Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  On Saturday Renjiro wasn’t feeling well. The next morning, he stayed in his dressing gown to read the paper, and Miyako told Lucy that if she liked, she could go to church with the Koga family from down the street.

  Lucy welcomed the chance to sit in one of the pews up front between the young Koga children, her hands folded on her lap as she stole glances around the congregation, knowing she was being admired. Rarely did a week go by without someone stopping her family outside the church to tell her parents how beautiful and well-mannered Lucy was, how much she resembled Miyako. And Lucy knew that she would receive even more compliments than usual after she spent the service seated between the squirming Koga boys, helping their mother keep them quiet.

  She wore her navy coat with frog closures and her patent shoes and combed her hair until it shone. Lucy knew she was a beautiful girl, but for some reason this impressed adults even more than the other children in her class. Maybe it was because she had grown up with many of them, seeing each other every day. Now that she was fourteen, Lucy thought she could see signs of maturity in her face when she looked in her mother’s vanity mirror—a narrowing of her cheeks, an arch in her brow that more closely echoed her mother’s. Lucy wasn’t particularly vain, but she had observed her mother carefully enough to know that beauty was a tool that could be used to get all sorts of nice things. The best fish in the case at the market, say, or a seat on the trolley on days when it was crowded.

  As the reverend came to the end of one of his long and boring sermons and the congregation stood to sing the hymn, Lucy kept her eyes downcast as though she were praying. In reality, she was staring at Mrs. Koga’s brown pump, noting smugly how dowdy the plain, unadorned shoe was compared to the dressy high-heeled pairs in her mother’s closet. Lucy’s feet were still smaller than her mother’s, but soon they would be able to share—if she could convince Miyako that she was old enough for heels. By the age of fifteen, surely? These were the thoughts she was entertaining when the doors at the back of the church creaked open and two anxious figures burst inside, interrupting the listless singing of “Faith of Our Fathers.”

  Later she would remember the unfamiliar words repeated over and over by the adults all around her, Pearl Harbor and torpedo and casualties—but in the confusion inside the church, all Lucy could think about was that some unknown disaster had taken place and she was here, daydreaming, thinking selfish thoughts while her parents were over a mile away by themselves, her father ill and her mother barely able to take care of either of them. It was the first time Lucy understood that it would fall to her to help them if something bad had happened, the first time she realized that in some ways, her childhood was already far behind her.

  * * *

  Somehow, in the confusion following the news, Lucy ended up walking home alone. She imagined the Kogas realizing that she was missing, and feeling terrible about it—“How could we let that poor girl out of our sight?”—but even that was small comfort. She had a sense of foreboding, and though her shiny shoes pinched her toes, smashing them together, she hurried, almost running, her breath ragged in her lungs.

  When she turned down Clement Street and saw the ambulance in front of her house, she was horrified but not surprised. She’d known from the moment the strangers burst into the church that tragedy had come for her—that no matter what other cyclones of disaster had swept the world that morning, one was bearing down directly on Lucy. Everything that led up to this day had been a portent: her mother’s moods, the children’s cruelty, the glassy look in her father’s eyes—disaster.

  Two men emerged from her front door as she ran toward her house. Between them they carried a stretcher bearing a figure covered with a blanket. Behind them, a woman came out onto the porch, holding the door—Aiko Narita, her mother’s best friend.

  Lucy ran to the stretcher and threw herself upon it. Her father’s shoe jutted out underneath the blanket. If she could just get to him quickly enough, before they took him to the ambulance, there was a chance she could bring him back. If she touched his face, he might feel her hands and choose not to go. If she called his name, he might hear her, and understand that he couldn’t leave them behind, not like this.

  The two men didn’t see her coming, and they were startled. One of them said a bad word. Lucy’s fingers barely brushed the blanket when she was seized from behind and held in strong arms. She fought as hard as she could, but Auntie Aiko held her more tightly, and the men carried her father to the back of the ambulance, where the doors stood wide to receive them.

  “No, no, no, Lucy,” Aiko’s familiar voice crooned in her ear. Lucy kicked as hard as she could, connecting with Aiko’s shin; she tried to bite Aiko’s arm but couldn’t quite reach. She heard her own voice screaming, couldn’t get enough air. “It’s going to be all right,” Aiko gasped, struggling to contain her. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Auntie Aiko was a liar. Lucy knew that she wanted to help, but everything was wrong and Aiko wouldn’t let go, and she saw her chance slipping away as the doors to the ambulance closed and after a moment it started slowly down the street. Aiko tried to carry her back up the steps into the house, but Lucy twisted savagely and almost managed to slip away. Aiko caught the hem of her coat and dragged her back. The coat’s buttons popped off and went rolling down the sidewalk. One went over the curb, through the grate, and disappeared into the blackness below the street.

  One more loss, and finally Lucy gave up and allowed herself to be dragged, limp in Aiko’s arms. The button had been etched with the design of an anchor. They would never find another to match. The button would disappear in the muck and rotting leaves in the sewer, as the ambulance carrying her father’s body was disappearing out of view.

  5

  The doctor had given her mother something to help her calm down, which seemed to make her mostly sleep. Aiko had moved into the house and slept in Lucy’s parents’ bed. Lucy could hear her during the night, getting up to go to the bathroom or to get a glass of water. She missed the sound of her father’s snoring. She missed everything about her father.

  The funeral would take place tomorrow. Mrs. Koga had taken her yesterday to buy a suitable dress. She and Aiko had had a whispered conference in the parlor, and Lucy had taken the opportunity to slip into her parents’ bedroom to check on her mother, something Aiko had discouraged her from doing.

  Miyako had been sleeping with her hands folded under her chin, the covers pulled up neatly, almost as though she too were dead. Her face was smooth, her lips dry and pale, her eyelashes fluttering slightly as she exhaled. The flutter of the lashes was proof that she was still alive, at least. Lucy watched her for a moment and then tentatively touched her hand. It was warm. After a moment, Lucy went around to the other side of the bed and got in, lifting the covers carefully and inching slowly across until she was pressed up against her mother.

  She burrowed her face into her mother’s arm. She could smell her mother, an unwashed smell that was both unfamiliar and welcome. Usually, her mother smelled like perfume and hair spray and the cloud smell from the laundry. Lucy burrowed deeper, inhaling as much as she could, and wished that she could stay here, that Mrs. Koga would go away and Aiko wouldn’t notice. She wished that she could stay here all night with her mother and maybe, in the morning, her mother would wake up and the first person she would see would be Lucy. She would look into Lucy’s eyes that were so much like her own and decide to be brave for her. She would stop taking the medicine that made he
r so sleepy and send Aiko home, and she and Lucy would decide together what to do next.

  But of course that wasn’t what happened. Lucy had gone downtown with Mrs. Koga. She had nodded numbly when Mrs. Koga asked if the dress, the hat, the slip were all right, and when she got home Aiko had made a pot of bad-smelling soup with vegetables and thick noodles. Aiko’s own husband had been dead since almost before Lucy could remember, and she was closer to Lucy’s father’s age than her mother’s. Lucy supposed she might end up staying forever, now that her father was dead, and she wondered what would happen to Aiko’s house and her two fat cats, one white and one tabby, who were never allowed outside because they killed the birds that came to the feeder Aiko had hung from a tree. The cats, the birds—Lucy supposed they would have to learn to fend for themselves now that Aiko had moved here.

  A man arrived with a load of dishes and napkins and silver for tomorrow. Another brought a stack of funeral programs from the printer. They had a picture of her father on the front, one Lucy knew well since it sat in a silver frame on her mother’s dresser; in the photograph, his hair was still dark and he wore a suit he no longer owned. The program was in both English and Japanese, and Aiko said that the readings had been her father’s favorite. Lucy doubted that was true—she’d caught him napping in church more than once, and she was certain he only went to please her mother.

  People would be coming to the house after the funeral. Lucy had attended two funerals already, so she knew what to expect: people would talk in quiet voices, and the ladies would make trips in and out of the kitchen, even though there would be hired help to do all the serving. The men would drift farther and farther from the women, until eventually some of them would be outside, huddled and smoking and shivering in the cold. Her mother would be required to talk to everyone, but at least she would be allowed to sit down, and a few words would suffice. No one ever wanted to talk to the grieving widow for very long. It was one of those things that grown-ups did that they obviously didn’t want to do. There seemed to be so many of those, the more Lucy understood about growing up.

  Aiko said that Lucy needed to stay at home for a while, that she could miss some school. Next week would come soon enough, she said. Lucy had asked if she could call Yvonne, but Aiko frowned and shook her head.

  Something else was bothering Lucy. Aiko had moved the radio into Miyako’s bedroom, where they listened to it after dinner, the sound turned down too low for Lucy to hear, even with her ear pressed to the closed door. Also, the newspaper was nowhere to be found. Lucy kept meaning to get up early enough to go out and get it from the drive, but each day she woke to find Aiko already up and busy around the house, the paper hidden away.

  She thought of sneaking out, waiting until Aiko was in with her mother and slipping out the front door. She could walk to the newsstand; she had an entire piggy bank full of coins. She could buy a chocolate soda at the drugstore and read the paper. Only someone was sure to see her and insist on bringing her home. Everyone knew her father was dead; there was no way she could escape the eyes of the neighborhood.

  Lucy filled the long and restless hours reading pages from her mother’s books, the words lost to her as soon as she’d scanned each page. Instead, her mind turned over the words shouted in the church, the ones that had seemed to put in motion the terrible events that followed—and the words printed on the neat stack of programs on the dining room table.

  Pearl Harbor. Torpedo. Casualties.

  Renjiro Takeda, 1879–1941.

  * * *

  On the day of the funeral, Aiko never left Miyako’s side. In the church, Lucy squeezed between them in the pew; at the graveside she allowed herself to be pressed against Aiko’s wool coat, but she never let go of her mother’s hand. Back at the house, though, they were separated. Someone had moved the red couch to the center of the parlor, and there was only enough room for Aiko and Miyako to sit.

  Lucy stationed herself near the front door and gave herself the job of answering it. By doing so she could avoid going into the parlor with all the flowers surrounding her father’s picture. His photo somehow made it seem like he was not only dead but fading from the house, memories and all, slipping away a little more each day.

  Late in the day, when people were already beginning to leave, the doorbell rang one last time. Lucy opened it to discover two Caucasian men dressed in fedoras and black coats standing on the porch. They did not remove their hats. Neither smiled. For a moment Lucy thought they must be men her father knew from his business, perhaps other merchants from Banning Street, but surely they would have come sooner if they meant to pay their respects.

  “Please get an adult,” the shorter of the two men said. He had a large nose the color of an eraser.

  Lucy said nothing, backing away from the door, and when the men followed her inside, she wondered if she should have asked them to stay outside. It wouldn’t do to bother her mother or Auntie Aiko. This was the sort of thing a father should handle, but who could she ask? Lucy turned and hurried to the kitchen, where some of the men had been smoking and talking earlier, but they had dispersed and were standing in groups of two and three, collecting their wives and their coats, preparing to take their leave. There were only twenty or twenty-five guests left, perhaps a quarter of those who had filled the home earlier, and of those who remained, none were familiar to Lucy. Her father was not in the habit of bringing friends and associates home.

  But the two strangers followed her into the parlor, and the one who had spoken earlier put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Lucy was astonished, both by the sheer volume the man was able to produce and by his audacity. But before she could respond, the other one, a tall, thin man nearly as old as her father, clapped his hands and began to speak.

  “Martin Sakamoto and Kenjiro Hibi. Please identify yourselves.” Lucy saw Mrs. Hibi step forward uncertainly, searching the room for her husband.

  “Martin and his wife left,” someone said from the back of the room, and there was nodding and a murmur of agreement. The taller Caucasian scowled and muttered something to his partner.

  They were holding something in their hands, small wallets containing badges that flashed gold. Lucy heard whispers of “FBI,” and the worry that had had taken hold of her when she’d opened the door bloomed into full-scale fear. She edged along the perimeter of the room, trying to get to the red couch; her mother looked dazed, leaning against Auntie Aiko for support.

  “See here, you can’t come in here.” One of the mourners, a man Lucy thought she recognized from one of her visits to see her father at work, stepped toward the FBI men. “This is a funeral. It isn’t decent.”

  “Are you Mr. Hibi?”

  The man hesitated, glancing over to Miyako’s piano, where Mr. Hibi was standing with a plate in his hand. There was a half-eaten slice of cake on the plate, the pale green pistachio cream cake that someone had brought from the bakery. Mr. Hibi slowly lowered the plate to the shiny black surface of the piano. Lucy was shocked—no one ever set anything on the piano; her mother would not allow it.

  “You’ll come with us, sir,” the shorter FBI man said.

  “Where are you taking him?” Mrs. Hibi looked like she was about to cry. She hurried to her husband’s side and took his arm, as though to hold him back. “Where are you taking my husband?”

  “We just need to ask him some questions, ma’am.”

  Lucy had reached the other side of the room, and she made a run for it, dashing to the couch and crawling up into
her mother’s lap. She was trembling; she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. Aiko had been too busy with her mother to make Lucy eat, and she hadn’t felt like it. Now she felt as though she might faint. Her mother patted her back absently, and her hands were cool and dry.

  Aiko stood. She was a small woman, but her arms and legs were thick and her hands were strong. “You must go now.” Her voice trembled, but she took a step toward the FBI men.

  “I’ll come with you.” Mr. Hibi pulled his arm away from his wife and didn’t look back. “Leave this widow in peace.”

  But even this did not seem to shame them. Everyone watched in silence as they escorted him through the house. He looked back, once, and then they were gone.

  Mrs. Hibi made a small mewling sound. Lucy’s father, in his photograph, seemed to watch in sorrow.

  * * *

  Mr. Hibi did not return. Within days, other men had been rounded up and taken somewhere to be interrogated. No one knew where they were. None came home. The phone rang throughout the day and Lucy could hear Aiko’s urgent voice; by eavesdropping carefully she learned that windows had been broken at the drugstore and several of the warehouses along East Second Street, only blocks from her father’s building. Aiko asked Lucy to go to the store for her and then immediately changed her mind, and they went together instead. There was almost no one in the streets; the barbershop window held a large hand-painted sign that read, I Am an American. Lucy read the headlines as they passed the newsstand: 4,000 Japanese Die in Submarine Raid. Hong Kong Siege Is Begun.

  The following Monday, Lucy was dressing for school when Auntie Aiko came into her room. Her face was pale and her eyes were red. Lucy knew she had been crying, which seemed strange to her because her mother had not cried since her father died. She’d barely spoken, barely eaten; she was like a shadow in the house, coming out when Aiko insisted she try to eat, bathing when Aiko led her to the bathroom.