere you turn.”

  “But George—”

  “Hush,” Aiko said. “You have to stop thinking this way. George won’t go after her. I hear he’s already found someone new, a girl from steno.”

  Lucy felt frozen, remembering the way Rickenbocker had looked at her, how strong his hands had been when he squeezed her flesh. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon, he had said.

  “You don’t know him the way I do. Those other girls are nothing to him. He was only happy when he was hurting me. The ones who let him—he doesn’t care about them. He’ll go after her to hurt me, don’t you see?”

  “That’s crazy,” Aiko exclaimed, but Lucy heard the tiny note of doubt in her voice.

  “Look at her, Aiko, see what I see,” Miyako implored. “She is ripe now. And when I’m gone—”

  “If you are gone, then I will watch over her.”

  “You’re at the net factory all day long!”

  “And she is at school. This war is going to end, you must never forget that. We just have to endure. A little longer, Miyako, for both of you.”

  “I have no more time.” Miyako’s words turned to sobs, choked syllables of grief, of despair. “I am cursed. We are both cursed. I should never have had her.”

  Aiko shushed her, soothing, denying—but Lucy was savaged by her mother’s words. “Mama,” she whimpered, but her voice wa
s stolen away by the wind.

  21

  With dawn came shouting. At first it was distant, maybe one or two streets over, and then people were running outside the thin walls of their barrack.

  “It’s George Rickenbocker! He’s been killed!”

  Lucy pushed at her blankets, struggling to sit up. Her mother was already out of bed, standing motionless in the center of the room. Her hair fell around her face in mussed waves, and her skin was as pale as a paper parasol.

  Miyako turned slowly and gave Lucy a look she would never forget, and she knew her life had changed forever.

  The building resounded with the clatter of feet hitting the floor and people talking over one another. Shouts echoed up and down the building as they pulled on jackets and shoes or, in some cases, bolted outside barefoot to find out what was going on. The door slammed over and over again as everyone raced out into the streets, and in almost no time at all the building was silent save for the wheezing of an old asthmatic woman and the whimpering of an infant.

  “Mama...” Lucy whispered, her heart pounding.

  “Get up now.” Miyako’s voice was calm.

  She pulled back the curtain and headed into the hallway, where she opened the door a few inches and peered through for a moment. When she returned, tears glistened in her eyes, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

  Lucy had managed to sit up and was pulling up her socks, which had gotten twisted during the night. Miyako crouched down in front of her at the edge of her bed, and placed her hands gently on either side of her face. Lucy closed her eyes and concentrated on her mother’s hands and pretended for a second that everything in the world was different.

  After a moment, Miyako released her. “Someday you will understand. Everything I do, I do for you, suzume.”

  She walked into the corridor, and Lucy touched her face where her mother’s hands had been. There was a humming inside her head, a cottony thrum. There had to be a way to undo all the things that had happened, all the grief that had settled in like veins of ore in stone. The baby her mother carried. The memory of Rickenbocker’s hands on her flesh. The jagged place in her heart where memories of her father were secreted away.