Chapter Ten Violet
Chapter Ten
Violet
Dear Otōsan,
Today was terrible. I tromped all over the camp looking for a working washroom for our laundry.
My dresses are depressed, dusty, and dirty.
I’m determined to revive them. After a good amount of time, Mama found me and was terribly annoyed that I hadn’t gotten the laundry done.
She’s been in rare form. Remember the friend I told you about?
His name is Ren. But don’t worry! I haven’t fallen head over heels in love or anything ridiculous, which is what Mama accuses me of.
Honestly, she treats me like a child, but I’m not a child.
I don’t think anyone is, here. Even the children don’t seem to be.
Goodness, I’m sounding melancholy, aren’t I!
It’s just been a long day. Oh—remember the man in blue?
Well, it’s confirmed. He’s a god, Otōsan.
His name is Akira. It’s funny, I always knew the magic in the deer was real, but somehow as I got older its realness dimmed.
How strange that I feel as though I’ve grown up, yet the presence of magic has brought me back to my childhood.
Maybe that’s the growing up you always talked about. Learning you don’t know anything.
I’m going to have tea with Akira tomorrow. Maybe he can help me, us. If he can, best believe I’ll make certain he does. I won’t ask for flowers. I’ll ask for you.
Love you always,
Violet
I’m walking next to Mama toward our barrack, but all I see is Ren’s face.
It was so stricken when I—well, when I’d lied.
I hadn’t anticipated the hurt that swam through his eyes.
It’d been there only briefly before his face quickly fell into its usual somber, guarded expression, but now I realize he didn’t even say goodbye. And neither did I.
“Violet, don’t spend time with that boy.” I glance sidelong at Mama. She’s upset. “You need to focus on school. What’s more, you’ll give him the wrong idea.”
“He’s just a friend, Mama.” I try to sound flippant, but my heart clenches in my chest, as though testifying that this, too, is a lie.
It makes me think about touching Ren’s face when he leaned against the barrack, how close I got to him, his nearness intoxicating.
Everything in me tightens at the memory, my body viscerally reacting to it.
He’s not just a friend to me. He never has been. “He was being nice.”
“Being nice.” Mama snorts in disbelief. Oftentimes, I feel like Mama doesn’t know me at all, but maybe that’s not it. Maybe she knows me well and doesn’t understand me, why I do the things I do. “He wants to nicely kiss you.”
“Mama!” I gasp, but the word kiss sparks a forbidden fire inside me, and I’m right back in the shadow of the warehouse, Ren’s eyes flashing in a silent challenge as I came closer.
We are quiet until we get to our barrack.
The laundry will have to wait until tomorrow.
I think our silence might continue until morning, but Mama picks up a garment and holds it out for me to put on.
It’s an olive-green coat. She’s gotten a job in one of the factories and spends all day cutting up khaki and green sacking into pieces and sewing them onto meshing.
The netting is sent overseas and used to disguise armaments and military positions.
Perhaps the netting will encounter my nylon stockings along the way.
I wonder if she got the fabric from work.
“Isn’t it a little hot for a coat?” I ask. But it’s new. I haven’t gotten anything new since arriving at Manzanar.
“It is right now,” Mama says. “But it’s going to be winter soon. We need to be prepared. Try it.”
I slip my arms into the sleeves and look down.
It’s an ugly drab color and the fabric is wool yet rubbery, as though it’s been weatherproofed.
I prefer jewel tones and soft fabrics that move with my body, neither of which the coat has.
However, its details mesmerize me. A fabric belt cinches the waist, the collar is formed from two perfect triangles, and mirroring rows of brass buttons run down the front.
I fasten the buttons into their hand-stitched holes.
Each circular surface is imprinted, and words coil snakelike around the edges, along with stars.
“US Army,” I read aloud.
“Military surplus,” Mama says. “From the Great War. It got sent here to keep us warm in the fall. Things like coats and caps…but it’s all so big!
American men are huge.” She clicks her tongue.
“Nothing fits anyone. Everything must be recut and remade, so they are having us do that for a bit at work. Mrs. Ito helped me. I told her, ‘My daughter is fashion, fashion, fashion,’ and she knew what to do.”
“It’s beautiful.” I run my fingers over it.
If it wasn’t for the buttons and the color, you’d never know it’d been a man’s military coat.
Somehow, Mama and the other seamstress alchemized it.
Mama nods, pleased. Then she motions for us to leave for the mess hall.
I think our silence from before will return.
However, she suddenly says in an awkward voice, “Tell me about your day.”
I almost miss a step.
Otōsan would say the same thing to me after school. “Tell me about your day, Violey-chan.” Homesickness grips me so tightly that I can’t breathe.
“School’s good?” Mama asks.
“Yes, it is.”
“The teacher is nice?”
“She is.” I realize it’s hard to break patterns. Our conversation is stiff and forced. I don’t dare tell her how I truly feel—that I hate how there’s no seating at school or that I’m mixed in with a bunch of young kids and that it feels pointless.
“Good, good,” she says.
“How was work?” I try switching tactics.
“I like it.” I’m suspicious because Mama has always hated mending, but I know she’ll never complain.
“Good,” I say before realizing I’ve copied her response.
I’m relieved when we finally get to the mess hall.
It’s loud and stifling, three coal burners radiating heat from the kitchen.
Japanese mixes with English. Babies fuss and little kids throw tantrums amid the clatter of aluminum everything—aluminum trays, aluminum dishes, aluminum cups, aluminum forks and knives.
Mama and I carry our trays to servers who glop hunks of a casserole that’s been dubbed Weenie Royale onto our plates.
It’s a concoction made from soy sauce, chopped onions, eggs, rice, and weenies.
Rationing restrictions and the desolate location of Manzanar always does a number on the food.
The proteins are the cheapest versions available—hence the weenies, often Spam, offscourings from butchers—and most of the vegetables are dead upon arrival, so the chefs boil them into mush and have nothing to season them with.
I long for Mama’s dishes. For green beans, sweet potatoes, and white fish enrobed in crunchy tempura.
I long for sukiyaki served in the donabe, its delicious marbled beef, mushrooms, and lettuce simmering in sweet dark broth, just waiting to be slurped up.
I long for Hershey’s milk chocolate bars with their squares that neatly break off and chewy, stringy fruit-flavored saltwater taffy sold in barrels on the boardwalk.
I even long for the scents and sensations of food—for the buttery smell of movie theater popcorn and the grainy residue it leaves on your fingers, for the pillowy soft way mochi melts on your tongue and the coolness of red bean paste, jelly, or chocolate oozing from its center as you bite it.
I’m about to eat dinner, but I already know I’ll be left starving for the food we left behind.
Mama and I carry our trays to Masonite-topped picnic tables.
They are full of unfamiliar faces bobbing over trays.
The younger generation uses forks and knives with ease, but I see the elderly woman who ran away from her daughters staring at her fork in confusion.
No chopsticks are provided. Some people brought them from home, but most didn’t.
We sit. Snippets of conversation fill my ears.
“He’s not even Japanese! He’s a Chinese fellow hiding here because he broke the law.”
“My sister at the Poston camp got deported before us. We got a letter from her while we were still home saying they served cow tongue. It had taste buds and skin still attached. Made everyone sick. I thought we’d have to eat tongue here every day.”
“Jiji, you were right about the geta. Keep my feet above the dirt and clean, especially after showering.”
“I swear to God! Before we left, my handicap was eight.”
One conversation catches my attention. A woman talks about openings for workers in the kitchen. The white chefs are going home, and we will replace them.
“You love to cook, Mama,” I say, poking at casserole. The wet hot dogs make it watery. “And you never enjoyed mending. Maybe you should work here.”
Mama doesn’t respond. I think maybe she didn’t hear me over the clatter. Then she looks around. Her eyes travel over the chaotic assembly of people getting food, eating, and busing their dishes. They fall to her plate with its hunk of Weenie Royale casserole.
She shakes her head.
I spear a round slice with my fork. Cooking is Mama’s soul. Every meal came to life beneath her enchanted spoon and then was dished up and served with love to Otōsan and me. All the love she can’t express is in her food and it nourished us, inside and out.
I understand why she doesn’t want to work in the mess hall.
After, Mama reads her Bible as always, and I sketch.
My drawing doesn’t come as easily. I find myself sketching the camp but putting it underneath the ocean with the shadow of a Bake-kujira in the distance and the barbed wire disintegrating into red nori.
As I draw, it seems all wrong. The camp isn’t underwater.
I’m the one underwater. I can’t escape it, not even in my mind.
Only one person has made it bearable, and I hurt him to save myself from Mama’s disapproval.
Even though paper is scarce, I crumple it up.
Later, I lie in bed, listening to Mr. Kimura’s snoring and the couple, who aren’t fighting or loving but rather deciding on the names of their children, though they have none yet. They come up with twelve names, which seems excessive.
Tomorrow, I’ll leave school early to meet Akira for tea. The thought of it should be exciting and hopeful, if not a little scary to be in the presence of a god. But my thoughts travel to Ren.
I hope he’ll understand. He doesn’t know how intense Mama can be.
Still, even as I stroke the deer, it takes me a long time to fall asleep.