The turtle house, p.13
The Turtle House, page 13
Having men in common is never enough.
Even within the group of Japanese women, old divisions lay quiet and waiting. Some of these girls were country dwellers, raised among only their own family. Some were small-town girls, like Mineko, daughters of decent means at one time. And many were city girls, girls from Tokyo proper who had somehow survived the bombing, had come out of destroyed homes and into the arms of the soldiers.
And most importantly, the biggest difference: some were locally married by a well-meaning Presbyterian or Methodist missionary preacher, and a few, but not many, were in marriages permitted by the Japanese government.
Mineko was neither, but she did not let on.
“Hello again,” a few of the Japanese girls said.
“Did you go to feed the little precious one?”
“Did you go back to look at our houses?”
“Did you have a chance to get the ice cream? It is still there, but just a little melted.”
Mineko smiled and answered their questions but she still moved, slowly, away. She never felt like being still because being still meant engaging in conversation. She hadn’t felt like talking much since becoming pregnant with Mae, after her falling-out with Fumiko. Since Mae’s birth, Mineko only wanted to speak to Mae and to hear her odd baby gurgles in return.
On the edge of the group of men was James. He felt her presence, hearing the squeaky wheels of the pram, and he turned.
“And here is my baby,” he said. James was proud of Mae in front of these men. He was distant most other times.
“She barely looks Japanese!”
“You gonna teach her to ride one day, hoss?”
“She’s gonna be a looker.”
The men were warm and friendly. Mineko tried to catch their comments, but only gleaned a few words.
“Where did you go?” James asked in Japanese. He was improving in his language. Mineko had to give him credit for his quick mind.
“Oh, to see the new house and feed the baby.”
“We get a corner one. I already discussed it.”
“Whatever you think is right.”
“It will have a bigger yard.”
“That will be good for Mae.”
“Where did you go again?”
“I told you, to see the new house and feed Mae.”
“Don’t you have something you need to say?”
Mineko stared at him, blankly.
“Don’t I get a thank-you?”
“Oh yes. Thank you.”
James sneered slightly, imperceptible to anyone but Mineko. Mineko felt her insides heave.
“I have news. Tell you later.”
After the boy and the purse incident, Mineko started taking the long way back to the apartment block after work. She already ended her day after ten p.m., so with her new walk, she wasn’t arriving in her room until close to midnight. The places she now bought food weren’t as good and were more expensive, so she didn’t eat as much and went to bed with her stomach talking to her, moaning its displeasure. She would wind herself into a ball, squeezing her abdominal muscles into her spine, trying to quiet the noise.
Hunger wound around her grief to form a tight twist inside her. She took this twisted feeling to work, where she weakly tried to be bright and pleasing, but where she put the beer glasses down too hard, where she let the cabinets slam.
The women at work told her she needed to forget the past and live for the present. We have accepted this, they said, and look what we have to show! Gifts from the P/X: chocolates and tuna in cans and stockings and thick lotions for hands and feet. Lipstick in three shades of red. Hair ribbons. Hairpins. Stop being so drab, Good Girl Mineko!
After two weeks, James was outside her door when she arrived home. He held up a small brown paper sack that Mineko could tell, even in the low light, was transparent with grease.
“Ika geso karaage. Did I say that right?”
Mineko took a deep breath. She could smell the salty squid.
“Let’s go inside,” James said in that long, slow voice.
Mineko nodded and led him to her tiny room, shutting the door behind him.
When Mineko became pregnant with an American soldier’s baby, the woman in charge of the building, hoping for better treatment, had given her a slightly larger yet still leaking room, this one with a window for light. Mineko had done the same trick with the tin cans. The room came with a newer futon and a cheaply made tatami. With money that James gave her, she bought a tiny cradle and an oil lamp, since electricity was still spotty. She bought a few pieces of clothing for Mae and enough diapers for a day’s use, cleaning the soiled ones in the busy shared laundry at night. She bought slippers for her room and a small washbasin for Mae’s baths. And even though James did not live there, as he had to be back in barracks by eleven p.m. each night, his presence was felt in every corner, by what his status could provide.
Mineko walked the pram to its owner, a woman who lent it for a couple sen for such use. Then she carried Mae back to her room and placed the sleeping baby in the crib, although she needed a good changing. The light clicked on easily in the room, which meant the electricity was working, so Mineko plugged in her Westinghouse hot plate, another gift from James, and began to boil water for a little bath. Mae was plagued with diaper rash and fighting it had become Mineko’s small war.
Soon there was a knock and then James opened the door.
“Stinks,” he said, looking into the cradle where Mae slept. He lit a cigarette. Mineko waited to be offered one, which he would do if he was in a good mood. He did not.
“We will be married on Tuesday,” he said. “That’s my news.”
Mineko let these words sink in. Almost everyone thought they were already local-married. But this chance passed them by, neither partner taking advantage at the same time. When Mineko wanted a local marriage, soon after her monthly flow stopped, James was uncertain and stopped meeting her. When James had come around, Mineko was too morning sick. Then James was sent to another base up north, and he stayed there for four months. Mineko both worried he’d never return and then, once used to the idea that James was gone, was concerned he would come back. When James arrived back at Tachikawa, she was out of the money he had left and had been laid off from her job. She mentioned the local marriage again, and he said nothing. Then finally, when he did decide he wanted to go to a preacher, Mineko’s belly had popped out like a balloon. No, they couldn’t go to a minister with a pregnant belly on display.
Rumors had circulated that the US government might be issuing American marriage certificates, albeit briefly, to those couples already locally married. Was this what he was offering to her?
“American marriage?” she asked.
“Not yet. Local. Over the summer, real certificate. So you two can live on base. Get Mae out of this dump.” James motioned to the apartment, just to make sure Mineko understood.
Mineko looked around at the better-but-still-awful room.
“Two months. Then base house. Best place you’ve ever lived, I bet.”
“Tuesday at the chapel?”
The chapel was on the edge of Tachikawa AB. It was cinder block and painted a glossy white. Soon after it was built, gifts from American churches arrived. There was a plaster Jesus holding a smiling lamb from the Catholics and a carved oak kneeler bench from the Presbyterians. The Methodists sent benches with backs and red cushions. Mineko didn’t know that there were other Christian churches because they hadn’t sent anything yet.
“No, someplace else. I’ll tell you when I know.”
“I’ll wear kimono,” Mineko said flatly.
“No, a dress.”
“I have no correct dress. But I can borrow a fine—”
“This is an American wedding. Wear what you have on, that’s good enough.”
The fried-squid night, Mineko ate and ate, standing up inside her dark room, James not taking a bite.
“Good?” he had asked, and she nodded yes. He reached out and took the sack from her hands, wadded it up, and threw it in the corner of the room. Then, he put his mouth on hers, even though she knew she smelled like a fish market. James didn’t ask, but reached up under her dress and pulled down her bloomers. He stuck his pointer finger inside her, as if testing the temperature outside or to see if a breeze was blowing. Deeming her weather acceptable, he pulled down his pants.
“Please lay down,” he said in Japanese, and Mineko did. Out of instinct, she forced the minogame into the corner. James did not notice it.
Then he pushed himself inside her. Somewhere, during his pushing, he unbuttoned her blouse and wrenched down her camisole, but finding small breasts on her muscular chest, he made a frustrated face, like he had seen an oasis that had been a mirage.
She felt a strange surge of triumph at his moment of disappointment. Mineko divided herself. The woman Akio had loved was the best part of Mineko, this woman, lying here, was the leftovers.
So while he moved and worked, Mineko stayed still, enjoying only the salty taste of food lingering in her mouth. While she hated herself for it, she thought that this barter was not altogether awful. There is no purity after a war, she thought. This will be over soon.
For three more nights in a row, he arrived by her side after work, already with some sort of dinner in tow, and walked her to her apartment, his hand placed on the back of her neck, guiding her.
“Tsuyoi,” he said one night near the apartment, and Mineko wondered if he was calling her strong or commenting on himself.
“Me?” she asked. And he nodded.
It was a strange compliment, a truth that she appreciated about herself, but didn’t think others noticed.
The someplace else where they were to marry was an empty room behind a bar that was the least favorite of the soldiers because of the prices. Mae was in the borrowed pram, in the corner. It was her morning nap, so she stayed blissfully unaware of her parents’ nuptials.
The minister was a soldier with dark skin. His uniform had a little cross on the chest. Mineko had seen these men only from afar. They had never come to her previous workplace, although she knew that they frequented another, and stayed in groups away from the white soldiers. Mineko thought of the groups of wives at the picnic, each in their own clump. No darker faces there, either.
“Negro Chaplain, different unit,” James explained.
Mineko looked at her own arm and the face of the man in front of her. She was barely a shade lighter than this man.
“Go,” James said. And he looked behind him at the doorway, the curtain closed. Mineko knew then that this chaplain was a way to keep the ruse going. That using a white chaplain would clue all the men in James’s squadron that they were not married before Mae. And while this would not have been shocking—it was happening everywhere—James needed this to keep this lie going, to protect a reputation that was important to him.
Mineko was prompted throughout the short ceremony as to what to say and when. Within two minutes she was married to James.
“Omedetou,” the chaplain said, and he extended his hand.
James did not take it and it lingered there, between them, so Mineko reached out and held it like she had seen soldiers shake hands before. She squeezed and the chaplain squeezed back. His hand was warm, and then he gave her a nervous smile.
“Good luck, y’all.”
“Yes, good luck for you, too,” Mineko said in English. She let go of his hand, and James, right hand firm on her hip, guided her nearly through the curtained door, until she reminded him: baby Mae.
She had gone to visit Fumiko a few weeks after she realized she was pregnant. James had gone missing after the first week of regular visits but had come back around a few weeks later. He had since helped her find a new office job, and so Mineko no longer saw Fumiko at work. Mineko met her at a little tea shack and told her of the baby, before either of them could take a first sip. Fumiko had begun to cry and Mineko, embarrassed, walked her friend around the corner of a building.
“Stop this. What is done is done.”
“But I’ve shamed you!”
“You have done nothing of the sort.”
“You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. And you wouldn’t have met the American, and you wouldn’t have—”
That much was true. After the Osaka bombings, their paths had diverted sharply. With no home to care for, there was no need for a housekeeper nor the housekeeper’s daughter. Mineko spent most waking hours trying to hunt down food for her family, and what was not spent looking was spent trying to build shelter where their home had stood. Fumiko, desperate, had run away from Kadoma, leaving her mother a note that she was going toward the city to find food and would send word to her when she was settled. Weeks later, word came by mouth from a cousin of a cousin of a neighbor that Fumiko was safe and she had a job, she had food and shelter. What job? Mineko had asked. The boy had shrugged. A ramen stall girl, maybe, he suggested. Mineko, tired of scraping the ground, decided that she would go to Fumiko and make a little money, too.
“It is what it is. I want this baby.”
“You do?”
Mineko stood straight and closed her eyes. She couldn’t speak of this to her friend with open eyes. Yes she did, no she did not.
“You love him?”
“Had I been matched, I would have married, even if I didn’t love him. I would have had his children and tied our families together.”
Fumiko began to cry harder. She pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You’ve always been so strong. And because you are, those around you are allowed to be weak. But then you see this weakness and answer it with more strength. It’s too much for you.”
“Why do you say these silly things? I came to you out of my own free will. I came to make money and get food for my family.”
“A family who will totally cut you off now. You know they will.”
“A family who is alive because I followed you.”
“I should have died. Look at my face! I wish I had died—”
“Hush! You’re being stupid! I’m happy you’re alive!”
“You followed me and you have shamed the memory of your Akio!”
Mineko felt suddenly nauseated, her belly too empty of food. All this talk of the past. All this regret. And Akio—how dare she mention him like this! She felt an anger fly through her that she hadn’t felt toward her friend. Not ever. Fumiko had fallen to her knees, and Mineko pulled her to her feet and then she shook her, Mineko’s hands on her shoulders, rattling her until she was quiet and her face a surprised orb, its pockmarks from the fire like the shadows on the moon.
James lay next to her and Mineko wondered about the time. Mae was asleep in her little crib. He would be leaving soon for base, and then Mineko could really sleep, spread herself out and drop away. But for now, they were all together, chaplain-married with child, a family.
Mineko wondered how she’d sleep when they lived in the same house, permanently.
“You know we’ll all go home someday.”
Mineko dissected his sentence. Home was all she surely understood. And then someday, which she always confused with yesterday or today. Day, she knew with certainty, had to do with the sun being up. It also had to do with time, and time was such a slippery thing.
“Okay,” she said. Okay was always a good thing to say. It punctuated this English like a sigh.
But which home? The base home? Not her home, because once the letter she just wrote arrived in Kadoma, she knew that would not be a place she would visit again easily. And where she slept now was not so much a home as it was a cabinet for bodies.
Mineko thought of the place with the gate and the word COPE over the entrance in large metal letters.
If she ever owned her own place, she’d write her name over the gate, too, she thought, sleepily.
When would he leave? Mineko hoped it would be soon and that he would do so quietly; keeping Mae asleep for as long as possible between feedings was the nightly prize.
“You have it on?” James asked, and he picked up her hand.
He had given her a ring. He had bought it at a pawnshop after the ceremony. They walked in together, he looked, he chose. It was an older style, yellow gold and a dark black-green stone in the center, marquise cut. When she looked close, she saw tiny dots of red. She wondered who it had belonged to and why it had been sold. The pawnshop made her sad, just standing inside surrounded by the things people had loved and lost.
“Very nice choice, sir. You are very lucky to find this ring today.” The pawnshop owner spoke slow, choppy English and looked only at James. Mineko knew that he was embarrassed to have her in his shop, a Japanese woman with a half-white baby in a pram. It felt unfair that she should have to carry the weight of shame alone, but Mineko stood straighter, just to irritate the man who was judging her with his inattention.
James had handed her the ring and she had slipped it on herself. It fit well.
“Tell her what it is, what the stone is,” James said, repocketing his billfold.
The man fixed his eyes on James but spoke to Mineko.
“It is a very beautiful stone, it brings strength and energy to all who wear it.”
“Not in English. Tell her in Japanese so she really knows.”
The pawnbroker cleared his throat. He began again.
“This gentleman—”
“My husband, sir,” Mineko said, tiredly.
“Your husband has bought you a bloodstone.”
Mineko looked down. It did look like blood splattered across dark moss. With this, she said thank you to both James and the salesman and pushed Mae out of the store.
Finally, James stood to leave, finding his pants, his shirt. He was unusually quiet tonight. It was not the silence of anger or sadness. Mineko wondered what it meant. This man was a mystery to her. She hoped she would grow to know him better, but worried about what she would discover. Perhaps there would be fondness, a warm love in their future. Perhaps the few glimmers of kindness he had displayed would be more plentiful over time.
