Chapter Twenty Ren
Chapter Twenty
Ren
It’s evening and I’m sitting in the apartment holding Cosette with Mama, so tired my eyes are begging to slam shut.
My mind feels like a weight, and I try to think about Akira and the shadow and freeing him but my thoughts always end up in the back of the truck with Violet beneath me, her eyes so big I could get lost in them forever.
Mr. Nomura is off on his trip to Salt Lake City.
Before he left, I helped him set up partitions using the same pine the barracks are made from.
Actually feels like we have rooms with privacy, instead of those damned sheets that turned us all into shadow puppets.
But the rest of the barrack has been buckling and separating, so none of it fits together right.
Wood, I’ve learned, is about as alive as anything else, affected by the weather and changing with time.
It complains all the while, creaking and moaning around us.
Glass shatters on the floor. I hear the Wozumi children squeal in alarm.
Jace says by rote, “It isn’t my fault!” even though it sounds like he wasn’t holding whatever broke.
From what I can tell, it’s Mrs. Wozumi who broke the plate or cup.
She speaks, but she isn’t upset. Her voice is trembling and full of joy.
“Sotaro!” she cries.
“Mary!” a man responds.
“Papa!” scream the children.
Mr. Wozumi is back. Mama and I listen as the children stampede their father.
He laughs aloud. There’s scuffling as he flings them high in the air, one by one.
He tells Jace he’s proud of him for being the man of the house.
He tells Abigail she’s beautiful and looks like her mother.
He tells Ethan he’s grown a foot and exclaims that he’s missing his front teeth.
He kisses Akiko and laughs and fights back tears and says she looks like a chubby sumo.
Then he kisses Mrs. Wozumi and the children groan and say “Ew” but their parents ignore them.
I’m happy for the gremlins.
Mama and I look at each other. There’s happiness on the other side of the board. There’s a family. Our part of the apartment is quiet. Cosette waves her arms. I lean over and kiss her nose. Mama holds out her hands for Cosette. She only holds her when she absolutely must, so I give her over.
“Looks like her father. Looks white,” Mama says, examining Cosette like a fruit. We haven’t gotten any more letters from Mrs. Ross. Not since Boser was so thoughtful as to alert her husband to our existence. Fine by me. I’m glad they’re leaving us alone. “A white Pasadena baby with a French name.”
“But her eyes belong to Emi,” I say, and Mama doesn’t disagree.
She holds Cosette out for me to take her again.
My heart sinks. I think Mama is going to fall silent and surly again, but she reaches for her drawer in our dresser.
She opens it and removes a ball of white yarn and her crochet hook, same one she used to make Cosette’s baby hat.
Slowly, she begins to work again on the baby blanket she abandoned after Emi died.
Relief fills me.
We are not like the Wozumi family.
But I am trying to make us one, and from what I can tell, Mama is finally ready to try as well.
I have to take off work for the rest of the week because Cosette’s stomach is so upset that she needs to be rocked all the time.
The only solace is when Violet stops by, though she’s always in a rush because her mother might catch her.
When I finally return to work, I let out a low curse.
The shadow is as thick as pea soup in the sky.
Today it looks sort of like a mountain range.
Strange lights beam at the top of each cloudlike crest, scanning the camp. My throat clamps shut.
I’ll do what I can to try to calm things down, but those shadows are ominous as hell.
My mind runs through my emergency plan. I’ve filched a spare fire extinguisher from the warehouse and put it in our barrack, along with wire clippers to widen the hole if we need a quick escape.
Hopefully it will be enough…so long as the guards don’t shoot.
I haven’t seen Kai since he grabbed Violet’s drawings. He’s at the warehouse, along with James and the others. Today’s work order is to unload the woman’s fancy cargo, which has just been sitting there in the truck. Each item seems to have a halo, a shiny gloss from my memories of Violet.
Kai acts as though things are normal. I’m relieved. Last thing I want is a problem with my childhood friend, but if he ever lashes out at Violet again, I’ll knock him into next week. Today, he’s practically cheery.
“Eh, Dragon,” he calls to me as he picks up the lamp, “remember when we broke my mother’s lamp? I think it was the same one!”
“How could I forget, Tiger? Last time I ever pitched indoors.” I tossed him a baseball because we were going to play catch at the park, and Mrs. Suzuki’s lamp became collateral damage. “We tried to hide the pieces under the couch.”
“And my father figured it out.” Kai shakes his head. “There was hell to pay.”
“It was your fault,” I say with a smile. I was scared out of my mind. I thought Dr. Suzuki would beat my ass or tell Mama, who would also beat my ass. Or worse, make Mama pay for it. But Kai never told him I was involved. “It was a flawless pitch. You bungled the catch.”
“It’s because I’m the home run king, not an infielder.” Kai sets the lamp down to swing a pretend bat and puts a hand to his eyes to shield them from a pretend sun, tracing the path of a slammer. He cockily pops an imaginary collar and acts out strolling to first base.
“Hey, pick up the pace,” the guard calls to us. For once, he isn’t off smoking or jerking off or whatever he usually does. There’s a moment of silence. James and the other guys glance sidelong at each other and then at the guard. He frowns. “You heard me.”
Leisurely, Kai sidles over to the lamp. The whole time, his eyes don’t leave the guard.
“Do we have a problem, Suzuki?” the guard asks. I grab the lamp by its neck and thrust it into Kai’s hands.
“No,” I respond for us all. It’s not that I like submitting to this prick. But with tensions in the camp reaching a boiling point and those shadows hanging over us like God’s judgment, I’ll be damned if I let things escalate.
“So, it’s like that,” James mutters. He’s talking about me. “Some dragon, Kai. Your friend is a chickenshit.”
“You want to say that to my face?” I ask in a low, even tone. James looks at me and then at Kai. He pats his pocket and grins.
“No, but when the time comes, you better take a side. The right side.”
I pick up a chair and follow Kai outside. Once the warehouse door closes behind us, I stop and turn to him, setting the chair down hard.
“What’s going on, Kai?”
“Nothing,” Kai replies, but I know him too well. He tries to walk around me. I block him, yanking the lamp from him and setting it down on the chair. “Fine. Some of the guys are getting ready.”
“Getting ready. Making weapons?” My mind races.
I think about Akira’s shadow and the sort of violence an uprising would cause while we’re all trapped.
“Kai, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you understand?
If there was a rebellion, it would be doomed.
With a snap of their fingers, the authorities could send the LAPD, the military, Captain America, whatever they needed.
Forget getting sent to Tule Lake. They’ll kill you. ”
For a moment, Kai hesitates. Then resolve settles in his eyes, the sort that comes from someplace so deep inside, there’s no getting rid of it.
It’s the kind I saw during our champion baseball game sophomore year, back when I was on the team, when Kai sprained his ankle so badly, he was limping.
Dr. Suzuki insisted he sit the game out, but when we needed a pinch hitter, he hobbled up to the plate.
Even though he could barely walk, he socked the ball to the stands.
Dread fills me. I want to shake him. I want to punch James. I want to punch every officer and guard and, while I’m at it, President Frankie D. And Akira, too, for bringing his damn shadow.
Instead, I pick up the stupid chair and Kai picks up the stupid lamp and we carry them to the rich lady’s bungalow.
Violet comes by my barrack before dinner. She always only has a few minutes before Mrs. Aratani will come looking for her. I join her and we step outside.
There’s commotion to one side of the barrack.
Mr. Wozumi is digging a hole, and the three older Wozumi children gather around.
It’s going to be a pond, one made especially for his kids.
He says it’s so they can have fun and feed fish.
Mrs. Wozumi, though, has told me it’s because Mr. Wozumi used to install them in fancy homes back in Salinas and they had one of their own in their backyard.
They had to leave the pond behind, along with their dog and parakeet, so he wants them to have a piece of home here.
Every night, he returns from his construction shift with rocks from the Inyo Mountains piled high in a wheelbarrow to line the hole.
“Look at my pond!” Jace says.
“Papa says it’s all of ours,” Abigail protests.
“Hey, hey,” Mr. Wozumi says, and it’s enough for them to stop bickering.
Since his return, they’ve been half less wild, spending more time in the barrack as he tells stories and jokes and Mrs. Wozumi reads them books from the library.
Jace follows his father closely, as though afraid he might disappear again if he lets him out of sight.
Even Akiko recently took her first steps, as though she was waiting for him, and Mrs. Wozumi gets to take long-overdue naps on the weekends.