Chapter Fifteen Ren #3
“Slow down, slow down. One at a time,” I implore. They fall silent and then, assuming their siblings will remain quiet, begin talking over each other again. I hold up my hand. “Did you find the doubloons?”
“Better!” Jace cries. “We found real treasure. It’s even better than the matches Mama took away from us.” I wince. If a fire blazed through here, the entire camp would light up like a Christmas tree.
Jace is unconcerned. “Show him, Ethan!”
We look at Ethan and he hesitates, shy as always, but his eyes twinkle. He holds up a black arrowhead. I pick it up, impressed. Its surface is faceted, with a sharp point. I prick the tip against my finger.
“Ow!” I dramatically wave my hand, making the kids squeal in horror and delight. “This is some treasure, pirate captains.”
It’s true. The arrowhead is large. Makes me wonder how many tears have fallen into the dirt under my feet as those people were pushed out. Now we’re here, adding our own tears after being forced out of our homes, too.
Jace snatches the arrowhead from me and hands it back to Ethan.
Ethan seems to be the appointed beast of burden for their treasures, because his pockets bulge.
Who knows what else they have been pilfering.
They run off into the camp, pointing their weapons at people and shouting that they’ll make them walk the plank.
The elders shake their heads, and I hear one murmur, “Wild children. No manners. No good.” If I was their age, I’d be a menace, too.
When I reach my barrack, Mama charges out the door, face tight. Her pink jacket flaps around her like an extension of her anger. I freeze and my stomach churns. She pushes past me as though I don’t exist.
“Nanako!” Mr. Nomura calls entreatingly after her. She doesn’t stop. Fury replaces my anxiety. Has Mr. Nomura upset her?
“What’s going on?” I demand, closing the distance between us. Mr. Nomura is startled. He puts a hand on my shoulder, but I roughly shake it off. “What did you say to her?”
“Hush, hush, your sister is resting.” Mr. Nomura steps out of the barrack and shuts the door. With great calm, he settles down onto the steps where he often rests with Mama at night. “Sit.”
I’m not about to sit next to him. I keep a wide stance, glaring at him.
“What’s going on?” I ask again.
“Your mother is upset because I’ll be going on a trip to Salt Lake City.”
“A trip?”
“Hai. It’s the JACL national meeting. I’m going to recommend that the government allow nissei to serve in the war.”
My mind stops and starts. I thought Mama and Mr. Nomura had gotten into some sort of dumb fight. I wasn’t expecting this.
After Pearl Harbor was bombed, the government wanted just about everyone to enlist except us. You want to die for your country but you’re Japanese? No thank you. You can go rot in a camp.
“Why does my mother care?”
“Because of you.” He says the words simply, as though it’s obvious.
“Because of me?”
“Hai. She’s afraid you’ll join up. Leave. She says you’ve been wanting to leave for a long time now and this’ll give you the excuse.” Mr. Nomura watches me carefully. “But I told her. You aren’t the sort to run away from things.”
My arms fall limp at my sides.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Nomura says, even though I haven’t said anything. “Everything will be all right.”
Violet and I meet at midnight and go to Akira’s barrack. But when we knock on the door, there’s no answer. I tiptoe inside to see if he’s in his stupefied sleep state—not eager to find him that way again—but his barrack is empty.
“The creek!” Violet says. “Maybe he’s there?”
I’m not happy to put Violet at risk again by sneaking out of camp, but I also know that arguing is futile.
We clamber under the fence and make our way to the stream.
It’s even thinner now, nothing more than a pane of water shimmering over rocks.
People have visited this spot often. There are a couple of dented fishing boxes, and a chair fashioned from sticks.
Some of the rocks are graffitied in different handwriting, the sentiments scrawled together.
Kanji mix with other words: Beat America, J & E Forever, Block 12, Groovy Baby, 357 Boyle Heights, Death to Japan, I’m the Dark Knight.
“Doesn’t look like he’s here,” I say.
“Let’s wait. He didn’t show up right away last time, either,” Violet replies. I realize I’m jittery now that it’s just me and Violet alone. I pick up a rock and send it skipping across the water. “Show-off. Let me see if my skills have improved.”
Violet snatches up a pebble. She employs the techniques I’ve shown her, and this time the rock hops twice before sinking.
“Masterful,” I say, and she smiles, pleased at her success.
“I’m very adaptable,” she replies. “And in more ways than one. I’ll have you know that last time I snuck out to meet you by the fence, I knocked over a bucket. This time, I made it without so much as brushing it.”
“Good. If your mother realized you were out here, she’d probably go under the fence herself and drown me in the creek.”
“Yes, she probably would.” I was joking, but Violet sounds so serious that I think Mrs. Aratani might actually do it.
Violet picks up another pebble, but she stops, turns it over in her hands.
“Mama and I have always butted heads, and it’s even worse without Otōsan to mend things between us.
” She takes a breath. “I’ve been wanting to say…
I’m sorry I acted like I didn’t know you when you were carrying our laundry. ”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say immediately. I can’t remember the last time someone apologized to me. Somehow, it feels more intimate than kissing, and it scares the shit out of me. “It’s fine.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She watches me in the moonlight. “I don’t ever want to hurt you, Ren.”
Now that’s something I’m definitely not prepared to hear.
Even after our kiss, I tried to tell myself I hadn’t gotten myself in too deep with Violet.
But it’s another one of my lies. Damn things grow like weeds, watered by my fears.
The truth is, I’m not getting out. Or, at least, not without a great deal of pain.
“It’s fine,” I repeat.
The pebble drops from her hands. For a moment, the only sound is the running creek and the nighttime desert.
“Oh, Ren,” she says, and there’s such understanding and heartbreak in her voice that I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should comfort her, but my throat is too tight to speak. She’s quiet for a bit, too. Then she says, “It must be nice that your mother gives you so much freedom. She must trust you.”
I’m relieved she’s changed the subject, even though the topic of my family is rife with its own land mines.
“Naw, it’s more that she has a lot going on in her own life and not a lot of room left for anything else.”
“I’m sure she loves you, though,” Violet says. “In her way.”
“She does.” I think about her charging past me earlier, pink jacket dramatizing her exit.
“ ‘In her way’ is a good way of putting it. It’s a brutal kind of love.
Can’t blame her too much. We have a long and proud family tradition of shocking the neighbors.
And anything Emi and I did wrong got heaped onto her, too… and we’ve both done a lot.”
Violet moves to sit on the rock and motions for me to join her. I go, slowly.