children. We would be sterilized and deported at the earliest practicable date.
WE TRIED to think positive thoughts. If we finished ironing the laundry before midnight our husband’s name would be removed from the list. If we bought a ten-dollar war bond our children would be spared. If we sang “The Hemp-Winding Song” all the way through without making a mistake then there would be no list, no laundry, no war bonds, no war. Often, though, at the end of the day, we felt uneasy, as if there was something we had forgotten to do. Had we remembered to close the sluice gate? Turn off the stove? Feed the chickens? Feed the children? Tap the bedpost three times?
IN FEBRUARY the days grew slowly warmer and the first poppies bloomed bright orange in the hills. Our numbers continued to dwindle. Mineko’s husband was gone. Takeko’s husband was gone. Mitsue’s husband was gone. They found a bullet in the dirt behind his woodshed . Omiyo’s husband was pulled over on the highway for being out on the road five minutes after curfew. Hanayo’s husband was arrested at his own dinner table for reasons unknown. “The worst thing he ever did was get a parking ticket,” she said. And Shimako’s husband, a truck driver for the Union Fruit Company whom none of us had ever heard utter a word, was apprehended in the dairy aisle of the local grocery for being a spy for the enemy high command. “I knew it all along,” someone said. Someone else said, “Next time it could be you.”
THE HARDEST THING , Chizuko told us, was not knowing where he was. The first night after her husband’s arrest she had woken up in a panic, unable to remember why she was alone. She had reached out and felt the empty bed beside her and thought, I’m dreaming, this is a nightmare , but it wasn’t, it was real. But she had gotten out of bed anyway and wandered through the house calling out for her husband as she peered into closets and checked under beds. Just in case . And when she saw his suitcase still standing there beside the front door she took out the bar of chocolate and slowly began to eat. “He forgot,” she said. Yumiko had seen her husband twice in her dreams and he’d told her he was doing all right. It was the dog, she said, that she was most worried about. “She lies around for hours on top of his slippers and growls at me whenever I try to sit on his chair.” Fusako confessed that whenever she heard that someone else’s husband had been taken away she felt secretly relieved. “You know, ‘Better her than me.’ ” And then, of course, she felt so ashamed. Kanuko admitted that she did not miss her husband at all. “He worked me like a man and kept me pregnant for years.” Kyoko said that as far as she knew her husband’s name was not on the list. “He’s a nurseryman. He loves flowers. There is nothing subversive about him.” Nobuko said, “Yes, but you never know.” The rest of us held our breath and waited to see what would happen next.
WE FELT CLOSER to our husbands, now, than we ever had before. We gave them the best cuts of meat at supper. We pretended not to notice when they made crumbs. We wiped away their muddy footprints from the floor without comment. At night we did not turn away from them in bed. And if they yelled at us for failing to prepare the bath the way they liked it, or grew impatient and said unkind things— Twenty years in America and all you can say is “Harro”? —we held our tongues and tried not to get angry, because what if we woke up the next morning and they were not there? How would we feed the children? How would we pay the rent? Satoko had to sell off all her furniture . Who would put out the smudge pots in the middle of the night to protect the fruit trees from an unexpected spring frost? Who would fix the broken tractor hitch? Who would mix the fertilizer? Who would sharpen the plow? Who would calm us down when someone had been rude to us in the market, or called us a
WE TRIED to think positive thoughts. If we finished ironing the laundry before midnight our husband’s name would be removed from the list. If we bought a ten-dollar war bond our children would be spared. If we sang “The Hemp-Winding Song” all the way through without making a mistake then there would be no list, no laundry, no war bonds, no war. Often, though, at the end of the day, we felt uneasy, as if there was something we had forgotten to do. Had we remembered to close the sluice gate? Turn off the stove? Feed the chickens? Feed the children? Tap the bedpost three times?
IN FEBRUARY the days grew slowly warmer and the first poppies bloomed bright orange in the hills. Our numbers continued to dwindle. Mineko’s husband was gone. Takeko’s husband was gone. Mitsue’s husband was gone. They found a bullet in the dirt behind his woodshed . Omiyo’s husband was pulled over on the highway for being out on the road five minutes after curfew. Hanayo’s husband was arrested at his own dinner table for reasons unknown. “The worst thing he ever did was get a parking ticket,” she said. And Shimako’s husband, a truck driver for the Union Fruit Company whom none of us had ever heard utter a word, was apprehended in the dairy aisle of the local grocery for being a spy for the enemy high command. “I knew it all along,” someone said. Someone else said, “Next time it could be you.”
THE HARDEST THING , Chizuko told us, was not knowing where he was. The first night after her husband’s arrest she had woken up in a panic, unable to remember why she was alone. She had reached out and felt the empty bed beside her and thought, I’m dreaming, this is a nightmare , but it wasn’t, it was real. But she had gotten out of bed anyway and wandered through the house calling out for her husband as she peered into closets and checked under beds. Just in case . And when she saw his suitcase still standing there beside the front door she took out the bar of chocolate and slowly began to eat. “He forgot,” she said. Yumiko had seen her husband twice in her dreams and he’d told her he was doing all right. It was the dog, she said, that she was most worried about. “She lies around for hours on top of his slippers and growls at me whenever I try to sit on his chair.” Fusako confessed that whenever she heard that someone else’s husband had been taken away she felt secretly relieved. “You know, ‘Better her than me.’ ” And then, of course, she felt so ashamed. Kanuko admitted that she did not miss her husband at all. “He worked me like a man and kept me pregnant for years.” Kyoko said that as far as she knew her husband’s name was not on the list. “He’s a nurseryman. He loves flowers. There is nothing subversive about him.” Nobuko said, “Yes, but you never know.” The rest of us held our breath and waited to see what would happen next.
WE FELT CLOSER to our husbands, now, than we ever had before. We gave them the best cuts of meat at supper. We pretended not to notice when they made crumbs. We wiped away their muddy footprints from the floor without comment. At night we did not turn away from them in bed. And if they yelled at us for failing to prepare the bath the way they liked it, or grew impatient and said unkind things— Twenty years in America and all you can say is “Harro”? —we held our tongues and tried not to get angry, because what if we woke up the next morning and they were not there? How would we feed the children? How would we pay the rent? Satoko had to sell off all her furniture . Who would put out the smudge pots in the middle of the night to protect the fruit trees from an unexpected spring frost? Who would fix the broken tractor hitch? Who would mix the fertilizer? Who would sharpen the plow? Who would calm us down when someone had been rude to us in the market, or called us a
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