The War Outside

by Monica Hesse

  “Tell you what? There is nothing to tell.”

  “But if there were something?” I say frantically. The guard has finished his sandwich; he’s starting to walk over.

  Reassure me, I want to say. Reassure me that I have nothing to worry about, that I don’t need to be angry with you anymore.

  “This conversation is incredibly disrespectful,” my father says stiffly, and here is the shitsuke lecture, which I deserve, because I don’t usually press things this much. “I am ashamed that you have not learned better manners.

  “But if you want the real answer to your question, it is no. Of course I wouldn’t. You are my daughter. My job is to protect you. Of course I wouldn’t tell you things that are dangerous.”

  NINE

  HARUKO

  THE UNION STORE AFTER SCHOOL. THE UNION STORE BECAUSE THIS is where I am supposed to take Toshiko, to use our parents’ cardboard tokens so she can buy a new pair of shoes. Where I will not think about what my father told me at lunch. Because he managed to say exactly the right thing and also exactly the wrong.

  “I’ll come, too,” Chieko offers, but I wave her off because I don’t think I can pretend to be fine in front of her.

  Toshiko chooses her shoes quickly; there are only two options in her size.

  “Do you want the mail while you’re here?” asks the clerk, a chatty woman my mother’s age. “I saw a few things with your family’s name on them.”

  Outside the store, while I wait for Toshiko to change into the new shoes, which she wants to walk home in, I flip through the small stack: a catalog, some official-looking things for my parents, a letter whose return sender I recognize as one of Toshiko’s teachers from back home. And a piece of V-mail. V-mail.

  “Did we get anything good?” Toshiko asks.

  “You got something from Miss Nina.”

  While Toshiko squeals and begins to open her letter, I slip the one from Ken into my pocket. I don’t know why I’m not telling her about it; it’s selfish and unfair. But she won’t be looking for another letter from him so soon, not when we just received one a few days ago. And I don’t want to read another letter from Ken in front of my family. I don’t want a repeat of everyone else acting so happy, nobody else thinking something is wrong.

  “Do you want to go straight home, or do you want to go to the community center?” Toshiko asks. “We could listen to records.”

  I don’t want to go to the community center. I want to read the letter from Ken.

  And what I really want is to read the letter with Margot.

  The thought comes quickly before I can stop it. We hadn’t spoken again in school, but now I’m standing here with a letter from my brother, and who else can I read it with? My father, who I don’t trust? Chieko, who, if I start to cry again, will tell everyone? Poor Haruko, be gentle with her, she is going through a rough time. It would get back to my family in hours.

  I want to read the letter with a person I barely know, because she is the only person I have been honest with since everything changed.

  “You should go to the community center if you want,” I tell Toshiko, before I can second-guess myself. “I ran out of school too fast. I need to go back and—and get some papers and things. I’ll see you for dinner later.”

  It hasn’t been more than twenty minutes since the last bell, but when I get back to the school, our classroom is empty. Miss Goodwin must’ve already finished explaining the assignments to Margot and the hallways are dark and quiet. I try to swallow my disappointment, to convince myself that it’s lucky she’s already left. What was I even thinking?

  The door to the girls’ bathroom opens as I walk down the hall.

  Margot sees me and freezes. Then she quickly lowers her eyes, gathering her pile of books from outside the lavatory.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, as she stands, thinking too late I should have helped with her books.

  “For what?”

  “For earlier today. Ignoring you. I didn’t know how to… I had a lot on my mind.”

  “Were you waiting for me?” She looks over my shoulder to see if I’m alone.

  “I came back to find you.”

  She shakes her head, pressing her books tightly to her chest. “I shouldn’t have talked to you. You told me it was easier for you if we didn’t talk at school. It’s probably easier for me, too.”

  She brushes past, head down. I can’t tell whether she’s telling the truth, or upset with me, or trying to get away from me. She’ll barely even look at me.

  “How is your mother?” I ask, before she can reach the door.

  Margot stops and slowly turns. “She’s fine. Please thank your mother for offering the tea, even if we didn’t take it.”

  She must read my confusion. “I thought that’s how you knew she’d been sick,” Margot explains. “Your mother was one of her doctors.”

  “Miss Goodwin said your mother was sick. I didn’t know she’d gone to the hospital. Is she okay?”

  “She’s just pregnant and she’s… she’s been unwell before.” Margot looks back over her shoulder toward the door. “Is that everything? I told you, thank you for your apology. But I have homework to catch up on so I should probably go home now.”

  She reaches for the handle.

  “Hold on!”

  Margot pauses.

  “Will you come with me to the icehouse again?” I ask.

  “When?”

  “Right now, just for a minute.”

  “Why?” she asks warily.

  “Because.”

  “Because why?” Now she seems genuinely curious.

  I scramble for an answer. “You could borrow my notes for the classes you missed while you were out.”

  I don’t think she believes me.

  She’s biting her lip, making a calculation I can’t figure out, but in this moment I need her to say yes. I don’t have anyone else to go to. I need her to say yes.

  Because the last time we were there, you told me I could share secrets with you because you didn’t have anyone to tell. Because it turns out I don’t think I have anyone to tell, either, anyone but you. Because you were right the first time. I am alone.

  I let Margot leave first. By the time I get to the icehouse, she’s laid out the blankets again, but not where they were last time. Now they’re far from the entrance, tucked behind some of the largest ice blocks so nobody who opened the door would see her at first. I don’t myself until she waves her arm. There’s also a thermos of water and another oil lamp, the kind they sell at our Union Store and probably in the German commissary.

  “I’ve come here a few other times,” Margot explains, when I point to the thermos. “It’s nice to have a quiet place.”

  “I take long showers for the quiet,” I say, relieved for something to immediately talk about. “I can usually get a couple of extra minutes before someone starts yelling at me to hurry up.”

  “My mother and I started doing our laundry at midnight so we wouldn’t have the crowds,” says Margot.

  “But everyone does their laundry late at night.”

  “Because my mother and I started it,” she says simply. “Do you want to give me your notes?”

  By the lamplight we go over the homework, and I’m trying to be normal with her, to treat her like any other school friend in order to make up for ignoring her in the classroom. But she barely laughs at the jokes I try to make, and it’s obvious after a few minutes that she didn’t need help on the homework. I still can’t figure out why she agreed to come, or if it was stupid to ask her. And I can’t figure out how, now that I know her mother was in the hospital, and Margot probably wants to get home, to bring up that I invited her here because I wanted a favor.

  “Are you sure you understand the guidelines for the Milton paper?” I ask when she’s finished copying my notes, though I’ve already explained them twice and she understood them the first time.

  “Haruko.” She shifts a little on her blanket. “Why else did you ask m
e here?”

  “What do you mean?” My voice is fake and high-pitched.

  Margot focuses on her pile of papers, smoothing them down, making sure each page aligns with the one below. “I appreciate your help with school. But you don’t have to be nice to me if you’re worried about me repeating the things you said about your family. I won’t.”

  “I know you won’t,” I say, though it’s exactly what I worried about a few mornings ago. “I’m not worried about that.”

  “Then… then I guess I don’t understand what I’m doing here.” She looks up. Her irises have flecks of blue I didn’t notice before, just around the pupils. Margot doesn’t make eye contact often. Her eyes are deep and opaque and I still have no idea what she’s thinking at all.

  When I don’t answer, she starts to stand, brushing off her skirt. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Wait.” I’m louder and more desperate than I meant to be. She stops, and I hear annoyance in her voice for the first time.

  “Haruko, what do you want? You don’t have to be my friend. We don’t have to do this.”

  Instead of saying anything else, I stand, too, taking Ken’s letter out of my pocket and handing it to her.

  She looks at the return address. “It’s from your brother?”

  “It came this afternoon. I haven’t read it yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Would you read it? Out loud, to me?”

  Margot turns the letter over in her hands but still doesn’t open it. “Why do you want me to read it?”

  I don’t know why a letter from Ken fills me with such dread. I am dying to hear from him. Dying for a long, chatty, ridiculous letter full of the bad jokes that would tell me everything is okay.

  “Please,” I say. “I can’t read it alone.”

  Margot finally reaches into the envelope.

  “It’s just one page,” she says, pulling out a thin white sheet that I can see is covered in a tiny version of his sloppy cursive. “Are you sure?” she asks one more time, waiting for me to nod before she sits again and starts reading aloud.

  “Dear Everyone,” Margot says. It’s startling to hear Ken’s words come out in her voice.

  “Well, family, the big news here is that yours truly is officially not over his fear of snakes! I was putting on my ol’ boots this morning, and discovered that a nasty lil critter had gotten there first. I screamed something awful, but now I double-check my boots, triple-check them, even, before I put them on every morning!

  “The other big news is that we had a fella come out here last week with a camera who said he was working on a newsreel about us. He filmed me for about twenty minutes doing a crossword puzzle because he said he was impressed by how ‘realistic’ I looked. Ha! I hope I get to be a movie star!”

  “That’s a lie,” I interrupt.

  Margot looks up from the letter. “What is?”

  “I’m sorry, I just—Ken would never want to be a movie star. I don’t even think he would joke about it. He made fun of me whenever I used my wages to buy film magazines. Go on, though. Keep reading.”

  She pauses like she wants to say something, but then skims to find her place in the letter again. “Do you remember Mrs. Minemoto from the post office?” she reads. “Her son is in the 442nd. Boy is it good to get to spend some real time with my old friend!”

  “Lie,” I say again. “He hated Steve Minemoto. Hated him. He never told my parents that, because Steve was such a bootlicker that everyone’s parents liked him.”

  “—And reminisce about all the fun we used to have—”

  “Lie.”

  “—Especially how we both miss the ice cream socials that the Japan League used to have for kids.”

  “Lie.”

  Nobody liked those ice cream socials. The punch was awful. Every month our parents would send us, and every month a group of us would sneak out early and go walking instead, or drive out to Red Rocks before gas was rationed. Steve Minemoto didn’t come with us, and if he was at the ice cream socials we never would have known. We didn’t stay long enough to see him there.

  Margot glances up. “Some people don’t express themselves well, especially in letters,” she says.

  “Ken does. Ken used to leave notes for me behind the register at the soda fountain where we worked after school.”

  “Well, maybe he hated Steve Minemoto in Denver, but by the time he got to wherever he is, he was excited to see a face that reminded him of home.”

  Would I have been happy to see Evelyn Minemoto, Steve’s boring younger sister, if I had arrived in Crystal City and found her waiting for me? I can’t imagine it. Maybe I would have been, but as hard as I try, I can’t imagine it.

  “Or,” Margot continues, “have you thought that maybe he’s just putting on a brave face? To give your family one less thing to worry about?”

  Of course that’s what I’ve thought. Of course that’s what I’m thinking. But wouldn’t Ken know I’d rather hear a terrible truth than an innocent lie? Wouldn’t anybody rather that?

  “Can you keep reading?”

  “Say, Mama, a couple of us were arguing about the proper time to make mochi at New Year’s. I told them that you always made it the night before.”

  It’s not right, none of it is. I’m trying to find Ken in those sentences, but I can’t. I’m trying to picture him writing those words, but in my mind the only way he would is if he was being forced. In my mind, he is writing those words because the enemy is standing over him, telling him, Write a happy American letter. No, happier. No, more American.

  That fear is ridiculous, of course; if Ken were captured, his letters wouldn’t arrive by V-mail. If Ken were captured, we probably wouldn’t get letters at all.

  Margot sees my exasperation. “I don’t know your brother. I’m just trying to point out that there are lots of reasons the letter might not sound like him. And not all of them necessarily mean something terrible has happened.”

  The way Margot is asking these methodical, rational questions is irritating, but they are also, I realize, exactly the points Ken himself would drily raise, if he were here reading his own lying letter. Maybe my letter is absurd because I didn’t want to deal with our parents’ questions, he would say. This whole conversation with Margot is making memories of him flood back. Maybe you should pull the twig out of your hair, Haruko, since we were all supposed to have been eating sundaes, not climbing around a bunch of rocks.

  Margot looks down at the letter again. “I don’t think I should keep going,” she says.

  “No, I want you to.”

  “It seems like it’s upsetting you and it’s none of my business.”

  “I want you to keep going.”

  She looks at me again and this time I don’t let her look away. “Please,” I say. “I won’t interrupt anymore.”

  Finally, Margot sighs and clears her throat and searches for her place.

  “It’s killing me to say all of this to you.”

  “Go on,” I tell her. “I said I want to hear it.”

  She shakes her head, stricken. “No, that’s what the letter says. That’s the next line in the letter.” She points at the paper to illustrate her point and then reads the line again:

  “It’s killing me to say all of this to you, to pretend everything is fine, when what I really want to do is tell you how sorry I am that—” Margot breaks off.

  “That what? How sorry he is that what? What does he say next?”

  My throat is full of lead. This is the first sentence I’ve heard or read in either of my brother’s recent letters that sounds like it was written by Ken. It sounds terrifying—the first real sentence and it sounds terrifying.

  Instead of continuing, Margot tries to hand the letter back, her face ashen. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Finish reading, just finish. Let’s get to the end.”

  “I can’t, that’s it.” She holds the paper closer to the lamp, scanning the back and the margins, as i
f searching for a missing paragraph. “That’s all there is in the letter.”

  “What do you mean? It ends there?”

  I snatch the paper away, racing to the bottom, where all I find are black lines. Straight black lines, and then below them, my brother’s signature.

  Love, Ken

  It’s been censored. Someone has crossed through the rest.

  I hold the letter up, trying to see if any of Ken’s words made it through the thick black ink. The dot of an i. The curving tail of a lowercase g. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Margot is saying, her voice emotional. “I’m sorry, I should have scanned to the bottom before I started reading so I could warn you.”

  I’m still looking at my brother’s handwriting. What could he have been trying to say? Was it something for me? Written in cursive, was it a secret message he knew only I’d read?

  I wonder when the letter was censored. Were his words scratched out across an ocean, weeks ago, or were they scratched out a hundred yards away by a camp employee who sees me every day and counts me when I stand in a row?

  The letter feels damp in my hands; my palms have broken out into a sweat. It’s just two lines crossed out, not more than a sentence before Ken’s signature. What could he have apologized for in one sentence? What did he have to be sorry for?

  “Do you want some privacy?” Margot asks.

  “I want my brother.”

  And now I’m crying again, because it seems like that’s all I do in front of Margot. Quietly, she takes a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and hands it to me.

  “Distract me?” I ask. “Tell me about something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You listened to me pour my heart out twice, and I barely know about you.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s all right.”

  “No,” I insist. “I’m asking. I want you to.”

  “It’s getting late.”

  “But you’ve barely told me anything and it feels… unequal.”

  “But that was your choice.” The pitch in her voice raises a little. She’s grabbed at the work blanket underneath her. “And I told you why my father was taken. I already told you my story.”