Weedflower (9 page)

“Everybody’s got diarrhea from dinner,” an old woman told her.

Inside the latrine was a line of holes in a wooden platform. Several old women sat on some holes. Sumiko cleaned off her brother’s behind and put him in his long Johns. On the way back to the stable the searchlight followed them again, the beam accentuating Tak-Tak’s skinny legs.

Tak-Tak fell right asleep. But instead of sleeping, Sumiko lay on her straw, smelling manure and listening to her family breathe and imagining the world outside: houses and grocery stores and playgrounds. Auntie already had thought of a phrase to describe that world:
out there
. Sumiko remembered something she’d overheard Jiichan say once, that sometimes when you were low, all you had left in life was your right to close the door on the world and sit in your room alone where nothing further could befall you.
He had said he’d felt that way when Sumiko’s mother died. He had closed the door to his room and separated himself from everything that was out there.

Beams from the searchlight reached inside through the stable slats and moved in flashes across the far wall. The searchlights were part of out there. At least Sumiko’s family was in here. At least they had a door, and at least it was closed.

12

T
HE NEXT MORNING
S
UMIKO JUMPED OUT OF BED TO
peek out the front door and see if the camp looked just the way she thought it had yesterday. For some reason she didn’t know what to expect this morning. When she stepped out, not a thing had changed. Stables lined the outer wall, and barracks filled the center of the camp. Japanese people walked here and there, some of them looking dazed.

So they really were here, in a town enclosed by stone walls, and almost everybody else was out there. It all reminded her of something, but she couldn’t remember what. Then she remembered. The place was like the dioramas her class had made for geography
once. The class had formed groups, and each group had made a diorama of life in a different country. That was a lot of fun, a good memory from school. Sumiko had helped make the Paraguay diorama. The teacher said all the kids did a great job. But now Sumiko thought that if you had enlarged all the dioramas, there would have been things missing, like curtains, pets, and gardens.
Details
. Those details were also missing from the assembly center.

The bell sounded for breakfast. Throngs of kids were already running toward the mess hall and shouting.

Breakfast was about two tablespoons of scrambled eggs and two pieces of bacon the size of postage stamps. All the kids ate ravenously and then ran like mad to another mess hall to get more. Sumiko grabbed Tak-Tak and ran with the other kids.

After breakfast they took a walk, Tak-Tak holding tightly to Sumiko’s blouse. As they walked Sumiko saw that many people had left their doors open for ventilation. So many cots filled some of the rooms in the barracks that there was no place to walk. The walls didn’t extend all the way up, and you could see the beams in the ceilings. In one barrack three giggling boys were climbing across the beams peering into other people’s homes.

“That looks fun,” Tak-Tak said hopefully.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to do that.”

“Will they shoot us?”

“Stop saying that. It’s bad luck.”

Sumiko opened the door to a barrack with a sign reading
RECREATION
. Inside she saw an empty room with a few tables. Seeing the empty room filled her with fear of something Jiichan had once described to her. He had been sick, and he tended to ramble when he was sick. Sumiko had been sitting with him as he told her about the trip from Japan to America. “I don’t see sky for many long time. I feel close to ultimate boredom. That mean close to lose mind. Inside myself, I feel like screaming. Outside myself, I calm.” He said that the thing that kept everybody going was a single word:
America
. That word was the most important thing his family owned, the only thing of value they possessed.

Day after day Sumiko felt as if she were living on the edge of the ultimate boredom. Some days she stayed inside the stable, other days she wandered aimlessly. Once as she and Tak-Tak wandered she heard people rushing through the aisles hissing, “The soldiers are checking for illegal sewing scissors!” She saw a woman screaming as soldiers ransacked her barrack.

Sumiko thought of her yellow knife and felt almost faint with fear as she ran to Stable Four. She could hear Tak-Tak calling behind her, “Where are we going?”

Auntie watched uncomprehendingly as Sumiko
ransacked her own luggage, found the knife, and ran outside. She stopped just long enough to snap at Tak-Tak, “You stay here!”

She ran and ran, finally stopping at the other end of the racetrack where she found a patch of dirt. She was drenched in sweat from running. She dug a hole and rammed her knife inside before walking back, trying to appear calm. She promised herself never to mention the knife to anyone.

Sumiko’s next big surprise came a few days later when she noticed Mrs. Ono sobbing while holding a letter.

“Mrs. Ono? Can I help?” Sumiko asked.

Mrs. Ono couldn’t stop crying as she waved the note in the air. She held on to Sumiko and sobbed and laughed. Sumiko took the note and read it:

Dear Mrs. Ono,

I hope this letter reaches you and would appreciate your letting me know. I am the new resident of your house. I wished to let you know that I will be caring for your dog until your release. Please do not worry as he is in good hands during these difficult times
.

Yours truly,

Mrs. Julia Donnell

Reading the letter was like seeing the sky. Sumiko thought about the woman all day. It gave her so much hope, it seemed like a miracle.

One day Sumiko sneaked back to where she’d buried her knife. She dug it up and scratched off her name before burying it again.

Otherwise, every day was the same. Oh, there were more room searches and there were electrical blackouts and the kids were going wild, but for Sumiko, whether their barrack was dark or light didn’t change her life much. Whether their barrack was ransacked by soldiers didn’t change her life at all. They had nothing to hide anymore.

Then one evening in late May, Ichiro ran inside and said, “My friend says the camp paper is going to announce tomorrow that the government will start moving us all to a permanent relocation center.”

The next day camp was in bedlam, people standing in the aisles shouting and discussing and debating and crying. The paper announced that several hundred to a thousand people would be shipped out at a time. Sumiko’s family was on the list of those leaving first.

The next day she came across some kids she didn’t know climbing a ladder up a roof. She hesitated—ladders were probably forbidden. But then she couldn’t resist, and she clambered up behind them. As she neared the top she saw the kids gaping at something.
She hurried up and saw what they saw. It was something amazing: normal life. Cars drove, people walked, trees swayed in the wind. A couple of the kids on the roof started crying. Sumiko just stared in amazement.

Later when she got back to the stable, her family was packing. They’d found out the next day they were being shipped to Poston, Arizona. The only thing anyone seemed to know about Poston was that it was very hot there. She thought about the coats and sweaters that had filled the meager space in their suitcases. Her uncle and grandfather didn’t have clothes for cold weather, and Sumiko, Tak-Tak, Auntie, Bull, and Ichiro didn’t have clothes for warm weather. So as before when she’d left the farm, she now found herself almost liking what she thought she had hated. Here the weather was mild; Poston would be hot. Here life was predictable; she didn’t know what Poston would be like. Here she had started to feel safe; who knew what would happen to them in Poston?

Her family walked through the aisles carrying their things. The camp was like a maze, with only the sun to tell Sumiko which way they were going. The nearer they got to the entrance gate, the more people joined them. Ichiro and Bull walked ahead, carrying the bulk of the family’s belongings.

Sumiko was so worried, she thought she would explode. “Ichiro?”

Ichiro stopped and turned to her.

“Is it better to go or to stay here?”

“I have no idea,” he said tiredly, and began walking again.

As they walked more and more people joined them. About a thousand
Nikkei
waited with their possessions at the gate. Hundreds of others had gathered to watch them leave.

Sumiko walked through the gate and thought about her knife. Maybe a hundred years from that moment, someone would dig it up. But probably nobody would ever see it again.

13

S
UMIKO FOUND HERSELF IN ANOTHER DARK, RUMBLING TRUCK
.

1. They wanted us to leave California.
   
2. They wouldn’t let us leave California.
   
3. They wanted us in the racetrack.
   
4. They don’t want us in the racetrack.
   
5. They want us in Poston, Arizona.
   
6. ???
   

This time the trucks took them to a train station where soldiers formed a long line along the platform.

On the train a white man walked through the car
and told them to keep the shades drawn. The train moved slowly. Every so often Sumiko could hear a bang on the windows. Finally she drew aside a shade and saw that a few people were throwing rocks and pebbles. What did they want from her? That was what she didn’t understand. What did they want?

The train stopped for a long time, and there seemed to be a furor outside. Finally word had spread through the train that a white man had lain on the tracks to protest the evacuation. As the train started she saw the man being arrested. At first Sumiko had thought they might actually be let go because of this white man. Then when he was arrested, she thought maybe he was crazy. She didn’t understand why he had done something that wouldn’t change anything at all. The man didn’t seem to feel any
haji
at all over his arrest.

Tak-Tak was studying his crickets. Sumiko peered in the box and saw a cricket sitting on a bit of mush Tak-Tak had saved from breakfast. He closed his box with satisfaction.

With the windows shut, the temperature was sweltering, but the same white man who’d told them not to pull up the shades walked through the car and announced that nobody should open the windows. Two people got sick, so it smelled pretty awful in the car. Once a Japanese man hurried through the train calling out, “Is there a doctor in the house?”

Sumiko didn’t feel so well herself, but she sat up straight so Tak-Tak wouldn’t be scared. When darkness fell outside, the only illumination came from little lights on the sides of the seats. Once in the night Sumiko peeked out and saw strange-shaped trees in a desert. The trees’ limbs bent at odd angles, and pronglike leaves shot out from all over.

On the morning of the next day the train pulled into the town of Parker, Arizona. The heat had been growing and growing, like when you light an oven and it keeps getting hotter. One man said cheerfully, “It beats being shot!”

Sumiko and the other Japanese disembarked and saw another line of soldiers to guard them.

“What is that?” Tak-Tak said.

“You mean the soldiers?”

“No … it feels weird in the air.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “It’s really, really hot,” she said.

“Hot?” he said uncertainly.

Sumiko had never felt anything like it either. Even when she was lighting the fire under the bathtub, the heat was contained in just the area of the fire. Even when they were burning their things, the heat stayed in a small area. But here the heat was everywhere, as if there were fire all around them.

Parker wasn’t much of a town. It didn’t seem to
consist of anything but a few old stores. White people stood outside the stores, just staring at the Japanese. The staring made Sumiko feel
haji,
as if she’d done something wrong, but also a little anger, because she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. She knew—because Jiichan had once told her so—that the
haji
she felt was from her Japanese side and the anger she felt was from her American side.