All Good Women (11 page)

Moira cleared her throat. ‘We're walking south. In the direction of Wanda's camp. It's really a dreary place.'

Mother frowned and regarded her daughter's cold, red hands. ‘Perhaps we should turn back now. You'll get a chill.'

‘Yes.' Moira nodded. ‘We don't want to go too far.'

The Chinese restaurant was warm
and steamy. Moira considered Randy through his cigarette smoke. He was talking about enlisting, about giving up his deferment, about something. But she couldn't concentrate. Ever since she had taken Mother to the train this afternoon, she had been nagged by guilt. Why hadn't she played the perfect daughter just once, just during the family crisis? As Moira watched Mother board the train, she felt as if she were seeing off a stranger. Waving good-bye, she had found herself crying.

‘So I thought I'd join the French Foreign Legion,' Randy continued with an impatient grin. ‘And fight lions and tigers in deepest Africa.'

Deaf to his words, Moira finally caught his sarcastic expression. She nibbled on an egg roll.

‘Come in, Moira.' He reached for her hand. ‘Or are you on the train to Los Angeles?'

‘The train.' She smiled ruefully and then started to cry.

‘Hey, hey.' He gripped her hand tighter. ‘The Wicked Witch is gone now. You're all right.'

‘She's not wicked,' Moira flared. ‘She's, she's …' She breathed deeply, amazed at the depth of her defense. ‘She's had a hard life. Immigrating. Losing her husband. Raising me. And before that, her own mother died. She just wants what's best for me.' Moira was grateful to see the waiter bringing their cashew chicken and mixed vegetables. She felt uneasy, exposed. She took a long drink of cold tea and tried to focus on Randy.

He was eating with a fork, waiting her out. When he saw her looking at him looking at her, he said, ‘Good grub. I've always liked this place.'

She picked up her chopsticks. ‘Me too.' Her stomach seemed to be settling. Randy was right. She should leave her mother on the train to Los Angeles.

‘But I'll take you to a real swell place when I win my baseball bet with Harry. He's a clown to back St Louis. I'll take you to a French restaurant downtown, hey, how about it?'

He found Moira in tears again.

‘What's going on, honey? You know I just want to take care of you. Don't you know that?'

‘Yes.' She nodded, wondering at how much she wanted him. He loved her. He would take care of her. He had promised to come back from the war. And before that, he would win the baseball bet and take her to a fancy meal. Loyalty. She had ached for devotion her whole life. And yet, even as she acknowledged this, her throat grew tight. How could she be Randy's wife and a serious actress? She hated choices.

‘Hey, Moi.' He reached his long blunt fingers for her cold hand.

She noticed that he had finished. And although she had hardly touched the supper, she couldn't eat.

‘Hey, Moi, how about a ride. Great stars tonight. And we can cuddle if it gets cold.'

This luscious feeling through her body was almost enough to make her forget Mother. Randy was right. She worried too much. They would take care of each other, for tonight.

Chapter Ten

Racetrack, California, Spring 1942

MEXICO DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY, ITALY

AND JAPAN

JAPANESE LAND IN ALEUTIANS

RAF BOMBS COLOGNE

WANDA AWOKE TO THE
baby's squalling.
Confused at first, she then realized that there was no baby in their room; she was not a mother. Yet the noise was not a dream. The child screamed again. Wanda was fully awake now. She lay back on her scratchy straw mattress and remembered that she was living at a racetrack. There were 8,000 other Japanese Americans at this temporary resettlement camp.

The baby was three stalls down and he had started to teeth last week. Wanda looked at her watch: 5.30. Unlikely that she would get back to sleep. The stench was ripe already. No matter how often they had scrubbed the walls these last six weeks, the fragrance of horse manure lingered. Six weeks since they had been carted off from their lives, herded into this ridiculous race track, fed like livestock in a disease-ridden mess hall and then bedded down in stalls. At least they had removed the horses first. People said that over 100,000 Japanese Americans had been evacuated, two-thirds of them, like herself, native born Americans. Well, obviously some sacrifices had to be made for national security and American liberty.

Wanda rolled over. It was probably just this ironic voice which got her article rejected the last two times. That and the accurate statistics. She sighed, resolved to rewrite it again and send it out by the end of the week. Perhaps next time she shouldn't call herself ‘a foreign correspondent'. A little more detachment and dispassion, the last editor had suggested. Well, she supposed she could tone it down a little. Wanda closed her eyes and tried to put the article from her mind. The baby had calmed down, momentarily. She might as well try for sleep. Howard's alarm would wake them early enough.

At 12.30, Wanda brought Mama's
lunch
on a mess hall tray. Mama refused to wait in the long commissary lines for food which was usually inedible and potentially contaminated. Today Wanda was pleased to see some fresh coleslaw along with the tinned beans and meat.

Mama picked through the food as if looking for land mines.

Wanda tried to feign appetite for Mama's sake. ‘Coleslaw,' she enthused feebly, ‘good for the digestion.'

‘Mayonnaise seems rancid to me,' Mama murmured in Japanese. She had hardly spoken English since the evacuation. ‘And since when did you love coleslaw?'

‘Since we were stuck with all those canned vegetables, I guess. It's a relief to taste some fresh food.' Wanda remembered the coleslaw from Roy's picnic in the park. That felt like years rather than months ago.

‘Now that they have a Japanese cook, why can't we get a little
okazu
?
Rice is cheap.'

It was good to see Mama emerging from her silence. Wanda usually hated the wordless vigil during Mama's meals.

Mama inspected the coleslaw closely, lifting the individual strands of cabbage and carrot with the prongs of her fork as if searching for an answer.

Wanda reached for the rapport of a moment earlier. ‘Maybe they're trying to Americanize us from the inside.' She knew that Mama hated to be drawn out. Any attempt to revive her would be resisted. Where did Mama go in her silence? Did she become numb? Did she visit Papa? Mama had aged and sagged since his death.

Was this the beautiful woman Wanda used to watch in the mirror each morning, the woman she was going to grow up and become? Now there were wrinkles Wanda could not have imagined last year, rivulets in the dry skin. Flocks of grey roosted, like mad birds, on either side of her head. Even as Mama sat, she stooped, her back weary, her neck down. So Wanda was grateful for the periods of fury, the anger reviving Mama's old self. But it was too late today. Mama was gone for the rest of the lunch. Quiet, still. The way she had looked next to Papa's urn.

Papa had planned it so well, Wanda considered. He was always organizing, always scheming for money he would make and holidays they would take. When the family returned from Sebastopol and saw policemen on the front step, Wanda guessed what had happened. She wanted to see his body right away, to say good-bye before his spirit had completely left, but the police had removed the corpse for an autopsy. Within two days, they had pieced together the story in a forensics laboratory. Then they forced all the grim details on Mama over the telephone. They had even threatened charging her with collusion, citing the Japanese tradition of marital suicide. But a lawyer from the American Friends Service Committee firmly halted proceedings. The family eventually retrieved the body for a funeral.

Wanda stopped pretending to eat for Mama's sake. She stared at the coleslaw and felt a horrible guilt. If she hadn't moved to Stockton Street, this wouldn't have happened. She had always been able to distract Papa from his crazy schemes. He had drawn away from her after she moved in with the
Hakujin no
girlfriends. If she had stayed home, or visited more often, maybe he would have talked to her … maybe …

And this pain over Papa's death was why she had left Stockton Street so abruptly. Of course she had to take care of Mama, but she also needed to retreat, herself. Now she could see how the girls had been confused and appalled and saddened by Papa's death and by her own evacuation. Still, she was angry at their immunity. She was a citizen like them, born in America. Why was she the only one carted away? The point was
no one
should be carted away. But she was immobilized by her fury. She had even imagined their complicity in the evacuation. She recalled every intimation of insensitivity. Moira refusing to believe the rumors of deportation. Teddy coming home with tales of those few Caucasians who had protected their Japanese neighbors. Always the Lone Ranger, Teddy. Ann too absorbed in stories about Europe to concentrate on what was happening in front of her face. Of course, of course, it wasn't their fault. But whose fault was it? Then she began to feel an irrational rage at Papa. For leaving them. For claiming the dramatic exit. For driving Mama mute. The more Wanda tried to understand, the more she felt confused and frightened.

She looked over to find her mother staring blankly. Should she remove the plate now? No, she would give Mama every chance. She would wait for the bell ending lunch. These last few months she had become a specialist at waiting.

She always intended to return to Stockton Street. But at first Mama needed her. Then Wanda grew afraid to go out. Afraid to get hit by a rock as Alan Murakami had been hit — five stitches' worth across the forehead. Afraid to be ignored in the shops, called names or spat upon. Daily the news of harassment filtered home. And she almost began to look forward to these ‘havens of refuge' as the War Relocation Authority called them. Wanda's anger and depression spiralled in on her until she became lost in her own madness. It was mad, for instance, to be afraid of Teddy and Ann and Moira, but she was afraid at times. It was mad not to return to Stockton Street, mad. So the girls' trip to the bus had meant a lot. Still, she wondered why she hadn't stood up that morning and given Teddy a hug. All the way to the race track, she had sniffed Teddy's flower and felt hope, a new sensation. This serenity allowed her to begin separating the anger from the terror from the grief. She wasn't clear yet, but she was starting to see her way out. She just wished she could bring Mama with her.

The camp bell gonged one o'clock and Wanda shook herself. Mother sat with her eyes closed, the barely touched lunch congealing on a cold, white commissary plate. Wanda noticed little bubbles in the coleslaw and imagined the food boiling at room temperature. She collected both plates; recalling the stern warning that ‘sick plates must be returned by the end of lunch hour'. What did they think she was going to do with them? Sell them on the black market as Japanese war souvenirs?

On movie night Wanda tried
to forget everything. She had been looking forward to seeing
The Grapes of Wrath
since it appeared two years before. She remembered now with some embarrassment how she had tried to drag Teddy to the film and how her friend refused to go. As she walked into the big room with Roy, blankets over their arms, she could almost imagine they were back at the Palace or the Verdi Theatre in San Francisco. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure the cosy seats and the aroma of popcorn. But this place did have its advantages. Since it was drafty, you could cuddle as close as you liked under the blankets. As they picked their way through friends and strangers for a good location on the floor, Wanda inhaled Roy's Old Spice shaving cream. Sweet of him to shave tonight, even though the hot water was probably gone from the men's room by the time he got there. Would camp conditions ever improve, or would they just get used to cold showers, toilets without doors and sewage pipes bursting to stink up the entire camp? Mama said it reminded her of the lumber camps when she and Papa had first immigrated. Wanda cleared her throat, this was movie night; she was here to forget everything.

‘Do you like Henry Fonda?' she heard herself asking Roy.

‘I guess so.' He was distracted, searching for the perfect place. ‘But I always think of the director when I go to films. I really admire John Ford. Oh, there, by the Mirikitanis; there's a good spot.'

As they settled beneath their blankets, she wondered again if they had been right to postpone the wedding. Many young couples were getting married earlier because of the uncertainties. Roy said he didn't want to marry until he had something to offer — a job and an apartment. Besides, her mother needed her ‘home' now. Yes, he was right. One more thing to wait for.

In the movie, Oklahoma looked bleak, hot and dry, just as Teddy had described it. Wanda wondered whether this $75 truck was like the one the Fieldings had driven and pushed across the country. Never before had she stopped to think how crowded it must have been with Teddy's nine brothers and sisters.

Roy moved closer and put his arm around her back. Wanda leaned into his shoulder, pretending to herself that she was oblivious to the gossip. Everything you did and said — even in your sleep — was recorded at camp. Well, they were engaged; what did people expect? She tried to concentrate on the film.

‘Red River Valley' — was this the tune Teddy hummed when she cooked supper? Wanda couldn't remember. It seemed like ages since she sat reading in the dining room while Teddy cooked and Ann worked in the garden. Could she bring their faces to mind? Of course, she had seen all the girls during visitors' days here at the camp, but it wasn't the same. They looked different now.

Maybe she simply looked at them differently, being surrounded by Japanese faces for months. Until recently, she had considered herself American. However these days, because of her exclusion and her inclusion, she was beginning to understand how Japanese she was — in her facial expressions, in her gestures, in her values. At first she had resisted this, recalling Papa's long lectures about their equality with Caucasians. Then she began to enjoy the Japanese characteristics, to relax into them. She was not, as Papa had promised, an average American. It was an odd sensation — to discover suddenly that you're not only not who you thought you were when growing up but that you're who you thought you weren't. She reached into her purse for a pen and made a couple of notes.

Yet people kept trying to deny that things had changed irrevocably. She considered the story Roy told about this
Nisei
friend at Berkeley who won the university medal, but who, because he was in camp, couldn't receive it. The university official simply announced that he had been called elsewhere by his country. Now what was that supposed to mean? Is this the way history got written? She resolved again to revise that article and get it published.

Roy took off his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. She looked more closely and saw that he was crying. Yes, it was a horrible story and, if she had been concentrating more, she would have been crying too. No wonder Teddy had not wanted to see the movie two years ago.

It was late afternoon
and
Wanda was huddled next to the radio, furiously making notes on a news report about the internment. Mama was sitting at the table, staring across the camp and Betty lay on the cot, reading. Wanda wanted to get down every word, to quote the blatant propaganda, to compare the news coverage about these ‘havens' to the reality.

‘It is essential that Americans learn to distinguish between our loyal Chinese friends and people of Japanese ancestry. Many Chinese merchants have alerted Americans with signs in their shop windows, declaring “Chinese” or “Born in Hong Kong”. But there are subtle differences in appearance and demeanor between the two separate races …'

Wanda turned the page, scribbling furiously. Yes, this would be perfect as the opening to her piece, to use their own words to hang them. To show how they develop a climate of hysteria among Caucasians — and how all sense of proportion got lost.

Wanda thought back to this morning's interview with Mrs Omi, who almost lost her son at the haphazard dispensary that passed for medical care at this place. If Mrs Omi hadn't been right there, complaining until her voice gave out, little James would have died. Wanda had much more documentation now than when she submitted the article before. They wouldn't be able to reject it again.

‘Enough noise.'

Had Mama said noise or news? Wanda sighed. ‘Just a few more minutes, please. It's really important.'

‘Write, write.' The older woman closed her eyes. ‘For what good?'

Wanda clenched her teeth. It was hard enough to be rejected by these magazine editors. But the very act of writing seemed like a form of lunacy or betrayal to her mother. Lunacy because writing took so long and brought no money. Betrayal because it meant embracing a language Mama hardly ever spoke. Never before had Wanda realized how much encouragement and support she had had from the girls on Stockton Street.