by Monica Hesse
“I’ll make one for you. It’s limes, and sugar, and soda water—it tastes better than I’m describing it—and that will be my job. Becoming the star clerk at a soda fountain, and then the manager, and then maybe I’ll buy it. What will you do?”
“I’m not sure,” I say slowly. My rule is to try to accept the actual words people are saying, but I don’t know what to do when the actual words seem more like a dream than reality. “I want to go to college. But I could figure out how to keep the books at your soda fountain. Or I’m a pretty good farmhand. I know how to fix the basic things that go wrong with equipment.”
“No, keep the books. You’ll have a little office in the back, and then when it’s time for the fountain to close, we’ll grab slices of pie from the display case, and we’ll take them home and eat them while listening to the radio and drinking evening cocktails.”
“Won’t you… won’t you go back to Colorado after this is all over?”
She looks at me. “Do you want to go back to where you’re from?”
I always thought I did. But right now I don’t want anything as much as I want to think about the fact that we are both on the outside of the fence. “Tell me about our apartment.”
“It will have a screen door to keep out bugs. There will be real beds, not cots. Oh, do you know what else we’ll have?”
“A shower,” I say automatically. “A private shower with a private toilet.”
“And hot water and no lines to wait in. And a refrigerator instead of an icebox.”
“And there won’t be any countings,” I say, letting myself get caught in the fantasy.
“Right, no roll call. If I come home and you are already there, I’ll say, One, two. And then I’ll be done counting all of the residents.”
“One, two,” I repeat.
“We could do it right now. We could run away. We’d start by—” Haruko says, and now she’s giggling. “We’d start by stealing the lunches. While everyone else is playing baseball, I’ll grab the baskets and start running.” She waits for me to add something to the story.
“We’d… we’d follow the train tracks to make sure we’re going in the right direction?”
“We’d tell anyone who asks that we’re university students whose car broke down. Maybe they’ll give us a ride.”
“Would they believe we’re university students?” I ask.
“Betty Asamo gets to leave Crystal City when she turns eighteen next month, and go to secretary school. Did you know that was allowed? Because she’s a citizen and she has her parents’ permission. A church mission sponsored her in Austin.”
“I don’t turn eighteen for more than a year. I’m only sixteen, remember?”
“Shhh,” Haruko says. “I’m hitchhiking to San Antonio. I’m walking if I need to.”
We couldn’t, obviously. We’re a hundred miles from San Antonio. But we’re young and healthy. Could we do twenty miles a day? Fifteen, maybe. The chicken and the eggs would go bad but the apples would be fine, and the bottles of Grapette that were in the cooler. It’s still so hot when the sun is overhead, but if we slept during the day and walked at night…
“Margot?” Haruko has stopped laughing while I’ve been lost in thought. She’s looking at her lap, folding the wax paper from her chicken into neat little pleats. “When the man came into the icehouse yesterday.”
I freeze. “Yes?”
“Just before he came in. Right before. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
My chest thuds. I would never have brought this up. So many things happened yesterday that I wondered this morning if I’d made some of them up. If grief and anger caused me to misremember things or misunderstand them.
Of course I remember when the man came into the icehouse yesterday. Of course I remember that, and what was happening just before then. Every detail of it. My mouth is dry, and I can’t tell if what I’m feeling is longing or fear.
“Margot?”
“I remember,” I say quietly.
“I wondered whether—”
“Haruko?”
For a minute, I think it must have been me who said Haruko’s name. But it’s not. It’s Miss Goodwin, who is calling my name, too. “Has anyone seen Haruko Tanaka?” Miss Goodwin yells out. “She might have been with Margot Krukow; I don’t see Margot, either?”
My stomach twists. Someone has seen us together. Someone has told her we’re plotting to escape. Someone has told her about the icehouse.
When she calls again, I realize she doesn’t know we were talking about running away, or even that we were together at all. She just doesn’t see us, and she wants to make sure we didn’t wander off.
The thick bushes along the bank shake and then part as Miss Goodwin steps through, frantic.
Beside me, Haruko slowly stands, brushing the grass off her skirt. “We’re here,” she says, her voice cracking. “We’re both here.”
Miss Goodwin’s face relaxes, but just a small amount, and only then do I notice two guards standing behind her. Not the ones who came with us. The guards who came with us had rolled up their uniform sleeves and were helping keep score of the ball game. Different guards. Buttoned-up, sweaty at the temples and breathing like they sprinted all the way from camp.
Haruko and I start toward them. It’s my mother. What else could it be? Why else would two guards be dispatched from their duties to interrupt a school picnic? But when we get over to Miss Goodwin, it’s Haruko she turns to and not me.
“Go get your things, and these men will escort you back to camp,” she says. “Just you, Miss Tanaka. Miss Krukow will stay here with the rest of us.”
Haruko’s eyes are panicked. “What do they—”
“I don’t know.”
“Am I going to—”
“I really don’t know, sweetheart,” Miss Goodwin says. “But I think you should hurry.”
SIXTEEN
HARUKO
THE GUARDS DON’T KNOW ANYTHING. THE GUARDS ARE USELESS. The guards told me, when I asked, that they didn’t know why they’d been asked to come and get me, only that they were told to do it quickly. Now that we’re heading back they are walking slow, and I can’t believe I’m wanting them to speed up, to get me back to the fence as soon as possible. My throat is tight and I can barely breathe. Something happened to my mother. Something happened to Toshiko.
But when we get to the administration building, my family is waiting outside. I let go of a fraction of tension, because the presence of my family means there are at least three terrible things I will not learn have happened when we go inside the building.
Waiting with them is Mr. Mercer, the camp director, but from my mother’s wild-eyed look, he hasn’t told them anything, either. She’s wearing her white coat from the hospital. Usually she changes out of it before she comes home, so they must have called her straight from work. “Did they tell you anything?” she whispers in my ear as I join them. “Us, either,” she says when I shake my head no. My father looks gray and nauseated. Toshiko grabs my hand before Mr. Mercer leads us inside.
“Right in here, please.” He holds the door open for my mother, and the rest of us file in behind, silent except for the shuffling of our feet. We’ve come into a room that makes my heart break for a moment, because of how normal it is. Two armchairs covered in floral fabric facing a matching sofa, with a coffee table and a vase of flowers between them. A sofa. I had almost forgotten such furniture existed. My first thought is that it will get dusty in here, that Crystal City is no place for soft squishy sofas.
This must be a room of bad news. Why else would they offer us water or coffee, tell us it will only be a minute. Why would they do all that unless it was to make us comfortable before they ripped out our hearts?
It will only be a minute, I automatically translate for my mother.
The war is over and America lost, I tell myself first, but that makes no sense, because why would they pull each family into a room to tell them one by one? My family is being sepa
rated, each of us sent to a different camp. My father’s father back in Japan, the one I’ve never met, has had a stroke and died.
The reason I am thinking of all these ridiculous possibilities is obvious: All of them are better than the most likely reason my whole family would have been brought here. Because my brother is dead. Because my brother went off to fight in the war, and somebody shot and killed him, and the United States government wants us to be comfortable when we learn the news.
My parents have had the same thought that I have. My father grinds his teeth—I can hear across the coffee table the scrape of enamel—and my mother keeps reaching up to dab her eyes with a handkerchief. Toshiko and I clasp each other’s hands harder.
Ken is dead. Ken is dead. Ken is dead.
I’m still thinking this, exactly this, when the door swings open, and Ken is standing in the middle of the frame.
Pinch yourself in dreams. I heard that once, that if you think you might be dreaming, you are supposed to pinch yourself, because you can’t feel pain when you’re sleeping. I’m pinching myself and it hurts.
Toshiko screams, and my father bursts into tears, and my mother rushes over to Ken, but then instead of hugging him, immediately starts to smooth back his hair, and adjust his collar, none of which really need fixing because even though the last time we saw Ken he was an absentminded teenager whose shirt was always half-tucked and whose buttons were always loose, now he is a soldier with the US Army with not a hair or thread out of place.
There’s another soldier with him, a white man, a commanding officer, I think. I don’t know anything about how the military works but this man is older and his uniform looks a little more official.
I try to hug my brother, but when my arms wrap around his right shoulder, he winces. “Careful.”
“Are you hurt?” my mother asks. Her poking and prodding changes from motherly to medical; she maneuvers his limbs, lifting his arms up and down. “Does that hurt?”
“I’m just scratched,” he says. “Lucky. The right side of my upper body was numb for a week; I couldn’t feel a thing. They thought there might be permanent nerve damage so they put me on a plane. As soon as I stepped off it, my shoulder started to hurt. Which is actually a good thing, in medical terms, they said. If it hurts it means I’m recovering.”
“The doctors over there probably don’t know anything,” my mother says, while Toshiko says, “I bet the other guy is worse than you.”
“I bet you didn’t stay around too long to find out,” my father says to Ken, and then we all laugh and laugh like it’s the funniest joke we’ve ever heard.
Ken is alive. Ken is standing here in front of us, with all his arms and legs intact.
“You seem shorter,” Toshiko says.
“It’s because you got taller.” She beams.
While we’re hugging and greeting and debating whether it’s Ken or Toshiko who changed the most, we almost don’t hear the door opening and the camp guard clearing his throat, joining the little circle that my family has made.
“The secretary is going to bring in some coffee and cookies,” he says, addressing my parents. “I’m told you’ve been granted permission to use this room for up to two hours before Ken and Sergeant Oakes go back to their hotel.”
“What do you mean up to two hours?” I say.
“His hotel?” my mother asks after Toshiko translates. She can barely hide the horror from her face as she and my father exchange glances.
“I’m told it’s really just a local woman who rents out a couple rooms,” Ken says, after a beat. “But it will be fine enough for me. They said I can come back here tomorrow to see you again.”
“I’m sure the hotel is very nice,” my mother says awkwardly, as the guard settles in the corner.
But of course until the mention of this hotel, my whole family thought that Ken would come back to our hut. Now we see the camp director intends for us to have our entire reunion in public, with a guard leaning against the door.
We all stand frozen in a tableau, suddenly aware we’re being observed. I open my mouth to protest the idea of Ken staying at a hotel, but close it almost immediately when I can’t think of how to start my sentence. My mother stiffly folds her skirt underneath her legs as she sits down on the sofa and gestures for the rest of us to do the same.
“It’s not fair—” Toshiko begins, but my mother silences her with a look. Toshiko stops talking, but her mouth is still angry.
“Thank you,” my mother says in her best English when the secretary brings in the coffee tray. My mother directs it to be set on the table. I’m proud of her in this moment, for finding a way to make it seem like she is the hostess, like she invited us to tea and the secretary and soldier are no more than staff.
“Ken,” she says, handing my brother a cup, which he takes with his left hand. “Please tell us how you are.”
“Oh, I’m swell,” Ken says. “Probably not worth all the fuss to send me home, but I don’t mind hitching a ride if it means a chance to see you all.”
“We’re so happy,” my father says, accepting his own cup. “We’re so happy to see you.”
None of us are behaving naturally. It’s like we’re in a play about a son who comes home from war, like we can’t remember how we’re supposed to be around each other. Toshiko is drinking her coffee with her pinkie finger raised, which I’ve never seen her do. I’ve never heard Ken say swell in his life. It’s like fellas from his letters—a word that the brother I know would roll his eyes at.
He’s thin. He has tired lines around his mouth. He sets down his coffee and his cup clinks loudly, which I wouldn’t be able to hear except that our conversation is so stilted and halting.
Suddenly, I’m glad the guard is here because I can blame my family’s awkwardness on him. What I’m really afraid of is that if the guard weren’t here, things would feel just as false.
“Once you are processed, you won’t have to stay in a hotel,” my mother says. “They assign bigger houses to families of five. We’ll be able to get a house with another room that you can sleep in for some privacy. I’m sure they just need to process the paperwork.”
“I’m sure they won’t go to the trouble,” Ken says, “as I’ll be heading back in a few days.”
He says it so casually that it takes a minute to sink in. My mother’s hand trembles midair as she reaches to refill my father’s cup, and my own cup screeches against its saucer.
“What do you mean you’ll be heading back?” my father asks, his voice even.
“Since it seems like my shoulder is better,” Ken says. “Can’t have an able-bodied man here when he’s needed over there. I’ll get a few days’ R & R, then it’s back on a plane for me.”
My mother looks at my father, and then, almost imperceptibly, at the guard, who is now examining the band of his wristwatch with such elaborate studiousness that I’m sure he’s listening to us. I have no idea if he speaks Japanese. I’ll assume he does and can understand everything we’re saying.
This time, not even Toshiko says it’s not fair. How can she, in front of the guard? How can any of us do anything except pretend that we think it’s wonderful that my brother is going back to war? That now that we finally have him with us again, now that we have been able to touch him and hug him, we absolutely want to put him back on a plane to God only knows where, where he might be killed. We must pretend that. We are serene. We are good Americans. We are behind the barbed wire, but we are still such good Americans.
“Well then,” my mother begins, but her voice cracks and she starts over. “Well then. We will have to make the most of the time that we do have, won’t we?”
We talk about movies. How we watch them outside the community center. How my brother, wherever he is stationed, has seen a few movies, too. We talk about food: how he gets better food than the average American because the country is saving its sugar rations for the boys in uniform to have Hershey’s bars. How we get decent food, too, for a different reaso
n: because the United States government has to feed us well in case Japan is watching. They want to treat us as well as they hope Japan is treating its American prisoners of war.
We are careful, so careful, not to talk about anything that actually matters. Not to ask Ken where he’s been, or how his unit is doing, or anything else that might make it sound like we are trying to figure out if Japan can win the war.
In the corner, the door opens. It’s the sergeant who came with Ken, whose name I already can’t remember. He gently clears his throat. We all pretend we can’t hear, because we know what it means, but eventually he interrupts. “Private Tanaka,” he says, “it’s time to go.”
Behind him in the doorway, Mr. Mercer appears again, looking as jovial as he did when he first led us in here. I suddenly realize that when he didn’t tell us why we were called to this room—that when it never occurred to him to say, Don’t worry, this is good news not bad news—he thought he was doing us a favor. Arranging a special surprise. He had no idea that we might, at this point, find the idea of surprises to be horrifying.
“Did everyone have a pleasant visit?” he asks. He turns to Toshiko and me. “You girls must be very proud of your big brother.”
Toshiko and I nod mutely. It’s our father who answers out loud.
“Mr. Mercer. We have very much enjoyed our visit, but I am sure you can appreciate that two hours is not enough time to visit with a son we haven’t seen in months. I ask that Ken might come and stay with us while he is in Crystal City. My wife and I have missed him so much, and so have his sisters.”
Mr. Mercer’s face reddens, but he keeps the same cheerful expression. “That’s… ahh, that’s not protocol.”
“We can make space for him.” My father presses on while the rest of my family stands behind him. Toshiko is crossing her fingers, which I know is stupid but then I cross mine, too. “We won’t need to request extra food. He can have my rations. But it would be very important. To our morale. To the morale of the whole camp, I think, to see one of our own sons here, coming back in his uniform.”
