Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  Mr. Hamaguchi made a sound in his throat as Aiko bent over Lucy’s bed and kissed her gently on the forehead. Lucy suddenly realized that no one was likely to ever kiss her cheek again, not even when it was healed and didn’t hurt anymore. She reached her arms up and circled Aiko’s neck, pulling her closer, pressing the good side of her face against hers. She knew she was giving in to weakness she couldn’t afford, but she closed her eyes and tried to pretend everything was the way it used to be, even if just for a moment.

  “We’ll be back again soon,” Aiko said as they turned to go, but her embrace had felt a lot like goodbye.

  * * *

  The day dragged slowly on. Lucy hoped Sister Jeanne might make an exception to her usual schedule and visit early. Lucy had no intention of confessing to having borrowed the mirror, because she wasn’t sure she could take much more overt kindness today, but it would be a comfort just to have Jeanne’s company. The ward felt even lonelier than usual, the little girl with the measles sleeping fitfully and the weekend nurses scarce.

  Late in the afternoon, Lucy was dozing when the feeling of being watched tugged her out of some instantly forgotten dream. She opened her eyes and discovered Jessie standing over her.

  For a moment she wondered if he was part of the dream, invoked by her longing. His hair had been cut since the last time she saw him, and he stood with both hands in his pockets, the way he often did when he waited for her after school. “Jessie?” she whispered tentatively. “Is it really you?”

  “Hi.” He spoke quietly, as if he was in a church.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Awhile.” The smile he gave her was tentative, almost a little afraid. He was wearing a shirt she recognized, blue with white stitching. She had once put her hand on that shirt and felt his heart beating underneath. “My mom thinks I’m at dinner... She thinks it’s too soon for me to come see you. But I didn’t want to wait.”

  Lucy’s joy at seeing him was tempered by the knowledge of what she looked like. She lifted a hand to her face, pressing it against the worst of the scars. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said, eyes downcast.

  “It’s all right.” He thought for a moment and added, “It’s not like I thought it would be. It’s still you, but different.”

  “I’m not pretty anymore.” It was the first time she’d said it out loud, the first time she’d acknowledged it completely. “I’m... I’m going to be a freak.”

  “That’s not true.” Very gently, he put his hand over hers. “Does it hurt?”

  “Sometimes. Not like before. It’s getting better.”

  He pulled her hand away from her face, and she could feel him looking at her and it was almost all right.

  “Can I sit with you?” Jessie asked. “I mean, in the bed? Is there room?”

  Lucy blushed, the sensation of warmth stealing over her scars unfamiliar and prickly. “Okay.” She wiggled over in her bed and patted the space she had made.

  Jessie got under the blankets with great care, as though he was afraid of hurting her. He kicked off his shoes before sliding his legs under the covers, and they echoed on the wooden floor. The last of the sun lit his face softly as he pulled the blankets back up, his body touching hers at the shoulders and hips.

  “Will I get in trouble?” he asked, staring at the ceiling.

  “I don’t know. Probably, if they see you.” After a moment, she added, “Thank you for coming.”

  He nodded. Under the sheet his hand found hers, holding it lightly at first, and then weaving his fingers through hers and hanging on hard. “I just wanted to tell you—he quit, Lucy. He quit coming for me. They say he’s getting transferred.”

  For a moment she thought about telling him the truth, about how her mother had led her into the hall, the way she had looked at her one last time before she reached behind the stove. But she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  Once, not that long ago, she and Jessie had spoken of the future as though they might share it. “When the war’s over,” they would say, or “When we’re in college.” Now that future was lost. Jessie might not even realize it yet, but the truth lodged in Lucy’s heart like a pebble in a shoe, impossible to ignore.

  If she was lucky, he would remember her the way she had been before, when all the girls in their class envied her and all the boys wished they were the one walking with her after school. Someday, when Jessie had a wife and children of his own, he might think of her sometimes when he was alone. Lucy hoped he would think of the first time he kissed her, the way their hearts pounded as they ran, laughing, from the creek that day, too fast and too clever ever to be caught.

  Jessie put his arms around her and pulled her close. She pressed her face into his shoulder and breathed his smell. She whispered his name and he whispered hers and she cried a little and he didn’t say anything when her tears dampened her shirt. I love you, she thought, and though she had lost the right to say it out loud, though that privilege was reserved now for some other girl, some girl with smooth skin and a beautiful smile, Lucy thought the words with all her might and hoped that somehow he understood.

  Later, when she woke up, it was dark and he was gone.

  26

  On the first day Lucy was allowed to be up and out of bed, she spent all morning pacing back and forth, looking out each window at the Children’s Village across the road. She felt weak and her scars throbbed at the slightest exertion, but it felt good to be on her feet.

  Lucy knew that soon they would be sending her to the village to be with the orphans. The other orphans. What was worse, there were rumors that the orphans were to be sent to the social services department in Los Angeles, that the Japanese orphanages that had been closed before the war would not be reopening. Lucy was terrified she would end up in a sanitarium like the Mercy Home for the Crippled and Deranged, not far from her old neighborhood. She suspected that Sister Jeanne was worried too; she had caught Jeanne staring at her with anxious speculation during her visits.

  Sister Jeanne came to see Lucy one night after dinner, bringing a thick novel that had come in a donations box. Lucy thanked her and set the book carefully on top of the others on her nightstand. “Sister Jeanne, I need your help. Dr. Ambrose says I’m almost ready to leave the hospital. I can do the salve myself—I don’t need the nurses to do it.”

  The familiar worried expression settled on Jeanne’s face. “Let’s not rush things. Everyone wants to be sure you’re fully recovered. There’s plenty of time.”

  “But I have an idea,” Lucy said. “I was thinking that I could go work on the sugar-beet harvest in Idaho.”

  Sister Jeanne’s eyes widened.

  “Wait, don’t say no yet,” Lucy said quickly. “I’ve got it all figured out. We can change the papers so they say I’m eighteen. No one will ever know. I heard the nurses talking, they’re taking almost anyone who will go. They’re going to lose the crop if they don’t get enough volunteers. And I work hard, they wouldn’t regret it. I’m well, I hardly have any pain at all.” This was a lie, but Lucy told it gamely. “In the field, no one will have to look at me, no one except the other workers. And everyone keeps saying that I’ll heal more as time goes on, so when everyone comes back after the harvest I’ll look better.”

  “Lucy, that’s preposterous, you can’t possibly—”

  “Please.” Lucy looked directly into Sister Jeanne’s kind eyes and willed her to understand. “There is nothing for me
here. I can’t— My mother is gone, and every day here is a reminder. Let me go and do something useful. Let me start over.”

  For a long moment, Sister Jeanne regarded her thoughtfully. Then she shook her head and sighed.

  “Lucy, I need to think about this. I cannot promise you anything. I will absolutely not be a part of a plan to send you a thousand miles away to do hard labor after you’ve suffered so much. But let me see what I can come up with.”

  “Oh, Sister, thank you!”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Jeanne said crisply, standing to leave, “because it’s entirely likely that I won’t be able to help.”

  * * *

  Sister Jeanne did not return for two days. Lucy tried to pass the time with reading and walking laps in the ward, trying to restore some strength to her muscles, but as time went by with no word, she began to lose hope. She struggled not to think about what waited for her in Los Angeles if she couldn’t escape her fate, but at night she tossed and turned, unable to shut off the memories of vacant-eyed patients staring out from inside the sanitarium’s fence back home.

  After dinner the second night, Sister Jeanne arrived, her face full of misgivings.

  “I am afraid I am going to regret this,” she said in lieu of a greeting, “but there is...an opportunity which has come to my attention. One with a lot of problems, I must be honest.”

  “What is it?” Lucy demanded. “What kind of opportunity?”

  “Certainly better than working in the fields,” Jeanne said. “And not far from here either. I might even be able to look in on you now and then.”

  “Is it working for a family?” Lucy asked. She’d heard that men out east were working as houseboys for wealthy families—maybe there were opportunities for young women too. “Is it taking care of children?”

  “Hush, before I change my mind,” Jeanne said. “This is far from a sure thing, and I’m not even sure it’s legal.”

  “But there’ve been dozens of people who’ve left for jobs,” Lucy protested. “Hundreds. They say the camps will be half-empty by fall.”

  This was only a slight exaggeration. Public outcry against internment had increased, especially after Roosevelt reversed himself and started letting Japanese Americans enlist. What began as a slow trickle of people leaving the camps was turning into a steady stream. Young men and couples who could prove they had a job and a place to live were heading for Chicago and New York.

  “That’s enough, Lucy. You know as well as I do that nothing’s a sure thing until the WRA says it is.” Jeanne sighed. “Give me a little time, and I will see what I can do. All right?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said, and for the first time in a long time a tiny ray of hope pierced the dark specter of her future.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Lucy was sitting in the dusty parlor of the Mountainview Motel in Lone Pine, wearing a dress Sister Jeanne had found for her and a thick layer of foundation that made her scars itch. One of the younger nurses had applied the makeup with a soft brush, adding more and more until the sheen and redness almost disappeared. Unfortunately, nothing could be done about the pocked and bumpy landscape of the scars, or the malformation of her eye and mouth, which continued to worsen as the scars matured and tightened.

  “She’s eighteen,” Mrs. Sloat said, scrutinizing Lucy. “If Sister Jeanne says she’s eighteen, then she’s eighteen. I would think you’d trust a nun to give it to you straight.”

  Mary Sloat took a sip of the tea she had set out for the three of them. She was a stern but handsome woman built on a sturdy frame. Her arms were finely shaped, browned by the sun with faint freckling and pale undersides like dough on a second rising. Lucy guessed she was somewhere in her late thirties, though the lines etched in her face made her look older. Brackets around her mouth might have passed for dimples on another woman, one who smiled. Under her eyes the flesh pleated, and she seemed to recede behind her gaze, the bright embers of her eyes deep set and guarded.

  Lucy was aware that she was staring openly, but one of the advantages of being a freak was that no one noticed if you stared, because they were too busy trying not to stare themselves. Her scars throbbed today. Sometimes now she could go an hour or two without pain. Today was not such a day.

  Outside the picture window, separating the street from the front lawn, was a crumbling stone wall that reminded Lucy of the Robert Frost poem they’d read in class. Of course, there was no need for such a wall here. There would be no frozen-ground-swell, no spring mending-time. There was only the dusty, flat earth, the chaparral and scrub, the mountain views she already knew by heart.

  Behind the parlor were the registration desk and dining room. The Sloats’ living quarters were upstairs. The old house loomed over the motel court next to it like a staggering old drunk about to collapse on a bench. The walls peeled and the porch sagged. A potted geranium sprouted small green leaves from among the winter-dead stalks. When Sister Jeanne described the Mountainview Motel, she had neglected to mention it was in complete disrepair, and Lucy wondered what other omissions she had made.

  “She’s not eighteen,” Mr. Sloat said, regarding Lucy. His face was weathered, and he patted the pocket in the bib of his overalls as if he wanted to reassure himself its contents were still there. Tobacco, probably.

  Mrs. Sloat squinted harder. “How old are you, dear?”

  “Eighteen.”

  She was still sixteen and there were plenty of records to say so, if anyone cared to look. That Sister Jeanne had lied on her behalf, Lucy appreciated; that the Sloats had not made careful inquiries was useful information too. They didn’t want to know.

  “See?” Mrs. Sloat said, nodding. “And you’re caught up on your lessons?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She speaks good, I’ll give her that,” Mr. Sloat said. “No Jap accent at all. Girl, say something for us.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know, don’t matter.”

  Lucy was silent. She could recite all of the Frost poem, or her algebra theorems, or she could list the capitals. She doubted that was what Mr. Sloat had in mind. The challenge was to win them over, and she knew she had only this one chance. Mr. Sloat seemed dull, perhaps a bit slow, not especially kind. But Mrs. Sloat was a more difficult read.

  “Sister Jeanne was not clear about your experience,” the woman said, her gaze roving across Lucy’s face, seemingly unembarrassed. “We were very specific with her that we wanted someone with experience.”

  Lucy resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Sister Jeanne had said the Sloats were having trouble keeping help; with the war on, there were other opportunities for young women, opportunities that paid better. An ambitious young woman with a lick of sense would not have to settle for a job as a maid at a run-down motel. But Mrs. Sloat seemed to be having trouble accepting the fact that she would be stuck with someone like Lucy, that she too would have to settle for life’s leftovers.

  “I worked as a maid in Manzanar,” Lucy said, a lie that had just occurred to her. Why not—if the Sloats checked out any part of her story, all of it would collapse. “I cleaned for the staff.”

  Mr. Sloat burst out with a loud bellow of laughter. “Hear that, Mary? She’s been cleaning for the WRA. If that ain’t good enough for you, I don’t know what is.”

  Mrs. Sloat pursed her lips and refused to look at Mr. Sloat. Instead, she fixed her gaze firmly on Lucy. “This is not an easy job.”

  “I don�
��t expect it to be, ma’am.”

  “You’ll start at five because the guests will want their breakfast. You’ll take your meals in the kitchen with us and Garvey. You’ll start on the rooms as soon as the morning dishes are done. We have a girl in to serve on weekends, but you can help prepare meals for the family the rest of the time. Evenings, you can read to Garvey, maybe, since you’ve completed your primary studies.”

  Mr. Sloat made a harrumphing sound, which, like his laughter, was unexpected. “Garvey don’t need anyone to read to him. Ain’t his eyes that’s wrecked.”

  Lucy had no idea who Garvey was, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask. And it wouldn’t make any difference, anyway. The duties outlined by Mrs. Sloat were what she expected; the only things she wasn’t sure of were how hard it would be to meet their standards and how harshly they would punish her when she failed. There’d been stories circulating in the camp; internees returning to the cities wrote of poor treatment by their employers. Anti-Japanese sentiment was as strong as ever in some places.

  “So...does that mean I have the job?”

  “You’ll have the room off the kitchen. It’s small but it does have a nice bed. You’ll receive eight dollars per week. Mind, you’re getting your room and board. Mr. Sloat will keep your account for you.”

  “All right.” Lucy doubted she would ever see any of the money, but this was a start.

  “Is that all your things?”

  They all turned to look at Lucy’s battered suitcase. She didn’t have enough to fill it, small as it was. After her mother’s death, their room was reassigned and she never found out what happened to their belongings, which were long gone by the time she was well enough to ask about them. She owned two donated dresses besides the one she wore. A strange little book given to her by Jeanne as a going-away present: The Little Prince, written by a Frenchman. It was about a little boy in a desert but apparently it was supposed to be about the war. Two textbooks—science and math—that Jeanne said she could keep.