We Are Not Free

by Traci Chee

  “I said if!” She waves me off, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t say I’d do it.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t either!”

  Would I?

  Not if I was Amy Oishi.

  But if I was who I was tonight, uninhibited, jubilant, free?

  Keiko grins, like she can read my thoughts, and saunters off, singing, “Good night, Kabochas.”

  But I don’t go inside yet.

  I sit outside my stall, watching the sky. Would Shig meet me out there, under the stars, if I asked him to? Would he fondle my hair and kiss me in the darkness, lips roving down my neck, over my collarbone?

  I blush again. Amy Oishi would never think such scandalous thoughts.

  But I don’t want to be Amy Oishi anymore.

  Amy Oishi is compliant. Her mother is sick and her father is a prisoner and they’ve left her alone to care for her shrinking family.

  Amy Oishi is trapped.

  I don’t want to be her. I want to be different. I need to be different. I can’t be the same girl I was on the outside. If that girl is in a detention center, an American citizen imprisoned without trial or even charges, then the world doesn’t make sense.

  But if I’m someone else, then it’s easier to accept that the world now operates by different rules.

  Up is down.

  Wrong is right.

  Captivity is freedom.

  DAY 27

  After that night, things change.

  During the day, I am myself. I am the obedient daughter, the dutiful sister, the high-strung disciplinarian. While Mom is in the hospital, I make sure Fred is bathed and clothed and fed. I pick up the toys he always leaves on the floor. I weather his tantrums. I put him to bed.

  But at night, I am someone else.

  I sneak out after he’s fallen asleep, and I wander the camp. Sometimes Keiko joins me. Sometimes we meet up with Shig and the boys and Hiromi in her blond wig.

  Sometimes we’re out for hours. Sometimes minutes.

  But for those hours, those minutes, we pretend there is no roll call, there is no barbed wire, there is just darkness and rebellion and laughter ringing out into the night.

  We’re young, we’re reckless, and we’re just like anyone else. We’re not Japanese-Americans, we’re just Americans. This isn’t a detention center; it’s just another neighborhood in San Bruno. My father isn’t in prison for suspected espionage; he’s just working late. My mother isn’t in the hospital; she’s just back home—we have a home—padding through the hallways in her slippers, peeking into Fred’s room while he sleeps soundly inside.

  DAY 32

  After we defeat the Japanese at the Battle of Midway, Twitchy steals us a cask of sake, and we celebrate on the infield once the rest of the camp has gone to bed, toasting the brave men of the U.S. Navy. The liquor is sweet on our tongues, and we drink until our skin is hot and our eyes are bright as stars.

  Shig puts his arm around my shoulders, and I lean into him, pressing my mouth to the tender area at the corner of his jaw. He tastes like the ocean.

  In the sake-slick darkness, I am blurry and happy and warm. Around us, Twitchy and Keiko turn cartwheels in the grass, competing to see how many they can do before they collapse in a giggling heap. Hiromi, Frankie Fujita, and Stan Katsumoto are arguing about their favorite films. Tommy and Minnow lie on their backs, connecting stars with the tips of their fingers, creating new constellations, constellations that look like us. “It’s Frankie, see? He’s fighting a couple of ketos.”

  Frankie chuckles. “And beating their asses, right?”

  “Right!”

  “And there’s Yum-yum.”

  I squint, blearily, at the sky. “Where?”

  “There,” Minnow says, pointing. “You’re playing a piano.”

  I imagine keys of starlight under my fingers, melodies like the singing of distant galaxies.

  “Ooh, there’s Mas!”

  “That’s a square, Minnow.”

  “I know!” Minnow laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, but he yelps and scrambles to his feet as Mas charges him. They race circles around us until Mas finally tackles him. When Mas gets up, he raises both fists in the air like he used to when he threw a winning touchdown. On the ground, Minnow is still laughing.

  There, in the dewy grass, with the guard towers nearly indistinguishable against the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the war seems almost over.

  We’re almost victorious.

  Almost free.

  DAY 36

  But the war doesn’t end. And we’re still here.

  When I visit my mother in the infirmary, she doesn’t seem to be getting any better. In fact, she seems to be getting weaker. “Are you eating?” I ask.

  “Never mind me. Are you getting enough sleep?” She reaches up to brush a lock of hair from my forehead, and I resist the urge to lean away. “You look so tired.”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “What about Fred? Where is he?”

  “Playing baseball.”

  “Tsk. Tell him to come visit his mother.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I say, though I know he won’t. He’ll do almost anything to avoid seeing her like this, including picking fights with me.

  In Dad’s letters, he continues exhorting us to be good and take care of your mother. There’s no sign that he even cares I’ve stopped responding.

  Fred keeps writing, though. He’s pinned the map of the United States to the wall above his cot, Missoula, Montana, circled in red. Around it are crude drawings of trains, his latest fascination.

  When he asks me why I don’t write, I tell him, “I just don’t have anything to say.”

  Dear Father, I got so drunk the other night I threw up in my hair.

  Dear Father, sometimes I think you wouldn’t recognize me if you saw me now.

  Sometimes I’m glad.

  After that, I stop reading my father’s letters, leaving every one unopened on Mom’s bedside table.

  DAY 40

  Nights with Fred are the worst. He doesn’t want to go to bed. He doesn’t want to put away his toys. He doesn’t want me telling him what to do.

  Tonight, I’m chasing him around the stall with a washcloth while he throws things at me, screaming like I want to murder him instead of just wipe his face.

  Maybe I should murder him, I think as I dodge the book he hurls at my head. The next one hits me in the shins, and I cry out as I stumble on the wooden train he keeps leaving out. Then I’d never have to wipe his face again.

  Taking a flying leap, I wrestle him, flailing and shrieking, to the linoleum. “Ha!”

  From the other side of the stables, someone shouts at us to be quiet.

  “It’s cold!” Fred kicks at me. One of his feet catches me in the stomach.

  I grunt, scrubbing his cheeks with the damp cloth. “It would’ve been warm if you’d let me do it sooner!”

  When I finally let him up, he stomps to his cot. “I hate you!”

  “I hate you too!” I shout.

  I don’t mean it. Of course I don’t.

  But I say it.

  The shock of it brings tears to his eyes. He dives into his cot, curled toward the map on his wall. “I wish I was with Dad!”

  “So do I,” I snap.

  Buried in his covers, Fred doesn’t reply.

  * * *

  That night, when the others retire, I ask Shig to stay. We’re standing in the eucalyptus grove, and above us, the moon is a bright disc through the sickle-shaped leaves.

  “Want me to walk you home?” he asks.

  “That’s not home,” I say.

  “Yeah.” He traces the inner curve of my wrist. “Want me to walk you back?”

  He tries to lead me away again, but I’m not going back—not there, not tonight, not yet—and I tug him to me, swiftly, hard.

  Beneath the eucalyptus trees, I kiss him. I’ve been wanting to kiss him like this for weeks—urgently and wrapped in shadow.

 
His tongue grazes my lower lip, touching the edge of my teeth, and I moan. I want to breathe his breath. I want to devour him. I want to be changed.

  He leans into me, hands sliding up my neck, into my hair, pulling me closer. Briefly, I wonder if he can feel my heart thrumming in my chest.

  He chuckles, his mouth moving along mine. “Oishii,” he murmurs. Yum.

  Laughing, I swat at him and pull back.

  In the moonlight, I can see his lopsided grin, the faint gleam of sweat along his hairline. “You’re full of surprises.” His voice is huskier than I’ve ever heard it, dark with want.

  I grin and throw myself back into his arms.

  We kiss for hours, long and slow and hard, until I can taste him in every tender corner of my mouth. We kiss all night, until the skies turn gray and the camp begins to stir.

  “Shit,” Shig says. “We’re going to miss roll call.”

  Hand in hand, we race back to the barracks, where, in front of my door, he pauses, breathless, and kisses me again. “See you soon,” he whispers.

  Then he’s gone, and the sun is breaking over the rooftops. This time, I stayed out until dawn. This time, I was alone with a boy. This time, for the first time since we entered camp, I breathe in the day and feel different.

  Hopeful.

  New.

  DAY 41

  As soon as I enter the stall, I know something is wrong.

  Fred’s suitcase is missing, as is Kuma. Above his cot, the map of the United States has disappeared. My head spins.

  Fred’s gone.

  He’s gone to find our father in Montana.

  Or, at least, he’s going to try.

  Someone knocks at the stable door.

  Roll call.

  I freeze. What do I say? What do I do?

  I think of the soldiers combing the camp for a little boy.

  I think of their guns.

  “All here!” My voice is taut and hoarse.

  There’s a pause, and for a second, I’m sure they know I’m lying. They’re going to burst through the door, brandishing their rifles.

  But then there’s another knock, not on our door but on our neighbors’. “All here,” he calls.

  I sink to my knees.

  Fred must still be in camp, right? If they’d caught him trying to squeeze under the barbed wire, we would have heard a siren.

  Or a gunshot.

  Unless he got out without them noticing. I imagine him walking along the highway with his suitcase and teddy bear. I imagine the police, the army, the National Guard, the manhunt.

  No. He’s still here. And I have to find him.

  I race to Shig’s barrack, where he dispatches Minnow to fetch Keiko and the rest of the group, and it’s not long before everyone’s assembled: Tommy, Frankie, Stan and Mary Katsumoto, Hiromi and her younger sister, Yuki, who’s almost as fast as Twitchy, bouncing lightly from foot to foot in the dust.

  “Don’t worry; we’ll find him,” Keiko says. “We would’ve known if he’d tried to get out.”

  “Twitch, Yuki.” Shig’s voice is as level as ever. “Can you check the fences?”

  Nodding, Twitchy flicks us a salute and sprints toward the perimeter with Yuki hot on his heels.

  “Let’s try the usual places. The Okimuras, the Aoyagis . . .” To my surprise, Shig begins ticking off a list of Fred’s old friends from Japantown, sending Minnow and Tommy off to knock on doors.

  I tell the others about Fred’s new friends, his favorite mess halls, how he might be at one of the recreation centers, the baseball field, the pond, the grandstand. One by one, the others race away.

  Then it hits me.

  Fred and his obsession with trains.

  I turn to Hiromi. “Stay here in case he comes back.”

  And I run.

  I run past the eucalyptus trees, past the infield, past people stumbling to the latrines in their handmade zoris, past the breakfast lines, until I reach the gate near the train tracks.

  But Fred isn’t there.

  The dust isn’t even disturbed where he might have crawled under the fence.

  I haven’t cried since we got here, but I cry now. I collapse against the back of the nearest tarpaper building, sobbing. I was so stupid, staying out all night, pretending that everything was okay, that I didn’t have a brother to watch, that my parents were here and well, that here wasn’t a racetrack-turned-prison because our own government was afraid of us.

  Hated us.

  Beyond the barbed wire, the city of San Bruno is stirring. Cars drive by, windows flashing in the dawn light. People are going to work, the grocery store, the beach. They avert their eyes from the fences, from the guard towers, from me, like if they pretend hard enough, we’ll disappear.

  But I know pretending doesn’t change things. I’m still here, still trapped as I was when my father was taken, when my mother got sick, when my brother—

  I look up suddenly, blinking tears from my eyes. There’s still one place I didn’t think to check.

  Standing, I turn my back on the world beyond the fence and race to the infirmary.

  * * *

  I find Fred curled up on the end of Mom’s bed like a cat, Kuma pillowed under his head.

  “Fred!” I launch myself at him, pinning him to the mattress.

  “Hey! Get off!”

  But I just hold tighter. “I’m sorry,” I mutter into his cowlick. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”

  At my words, he relaxes. After a moment, he whispers, “I don’t hate you either.”

  “I thought you’d gone to find Dad.”

  “I did. But I got scared.”

  “I was scared too. I’m scared a lot.” I’m scared that Dad will never come back. I’m scared that Mom will die in this hospital. I’m scared we’ll be deported. I’m scared we’ll be shot. I’m scared of failing. I’m scared of being trapped.

  “Really?”

  “All the time.”

  “Is that why you’re so mean to me?”

  I laugh, but before I can answer, Mom stirs. “Amy? Fred? What are you doing here so early?”

  Fred looks at me. I shrug.

  “Nothing,” we say in unison.

  He grins at me, like he used to when we were keeping something from our parents. A popsicle we shared before dinner. A fight he got in with one of the neighborhood boys.

  I grin back.

  Mom glances at his suitcase, sitting in the corner. Then she says, “Amy, you look tired. There are bags under your eyes.” She takes a hand mirror from her bedside table, but she doesn’t show me my face. In the reflection, I see a kiss-shaped bruise on the side of my neck.

  My hand goes to my throat. My cheeks burn.

  “What’s that?” Fred asks.

  Our mother ignores him. “I left a case of powder in my top drawer,” she says to me. “It worked wonders for me when I was your age.”

  I blink. Mom? How many love bites did she have to cover up when she was younger? How many nights did she sneak out of her parents’ farmhouse back in Japan?

  Before I can thank her, she leans over again, selecting one of my father’s letters from the bedside table. “This is for you.”

  I shake my head. “No, I—” But I stop when I see the salutation.

  Dear Amy,

  This is the first time he’s written to me—only to me. Maybe he did care, after all.

  I tuck it into my pocket. “I guess we’d better get going, then.” Out of habit, I almost grab for Fred’s arm before he can run away, but I stop. “Ready to go home, Fred?” I extend my hand to him.

  After a moment, he takes it.

  * * *

  They’re all there when we get back, crammed into our stall—Keiko, Shig, Minnow, Tommy, Twitchy, Frankie, Hiromi, Yuki, Stan Katsumoto, Mary—shoulder to shoulder on the cots, leaning back in chairs I made myself, filling both the tiny rooms.

  With a cry, Keiko races up to Fred, twirling him around and around as he throws his head back and laughs
. On my cot, Hiromi is making Mary try on her blond wig, saying things like, “This color suits you!” Mary looks furious.

  Dashing forward, Twitchy takes Fred’s suitcase. Plopping down, he opens it. “What’s this? Canned sausages? Where’s the chocolate bars? The M&M’s?” Looking up, he shakes his head. “Freddy, you better talk to me before you run away next time. I’ll—”

  “There won’t be a next time,” I interrupt.

  “Of course not.” Twitchy winks at Fred, who clumsily tries to wink back.

  Gently, Shig takes my hand. “You okay, Yum-yum?”

  “No.” Taking Dad’s letter from my pocket, I place it on my dresser until I can read it. Dear Amy. “But we will be.”

  All around me, my friends are making tea, tuning a Silvertone radio I recognize as Mas’s, shuffling a deck of playing cards, talking, joking, laughing. Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us. But in here, we are together.

  We are not free.

  But we are not alone.

  Topaz, Utah

  IV

  THE INDOMITABLE BETTE NAKANO

  HIROMI “BETTE,” 17

  SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1942

  SEPTEMBER

  By September, the evacuation from the assembly center at Tanforan to our new camp in Utah is well under way as we pack our suitcases and prepare to ship our scrap-wood furniture by train. It’s a curious feeling, saying goodbye to Tanforan. The camp may have smelled, been poorly constructed, and had repulsive food, but it was only twenty minutes from home, and some of us had dared to hope we wouldn’t have to leave California after all.

  As for me, after four months of the same dusty racetrack, I am looking forward to another adventure, particularly aboard a train, although I must confess I’m a tad disappointed with the railcars that screech to a stop next to the Tanforan fence. I know it’s silly—my younger sister, Yuki, likes to say I’ve seen too many movies—but I was picturing a sleek locomotive with state-of-the-art brass fixtures and polished beverage carts pushed by waiters in bellboy caps. Instead, what we get is an old coal train with steel siding and hardwood seats I know Bachan will be complaining about within the hour.