Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  But somehow, the possibility failed to move Patty. She wasn’t sure what kind of reaction she had expected from her mother—denial? regret?—but she was suddenly angry. “How could you lie to me all those years?”

  “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t—”

  “It’s lying, when you let me believe—”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I called the Department of the Interior. They keep all the records.”

  Lucy nodded. “I always wondered where they ended up.”

  “Mother. Don’t you get how serious this is? If the cops find this... All these connections lead right back to you. And your mother was a murderer. Don’t you think—”

  “Patty.” The rebuke was sharp, especially coming from Lucy, who never raised her voice. Diners at neighboring tables glanced their way. “I am very sorry that I never told you about any of this, but please don’t talk about your grandmother that way. She was... You never knew her. But she did the best she could.”

  The waiter appeared, bearing their lunches, balancing the plates high above the diners’ heads. As he began to lower them to the table, Lucy stopped him. “Pack those up, please. We’ll be taking them to go.” The waiter sighed and retreated.

  “I’m sorry, I know you have to get back to work.”

  Lucy shrugged. “Maybe I’ll take another afternoon off.”

  Patty started to dig in her purse for her wallet, but Lucy reached across the table and stopped her. “I will buy.”

  Patty watched as her mother stacked bills and coins. She always left a ridiculously large tip. She said it came from working as a motel maid, that once you had to count on other people’s generosity, you learned to be generous yourself.

  As Lucy counted out twenty, thirty, thirty-five percent of their bill, Patty slipped the photo album back inside her shoulder bag, where it weighed more heavily than ever.

  * * *

  When they got home, Lucy set the take-out containers on the counter and disappeared into her bedroom. She emerged a few minutes later with an old tin box covered with a design of roses and the logo for a soap company. She set it on the kitchen table and took a deep breath, almost as though she was afraid to open it.

  “I haven’t looked at any of this stuff in years,” she said softly, prying off the lid. Inside was a stack of yellowed papers and photographs curling with age. A faint dusty scent rose from the box as Lucy dug through carefully and took out a small square photo.

  “This is my school picture, the year I went to Manzanar. I was fourteen.”

  Patty took it carefully, touching only the edges with her thumb and forefinger. “You always said you didn’t have any pictures of yourself.” Then, catching her breath: “Mother...”

  The girl in the photograph was perfect. Her smile was serene yet mischievous, her glossy hair falling perfectly around the curve of her jaw. Her eyes sparkled beneath long lashes and her teeth were even and white. Her velvet hairband and round-collared blouse were suitable for a child, but already there were unmistakable signs of impending womanhood in the swell of her cheekbones, the curve of her lips.

  Patty glanced from her mother to the photograph and back. There...in the profile of her mother’s good side, in the shape of her eyes, she could see the shadow of this girl.

  Lucy sifted through the papers in the box. “Here’s one from Manzanar. I’d won a prize, for history.”

  In this one, Lucy posed with a plain, skinny woman in front of a map tacked to a white wall. She stood with her hand on her hip, grinning at the camera with an expression that could only be described as provocative. Her hair was longer and curled in the style of the forties. She wore a simple skirt and cardigan, rolled socks and black shoes, and she was turned slightly away with one foot pointed toward the camera, her chin tilted flirtatiously. She was a girl on the cusp of womanhood, and her resemblance to the photographs of Miyako was startling.

  “You were...gorgeous.”

  “Yes,” Lucy said, without a trace of self-consciousness. “It was a long time ago.”

  “What’s this one?” Patty lifted a snapshot from the box. In it, her mother, a little older, stood between two lanky, blond teenagers, a boy and a girl. But this was her mother after the accident; the transformation was astonishing. Her scars were dark and jagged, her hair cut short and badly. She was wearing a shapeless dress that was too big for her. No one in the picture was smiling.

  Lucy took the photograph from her. “They worked at the motel in Lone Pine too. They came with their mother on weekends. I don’t remember their names, but the girl and her mother cooked, and the boy worked on the grounds.”

  “Were they your friends?”

  Lucy shrugged noncommittally. “They were the only other young people I ever saw, so I spent a little time with them.”

  A connection clicked in Patty’s mind. Her mother had always said that Patty’s father was a boy from Lone Pine, someone she didn’t know well, someone who didn’t matter. She refused to say more about him, and Patty had always secretly assumed that her mother had been taken advantage of in some way, that her conception had been against her mother’s will.

  Could this be the boy? She looked closely at the picture, at the boy’s sunburned, broad face, his worn overalls, his somber expression.

  Lucy took the photo back and placed it carefully in the box. Then she fitted the lid back in place. “It was so long ago, Patty, I doubt they even remember me anymore.”

  “I wish...” But what did Patty wish, exactly? Of course, she wanted to settle this business with the police as soon as possible, to clear her mother’s name. But there was more. She wished Lucy had shown her these pictures long ago. She wished she’d met her grandmother before she died. And now that she had seen the wholly unsettling image of the girl her mother had once been, she wondered if she really knew her mother at all, and it seemed that discovering that truth was a dangerous thing to wish for.

  “I don’t know if I can tell it right after all these years,” Lucy said, as though reading her thoughts. “Sometimes things get mixed up in my memory. But I’ll tell you the best I can.”

  19

  Manzanar

  February 1943

  Lucy went to school early on Monday and waited, shivering in the cold, outside Jessie’s classroom. She had gone to his baseball game on Sunday afternoon and watched the whole thing, standing up against the chain-link fence, gripping the links so hard they left red marks on her fingers. He never looked her way. His expression never changed, not when he was crouched at the plate, or when he lunged to catch a grounder, or even when his team won the game four to zero. Afterward he left so fast that she wasn’t able to catch up with him.

  As kids arrived, blowing icy breaths on their way into the classroom, she started to wonder if Jessie would come to school today. Finally, as a teacher struck the brake drum that improvised as a school bell, he came jogging along the path, his book bag banging against his hip. He barely slowed when he saw her, bounding up the steps two at a time.

  “Leave me alone,” he muttered in a low voice. “Don’t talk to me.”

  Lucy put her hand on his arm as he tried to pass, and he flinched—but at least he stopped.

  “Jessie...what happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just forget you ever saw me there. I’m serious. If you don’t—bad things will happen.”

  “Bad things?” Lucy echoed.

  “Just forget it, okay? Quit asking me!�
�� Jessie wrenched his arm free, and Lucy saw that his eyes were puffy and rimmed with red. “You can’t help me.”

  “Oh, Jessie—what did he do to you?”

  He raked his hand through his hair and exhaled in frustration. His face was ashen and drawn; it looked like he hadn’t had much sleep. “Nothing, just... Nothing. He was helping me with my stance. He used to play semipro. That’s all it was, okay?”

  Jessie had to know she would never believe the lie. They knew each other too well, had shared too many secrets. Lucy longed to touch him, to hold him and brush the hair from his brow the way she had a dozen times before, but his anger scared her.

  “We have to tell someone,” she said urgently. “Mr. Hamaguchi, he’s on the community council, he can—”

  “He can’t do anything,” Jessie snapped. “Forrest is friends with all of them—everyone who matters. He told me—”

  He bit down on his words, staring off at the mountains, shaking his head.

  “What? What did he tell you?”

  “Only the truth. That no one would ever believe me over him. Look, Lucy, if you care about me at all, you have to let this drop. Just pretend you never saw anything and things can go back like they were before, okay?”

  Lucy might have refused; she might have threatened to tell someone herself, promised she would stay by his side no matter what, but at that moment his teacher came outside and Jessie was gone, darting inside with the speed and agility of the baseball league champion he was, and Lucy walked slowly to her own classroom.

  Lucy tried to talk to him one more time, at lunch. She approached their regular table with her tray, but Jessie got up and moved to another table. When she followed, he turned around and brandished his tray between them.

  “I told you to leave me alone,” he muttered in a low voice. “Don’t talk to me. If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll... I’ll...”

  Lucy was devastated, but she was also angry. All she wanted was to talk, to understand, and he kept pushing her away. “You’ll do what? How are you going to stop me?”

  Jessie’s hand was at her throat before she could blink, their trays crashing to the ground. He circled her neck with his hand but he didn’t squeeze hard, mostly just shoving her into the table. Lucy’s shin banged painfully against the edge of the seat and she pushed his hand away, only to have him fall against her. He made a sound like an animal as they tumbled to the floor together. Lucy struggled underneath him as teachers came running and other students yelled and tried to pull him away, but in the end Jessie rolled off her himself, backing away from her on his hands and knees, an apology in his haunted eyes.

  * * *

  In their room that night, Lucy watched her mother rub scented cream into her hands from a little jar that had recently appeared on the dresser without explanation. Her outline was hidden under her shapeless nightgown, but even so, Lucy could see that Miyako had wilted and withered. Recently, it seemed as though her anxiety was starting to make her body sick in addition to her mind. She was more haggard than ever, and some nights she lay down for a nap the minute she came home from work.

  Lucy had tried to stay silent about what had happened with Jessie, but the pain of his rejection combined with her fears about Reg were too much to bear alone. Lucy knew that what was happening to Jessie was wrong, and it seemed to be breaking him inside, but she also knew he was right to fear Forrest. The image of him cowering at the end of Reg’s bed combined with her memory of Rickenbocker’s crushing grip on her leg: they might both be evil, but they were also powerful and used to getting what they wanted.

  Lucy had no illusions that Miyako could make Reg stop. He was a staff member, and a man; she was a woman, utterly powerless. But maybe she would know what Lucy should do, how to help her friend.

  “Jessie pushed me at lunch today,” she said carefully, and Miyako looked up sharply, cream shiny on her fingers.

  “What would make him do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know. He’s—he’s mad at me.”

  “Did you two have a fight?”

  “No. I—” Lucy swallowed; the words were hard to get out. “I went to see Reg Saturday morning and Jessie was there and he was sitting on the bed.”

  “You went to Reg’s room?” Miyako looked taken aback. “Why would you go see him?”

  “No. I only wanted...” Lucy bit her lip. “I had a letter to deliver to him.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “I was supposed to deliver it the day before. I tried, but he wasn’t there,” Lucy said, unwilling to mention the motor pool office, the party she’d interrupted.

  “Lucy.” Her mother sat very close to her on the bed and gripped her wrists. “How could you? After what happened? We talked about this. You must never go to see any of those men alone. Not any of the staff, even if you think they’re trying to be nice to you. Do you understand me?”

  Miyako’s grip was surprisingly strong. Lucy breathed in her mother’s smell. Miyako had stopped wearing perfume, and in recent weeks she had often skipped her late-night bath. Her odor was unpleasant to Lucy, earthy and ripe.

  “How could I say no?” Lucy protested. “It’s my job. I have to do whatever they tell me. You do whatever Mr. Rickenbocker tells you.”

  Her mother slapped her so fast she didn’t see it coming, but the impact of her palm on Lucy’s cheek was stunning. Tears immediately stung her cheeks.

  “Oh, Lucy,” Miyako cried, horrified. She cradled Lucy’s face in the hand she’d slapped her with. Lucy tried to pull away, but her mother held tighter, mashing her cheeks. Lucy turned her face from Miyako’s stale breath, but she couldn’t twist out of her strong grip.

  “Mama—let me go—”

  “I can’t always be with you! Don’t you understand that? Don’t you see?” She shook Lucy by the shoulders, making her teeth knock together. “They do whatever they want. Whatever they can get away with. We have no power here, none. We are prisoners and your only hope is to stay away from them.”

  Lucy’s defiance vanished at the pain in her mother’s ragged, broken voice. “I can get a different assignment,” she offered, wanting to reassure her mother. “I can ask Mrs. Kadonada if I can file, or—”

  “No, don’t you see? It will never be enough, not if they decide to go after you. You’ll never get away from them.”

  “Why would they go after me?”

  “Lucy.” Finally, her mother relaxed her grip, but she did not let go. Her eyes were glassy, her hair wild. “Do you know why I married your father?”

  Renjiro Takeda had receded to the background of Lucy’s thoughts lately. In her memory he was always dressed in fine clothes and scholarly spectacles, always with a pocketful of treats. The men at Manzanar dressed in rough clothes and dug ditches or washed dishes, or crouched outside the barracks playing dice games and smoking. It was unimaginable to Lucy that her father should ever be in a place such as this, squatting in the dirt with farmers, eating beans from a tin plate. Perhaps, somehow, he had known what the future held, and had wisely died before he could be dragged into this place of shame and suffering.

  “No, Mama,” Lucy whispered.

  Miyako pursed her lips, seeking the right words. “Your father was a gentle man. He protected us. I thought... But you see, no one can protect you forever. Not even me.”

  Lucy didn’t dare disagree, but as she thought of the girls in the motor pool office, Jessie sitting at the edge of the bed, even her own absent and mu
ch-missed father, she felt the stirring of rebellion. Lucy was not like those others.

  She might not be able to protect her mother. She might not be able to help Jessie. But her mother was wrong about one thing: Lucy would find a way to protect herself. The night in the frozen garden, when Reg had dug his fingers into her flesh, she had still been a child. But something had changed. She could feel her strength coiled inside her, tense and ready to spring. She was tough and she was clever. She could be stronger than her fears. All this was true even if none of it was apparent on the outside yet. With Jessie she had taken the first steps toward womanhood, but now it loomed like a branch of a tree that for the first time she found herself tall enough to touch as she walked by.

  She would not make the same mistakes again. She would not walk alone at night, would not go with strangers. If Rickenbocker or Reg or any of the others tried to talk to her, she would ignore them, and show them that she wasn’t afraid. Someday, the war would be over and George Rickenbocker and Reg Forrest would be gone, and then nothing could stop her.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mother,” she said.

  Miyako’s bitter, crazy laughter filled the room. “Worry is all I have left, suzume.”

  * * *

  That night Lucy dreamed of a dress Miyako had once owned, long ago in Los Angeles. It was blue rayon with a tiny flowered print and puffed short sleeves. In the dream, Miyako’s face and limbs were so thin that her bones protruded. Only her torso remained plump and full, the silky fabric stretched tight across her belly, her breasts. Worry. She was made of worry, her skin stretched with it, her body stuffed with it, like one of those olives stuffed with bright red pimento.

  In the morning, Lucy heard her mother moan softly and then get out of bed and hurriedly dress, and she knew Miyako was about to be sick. It had happened twice before. Once she hadn’t made it to the latrine, and even after Lucy scrubbed the floorboards, the smell lingered.