The day is blistering, too hot even for candles. But they blaze before me, sixteen of them on a layer cake with pink frosting. The dining room is hot and stuffy and I long for air, for him.
Kira tries to speak but can make no sound. She thinks her eyes are open. There are shadows, figures blurry like those in a black-and-white newsreel shot from a distance at a dead run. Yet she knows the girl is the same one as always, knows she’s in a room with a long table and shuttered windows with the curtains tied back.
“Make a wish,” my mother says.
“Wish for a husband!” my friend says. She’s wearing that dress I like so much, the white one with red polka dots, a full skirt fitted with a red patent leather belt.
My family doesn’t know what I wish for. If only he were here, the boy I love. If only I could tell everyone we’re in love, make it a real celebration.
They are watching me. I take a deep breath and make a wish, and it is not the wish my mother would have made for me. I blow hard, and all the candles go out but one. A terrible omen. I can’t let them see me cry.
A feeling like sand dissolving beneath Kira’s feet, rushing to meet the undertow, and the Kanekos’ dining room reappeared. Kira was sitting up, gripping the sides of the chair. Dan was kneeling in front of her and Mariko stood as if frozen, a hand at her throat.
“What happened?” Dan said. “Are you all right?”
Kira looked around in confusion, the scene still vivid. Another one.
“Should we call a doctor?” Mariko said.
“No—no, I’m okay I’m fine, really.” Another one. A sense of empty weightlessness, as if her blood had drained from her body.
“Oh my God, you scared us to death,” Jennifer said. “Your eyes were open like you were in a trance or something.” Everyone started talking at once, offering tea, a moist cloth for her forehead, a place to lie down.
“No, we’re leaving. We shouldn’t have come,” Dan said. Kenji maneuvered in to help support Kira as she stood, his arms steady, comforting. She wanted them to tell her nothing was wrong, that they would make everything right. Please make everything right.
Out the door, down the steps. At the car, the family hovered, a collective mother.
“She’ll be fine,” Dan said. “She just needs some sleep.”
If only. Twice now, wide awake. The emptiness subsided, her body reverberating with panic. You can brush off something inexplicable once, but twice means it’s real. Twice means you should pay attention.
On the way home, Dan kept glancing at her. “What was that, a seizure? You looked totally out of it. We’ve got to call your doctor first thing.”
No doctor. Whatever answers a doctor could provide, Kira didn’t want to hear them. All she could think of was what her mother had said about Kira’s father calling her crazy. What if something had been wrong with her mother, something chemical, organic, and she couldn’t see it? What if the same thing was wrong with her?
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah you heard me, or yeah you’ll see a doctor?”
Kira made a guttural noise that Dan could interpret however he wanted. Straight ahead, down the seaward slope of Alcatraz Avenue and past the Berkeley flats, the island prison shone, fuchsia-tipped against the crumpled aluminum bay. Then the sun nosedived and Alcatraz disappeared. Kira let out a long breath. Perception was fluid, responsive to time, place, mood, history, changeable in an instant or over a lifetime. The only real truth was that it was impossible to know anything, really. Except, perhaps, that nothing was impossible.
Nine
July 2, 1945
Get away from the fence!”
Maddalena looked up at the mouth of the megaphone, the man silhouetted behind it. And then somehow she was on Scout’s back, urging him on.
The horse hit a canter, dust rising around him. Maddalena’s arms and legs were like jelly, her heart a wild bird. She could have been killed; Akira could have been killed. She glanced back, saw him standing on the hospital steps, safe. He was safe, she was safe, no one was hurt. But she said every prayer she could think of, the words in rhythm with the horse’s hooves thudding beneath her.
Finally the guard tower was far behind her, its monstrous head and leggy body reduced to a thumbprint. Maddalena slowed Scout to a trot. What an idiot she’d been. She’d lost her head, every shred of common sense. If her mother found out what had happened, she’d be out of her mind with anger, confine Maddalena to the house for weeks, and her father would sell Scout to someone hundreds of miles away who didn’t love him. Worst of all was imagining the boy lying face down with a bullet in his back and herself sprawled on the other side of the fence, their blood staining the desert floor.
Slowly her panic ebbed and her mind cleared. Those guards wouldn’t have shot her. She was outside the fence, an innocent girl, no threat to anyone. They were warning her, that was all, or having fun scaring her to death. There hadn’t been any danger, not for her. Only for the boy, the one on the inside. He had kept his distance from the fence, she realized, and so had the little boys who’d run alongside Scout. Barbed wire and guns. What kind of people put children in such a place?
The wind kicked up, whipped at her hair, slapped her face. Usually an annoyance, today it felt right—like her, fierce and unpredictable and crazy. Crazy to think she could talk to the boy through that fence, crazy enough to try. She was sweaty, dirty, exhilarated, alive. Where was the Maddalena who gathered eggs early in the morning without complaint, who arrived at school before the first bell with her dress ironed and her hair neatly braided? She wasn’t herself anymore; she was wild and free. Pushing Scout to a gallop, she dropped the reins, her arms outstretched like wings. The sky opened, endless above her, Scout’s hooves drumming below. This was what life could be—a risk, an adventure. Her mother could keep her rules and worries to herself. Maddalena would go back to Manzanar and see the boy again. Akira. What a perfect name!
Inside the hospital, Akira wiped his glasses clean, hands shaking. The guard had no right to scare the girl like that. And now there would be talk; there always was when people heard gunshots. Everyone would wonder what happened, ask who saw what. With any luck, nobody had seen the girl, or him, but a lack of facts never stopped anyone from gossiping. People made up stories, and once the rumors circulated at the mess halls and on the streets, they became truth.
Checking in at the supervisor’s desk, Akira was told to transport a patient to Ward 4, then clean the floor in Admitting. He was wheeling a spindly old man down the hall when Paul zipped out of nowhere and fell in step beside him.
“Did you hear the shot? Sounded close, this end of camp, I’ll bet,” Paul said. “You see anything?”
“No,” said Akira.
“Now you’re gonna tell me you didn’t hear the shot. Come on, you were outside. You sure you didn’t see anything?”
“You got ears? I said no.”
“Right-o. Touchy today, aren’t we?” Paul left, whistling.
“Someone got shot?” said the old man in the wheelchair, swiveling toward Akira.
“No. Nothing to worry about.” Akira helped the man into bed and traded the wheelchair for a mop bucket. Paul could be a nosy jerk sometimes.
The floor in Admitting was a mess, with dust and dirt everywhere, and a sticky patch of something near the entrance, as if it hadn’t seen a mop in about a week.
“Guess you’ve been busy,” Akira said to the girl at the desk. “What happened? Did a pack of dogs run through here?”
The girl laughed, a sweet, musical sound. Before Annabelle, he would have flirted with her. She was small and slim and wore a yellow sweater with pearly buttons. Annabelle had one like it in blue.
Akira scrubbed the floor, wishing it could be as easy to wash away his mounting guilt. A guy couldn’t ask for a more devoted gir
lfriend than Annabelle. They’d started dating last year, right after high school graduation. Sitting next to her, waiting to shake the principal’s hand and get his diploma, Akira had tried hard not to think about what graduation would have been like at Berkeley High with all the seniors out on the football field, laughing and yelling and backslapping. Annabelle smiled at him as if she knew what he was thinking, and that was the first time he’d noticed how cute she was. They spent the rest of the ceremony making jokes about what an honor it was to graduate at Manzanar, and afterward, while their parents talked to the teachers, Akira asked her out. They went to a movie that Saturday and started going steady right away. Sitting in the rock garden, watching the sky over Mount Williamson go from blue to orange to pink, they kissed for the first time.
Annabelle was a virgin when they met, but she wasn’t a prude. In fact, she was something else when it came to sex, even with dust in her eyes and rocks under her back. But sex wasn’t everything. Sometimes Annabelle was funny when she didn’t mean to be. Sweet, but not the smartest girl around. The girl he’d marry would have to be someone he could talk to about more than movies and what was for dinner, someone who knew her own mind and wasn’t shy about saying what she thought. Girls like Annabelle were obedient and quiet, bending to men’s wishes like a sapling to the wind, eager to prove their worthiness as wives, their potential as mothers. She was exactly the kind of girl his parents would want him to marry, someone who had no ambitions other than keeping the traditions alive, raising their children to honor their parents and grandparents.
Akira worked the mop, thinking about the girl on the horse, how different she was from Annabelle. She’d surprised him by coming up to the fence the way she had. Until now, he hadn’t thought about seeing her except from a distance—her out there, him in here. But she seemed determined to talk to him. And why not? All they needed was a plan.
By the time Akira clocked out, he knew what to do. The fellas in the Manzanar Fishing Club sneaked out of the camp all the time, and so could he. They went out before dawn, fished the mountain streams from first light till last, then sneaked back under the fence after dark. He’d never wanted to go because he didn’t care about fishing, which meant he’d have nothing to do out there but taste the freedom he didn’t actually have. Not worth tormenting himself, and definitely not worth the risk. But now a little risk sounded good. The problem was figuring out how to let the girl know.
Lost in thought, he rounded a corner and walked smack into Annabelle. “Geez, I’m sorry!” Akira said, grabbing her arm to steady her.
“You should watch where you’re going.” Annabelle gave him a chilly look, one hand clamped on her sun hat. “I’m already a wreck after hearing that gunshot.”
“You heard it?”
“Of course, you ninny. I nearly jumped out of my skin.”
“Yeah, me too. We didn’t send out an ambulance, so I guess no one got hurt.”
“That’s a blessing.” Annabelle took off her hat. “Notice anything different?” She swirled her skirt side to side.
“Well, you look pretty,” Akira said. “I mean, you always look pretty, but—”
“I got my hair bobbed yesterday.” She tossed her head and her sleek hair swung, barely grazing her shoulders. “Men are so unobservant.”
He’d liked her hair long, the way it fell over her face when she was on top of him. “It looks swell. Pretty, I mean.” He was getting nowhere. “Say, want to get some dinner? My poker buddies say the new cook in Block 3 is good.” Not much chance of that. When people said the food was good, that pretty much meant the cook didn’t top the rice and everything else with lime Jell-O.
“Oh?” A tone as brisk as the wind. “You won’t be hanging around the fence waiting for someone?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Akira Shimizu.” Annabelle crossed her arms, her lips pouty. “A little bird told me you’ve got eyes for some girl on a horse. A white girl.”
“Her? I’ve seen her ride by a few times, that’s all.” If only he were a better liar.
“Uh-huh. Well, I’m meeting Jackie for dinner.”
“Want to meet at the canteen later, then? Say seven o’clock?” He slipped an arm around her, murmuring into her hair. “You can lose Jackie by then, right?”
“I’ll think about it.” She left, swinging her hips.
Annabelle wasn’t very good at playing hard to get. She’d be at the canteen tonight, and she’d do her best to keep his attention on her and no one else. Not long ago, he would have welcomed that. Funny how when your life takes a turn and your view of the world changes, the people in your life seem to change too. Annabelle was the same girl she’d always been, but Akira no longer thought about how she laughed at his jokes, how her legs moved beneath her skirt, how she made a little “mmm-oh” sound when he pushed inside her. He felt like a louse. He’d never been a guy who hurt people and thought nothing of it, or hurt people at all, at least not intentionally. He’d dated a few girls before Annabelle, back in Berkeley, and he’d tried to be a good boyfriend. The girls had thrown him over, not the other way around, and he’d been depressed for weeks, especially after Kaori, the first girl he’d slept with. He knew what it felt like to get dumped, and he didn’t want to hurt Annabelle. Still, they probably wouldn’t have lasted this long anywhere but Manzanar.
He pictured the girl jumping off her horse, running toward him, oblivious to the guards and their guns, ignoring the fact that he had Japanese blood and she didn’t. Because of her, freedom, however fleeting, was something he could imagine again. It was like going back in time, before Manzanar, and remembering what it was like to dream.
The room was suffocating, too hot to sleep. Maddalena tossed the sheet aside. The iron bed she’d slept in her whole life didn’t seem right anymore, not when the narrow world of her childhood lay behind her. Her eyes were open now, seeing things that had been invisible, contemplating a future she’d never imagined. All because of Mrs. Henderson and Manzanar, the boy at Manzanar. “Akira,” she whispered into the darkness. She flapped her nightgown to cool her legs and belly, and her nipples hardened. She touched them, a tingle shooting through her belly. How lovely to fall asleep touching herself, drifting off all soft and fluid. Her mother said it was a sin, that the pleasures of the body were meant for marriage, but Maddalena had never understood why pleasure was wrong or why it had to wait until certain times in a person’s life.
She rolled over, her head full of thoughts that flitted away before she’d finished with them. Getting shot at was enough to make her nerves melt, enough to turn the desert she knew so well into an unrecognizable place, filled with danger worse than rattlesnakes and sandstorms. Why were guns necessary? How could an entire race of people who’d chosen to come to America be enemies of the state?
Most of what Maddalena knew about Japan came from the war reports. At school it had always been America this, Europe that, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist—until the “murderous Japs,” as her social studies teacher put it, attacked Pearl Harbor. But Maddalena had stood in a city full of Japanese Americans and seen for herself that the world was bigger than she’d thought, that things were more complicated.
The singsong cries of coyotes pierced the air. Maybe they’re in love too, Maddalena thought. She went to the window and leaned out, as if breathing in the night air would bring her closer to Akira. The blackness was three layers deep—velvet barn, charcoal mountains, plum sky. High clouds pressed the day’s heat into the earth. The coyotes called again and she wished she were with them, the wind soft on her face, her bare feet clouded with warm dust. Whatever this feeling was—wildness, longing, anticipation—she wanted it to last forever.
If she was in love, God help her. The world she lived in had rules that said she couldn’t be in love with a boy who wasn’t white. Her father wouldn’t let a Japanese b
oy so much as set foot in the door; he was always talking about how the Japs deserved to be locked up. At first she hadn’t understood how he could be angry that Italians were being locked up, yet think the Japanese deserved it. Eventually she decided that he needed to look down on someone. He often complained that the northern Italians had snubbed his family, who were from Naples and Calabria, and then he acted the same way himself. He’d scorned the Jews and Mexicans in L.A., and now he thought it was perfectly fine to lock up the Japanese. They looked different, and to him that was bad.
Not to her. Different was exciting. But if it were up to her parents, Akira would have no place in her life. They were so rigid and strict that last spring they hadn’t wanted her to go to the junior prom because she wasn’t a junior and the boy was a year older. Her mother acted as if the age difference was a crime.
The boy who asked her, Tom, looked like a nervous stork, but he was nice enough, and cute enough in an awkward way, and Maddalena desperately wanted to go to the prom. So she begged her parents until they said yes, as long as he brought her straight home afterward. Her mother altered one of her own dresses for her, a silky sheath in emerald green that Maddalena had never seen and couldn’t imagine her mother wearing. It rippled down her body and showed the tops of her breasts. “You look pretty,” her mother said when Maddalena tried it on. Then, in a warning tone,“Don’t waste it.” She tucked up the shoulder straps and Maddalena’s hint of cleavage disappeared.
The night of the prom, when she went downstairs wearing that dress and dangly rhinestone earrings, with a green velvet ribbon in her hair, her father stared as if he’d never realized she was female. Then he shook Tom’s hand for a good thirty seconds, giving him a look there was no mistaking. When the terrified boy pinned a corsage of pink carnations to Maddalena’s dress, he nearly skewered her.
Her parents needn’t have worried, because Tom turned out to be any parent’s idea of a perfect gentleman. At the school auditorium, made festive with crepe paper and balloons, he fetched glasses of punch, then planted himself a good three feet away from Maddalena. They sipped their punch and watched the dancers, Tom growing paler by the minute. Finally, when the fourth song started, Maddalena said, “Could we dance?” and he gave her a sweaty hand, his face rooster red. They shuffled across the dance floor, his hands barely touching her, both of them apologizing every time their knees bumped. When he stepped on her foot, she yelped and they both bent over, smacking foreheads. Then they both laughed and Tom apologized about a million times, and the rest of the dance was fun. When a slow song came on, Tom’s hand crept to the sway of her back and she pressed against him. He turned his head but didn’t pull away. Over his shoulder, Maddalena watched couples sneak off to dark corners to neck. Tonight was her chance. She’d always hated that stupid saying “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,” as if it was the girls’ fault and boys had nothing to do with it. She was determined not to be one of those girls.
The Wild Impossibility Page 7