I hovered near her triplex for what seemed like a long time, gathering the courage to walk up to her front door and knock on it. To my relief, Chiyo—not Kenji—answered.
“Mariko can’t come out,” Chiyo said tonelessly. She looked tired and devoid of emotion. From behind her, I heard Mariko’s voice saying, “Please let me talk to her, Mommy! Please?”
Chiyo didn’t turn around or acknowledge that she’d heard Mariko. She just continued to stare hard at me. Like she wanted me to go, and yet didn’t.
So I didn’t go. I just stood there and stared back at her.
“Please let me talk to her, Mommy?” Mariko begged.
A few seconds later and without a word, Chiyo swung the door wide and stepped aside. Mariko, standing behind her, closed the distance to me in a few quick steps. My best friend’s eyes were red from crying. The pale red imprint of a slapped hand lay across her right cheek.
“Mariko,” I said in a whisper.
She said nothing, just shook her head.
Chiyo finally turned away from the doorway, but not before gazing back at me now with a hopeless look. She walked away from us and into the back room that had been Tomeo’s. Mariko didn’t step outside where I was, and she didn’t invite me in.
“Who hit you?” I said, though I had an idea who did.
“I deserved it,” she answered softly. “I spoke disrespectfully to him.”
“Why? What is wrong? What happened?”
“He’s angry with me. I bragged about our plans to live in New York. I should have said nothing, but he was saying unkind things about you and I was mad. I should have said nothing. He won’t let me see you today. I’m sorry.”
“But it’s our last day!”
“I’m so very sorry,” Mariko said again, as though she was responsible for what was happening.
She was still standing on the threshold of her house and I was standing on the woven mat where the Inoues put their shoes. They never wore their shoes inside their quarters. None of the Japanese did. Chiyo’s were there by my feet and so were Mariko’s. Kenji’s were not.
“The time will go by fast,” she said, blinking back tears. “It will. We will write to each other. We’ll finish Calista’s story together through our letters. I’ll write to you about where I’m at in the story and you can write back to me what I should do.”
“I never know what to do,” I said, and it was about the story and everything else.
“But you do. You have good ideas. You do.”
I didn’t think she was right. I shook my head.
We said nothing more for several seconds. Then Mariko spoke. “My father will be home soon. You need to go. But I will sneak out tonight so we can say good-bye.”
I nodded numbly but made no move to go.
“Please, Elise. Go. He’ll barricade me in my room if he sees you here and then I won’t be able to get away tonight.”
Her eyes and voice were urgent. I turned away from her and walked away. I turned back once, but she had already closed the door.
* * *
? ? ?
I knew Mariko would only come after nightfall, perhaps even after her parents were asleep, which would be tricky, because internees weren’t supposed to be out at night unless there was a scheduled event. I waited for her to come to the door after the sun set, and she didn’t. Then I waited for her to come during the few hours between supper and bedtime, and she didn’t. Then I lay awake in my bed, listening at the window for the sound of her voice or maybe the sound of a pebble hitting the glass. But I heard nothing. At midnight, I crept out of bed and went to the front door, opening it carefully and looking out into the night.
“Mariko?” I said as loudly as I dared. I heard nothing but crickets and the screech of an owl. I must have stood at the door an hour waiting for her. Finally, I closed the door and went back to my bed and waited for her until I fell asleep.
In the morning, the second of January, I dressed as quickly as I could and kept my eye on the front window, looking for Mariko as we readied our suitcases.
“She’s going to come,” I told my parents as they tipped their heads in sympathy for me. The buses would not wait for Mariko, their sad eyes told me.
We gathered first in the dining hall.
The four hundred of us bound for Germany ate our last meal at the camp at long tables. On our plates were eggs and sausage and warm tortillas. Some people stared ahead, numb perhaps with the prospect of what might await us in Germany. Others talked animatedly, in German and in English, about getting out of Crystal City, out of Texas, out from behind barbed wire and guard towers.
After breakfast, we all shuffled outside into the morning air, which was unusually chilly for southern Texas. We all stood before a podium as Mr. O’Rourke bid us farewell. He thanked us for having been amenable to a difficult situation and for all the labor that we had willingly done to build roads and buildings in the camp, and for the hard work of constructing the swimming pool. A group of children from the American school—Max, of course, was not among them—sang “God Bless America,” and then we were led en masse in the singing of the German national anthem. My parents sang it with tears in their eyes. A man next to me raised his arm in a Nazi salute as he bellowed out the chorus.
I didn’t sing. I kept an eye trained for Mariko to appear at the sidelines. Surely she would come.
We’d been told what we could take with us: our clothes, passports and birth certificates, family photos—the photographs that had been taken from us in Davenport had been mailed back to us—but little else. No electrical appliances of any kind, or garden tools or binoculars. Nothing that could be used in the smallest of ways to aid Germany in its war against the Allies. We had all been to the camp doctor to have our health assessed and been declared fit to travel. My parents had signed documents pledging never to discuss their internment or the details of the prisoner exchange. Papa had to sign an oath that he would not perform any kind of military service for Germany. Just before our transportation arrived, our suitcases and purses and pockets were searched for contraband.
When it was time to board the buses, and there was still no sign of Mariko, I knew she would be at the gate waving to me from within as our bus rumbled out. She had to be.
The buses neared the entrance to Crystal City. I looked in every direction for my friend because I knew she had to be there. The gate swung open and the guards on horseback waited on either side. We began to inch out of the camp and onto the road that led into town. I looked behind us, my heart in my throat.
Mariko was nowhere in sight.
The gate was closed, the bus lumbered forward, and in seconds, Crystal City disappeared behind me in clouds of dust.
16
Armed FBI agents accompanied us on the buses bound for the train station in Uvalde, Texas, forty miles away. As we had been eighteen months before, we were made to wear white tags around our necks to identify who we were. Papa was given an envelope of cash that was the remainder of his money from his bank account in Davenport. Part of his funds had been used for Mommi’s and my and Max’s train tickets to Crystal City. I hadn’t known until that day that Papa had had to pay for those tickets himself. Some of his money had been paid to the landlord of our gray and white house for the back rent Mommi had been unable to pay. We sat in the Uvalde depot surrounded by border-control police for hours, waiting for our train to arrive. Many of the internees fell asleep on benches or chairs, or even on the floor, leaning against suitcases as night fell.
Finally, around midnight, the train arrived and we boarded. Our family was assigned a sleeping car with berths for the four of us to at last stretch out and sleep. Nell, Nathalie, and Gunther were in other cars. Soon after loading, the train started moving and the clacking of the track lulled me into slumber.
In the morning, we awoke to pulled shades. Armed guards took us to breakfast and brought us back. We were not allowed to visit the other cars and no one was allowed a newspaper. The journey to Pier F in Jersey City would take two days, and all of it was a blur of clacking track and whistles and the crying of babies who’d been born at Crystal City. We saw nothing out our windows. Our world had been reduced from a detainee camp to the inside of a train.