Garden of Stones. Sophie Littlefield

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СКАЧАТЬ just need to ask him some questions, ma’am.”

      Lucy had reached the other side of the room, and she made a run for it, dashing to the couch and crawling up into her mother’s lap. She was trembling; she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. Aiko had been too busy with her mother to make Lucy eat, and she hadn’t felt like it. Now she felt as though she might faint. Her mother patted her back absently, and her hands were cool and dry.

      Aiko stood. She was a small woman, but her arms and legs were thick and her hands were strong. “You must go now.” Her voice trembled, but she took a step toward the FBI men.

      “I’ll come with you.” Mr. Hibi pulled his arm away from his wife and didn’t look back. “Leave this widow in peace.”

      But even this did not seem to shame them. Everyone watched in silence as they escorted him through the house. He looked back, once, and then they were gone.

      Mrs. Hibi made a small mewling sound. Lucy’s father, in his photograph, seemed to watch in sorrow.

      * * *

      Mr. Hibi did not return. Within days, other men had been rounded up and taken somewhere to be interrogated. No one knew where they were. None came home. The phone rang throughout the day and Lucy could hear Aiko’s urgent voice; by eavesdropping carefully she learned that windows had been broken at the drugstore and several of the warehouses along East Second Street, only blocks from her father’s building. Aiko asked Lucy to go to the store for her and then immediately changed her mind, and they went together instead. There was almost no one in the streets; the barbershop window held a large hand-painted sign that read, I Am an American. Lucy read the headlines as they passed the newsstand: 4,000 Japanese Die in Submarine Raid. Hong Kong Siege Is Begun.

      The following Monday, Lucy was dressing for school when Auntie Aiko came into her room. Her face was pale and her eyes were red. Lucy knew she had been crying, which seemed strange to her because her mother had not cried since her father died. She’d barely spoken, barely eaten; she was like a shadow in the house, coming out when Aiko insisted she try to eat, bathing when Aiko led her to the bathroom.

      “No school today,” Aiko said. “We have work to do.”

      They went through the house room by room, taking everything that Lucy’s father had brought with him from Japan, all the beautiful things that had belonged to his family: photographs, dishes, lacquer boxes, mother-of-pearl hair clips that had belonged to his mother, tiny ornamental dolls. There was a Bible printed in Japanese that Lucy had never seen him read, silk ribbons marking certain passages. There was an old set of calligraphy brushes and inkstones that Lucy had always wanted to play with but her mother had never allowed her to touch.

      It took two days to find everything that had come from Japan, was printed in Japanese, or even hinted at Lucy’s father’s ties to the Japanese community. “They think we are sending messages,” Aiko fumed, as she opened boxes containing old kimonos in gorgeous silks and added them to the growing pile in the parlor.

      “Messages to who?”

      “Whom,” Miyako said. She barely spoke, and wasn’t much help with the sorting and assembling. Her embroidery gathered dust in the basket, the hoops left too long on the linen leaving permanent circles that would not block out. Occasionally she would take an interest in some object, holding and examining it until Aiko gently took it back from her. Lucy was beginning to wonder if her mother was going crazy, since her conversation was limited to a few lucid sentences in the mornings as she picked at the toast Aiko forced her to eat. By evening she was almost entirely silent, and most nights she went to bed as soon as the sun went down.

      “To whom,” Lucy acquiesced.

      “The emperor, I suppose. The Japanese army.”

      “But we’re at war with them now. Why would we be sending them messages?”

      Aiko’s expression turned more bitter than Lucy had ever seen it. “It seems that some people have forgotten that we’re Americans too.”

      “Well, I haven’t,” Lucy said fiercely.

      But later, when the sun had set and the sky was slowly purpling over the rooftops, Aiko asked her to help carry the big pile of precious belongings into the backyard. She’d built a fire in the center of the sidewalk that led from the back door to the detached garage, and already Renjiro’s old sheet music was burning.

      “We have to burn it all?” Lucy asked, horrified. She had assumed the heirlooms were to be stored somewhere safe until after the war.

      “Yes, and quickly too. The FBI has been to half the houses in Little Tokyo. It’s only a matter of time before they come looking here.”

      “But they were already here. When they took Mr. Hibi away.”

      Aiko gave her a grim look. “At least they can’t take your papa now. But we don’t want to give them any reason to think we’re not loyal.”

      The dolls, in the end, took the longest to burn, and as they did, they gave off thick, noxious smoke. The dishes had to be smashed with a hammer Lucy found in the garage, and the paint curled and flaked from the shards as they burned. When it was finally finished, she and Aiko came inside the house to wash and change out of their smoky, dirty clothes, tears mixing with sweat and soot on her face.

      Lucy gasped when she saw Miyako sitting in a chair she’d pulled near the back window. She hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights as night fell, and her face was pale and almost luminous in the flickering glow of the dying fire. Miyako said nothing as Aiko pressed a hand to her shoulder and sighed, and Lucy wondered if her mother had ever even blinked as she watched the treasures burn.

      6

      The holidays came and went. There was no Christmas tree, no tinsel, no candles in the windows as they had been in the past. Aiko moved back into her house on New Year’s Eve, but she still visited almost every day. Lucy helped Aiko burn her own mementos from her childhood in Japan, and all the things from her husband’s family. After that, Aiko’s house seemed as bare and joyless as their own.

      Miyako seemed to come out of her funk. “Time for you to go back to school,” she said briskly the Monday that classes were to resume after the Christmas break. “No sense sitting inside forgetting everything you’ve learned.”

      The morning she was to return to school, Lucy tucked some money from her allowance into her pocket, planning to buy some iced cookies from the bakery on the way home. But as she walked past it, she was startled to see that the windows had been soaped and a sign read Lost Our Lease. The bakery was gone.

      At school, Lucy ran to find Yvonne. She hadn’t spoken to her friend since before her father died. It seemed like months had gone by, not weeks. There was so much to tell. Lucy didn’t realize how much she had missed Yvonne until she spotted her hanging up her coat.

      “Hi,” she said, as nonchalantly as she could manage.

      Yvonne looked at her, then quickly away. A red flush stole over her face. “I have to go,” she muttered, and went to her seat. Lucy thought about following her, but the bell rang, and besides, Yvonne had made it clear: she no longer wanted to be friends.

      The rejection stung. Lucy was wearing the same clothes the other girls did, carrying the same schoolbooks, bringing the same foods СКАЧАТЬ