by Julie Otsuka
On her days off she took in washing and ironing to make a few extra dollars. She strung up clotheslines across the backyard and whenever we looked out the window we could see the private undergarments of people we did not know—the lonely shipping heir, the jovial bachelor doctor, the glamorous war widow whose young husband had died on Omaha Beach (“Introduce her to them!” we’d suggested to our mother as she hung up their things side by side, to which she had replied, “It’s too soon”)—floating ghostlike between the bare black branches of the trees.
With the money she earned our mother bought new lace curtains for the windows that faced out onto the street. She polished the rusty brass knocker. She set out a welcome mat on the steps by the front door. Little by little, she accumulated things. One of her employers gave her a set of dishes and a camel’s hair coat that looked as though it had never been worn. Someone else gave her two silver candlesticks, which she took to the pawnshop the very next day. At the Salvation Army she bought us our own dressers and beds and from that day on we each slept alone—our mother, downstairs, in the bedroom she had once shared with our father, and the two of us, by ourselves, in our old rooms upstairs.
THE TELEGRAM WAS DELIVERED on a foggy wet morning in December. Leaving Santa Fe Friday. Arrive Sunday, 3 p.m. Love, Papa.
For the next several days we did nothing but wait for the hours to pass. We went to school. We came home. We stared at the clock. He’s in Albuquerque now. He’s in Flagsta f. He’s crossing the Mojave. . . . Our mother cleaned and she cooked. She carried the telegram with her, in her pocket, wherever she went—to work, to the post office, to the market to buy bread. Sometimes, in the middle of supper, she pulled it out and examined it under the light just to make sure that the words were still there, or that they had not mysteriously rearranged themselves, while she was not looking, into some other message.
“What if it’s not real?” she asked us. Or had been delivered to our house by mistake? Or sent to us, as a joke, by the same man who called up in the middle of the night to tell us where we could go?
It’s real, we told her. No joke.
ON SUNDAY, near dusk, our father’s train pulled into the station. A light rain was falling and the windows of the train were streaked with water and soot and all we could see on the other side of the glass were dark shapes moving. Then the train came to a stop and a small stooped man carrying an old cardboard suitcase stepped out of the last car. His face was lined with wrinkles. His suit was faded and worn. His head was bare. He moved slowly, carefully, with the aid of a cane, a cane we had never seen before. Although we had been waiting for this moment, the moment of our father’s return, for more than four years now, when we finally saw him standing there before us on the platform we did not know what to think, what to do. We did not run up to him. We did not wave our hands wildly back and forth and shout out Over here! to him. And when our mother pushed us gently, but firmly, from behind, and whispered, Go to him, all we could do was stare down at our shoes, unable to move. Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father’s place. That’s not him, we said to our mother, That’s not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us.
He put down his suitcase and looked at her.
“Did you . . . ” she said.
“Every day,” he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms and over and over again, he uttered our names, but still we could not be sure it was him.
OUR FATHER, the father we remembered, and had dreamed of, almost nightly, all through the years of the war, was handsome and strong. He moved quickly, surely, with his head held high in the air. He liked to draw for us. He liked to sing for us. He liked to laugh. The man who came back on the train looked much older than his fifty-six years. He wore bright white dentures, and he’d lost the last of his hair. Whenever we put our arms around him we could feel his ribs through the cloth of his shirt. He did not draw for us, or sing songs for us in his wobbly, off-key voice. He did not read us stories. On Sunday afternoons, when we were bored and could think of nothing to do, he did not tie pieces of bent tin onto twigs and put on shadow plays for us from behind hanging white sheets. He did not make us stilts.
Of course, our mother was quick to point out, we were too old now for stilts, too old to be read to, too old for shadow plays from behind hanging white sheets.
Yes, yes, yes, we replied, and too old to laugh!
He never said a word to us about the years he’d been away. Not one word. He never talked about politics, or his arrest, or how he had lost all his teeth. He never mentioned his loyalty hearing before the Alien Enemy Control Unit. He never told us what it was, exactly, he’d been accused of. Sabotage? Selling secrets to the enemy? Conspiring to overthrow the government? Was he guilty as charged? Was he innocent? (Was he even there at all?) We didn’t know. We didn’t want to know. We never asked. All we wanted to do, now that we were back in the world, was forget.
IN THE BEGINNING he wandered slowly from one room to the next, picking up objects and looking at them in bewilderment and then putting them back down again. “I don’t recognize a thing,” we heard him whisper. In the afternoon he lay down on the couch and let himself drift off into sleep only to awaken, moments later, with a start, not knowing where he was. He sat up and shouted out our names and we came running. “What is it?” we asked him. “What’s wrong?” He needed to see us, he said. He needed to see our faces. Otherwise he would never know if he was really awake. On the train, he told us later, he had dreamed again and again that he’d fallen asleep and missed his stop.
He wore the same loose baggy trousers every day and was convinced that someone was watching the house. He did not like to use the telephone— You never know who might be listening—or to eat out in public. He rarely spoke to anyone unless he was spoken to first. Why go looking for trouble? He was suspicious of everyone: the newspaper boy, the door-to-door salesman, the little old lady who waved to us every day as we passed by her house on our way home from school. Any one of these people, he warned us, could be an informer.
They just don’t like us. That’s just the way it is.
Never tell them more than you have to.
And don’t think, for a minute, that they’re your friend.
Little things—the barking of a neighbor’s dog, a misplaced pen, an unanticipated delay of any sort—could send him into a rage. One afternoon, after a long wait at the bank, he pushed his way to the front of the line and began pounding on the floor with his cane. “I don’t have all day!” he cried out. We turned away and pretended not to know him. None of the other customers in line said a word. “You think they care?” he shouted at us as we slowly made our way toward the door. We covered our ears with our hands and kept on walking.
HE NEVER WENT BACK to work. The company that had employed him before the war had been liquidated right after Pearl Harbor and there was no job for him to return to. Nobody else would hire him: he was an old man, his health was not good, he had just come back from a camp for dangerous enemy aliens. And so he stayed at home, day after day, poring over the newspaper with a magnifying glass and scribbling down words in a little blue notebook. Sometimes he went out into the yard and watered the grass, or he swept off the front porch. And every afternoon, when we came home from school, he fixed us a snack: jelly and crackers, or a plate full of apples carefully peeled and sliced.
He always seemed happy to see us. “So tell me the news,” he called out to us the moment we walked through the door. We sat with him in the kitchen and talked about school. The weather. The neighbors. The same things we’d talked about before the war. Nothing more. He leaned forward in his chair as though he were listening but no matter what we said— a moth flew into Miss Campbell’s ear during dictation, Donald Harzbecker has been grounded for life—his response was the same. “Is that so?”
Always, it seemed, he had something else on his mind.
Maybe he
was thinking of our mother. Maybe he missed her and was hoping she’d come home from work soon. Maybe he was trying to imagine her, at that very moment, as she gazed back at her own reflection for the hundredth time in the toilet bowl of some stranger. Still there? Or perhaps he was remembering the promise he’d made to her, years before, right after they’d first married—You’ll never have to work —and he felt bad that he hadn’t come through. There were heavy blue veins around her ankles now, and her hands were red and rough, and every evening when she climbed up the front steps her feet seemed to move more slowly than they had the evening before. Or it is possible he wasn’t thinking of our mother at all. It is possible he was troubled by something he’d read in the paper earlier that morning— Lend Lease Diapers Used as Turbans by African Sheikhs! or Jap Emperor Repudiates Own Divinity!—and he’d had about as much news as he could take for one day.
BIRDSONG GREW FASTER, and shriller, and the chill slowly lifted from the air. Our mother rose early every morning and made us breakfast, then tied a white scarf over her head and hurried off to catch the next bus. She wore a shapeless black dress, sensible shoes, no lipstick. In a large brown shopping bag she carried an assortment of brushes and rags. Got to make it all shine. She moved briskly and did not complain. “Be good,” she called out to us on her way out the door.
It was a relief, she told us years later, to wake up every morning and have someplace to go.
As the days grew longer our father began spending more and more time alone in his room. He stopped reading the newspaper. He no longer listened to Dr. I.Q. with us on the radio. “There’s already enough noise in my head,” he explained. The handwriting in his notebook grew smaller and fainter and then disappeared from the page altogether. Now whenever we passed by his door we saw him sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands in his lap, staring out through the window as though he were waiting for something to happen. Sometimes he’d get dressed and put on his coat but he could not make himself walk out the front door.
Every once in a while we’d try bringing him his hat and inviting him to come out with us for a walk but he just smiled and waved us away. “You people go on ahead,” he said.
In the evening he often went to bed early, at seven, right after supper—Might as well get the day over with—but he slept poorly and woke often from the same recurring dream: It was five minutes past curfew and he was trapped outside, in the world, on the wrong side of the fence. “I’ve got to get back,” he’d wake up shouting.
“You’re home now,” our mother would remind him. “It’s all right. You can stay.”
THE FIRST SIGNS of spring: mild days, buds in the fruit trees, no more long lists of the dead. The mothers were all back in the kitchen now. The last of the fathers on our block—those who could—had come home, they were safe. The sun was in its place. There, up above us, but not too high. Strength was slowly returning. Speech was beginning to come back. In the school yard. At the park. On the street. They were calling out to us now. Not many of them. Just a few.
At first we pretended not to hear them, but after a while we could no longer resist. We turned around and nodded, we smiled, then continued on our way.
For two weeks in April the magnolia trees blossomed with pale white flowers and the skies were blue and clear. Purple hyacinths and narcissus came up in the garden, and tall stalks of mint, and every evening, at dusk, we wandered out into the yard and watched the starlings gathering in the trees. At night we slept with the windows wide open, and in our dreams we could hear singing and laughter and the endless turning of the leaves in the wind and in the morning, when we woke, for one brief moment we could almost forget we had ever been away.
In May, when the heat settled in and roses everywhere burst into bloom, we wandered the streets every day after school in search of the rosebush our mother had once planted in our front yard. At first we saw it wherever we looked—in the Gilroys’ front yard, and the Myers’, and lying low among the rhododendrons in the prize-winning garden of the Misses O’Grady—but upon closer inspection none of these rosebushes turned out to be ours. They were too big, or too small, or their petals too pale, and after a while we gave up and turned our attention to other things. But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger’s backyard, our mother’s rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light.
CONFESSION
Everything you have heard is true. I was wearing my bathrobe, my slippers, the night your men took me away. At the station they asked me questions. Talk to us, they said. The room was small and bare. It had no windows. The lights were bright. They left them on for days. What more can I tell you? My feet were cold. I was tired. I was thirsty. I was scared. So I did what I had to do. I talked.
All right, I said. I admit it. I lied. You were right. You were always right. It was me. I did it. I poisoned your reservoirs. I sprinkled your food with insecticide. I sent my peas and potatoes to market full of arsenic. I planted sticks of dynamite alongside your railroads. I set your oil wells on fire. I scattered mines across the entrance to your harbors. I spied on your airfields. I spied on your naval yards. I spied on your neighbors. I spied on you— you get up at six, you like bacon and eggs, you love baseball, you take your coffee with cream, your favorite color is blue. I crept into your house while you were away and sullied your wife. Wait, wait, she said, don’t go. I touched your daughters—they smiled in their sleep. I smothered your firstborn son—he did not struggle. I stole your last bag of sugar. I took a swig from your best bottle of brandy. I pulled out the nails from your white picket fence and sold them to the enemy to melt down and make into bullets. I gave that same enemy your defense maps for free. The Boeing assembly plant is here. The oil refinery, there. “X” marks the spot where they make the camouflage nets. I sent him aerial photographs of your major coastal cities. I radioed to his submarines the location of your troop ships. I leaned out my second-story window and signaled to his aviators with my red paper lantern. Come on over! I left my lights on during the blackout. I went out into the yard and tossed up a few flares just to make sure he knew where to find you. Drop that bomb right here, right here where I’m standing! I cut arrow-shaped swaths through my tomato fields to guide him to his next target. Straight ahead to the air force base! I told him all about you. Tall and handsome. Big eyes. Long nose. Broad shoulders. Perfect teeth. Nice smile. Firm handshake. Solid family man. A joiner. Member of the Elks. The Kiwanis. The Rotary. The local Chamber of Commerce. Mows his lawn every Saturday and goes to church on Sundays. Pays his bills on time. Enjoys the occasional night out with the boys. Wife stays home and takes care of the kids. I revealed to him your worst secrets. Short attention span. Doesn’t always remember to take out the garbage. Sometimes talks with his mouth full.
Who am I? You know who I am. Or you think you do. I’m your florist. I’m your grocer. I’m your porter. I’m your waiter. I’m the owner of the dry-goods store on the corner of Elm. I’m the shoeshine boy. I’m the judo teacher. I’m the Buddhist priest. I’m the Shinto priest. I’m the Right Reverend Yoshimoto. So prease to meet you. I’m the general manager at Mitsubishi. I’m the dishwasher at the Golden Pagoda. I’m the janitor at the Claremont Hotel. I’m the laundryman. I’m the nurseryman. I’m the fisherman. I’m the ranch hand. I’m the farm hand. I’m the peach picker. I’m the pear picker. I’m the lettuce packer. I’m the oyster planter. I’m the cannery worker. I’m the chicken sexer. And I know a healthy young rooster when I see one! I’m the grinning fat man in the straw hat selling strawberries by the side of the road. I’m the president of the Cherry Blossom Society. I’m the secretary of the Haiku Association. I’m a card-carrying member of the Bonsai Club. Such a delightful little people! Everything so small and pretty! I’m the one you call Jap. I’m the one you call Nip. I’m the one you call Slits. I’m the one you call Slopes. I’m the one you call Yellowbelly. I’m the one you call Gook. I’m the one you don’t s
ee at all—we all look alike. I’m the one you see everywhere—we’re taking over the neighborhood. I’m the one you look for under your bed every night before you go to sleep. Just checking, you say. I’m the one you dream of all night long—we’re marching ten abreast down Main Street. I’m your nightmare— we’re bivouacking tonight on your newly mowed front lawn. I’m your worst fear—you saw what we did in Manchuria, you remember Nanking, you can’t get Pearl Harbor out of your mind.
I’m the slant-eyed sniper in the trees.
I’m the saboteur in the shrubs.
I’m the stranger at the gate.
I’m the traitor in your own backyard.
I’m your houseboy.
I’m your cook.
I’m your gardener.
And I’ve been living here, quietly, beside you, for years, just waiting for Tojo to flash me the high sign.
So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Auction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing—is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all—and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous and cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this: