Chapter Four Violet
Chapter Four
Violet
Dear Otōsan,
You probably have heard about the evacuation. We’re told that we’ll have everything we need where we are going, though we don’t know where that is. As soon as I can, I’ll send this letter so you have the address of our new place.
We’ve packed everything up. Don’t worry!
Women from church are helping and they agreed to take all your books.
Every single one. So Moby Dick and The Book of Yōkai will be waiting for you, along with all the others.
My childhood dolls weren’t so lucky, but I had to let go of them at some point, right?
Mama always says I sew too many dresses for my wardrobe, and I hate to admit it, but I was startled by the number.
It was very clarifying to pick my favorite ones to bring. But we got everything settled.
Mama is well and I am well—well (how many wells can I fit into this sentence??), we miss you terribly.
Love you always,
Violet
There is no ocean at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in Owens Valley.
There is only dust.
It tries to be the sea. It stretches on through a funnel of mountains, endless to the north and south, seeking the far reaches of a horizon the road threading between the mountains never finds.
Wind picks up the dust and rains it back down on us, pelting our faces like salt off waves.
I miss the ocean I know, the one that raised me, the one I fill with folklore monsters when I draw.
It didn’t always take the white shells I offered it, but it never failed to give me a cool and briny embrace.
It watched me grow from a little girl whose Otōsan carried her out into the waves to a young woman who swam past them herself. But that ocean is far away.
And Otōsan is even farther.
Anyone would be lost on the face of this desert plain, but they’ve made a place for us here, hacking it out of the land with a barbed wire fence, barracks, and half-finished watchtowers.
There are going to be eight. There’s a soldier in the completed watchtower.
He’s so small that he might as well be a porcelain figurine.
His binoculars flash in the sun and his rifle is a sharp point slung across his back.
Streets and firebreaks slice between long, narrow barracks.
Nothing is completely done. Our prison is being built around us.
We’ve been directed to apartment 1, barrack 7.
Our bags are heavy. My slingback heels dig into the dirt and my skirt flaps, the hot wind stinging my bare legs.
They feel strange without my nylon stockings, but nylon is used for parachutes, so no one has them anymore.
It’s an inconsequential loss, though, in comparison to everything else.
I close my eyes and think of the shop. For once, I miss the typeface in my hands. I would sort hundreds of typefaces if I could just go home.
But there is no home.
There is no shop.
Not anymore. We tried to secure our most precious possessions.
Friends from Mama’s Bible study helped. They took Otōsan’s books and Mama’s tea set, jade wedding chopsticks, and matching jade dragon chopstick rests to store for us.
But they were helping other families from church, too, and they only had so much space in their homes and garages for our displaced property.
Everything else was sold. People streamed through our door, saying, “Your sign says you’re having an evacuation sale. What do you have?”
After rifling through the print shop, those people came into our home.
They pawed through our cupboards and drawers with fast hands and plopped their bodies down onto our armchairs and sofa with grunts of comfort and asked, “How much for this?” and “How much for that?” Otōsan’s landscape painting and banker’s lamps with the green shades sold first. Strangers wandered from the kitchen to the living room and back again with growing armloads, snatching up the matching wall sconces, Mama’s drink coasters in their caddy, our mixing bowls in primary colors and graduating sizes.
They even took our boxed-up Christmas bulbs.
Good Lord, they would’ve carried our home down the street on their backs if they could.
Mama followed each person, pointing out the merits of different items and saying, “Everything must go. You want the Pyrex, too? I’ll give you a discount if you take the Pyrex and the eggbeater. Everything must go.”
I clutched Otōsan’s deer, which hummed and fretted in my hand like it knew what was happening.
At night, I whispered to it. I begged it to bring Otōsan back or to show me what to do to reunite us.
I took it to the temple, where I lit candles and incense.
I walked it through a shrine’s torii gate.
I knelt by my bed with folded hands like I did as a child, praying for God to tell me what to do. But there was no answer.
At first, Mama insisted I keep going to school.
But then, as our evacuation date drew near, I stopped, and she didn’t say anything.
I marveled at how I thought the future was uncertain a month ago when I didn’t know if I would get into UCLA or minor in art.
Now Japanese American students have been expelled from colleges.
Admissions are closed to us. I don’t recognize life anymore.
When Mama wasn’t looking, I put lipstick and a sketchbook into my bag. On the day we left, I slipped drawing pencils into my sock, terrified they would snap if I put them in my luggage.
“This is it.” Mama pulls me back to the present. We stand outside barrack 7.
We’ve already been given the rundown. Every barrack has its own mess hall, showers, restrooms, and laundry and ironing rooms. Families share the barracks and there is no indoor plumbing.
Drinking water can be obtained from an outdoor faucet.
Fires are at high risk because of the dry, arid climate and wood buildings, so we were told to note where the fire extinguishers are.
A canteen and catalog mail order service will open soon.
I’m distantly worried because the camp doesn’t provide sanitary napkins, which means I’ll have to hope my boxes of Tampax last. If they don’t, I’ll have to use toilet paper.
Three steps lead to the door. Together, we climb them. They shake under our feet, and our shoes make odd, hollow sounds on each step. We enter and stop in confusion.
A family is already there. There’s a woman, the matriarch likely.
Mama thought I was ridiculous for wearing my slingback heels here, but in comparison to this woman, I might as well be a Puritan.
Despite the heat, she’s swathed in a long, lightweight silk jacket embroidered with lotus flowers and spindly, elegant cranes.
Ropes of purply-green and blue gemstone necklaces encircle her neck and wrists.
Upon closer inspection, though, I realize the garment is quite old and that the necklaces and bracelets must be fake.
The jacket’s embroidery is unraveling, the images dwindling away.
Several of the gaudy gems are missing from the jewelry.
The gaps in the settings stare at me like empty eye sockets.
Past the woman, lying sideways on one of the cots, is a girl who is probably only a year or two older than me.
She has the same face as her mother, about two decades younger, time undone.
She’s asleep, her eyes nothing more than two swaths of black lashes against her pink skin.
In the heat, she sweats. The angle of her body reveals she’s pregnant.
There doesn’t seem to be a husband for either of the women, but it isn’t shocking. It’s likely their men have been arrested, just like Otōsan. I feel especially sympathetic to the girl. I can’t imagine being pregnant here.
The third and final occupant is a boy, about my age. He sits all the way back on a cot with his knees up, feet planted on the mattress, propped against the wall.
It’s hard to get a good look at him because his head is bent, dark hair falls over his eyes, and his knees form a barrier between him and everyone else.
His left arm is in a sling, and his shoulders are slumped.
Even on our arrival, he doesn’t look up.
It’s like he’s lost, somewhere inside himself.
Staring at him, I suddenly wish to glimpse his face.
I know it’s silly. Boys don’t matter anymore. Not here.
But I can’t look away. He sags against the wall as though all the fight has been beaten out of him.
Perhaps it should be sad in someone so young, yet it only makes him more intriguing to me.
Maybe it’s the wariness emanating from him—it’s like he’s seen the true nature of the world, a nature I’ve only just begun to glimpse and just… accepts it.
I clear my throat, trying to get his attention any way I can.
I want him to see me. I want to see him.
He remains as he is, head down, gaze fixed low.
In my pocket, my deer grows warm. The warmth has direction, as though it’s a current of water.
It streams toward the young man. Never have I felt it react to a person.
It’s like it knows him. Or, if it doesn’t know him, it knows something about him.
Something…good. I wonder if he senses the energy radiating toward him. If he does, he gives no reaction.
“Is this apartment one? Barrack seven?” Mama asks. “We’ve been assigned here. I think there’s been a mistake.”
The boy shifts and I think he’ll finally look up. But all he does is lift his left hand to hold his right shoulder. Still he doesn’t raise his head.
“There has been a mistake,” the woman says. “This is our place.”
Her voice is raspy, and as she moves toward us, stale cigarette smoke billows from her breath, mixed with a too sweet cheap perfume.
“We’re already moved in.” It’s a lie. None of their bags are open, and aside from the daughter’s, none of the other cots have been made up. “Rest of the place is occupied, too.”