“Mom? Are you there?” Panic rose up in Patty’s voice and she squeezed the receiver with both hands.
“I’m here, I’m fine. But I think it’s time I get a lawyer.”
“What? Why? When are you coming home?”
“I might be here a little while longer. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“When can I see you?”
“I don’t think they’ll let you see me here, Patty. Listen... I’ll call you as soon as I can.” There was a hesitation, and Lucy thought her mother had already hung up. “I love you, Patty,” she said, very quietly, and the words echoed in Patty’s mind long after the phone went dead.
24
Manzanar
April 1943
Days went by—three, four, Lucy couldn’t keep track—and gradually the haze began to lift. She was becoming aware of the people around her. The boy who had called for the nurse that first day was gone, and other patients came and went before she could learn their names. The nurses, all of whom had worked in Los Angeles before being interned, spoke in soft voices as they moved efficiently around Lucy’s bed, whisking away her linens and replacing the water in the pitcher next to her bed.
Sister Jeanne came to visit most days, often sitting quietly by Lucy’s bedside, reading or marking papers. Sister Jeanne was not a big talker, but she was a comfort nonetheless. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes were large and curious. When Lucy moaned or winced with pain, Sister Jeanne held her hand and soothed her with idle conversation about the pets her family had owned when she was little, or about the trips she took to visit her sister in San Diego, where her sister made ice cream on the back porch.
One afternoon she brought Lucy a bouquet of flowers in a glass pickle jar, orange poppies and pastel snapdragons and a burst of tiny white daisies.
“These are from Block Twenty-nine,” she said. “With their best wishes for you to get well soon.”
As Sister Jeanne fussed with the blooms, Lucy tried to remember if she knew any residents of Block Twenty-nine, and couldn’t come up with anyone. Lucy knew she wasn’t allowed visitors yet, but now she wished someone from her own block had sent the flowers, or one of the kids from school. Jessie—how she would have loved a note from him, a flower, even one of the flat stones he loved to skip in the creek. Maybe, once she was better, she could ask Sister Jeanne to take him a letter.
As soon as she had the thought, Lucy dismissed it. She had yet to see her face in a mirror, but she knew from the pain and from the way the nurses looked at her that it was bad. Jessie wouldn’t want her anymore, even if he wasn’t so angry all the time.
“Sister Jeanne,” she said. Nearly a week had passed, and talking came more easily now. “Tell me what really happened.”
Jeanne’s hands stilled on the bouquet. Lucy could tell that she had pains of her own, from the way she moved her thick legs and freckled arms so carefully. She knew Jeanne didn’t want to tell what she knew, but Lucy had no one else to ask.
The only other patient in the ward, a little girl with the measles, was sleeping, but Jeanne still spoke softly, as though what she had to say was a secret.
“People heard your screams and came running,” she said, tucking a loose strand of Lucy’s hair behind her ear. She liked to keep her hands busy when she sat with Lucy, and she was always adjusting the sheets and pillow, smoothing her blankets, patting her arms. “They found you on the floor in the hall of your building.”
“Was I alone?”
“Yes, of course you were,” Jeanne said. “This was just a terrible accident, Lucy. They say the heating pan had somehow come loose from the brace inside the stove, they don’t know how. You don’t remember that? You didn’t touch the stove, maybe try to adjust it yourself?”
Lucy had been asked the question so many times—by Dr. Ambrose and, later, by a man from the maintenance staff—that she lied with ease. “I don’t even remember going into the hall.”
“Well. It’s no matter now, no sense focusing on that. They think it might have ignited and flared up, or there was maybe even a bit of an explosion that made the oil go through the air like that. But that’s not what you want to know, I don’t think.” She picked up one of Lucy’s hands in her own. They were old and wrinkled but warm. “I am guessing you want to talk about your mother.”
Lucy nodded, not daring to look into Jeanne’s kind eyes. She had replayed that morning dozens of times in her mind: Miyako, taking her hand and leading her into the hall. Their bare feet on the rough, cold wood. The shouting outside the building. The stove, hissing and smoking, her mother, reaching for something behind its iron hulk...
Her memories really did stop there, but she knew the truth: Miyako had done this to her. Deliberately. She would never tell a soul, but she still longed to know about her mother’s last moments, the time between when she let Lucy go and when she died. “I just wondered if anyone saw her after.”
“She wasn’t at the barrack,” Jeanne said. “You already know that after they found you, some people brought you here to the hospital. Everyone was terribly worried about you. They didn’t know the extent of your injuries.”
“You mean people thought I was going to die?”
“I think some people were afraid that was a possibility,” Jeanne said quietly. “So you can understand that people were searching everywhere for your mother. It wasn’t until later in the day that some kids playing near the net factory found her.”
“And she hanged herself.” Lucy said it herself to spare Sister Jeanne, a fact she had pieced together from the bits she’d heard the nurses saying when they thought she was asleep. “In the smoking hut.”
Jeanne blinked. “Yes, Lucy, I am afraid that is true, although—”
“Was there a note?”
Surprise and dismay flashed across the nun’s face. “Please, Sister Jeanne, please just tell me. I have to know.”
Sister Jeanne sighed and she looked even older, her wrinkled skin sagging. But she didn’t let go of Lucy’s hand, and Lucy held on tight. “You must understand, Lucy, the MPs took the note. I never actually saw it.”
“But they told you what it said. Right? When you started coming to see me.”
“In general terms, yes, but I can’t tell you exactly—”
“I don’t need to know exactly, just tell me what you know.”
For a long moment Jeanne said nothing, biting her lip. “Your mother confessed to killing George Rickenbocker.”
Lucy felt as though the air was sucked out of her. “Does...does everyone know?”
“The case is closed, Lucy, and since your mother has passed, there is nothing more to be done. But people talk. There are rumors...all kinds of rumors. The note didn’t give any reasons, just your mother’s confession, and her body was laid to rest without any further investigation.”
Lucy wondered if Sister Jeanne was alluding to the baby inside her mother. But no one knew about the baby, no one but Auntie Aiko and her. And Rickenbocker, but he was dead too. And now the baby was buried inside her mother, and they would always be together, in the little cemetery at the edge of the camp.
“He was so mean to her,” Lucy whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Jeanne said. “So very sorry, for everything. For your mother’s suffering.”
Lucy saw how it would be; people would learn that Miyako had been hurt, and maybe they would forgive her, at least a little. The story would swell up with all their guessing and gossiping, but eventually it would
fade away, and people would remember how beautiful she was, and be glad that she died without ever having to know what happened to her daughter. Maybe they would curse Rickenbocker and be glad he was dead. Maybe the pretty girls would stop going to the parties in the motor pool. Maybe the soldiers and the staff would be more careful now, even a little bit afraid.
Maybe Reg would leave Jessie alone.
“Lucy, I want you to know something else,” Jeanne said. “In a case like this, where someone has suffered, as your mother suffered, God can be...compassionate. I believe forgiveness is possible, even for the gravest of sins. Even for taking a life.”
It took Lucy a second to understand that Jeanne meant God’s forgiveness, not her own.
“You mean she won’t have to go to hell.”
Jeanne nodded. “I have been praying for her soul, Lucy, and for the intervention of the Holy Spirit.”
Sister Jeanne was kind, but Lucy knew, without even a hint of doubt, that her mother was finally at peace, that all she ever wanted was to be safe. In death, no one could ever hurt Miyako again. Lucy wasn’t sure she even believed in hell, at least not for someone like her mother. Someone who’d done her best all her life, whose failures were never for a lack of trying.
Before she died, Miyako had made sure no one would ever try to hurt Lucy either. If her mother’s gift had been bound up with suffering, Lucy knew it was also a gift of mercy.
She would never tell anyone what her mother had done to her. Miyako was past suffering, but people would never understand. Lucy couldn’t even tell Jeanne, which made her sad: already, she was learning how lonely it was to be a keeper of secrets.
But she would manage. That would be her gift to Miyako.
25
Weeks passed, and the pain receded. The bandages were gone now, and sometimes in the dark Lucy snuck her fingertips over the landscape of her scars. She begged the nurses to give her a mirror, but they said it was too soon. “Just a little while longer,” they always promised. “So you can see how you are healing.”
So you don’t see how ugly you are now, Lucy imagined them thinking. It was disturbing to think that next time she saw her reflection, it would be a new face, a stranger’s face. But she still wanted to know.
In a few weeks the risk of infection had passed and Lucy was allowed to have guests. Auntie Aiko and Mr. Hamaguchi were the first to come visit her, and Lucy was sitting up in bed when the nurse led them into the room one Saturday, her breakfast tray barely touched at her bedside. Mr. Hamaguchi was wearing a suit that was too large for him, the cuffs overhanging his wrists and the shoulders sitting awkwardly on his thin frame. Lucy thought that if Miyako were alive, she would have insisted on helping Aiko tailor his suit. She would never have allowed Lucy’s father out of the house in such badly fitting clothes.
Aiko was dressed up as well, like the privileged woman she once was. The dress she wore was one Lucy remembered from before—a green bouclé with three-quarter sleeves—but the privations of camp life showed in the way the dress hung on her. She and Mr. Hamaguchi were like a matching pair of scarecrows.
Aiko clutched her purse and a neatly folded paper bag tightly at her abdomen, smiling stiffly. “Lucy...it is so good to see you.” She held out the paper bag. “We brought you some things from the store. Magazines—Movie Life, and Movie Story Year Book. And candy.”
“Thank you, Auntie.” Lucy swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat.
Aiko’s smile faltered. “Oh, Lucy,” she said softly, her voice catching.
“You can sit in that chair,” Lucy said politely, pointing at the chair Sister Jeanne used when she visited. Aiko dragged the chair so close to the bed that her knees touched the mattress, and took Lucy’s hand in hers.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “With everything that’s happened... Oh, Lucy, I don’t even know what to say.”
Lucy held on tight, not trusting her voice. She remembered how Aiko used to come over with shiny pennies for her when she was little, slipping them solemnly into Lucy’s little white patent-leather purse, whispering that one day she would be rich and famous.
“The nurses say you are healing very well,” Aiko continued gamely. Mr Hamaguchi nodded encouragingly.
Lucy tried for a smile, grateful for once for the pain, since it took her breath away, along with the urge to cry. “They treat me very well.”
“This will help you to pass the time.” Aiko tapped the bag of gifts, the paper crinkling. “Before you know it, you’ll be out of the hospital.”
“Thank you,” Lucy repeated.
“Lucy, I thought you’d like to know that Mr. Hamaguchi’s friend has made a marker for your mother’s grave.”
“Mr. Kado, he is very skilled. He made the cemetery monument.” Mr. Hamaguchi clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. Lucy knew the monument he was talking about—it loomed large and impressive in the center of the graveyard, which had been cleared and ringed with smooth stones by volunteers. “Maybe you would like to go see it, when you are feeling a little better.”
Lucy had not allowed herself to think of her mother’s body buried under the earth. It was simply too painful. “Auntie Aiko,” she said, changing the subject, “do you have a compact in your purse?”
Aiko froze. She loosened her grip on Lucy’s hand and shifted her gaze to the starched hem of the bedsheets. “I am sorry, I don’t.”
Lucy knew it wasn’t true: Aiko carried a compact with her everywhere. “Please, Auntie, I need to see,” she whispered.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Aiko said. Lucy’s hand slipped from hers. “Give it time—you have more healing to do. The doctor will say when you are ready.”
“Please. It’s my face, I need to know.”
The look that passed between Aiko and Mr. Hamaguchi was full of regret. Years later, it would occur to Lucy that they had been considering taking her with them. They would be married by the end of the war; they could have adopted her, given her a home. And she would wonder if it was in this instant that the decision was made: looking upon her face, calculating the damage, the strain such a responsibility would place on their new life.
“My mother would want me to see,” she pleaded. “She always said you must do the things you’re afraid to do.”
This was, in fact, not something Miyako ever would have said, but rather an approximation of an Eleanor Roosevelt quotation. But in this moment, Lucy was not above lying to get what she wanted. What she needed.
“I still don’t think...” Aiko sighed, but she reached for her purse and withdrew the compact. She opened it and swiped at a speck on the mirrored surface. “Just promise me that you’ll remember that you’ll keep getting better and better, and—”
Lucy snatched the thing from her hands, too impatient for manners. The mirror flashed brightly in her eyes, making her blink. Then: a glimpse of red-washed dunes, fissures and valleys of shiny stretched flesh, half her face twisted beyond recognition.
She caught her breath. Tilted the mirror and slowly moved it down to reveal her chin, her...
Her mouth. She knew it was wrecked from the agony she felt the first few times she tried to speak. But she couldn’t form a picture in her mind of what it must have looked like. The oddest thing was...one side was perfect, her lips rosebud-pink and tipped up at the corner. But the other side dove down in a grotesque leer, the damaged flesh reknitting itself in a new order.
She coul
dn’t bear it; she tilted the mirror away. She followed the path of the scar up the side of her face to her eye, where the tissue was thick and shiny, pulling cruelly at the part of her face that had escaped. Her lower lid canted down, the scar’s northern reaches stopping just short of the outer arc of her brow (how many times would Lucy have to endure Dr. Ambrose reminding her of her good fortune at not losing the eye?); sometimes she felt that eye water when the other did not.
Finally Lucy held the compact away from her, trying to see her entire face, but the surface of the glass was too small and she managed only about two thirds. Regarding herself this way, it was difficult to believe it was truly her. She switched to her good side, and there she found herself. Her expression was unfamiliar, true, but it was her eye, lip, nose, chin. Moreover, it was also her mother, captured there in the glass, her spirit, her memory.
“Thank you,” she said, snapping the compact shut and handing it back to Aiko, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Oh, Lucy, please don’t be sad, please don’t—”
“I’m not,” Lucy lied. “I’m fine. It’s what I expected.” Also a lie. Because hadn’t she endured these painful weeks by tricking herself, convincing herself that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad?
Pathetic, Lucy now realized, and weak. She wanted to throw something, throw the mirror and watch it break into a million sharp pieces.
“I’m just so tired,” she said instead. “I think I need to rest now.”
Aiko looked as though she was going to cry herself. “We’ll visit again soon. You’ll be moving to the Children’s Village, the nurses say, and we can come every weekend.”
“That would be nice,” Lucy said, pushing her hands under her blankets so Aiko couldn’t see the way she squeezed them into fists, turning her knuckles white and leaving half-moon marks on the tender flesh of her palm with her nails.
Garden of Stones Page 17
