by Jay Rubin
And there was Frank. “I love you,” he had said. “I want to marry you.” But had he ever asked her if she loved him? How tempting it was to follow him, married or not. But what awaited them in Tule Lake, where the government would bring together all the smoldering resentment it had created? For her, it mattered little what the future held, but what right did she have to inflict suffering—perhaps even death—on a man she did not love with her whole heart? She recalled how the eyes of Mrs. Sano had glared at her in the hospital—the eyes of a mother filled with hatred for a woman who dared to harm her son. Mitsuko knew that she herself would be equally capable of hatred in the face of a threat to Billy.
Half conscious of her own movements, Mitsuko drifted to the table and signed the official application for passage to Japan. Never had she imagined when she left her native land that a decision to return to it would entail such inner turmoil. Now, every moment she spent here would feel like her last.
That night, in the shower, she washed Billy with special care, covering him with mounds of the lather he enjoyed so much. Her washcloth found every little fold and wrinkle of his skin—the funny hollow at the top of his right ear where the cartilage dipped in; the white elastic ball of his tummy, so perfectly round and smooth it was impossible to imagine there were intestines and a stomach inside; the springy, little penis that moved languidly from side to side like a blind lizard with a life of its own; the space between the solid, little buttocks which he had finally learned to control for himself after endless coaxing.
The moonlight set their matched yukata aglow in the night as they walked slowly back to the barrack, hand in hand.
“Sing Odoma,” said Billy. “You don’t sing Odoma anymore.”
It was true. She had been leaving him so often in Yoshiko’s care these days that he had been going to bed without his lullaby.
Holding his hand more tightly, and looking up at the moon, Mitsuko sang in her low, plaintive way: “Odoma Bon-giri Bon-giri, Bon kara sakya orando …”
“Don’t stop, Mommy.”
But Mitsuko could not go on. The words were true, she realized: “I’ll be here until Bon, and when it’s over I’ll be gone.” O-Bon—the festival of the dead—was little more than a week away. And eight days later, she would be gone. It was as if she had been singing this lullaby to him night after night for the past four years in preparation for their final parting. The moon dissolved in her tears, and her throat was convulsed with sobs.
“What’s the matter, Mommy?” asked Billy. “Why are you crying? Did you hurt yourself?”
She knelt down and held him tightly to her breast. “No, no,” she said at last. “It’s just that … I don’t know … I was thinking how much I love you. Sometimes … when you love someone very much … it can hurt inside. It feels so good, it hurts.”
“You’re silly, Mommy. Sing Odoma.”
Mitsuko wiped her tears on her sleeve and, sniffling, she stood up. In a tremulous near-whisper, she sang, “Odon ga shinda chuute, Dai ga nyaate kuryo ka, Ura no matsuyama semi ga naku”—“Who will cry for me when I am dead? The cicada on the pine-covered hill.”
“No!” Billy protested. “Sing the real words.”
“Oh, Billy, those are the real words. I never sang that part for you before. Do you think you can learn the new words?”
“No! I want you to sing Odoma.”
“All right,” she said. “Come. I’ll sing to you in bed.”
Nineteen more times she would sing for him. Nineteen days until she was gone. Nineteen days, and then what?
25
“YOU SIGNED WHAT!” Frank shouted. “I can’t believe this!”
Sleeping bodies stirred and eyes focused in this direction all up and down the ward.
“I had to do it, Frank. I can’t stay in this country any longer,” Mitsuko said quietly but firmly.
Mrs. Sano charged toward them, jaw set. She stopped short when Frank waved her off.
“Frank, if you don’t lower your voice, I will have to leave.”
“What the hell difference does it make?” he muttered. “You’re walking out on me anyway.”
“It is for your own good.”
Again Frank gestured to his mother, who backed off.
“The only thing that’s good for me is you,” he said.
“I will tell you another thing,” Mitsuko went on. “You must not go to Tule Lake. They will kill you.”
“So let them kill me.”
“Don’t be such a child,” she said. “If you change your ‘no-no’ to ‘yes-yes,’ you can stay here. Some men who do not want to go to Tule Lake are changing their answers.”
“And then what? They get sent to the Nisei combat unit.”
“Not necessarily. You do not have to volunteer.”
Suddenly Frank reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Well, I will,” he growled, his eyes full of anger.
“What are you talking about?”
“If you won’t come with me, I’m going to join the 442nd. They call it a suicide squad. That’s perfect.”
“Stop talking like a little boy,” she said, wrenching herself free.
“Please, Mitsuko, you’re all I want. Come with me!”
“You have no idea how much I would love to, but it wouldn’t work for either of us. Can’t you see that?” There was nothing more she could say. She hurried down the long alley of beds while Frank called out to her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Mrs. Sano, as the frantic mother, hair and clothes flying in all directions, stormed past her.
Frank was still in the hospital ten days later, the night of the Bon dance.
“I want Frank to pick me up on his shoulders!” shouted Billy, trying to be heard above the din of drums and bells and the high, squealing voice blaring over the loudspeaker.
Mitsuko herself could hardly see a thing besides thousands of arms held aloft and swaying back and forth to the pulse of the music. The entire field behind the administration building was swarming with dancers in yukata rotating around the ten-foot-high roofed music platform in the center. Gathered together here, in the American desert, having brought their Bon dancing styles from all parts of Japan, the crowd moved with none of the uniformity of Bon dances that Mitsuko had known, but the vigor was there. Thousands of stamping feet raised clouds of dust that shone yellow in the light of the hundreds of paper lanterns strung up around the field. The dancers’ familiar, glazed look of joyous abandonment to the hypnotic beat gave Mitsuko a delirious sense that she had made the crossing to Japan with Billy and the war was over.
Her arms were aching from the effort of holding Billy up. “I wish Frank could be here, too,” she said. “But he’s still sick.”
“I wanna go up there!” Billy pointed up to the water tower in the corner of the field, where several dozen men had climbed the tower framework and hung precariously, surveying the lively scene. Even from here, their unsteady clinging to the framework suggested that several of them had managed to buy or make themselves liquor in violation of camp rules and were having a more authentic celebration than they were supposed to. A few of them were wearing the white hachimaki of the Black Dragon Society. Mitsuko hated to think of what might happen if some of those men were to descend from the tower and see Billy.
“Time for bed,” she told him.
Billy pouted. “I want to dance more.”
But now the thought of plunging into the crowd again had become a little frightening to Mitsuko. “I’ve got a present for you,” she said teasingly.
“Let me have it!” Billy cried. “What is it?”
Holding her hands behind her, pretending to hide it from him, Mitsuko shuffled through the thick dust underfoot, moving backward, away from the crowd. Billy ran after her, snatching at her concealed treasure, but she twisted her body away each time his hand shot out.
Finally, at the edge of the field, she showed him her empty hands and confessed, “It’s not here. I have it in the room.”
�
�Let’s go!” He started running, pulling her yukata sleeve.
“Wait. Slow down. We don’t have to run.”
For a few minutes, they walked silently, hand in hand, listening to the metallic singing drawing into the distance behind them. The deep thump of the huge drum continued to shake the desert air, and Mitsuko felt as if it were passing through her heart.
“Billy. Mommy’s going to give you a going-away present,” she said when she could no longer stand the wait.
“Are we going away?” he asked.
“I am going away first,” she said, “and then Daddy is coming to take you home to Seattle.”
“Then you’ll come, too?”
“No, Billy, I am going far away.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Then, we’ll come back to Seattle to be with Daddy together.”
“I would love that very much.”
“But you have to,” he said nervously, his grasp tightening on her hand.
Her voice would no longer come. They approached the bend in the road.
“I want to give you something to help you remember me,” she said at last.
“No! I’m going with you! I don’t want that kind of present!”
He pulled his hand from hers and began to back away. “I don’t want it!” he cried again. Then he turned and ran toward the field of dancers.
“Billy, come back!” Mitsuko tried to hurry after him, sandals flapping against her heels, but the loose sand caught the front edges of the sandals, slowing her down until, in frustration, she kicked them off and ran barefoot.
Billy plunged into the swaying crowd just ahead of her, ducking under hands and elbows, squeezing between tightly packed hips wrapped in yukata and obi. To Mitsuko, the crowd was almost as impenetrable as a wall, and she heard curses as she pushed her way through. She felt as if she were swimming across a swiftly flowing stream, the current always threatening to carry her away to the right. She broke through to the hub of the vast wheel of bodies just in time to see Billy duck under the legs of the music platform and out the other side. Again he plunged into the flow of bodies, and again Mitsuko dove in after him, her yukata in hopeless disarray. Now the stream at the top of the wheel was moving left. Mitsuko lost sight of Billy among the dancers. When she emerged from the other side, there was no sign of him between the crowd and the barracks at the other end of camp.
A flash of white disappeared between the barracks of Block 10. She dashed ahead and through the block just in time to see Billy swallowed up in the darkness of the no-man’s-land beyond. He was heading straight for the fence.
“Billy, no! Don’t go out there! Billy!”
But it was too late. The beam from the watch tower swung around to catch the small figure flying toward the fence, and a shot rang out. In the glare of the search light, Billy crumpled to the ground.
“No! No!” Mitsuko screamed, “Don’t shoot! He’s just a boy!” but the words torn from her throat seemed to die as they were sucked into the emptiness. Under the harsh, blue-whitelight, she could see a red stain on Billy’s yukata. Skirts flying, she ran to him with all her strength, hoping that the guards would kill her, too.
Before she could reach him, a khaki form darted into the light, taking up a position between her and Billy, a rifle like a bar blocking the way. But stopping was out of the question. She collided with the wild-eyed soldier, knocking him to the ground.
Doctor Neher told her that the bullet had passed cleanly through Billy’s thigh about four inches above the knee: in the back and out the front, without hitting any bones. There would probably not be any permanent muscle damage, but for a few days, they had to be on their guard against infection.
“A few days?”
“Without complications, he should be out of the woods in ten days or less.”
“I don’t have ten days!”
Mitsuko spent most of the time remaining to her in Minidoka in the hospital, sponging Billy’s forehead and making him as comfortable as possible. At first, whenever he came around, he wouldn’t look at her or speak, but soon he began to forget himself and smile. On the fourth day, he gave her a sly, knowing look and said, “You’re not really going away, are you? You were just kidding.”
“Don’t worry, you just get better. I won’t go right away.”
He began to toss wildly in the hospital bed, swinging his arms, pounding the mattress with his fists, kicking with all his strength against the sheets.
“Billy, don’t! You’ll make it bleed again.”
She stood and pressed his shoulders down, but he continued to struggle.
“All right, Billy. I won’t go. I won’t go.”
The pitching stopped. His heart pounded beneath her hand, and his breath came with the quick gasps of a frightened animal. He looked at her, his little nostrils flaring, and she knew he was waiting for her to tell him her comforting lie again. She had never told him anything but the truth, and now, when she wanted to be closer to him than ever, the need for deception seemed to be driving them apart.
“What I meant was,” she said, pronouncing each word slowly and carefully, struggling to find a way to bridge the gap between truth and falsehood, “I was not kidding, but now I can stay.” Yes, she could stay; she would refuse to be repatriated. The others could leave without her on the twenty-ninth, and Billy would go with his father on the first. He would have three extra days of healing that way. It was worth it. What difference did it make when she got to Japan? All that mattered was that Billy should recover.
When Billy was napping that afternoon, Mitsuko went to see Richard Dawson, the assistant project director who had been handling the repatriation. When she told him her change in plans, he turned bright red.
“You can’t back out now!” He rose to his feet, towering over her. “Everything has been arranged with the Japanese government and the Spanish embassy.”
She explained her desperate need to stay in camp just three more days, which only made matters worse.
“You’re crazy! We’re not going to embarrass ourselves so you can hang around for three lousy days. You signed that thing and you have to stick to it.”
“I want to talk to Mr. Stafford.”
“You can talk to anybody you like. It’s not going to do you a damn bit of good. You wanted to go back to Japan, and that’s where you’re going, come hell or high water.”
He was right, she was crazy. What kind of suffering was she sentencing herself to by remaining in this country? Was it really for Billy’s sake she wanted to stay? Wasn’t it just a way for her to postpone the inevitable for a few more days? Now was the time to be strong, to face what was coming and help Billy to face it.
That night Yoshiko came to see her in the hospital. She told her that twenty-two people had been brought into Minidoka today from Topaz: six families and five individuals. They would be combined with the forty from Minidoka who were choosing repatriation.
“Please, Mit-chan, don’t go with them.”
“It’s too late,” said Mitsuko. “I tried today. They told me I have to go.”
“You tried? Then you don’t want to go! I knew it! Goro and I will come with you tomorrow. We’ll make them keep you.”
“No,” sighed Mitsuko. “I don’t have the strength to fight anymore.”
Yoshiko left in tears.
On the morning of August 29 it took Mitsuko little more than an hour to sort her things and pack. Repatriates were allowed two suitcases, but she could barely fill one.
Slipping the mirror from the brocade case she had sewn for it, she polished the little circle of light, then held it before her. How sunken and dark her eyes had become. She saw in herself the faces of the Isseis who had died in their hospital beds, and she half hoped that death would be coming for her soon as well.
Leaving the suitcase by the door, Mitsuko trudged across the baking desert sands to see Billy one more time at the hospital. The sun was burning through the shoulders of her blouse, and several ti
mes she mopped the perspiration from her brow.
“What’s wrong?” Billy said immediately when she approached his bed with tear-filled eyes. She did not have the courage to tell him. Yoshiko had agreed to make excuses for her until Tom arrived on Wednesday.
“Nothing,” she said, trying to smile. “I think I may be catching a cold.”
“Oh,” Billy replied, but he did not return her smile.
“I brought you something,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed with her feet dangling above the floor.
“It’s not a going-away present, is it?”
“No, it’s just a present.”
She drew the mirror in its case from the pocket of her dress and handed it to him. He did not reach for it.
“What is it?”
“Something you like. See for yourself.”
At last, he stretched his hand out and took the case, working the flap loose from beneath the narrow band that held it closed. The mirror slipped easily into his small hand.
“The mirror?” he asked, holding it at arm’s length.
“That’s right,” she said. “Look at yourself.”
He brought it closer to his face.
“Now look at the back.”
“The sun,” he muttered, touching the carved figure.
“And Nils’ goose. Just what you wanted.”
He did not reply, but he turned it in his hand, running his fingers over the wood and studying his image in the little circle.
“You keep it,” he said at last. “I don’t like it.”
He tried to thrust it into her hand.
“No. I want you to have it. I made one for myself just like it. We can both have one.”
“Take it back,” he whimpered. “I don’t want you to go away.”
Before she could lie to him again, he flung the mirror across the aisle. It clanged against the pipe frame of the bed opposite, and dropped to the wooden floor with a crash of glass.
“Don’t go, Mommy, please don’t go,” he wailed, wrapping his arms around her neck.