by Traci Chee
That’s five days. Five days to pack up our entire lives.
They couldn’t even give us a week.
THINGS THAT HAVE TO STAY
the tin canister of marbles and baseball cards we buried somewhere in the backyard
the dent in the wall where Mas’s shoulder hit it when we were wrestling
the names we carved into the baseboard: MAS, SHIG, and a little fish for Minnow
Vultures.
The white people come around again, sniffing out bargains.
The Kitanos’ whole dry-cleaning business, equipment and all, goes for fifty dollars. I know because you can hear the ketos crowing about it as they head back to their Cadillac. Across the street, Jim Kitano steps out onto the sidewalk, and I meet his gaze. He’s got a greenish-yellow bruise on his jaw where Frankie punched him last Friday.
I nod at him.
He nods back, lighting a cigarette, and leans against the door of the pool hall, where Frankie used to dupe guys out of their money when he got bored. It’s abandoned now, its windows papered over.
Next to me, a couple of ketos are haggling over the American flag Dad used to fly from our stoop every day. One of Mas’s eyelids is twitching the way it does when he’s trying not to cry. He loves that flag almost as much as Dad did, kept flying it after Dad died.
Gaman, I remind myself.
Grin and bear it.
Bend over and kiss your own ass.
But ever since that night out with Frankie, my anger’s been filling me up. Every day, it’s there inside me, buzzing louder and louder like a malfunctioning transformer until sometimes it’s all I can hear or feel.
“No deal,” I say suddenly. “Get outta here!” I wave my arms at them, and they hop away like irritated gulls.
“Shigeo!” Mom says.
“What?” Buzzing. “That’s Dad’s flag. It’s worth more than a quarter.”
She combs my hair with her fingers, like she used to when I was little, but even that doesn’t quiet my anger. “It’s not about what it’s worth,” she says. “It’s not about what we deserve. It’s about what they’re willing to give us.”
“Shit,” Minnow says, looking up from his sketchpad. “All they’re willing to give us is shit.”
“Watch your mouth, Minoru,” Mas snaps. He looks like he’s about to crack in half like a brick in an earthquake.
But he doesn’t. Not even when Dad’s flag goes for fifteen cents an hour later.
No, it’s Mom who breaks, that afternoon.
She’s wrapping a set of red-and-black lacquerware, placing tissue paper between each dish to protect it, and she just starts crying. It was her grandmother’s lacquer set, you know? One of the nicest things she brought over from Japan when she married Dad.
She never let us or Dad touch it, not even to clean it. She displayed it on the highest shelf in the living room and dusted it herself with a soft brush. It was hers, and it was precious.
Now some hakujin strangers are going to take it. They don’t want our alien faces in their neighborhoods, but they don’t mind our lacquerware in their homes.
Inside me, the buzzing is so loud, I can barely hear Mom crying in my arms.
The vulture shifts uncomfortably as Mas passes her the lacquer set, but she doesn’t do anything, at first. Guilt and pity pool behind her glasses.
After what seems like a full minute, she tries to hand him another dollar. A whole goddamn dollar. It hangs limply from her fingers like a dead thing.
He doesn’t take it. “We already agreed on a price,” he says flatly.
“But—”
Mas crosses his arms. He’s almost six feet tall with the build of an Olympic wrestler. He can be real intimidating when he wants to be. “Thank you for your business,” he says, and she scurries off, the dollar flapping uselessly in her hand.
* * *
In one of the trash piles, I find a shoebox full of origami: frogs and birds and balloons, pinwheels and boats and even a potbellied pig.
I guess Mom knew the whole time. She must have been collecting all those little things Dad was making.
And we can’t keep them. We don’t have the space.
THINGS THEY’VE TAKEN
my home
my friends
my community
I’m with Yum-yum when her mom sells her piano.
Lucky for them, they own the building, so they can rent it out while they’re gone. Or, technically, Yum-yum owns it. It’s in her name, because the California Alien Land Law doesn’t allow Issei to own property here.
But, homeowners or not, they’re as Japanese as the rest of us, so they still have to move. They still have to store or get rid of the things they can’t rent or take with them.
We would’ve lent them a hand even if Mr. Oishi hadn’t been arrested, but me and the guys make an extra effort to help Yum-yum’s family. Together, we heave the piano down the stairs and onto the sidewalk to be picked up by a Bekins Moving and Storage truck.
Don’t tell her, but we all hated hearing her play at first. The piano was already old when she got it, beat up and out of tune, and you could hear every swampy note as she banged out her scales, up and down the keys.
But she’s good now, and we all lean in when she sits at the piano bench and lays her hands on the keyboard one last time.
Yum-yum’s always been pretty, but today she’s beautiful, and strong, too, sitting there, fingers still, like she’s saying goodbye with her silence.
She begins—loud, then real soft. The music is heavy as fog crawling down the San Francisco streets, heavy as the footsteps of two guys out at night, wanting to break things.
It builds and builds, getting darker and darker, when all of a sudden it speeds up, and the notes are sparks, they’re catching things on fire, the whole street is filled with them. They’re explosions. All the buildings collapse, crashing into the road in heaps of luggage-shaped rubble. If she could, I bet Yum-yum would tear down the whole city with her music.
But by the end, it’s soft again, and her face doesn’t betray any of the violence and turmoil inside her. Standing, she walks into my arms, and I hold her until the truck comes to take her piano away. She doesn’t cry.
And I get it, finally. Gaman.
The ability to hold your pain and bitterness inside you and not let them destroy you. To make something beautiful through your anger, or with your anger, and neither erase it nor let it define you. To suffer. And to rage. And to persevere.
* * *
When I get home, I find out we got a letter from Tommy.
Dear Mas, Shig, and Minnow,
Well, we’re all settled in at Tanforan now. The house, or horse stall, has two rooms. Mom, Dad, and the twins sleep in the back; Aiko and I sleep in the front. They do a head count every morning at six thirty (and again in the evening), and since I’m the oldest, and the only boy, in the front, it’s my job to tell them we’re all here.
I don’t know if you’ve gotten your evacuation notice yet, but wherever you go, bring your saw, hammer, and sockets. There’s no furniture anywhere except the army cots, so everyone’s having to make chairs and tables out of scrap wood. If you find out you’re coming here, I’ll try to save some for you.
The food is pretty bad. Yesterday we had potatoes, meat innards, and bread. It’s served by hakujin workers they hire from outside, and they touch everything with their bare hands. When we eat, there’s a line two or three blocks long, so you better get in line early!
Mas, some men in camp are driving instead of taking the buses. They load their cars with all sorts of things, like canned fruit and handmade soap. Maybe you can pack up the Chevrolet and bring in some food from outside. I’ll take a chocolate bar as a thank-you.
Take care of yourselves,
Tommy
P.S. Say hello to Twitchy and Frankie.
P.P.S. I’m sorry for writing in pencil, but I’m trying to economize on ink.
THINGS WE HAVE TO FIND SPACE FOR
food
gaman
It’s the night before we have to leave, and me and Minnow are lying on the floor of our bedroom. The walls are bare. The mattresses have been sold off. All we’ve got are our suitcases and the things Mas is going to pack into the Chevy.
And the shoebox of origami I rescued from the trash. Mom must not have thought anyone would pay for it.
There’s the buzzing again. A hot electric current running under my skin. If I’m not careful, I’m going to ignite every paper creature between my hands just because I want something to burn.
“What’s that?” Minnow says, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Dad’s.”
“What is it, though?”
“None of your business,” I say, and regret it immediately. I don’t usually snap at my little brother—that’s Masaru’s deal. “Sorry, Minnow.”
He looks at me, and even though he’s almost as small as Tommy, he seems older than fourteen all of a sudden. He’s been everywhere these past couple weeks: drawing the mountains of luggage, doing portraits of the families waiting for the Greyhound buses, sketching the army soldiers and hakujin photographers the government sent in, his fingertips black with charcoal.
He’s always drawn a lot, but there’s something different about him lately. He used to disappear into the background like he was part of it. Now when he draws, you can’t miss him. He’s there in the middle of things, with this new ferocity, like if he doesn’t capture this moment, he’ll never get the chance.
That’s how it is these days. You hesitate, and your neighbors have vanished. You look away, and your friends have been stolen from you. You blink, and you’re gone.
I open the box.
“I always wondered where these went,” Minnow says, holding up butterflies and stars so the overhead light shines through them, making them glow.
I guess Minnow noticed Dad doing origami too. It shouldn’t surprise me. Minnow notices a lot of things—that’s what makes him such a good artist.
“Should we give it to Mas?” he asks. “I bet he could find space in the Chevrolet.”
I shake my head.
“We could carry it. I don’t think anyone would notice.”
But that doesn’t feel right to me either. I want to do something good with these scraps nobody would pay for. I want to change things, the way Dad changed all these old envelopes and ticket stubs and potato-chip bags. I want to do what Yum-yum did with her piano, what Mrs. Katsumoto did with her thank-you note.
I want to show they haven’t beaten me.
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I’ve got a plan. You wanna help?”
* * *
After Mas loads up the Chevrolet and drives off, me, Minnow, and Ma report to the Civil Control Station, where we weave between the curbside luggage, the army guards, the lines of weary people waiting to board the Greyhound buses.
Under one arm, I’ve got the box of origami.
Twitchy comes to see us off, and he doesn’t bat an eye when me and Minnow tell him the plan—you gotta love Twitchy for that—he just takes some of the paper figures as carefully as he’d handle his old butterfly knife and gives us a smile.
While we wait for our turn to go, we put on party hats me and Minnow made out of newspaper and, with big, flashy smiles, we march through the crowd, distributing Dad’s origami to the kids. We’re not evacuees today—we’re kings in a parade, we’re cheerleaders at a pep rally, we’re three beardless Japanese Santa Clauses, and Christmas has come early this year!
I give Jeannie Kitano, Jim and Shuji’s sister, a crane that flaps its wings when you pull its tail, and baby Don Morita a box he instantly crushes in one of his chubby fists. The Abe sisters get a ball they can blow up and bat around. Minnow hands Toshie Nishino a fox. Twitchy tosses her brother a cat. Every kid gets something on Evacuation Day!
When it’s almost 11:30 a.m., I turn to Twitchy, who’s not leaving until tomorrow, and press forty-five cents into his hand. It’s all the change me and Minnow could find in the apartment last night. “Get some candy for tomorrow’s evacuation,” I tell him as me and Minnow stuff our pockets with the last of the origami. “To give to the kids.”
“We were thinking malt balls or something,” Minnow adds, tossing the empty shoebox onto a mound of baggage.
Twitchy frowns, jingling the coins in his palm. “Your mom would want you to save this for a rainy day or something,” he says.
“C’mon, Twitch—”
“But I’m fine blowing it on chocolate!” He grins.
Me and Minnow grin back. We’re standing on a street corner with everything we’ve ever known about to come crashing down around us.
And we’re angry.
And we’re smiling.
And we aren’t broken.
THINGS THAT DON’T TAKE UP ANY SPACE AT ALL
my humor
my courage
my joy
When our group is finally called, we’re the last people to board, and as me and Minnow follow Mom to the back of the bus, we fish into our pockets for dogs, koi, turtles, and gulls, passing them out to the other families.
The Greyhound becomes a menagerie on wheels, a circus, a traveling zoo of paper animals, filled with the kids’ delighted shrieking and the imagined sounds of elephants and zebras and monkeys.
As we drive away, I see Twitchy standing on the steps where we watched the first families leave Japantown, waving like he’s trying to bring a plane in to land.
* * *
It doesn’t take long to get to Tanforan, but it feels like hours. I spend the ride unfolding and refolding the last piece of origami, following the creases Dad made years ago, a rabbit appearing and disappearing in my hands like a magic trick.
There and gone.
There and gone.
We see the barbed wire first. The chatter in the bus quiets. The fence seems ten feet tall, with guard towers at regular intervals, like it’s a prison.
Like we’re criminals.
Then the grandstand, the muddy racetrack, the tarpaper barracks, and now no one’s speaking.
You will not beat me, I think.
There are things you can’t take.
Mom reaches for my hand. She’s already holding Minnow’s.
I turn Dad’s origami rabbit in my fingers. It’s already starting to split along the creases, gaps opening up at the corners.
Gaman, I think.
We drive through the gates.
III
I AM NOT FREE
YUM-YUM, 16
MAY–JUNE 1942
DAY 1
It’s a shock at first. One minute, Mom, Fred, and I are traversing the roads of San Bruno, California, like we’re on a road trip down Highway 101, headed for Los Angeles. The next, we’re being ordered off the buses between guard towers and armed soldiers, a barbed-wire fence separating us from the rest of the city—its streets, its schools, its citizens, wandering free.
As we’re herded toward the nearest buildings, I wonder if we’ll ever be allowed to wander again.
Between Mom and me, my younger brother, Fred, fidgets and tugs at our hands. At nine years old, he’s small for his age, with a cowlick at the back of his head that won’t stay flat, no matter how much you comb it. Mom likes to say it’s as unruly as he is.
I pull him closer.
Ahead, the crowd splits. Men are shuffling into one building; women, into another. Medical examinations, someone says. They want to make sure we’re not diseased.
Bowing, Mom approaches one of the soldiers. “My son is only nine years old,” she says in Japanese, clinging to Fred like the rush of people will take him from her the same way the FBI took my father last December—swiftly, almost soundlessly, so quick we barely had time for last words. “He has no one to accompany him.”
Sensing the soldier’s impatience, I translate quickly.
“What about her husband?” the soldier asks.
“Missou
la,” I tell him. Montana. My father is a good man—he’s always done right by us. But now he’s in a prisoner-of-war camp almost a thousand miles away, and he looks to me to do what he cannot.
The soldier shrugs. “These are the rules.”
My mother doesn’t need to be fluent in English to understand his indifference. Her grip on Fred tightens.
I waver. We can’t be separated. I can’t let us be separated.
“Beishi!” Fred squeals suddenly, wriggling out of Mom’s grasp as he chases one of his friends from Japantown into the men’s line.
Mom tries to cry out, but she doubles over, coughing.
So I’m the one who acts. I have to be. I dive after him, but a soldier shoves me back. “Men this way. Women that way.”
“But—”
“These are the rules.”
Standing on tiptoe, I catch a glimpse of Fred’s cowlick as he squeezes into the men’s building. For a moment, I wish for my father, and for my father’s advice. He’d know what to say. He’d know how to keep us together.
But then I remember how docilely he went with the FBI agents that night: the hollow clop-clop-clop of his heels on the sidewalk, the stoop of his shoulders, the moonlight on the back of his bowed head. And I know he would have done the same as I do now—the same as we all do.
Obey.
* * *
The examination room has curtained cubicles to undress in, but the hakujin nurses are careless with the partitions, and the women cover their chests and bellies as best they can with their hands, avoiding one another’s eyes.
“Here? In front of everyone?” Mom coughs—a delicate sound, hastily smothered, like a secret.
“The faster we do it, the sooner we can find Fred,” I assure her, though I feel anything but sure.
In the cowed quiet, every noise is as loud as a landslide: sniffles, shifting feet, shame. Somewhere nearby, one of the Issei women begins weeping.
A few cubicles down is Hiromi Nakano in her blond wig. The day she wore it home, her father was furious, thinking she’d dyed her hair. He raged at her for almost ten minutes, his face turning red as a plum, before she finally took it off, laughing and waving it in his face. She still wears it when she’s feeling rebellious.