My Nest of Silence Read online

  Dedicated to the memory

  of

  Robert Bly and

  Malidoma Patrice Somé

  And for my wife, Kris

  Always

  BEFORE we go any further, you should know a few things:

  1. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the US government took me away from my home, my school, and my friends and stuck me and my family in a prison camp in the desert just because we’re Japanese American.

  2. Now that my brother, Mak, has turned eighteen, he’s signed up for the army, and they’re sending him off to war.

  3. I’ve stopped talking for the duration of the war. Or at least until Mak comes home.

  4. My father thinks I’m abnormal.

  I’m not.

  Mama says I have an overdeveloped imagination.

  But that just makes me exceptional.

  Not abnormal.

  1. THAT’LL TEACH THEM

  It was a greyhound, my father said, a kind of dog, painted on the side of the bus. It didn’t look like a dog. Not in the least. Trust me. If I were going to draw a dog, it wouldn’t look like that thing. I was trying to figure out what this “dog” thing actually looked like when the bus pulled away, taking my brother off to the army. I waved to him. The windows were so dirty, I couldn’t tell if he was waving back. So I waved harder. While I was waving, I noticed a suspicious-looking dust cloud rising up behind the bus. It loomed over my parents and me and took on the appearance of a hammer. I was sure it was up to no good. Luckily, a breeze grabbed ahold of it and tossed the dust hammer onto the side of the road.

  I wish I hadn’t been so concerned about the dust-cloud hammer, because by the time I’d confirmed that it wasn’t going to clobber us, I realized that the bus was very, very far away. A moment later it and Mak were gone, disappearing behind a distant hill. I kept waving anyway.

  If he’d been there, Mak would’ve laughed at me.

  Hey, kabocha-head! I could hear him say. Get a load of you worrying about a dust cloud. You and your crazy imagination!

  I rubbed my head where I imagined Mak would’ve applied his noogies. Funny thing was, I’d always hollered and squealed in the past when he rubbed my head with his knuckles. But now I actually missed them, Mak and his noogies. I pictured Mak’s face, his eyes and eyebrows and the silly-looking glasses he wore, the way the little scar over his lip would tilt upward when he smiled. I jumped when Mama called my name.

  “Come along, Mari,” said Mama as she and Father started the long walk back to the barracks. (Like all the other grown-ups at the camp, they always spoke in Japanese. They had emigrated from Japan and didn’t learn English when they were growing up, the way Mak and I did. We spoke in Japanese too when we talked with them, though when it was just Mak and me, we spoke English like the other kids. So as you read, just imagine our conversations are all in Japanese.)

  “Mari!” said Father. “It’s dinnertime! Come along.”

  Dinner? Honestly, Father! Mak is going to war on a dirty bus with a stupid dog thing painted on the side of it, and all you care about is dinner. I stood there for a moment, furious, thinking about dust clouds that looked like hammers, about my selfish big brother who’d made a stupid decision to go to war without discussing it with me first, and about my father needing to go eat another piece of boiled SPAM in the mess hall.

  It was right then that I decided I wouldn’t talk anymore.

  I remember saying to myself, I know what’ll teach them. I’m not going to talk anymore. Later on I added, Or at least until Mak comes home. But I didn’t add that part till I’d spent a few days not talking. Take it from me, not talking is not easy.

  “Mari! Please,” hollered Father.

  I spun about, stomped after my parents, and caught up to them. As we passed the guard post by the front gate, the sentry smiled at me. I stuck out my tongue.

  That’ll teach him, too.

  2. TWO WEEKS IS A LONG, DUSTY TIME IN MANZANAR

  Bad news: no mail from Mak! Not a single letter! I’d already written to him three times! And these weren’t your average letters, either. These were four-page letters with long descriptions and drawings. I drew a picture of me and Mama and Father and the sentry by the front gate. And I drew the weird dog thing that was on the side of his bus and the dust cloud that turned into a hammer. The envelopes were stuffed and they needed extra postage to mail. Father made me pay for the extra stamps.

  And still no mail from Mak. Do people forget how to write when they join the army? Maybe he didn’t even get there. Maybe he jumped off of that dirty bus and joined the circus and he was too busy cleaning up after the elephants to write to me. Anyway, I couldn’t believe he hadn’t written to me yet.

  And just so you know, being silent hadn’t been easy. Not long after I’d made my vow, I started wishing I’d thought of some less difficult manner of teaching everyone a lesson. It was about then that I came up with a good reason for keeping silent: maybe by staying quiet I was somehow helping Mak come home safe. I know, it’s kind of crazy and I’m not sure about the logic of that, but it felt like a better reason for keeping my vow than just to irritate Father.

  For as long as I could remember, I was the one who’d done most of the talking in my family. Singing, too. And while Father was not a fan of my talking, he very much disliked my singing. He would put up with it, though, in that grumpy way he puts up with things he doesn’t like. As far as my more recent decision not to talk was concerned, well, I was fairly certain he hated it. You’d think he would’ve appreciated my silence, seeing as he disliked my “jabbering” as much as he did. But not so. Mama, on the other hand, took my silence much better than Father. That was understandable. In the best of times, Father was a surly grump and Mama was, well, Mama. She could make sweet things out of sour.

  I remember after Pearl Harbor when the FBI came and took our radio. Mama waited till they’d driven out of sight and then put a record on the phonograph, turned it up loud, and went right back to doing whatever she’d been doing before they arrived. Father? He stomped outside and slammed the front door, something he never did. And when we learned that the government was sending us to live in this dusty, frying-pan prison camp, Mama simply got busy: busy selling the farm and busy packing. Father? He fumed and snorted, staring at our fields and mumbling to himself about how little money we’d received for the farm and that we were being punished for a crime we didn’t commit.

  I remember waking one night to the sound of him smashing stuff in the kitchen. This scared me. But it didn’t last. Father may come to a boil pretty quick, but he cools down even quicker.

  Okay, back to my decision to stop talking; as I said, it was something that Father simply couldn’t accept. Not only was it not acceptable, it was, to him, abnormal. And for Father, abnormal is the worst thing a person can be. One night during our walk home from the mess hall, Father knelt down and took my hands in his and looked me in the eye.

  “Mari, this willful silence of yours must end. It is abnormal,” he said.

  “Ichiro, please,” said Mama. “She’s just upset over Mak leaving.”

  Father stood, frowning, his arms folded.

  “Aki, we cannot simply ignore Mari’s abnormal behavior.”

  Abnormal. There it was again. That word came out of Father’s mouth like it tasted bad.

  “She is becoming the object of scorn!”

  Mama took my hand and started walking us back to our barracks.

  “Mari is fine,” Mama said over her shoulder. “Please relax, Ichiro. You’re going to have a fit.”

  “I do not feel like I will have a fit,” Father grumbled as he fell in behind us. (I made a mental note to myself: Draw Father having a fit when we get home.)

  3. THE CL
UCKING SISTERS

  Still no mail came from Mak. What was wrong with him? How could he do this to me? He made me so angry! If he had been there right then, Mak would’ve been the person I wouldn’t talk to the most! Ha! But honestly, three weeks was a long time to wait for a letter in a sweaty, nowhere place like Manzanar with nothing to do.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. There were things to do. Such as chores. There were always lots of those. Giving me chores to do was Father’s way of paying me back for being abnormal. I hated chores. And doing laundry was the worst one of all. Oh, I just hated folding the laundry. Why fold it when you’re only going to wear it again anyway?

  But let’s not dwell on laundry. On the bright side, I’d gotten pretty good at being silent. And I was quite proud of myself, because it hadn’t been easy. A lot of grown-ups seemed to take my silence as a personal insult. They’d ask me a question and I’d just smile at them and wouldn’t answer. Most grown-ups hate when kids do that kind of thing. But others thought my being silent was just a silly thing, something to laugh at and forget.

  Being silent did, however, bring some pleasant surprises. For instance, I was happy to notice the irritation my silence caused our gossiping neighbors, the Chiba sisters. They lived next door to our barracks. Father called them the Clucking Sisters because they were always gossiping. They couldn’t stand my silence. I couldn’t stand their clucking. I spent many happy hours drawing the Chiba sisters. I really enjoyed turning them into chickens.

  There was a big open space where everyone in our barracks hung their laundry. On Tuesday mornings it was my job to collect the dry clothes from the line. Many days the clothes were covered with dust, and I’d have to beat them with a stick to get the dust out before folding. Have I said how much I hate folding laundry? Anyway, I remember the Clucking Sisters watching me as I watched them. When I’d finished folding, I picked up my basket and walked past them, heading for home.

  “Good morning, Mari,” said Clucker #1.

  “Hello, Mari,” said Clucker #2.

  I smiled at them and kept on walking.

  “Mari,” said Clucker #1. “It’s rude not to say hello.”

  They didn’t care about me saying hello. I’d walked past them dozens of times and they’d never even smiled at me. They just wanted to trick me into talking, that’s all. Instead I did a little pirouette and walked on. I could hear them clucking behind me.

  “Such a strange child,” said Clucker #1.

  “Cluck, cluck, cluck,” said Clucker #2.

  Inside our barracks, I began to fold our clothes. Father stepped in. He was holding a small bundle of mail. MAIL!

  “Mari, where is Mother?” said Father.

  I dropped what I was folding and rushed over to make a grab at the mail. Father saw me coming and held everything above his head.

  “Hey, stop it!” he cried.

  Then he dropped it all on the floor.

  “Look what you’ve done!” said Father. “I hope there was nothing breakable in this package.”

  I looked at the address. It was from Mak to me! Father picked the package up. I tried to grab it. He held it above his head. I danced around him, jumping and grabbing.

  “Mari!” said Father. “Would you please stop it!”

  I stopped jumping and stepped back. Father sat on his bed. I tried begging and gave him my best wide-eyed, suffering-child look.

  “Stop this silliness, Mari! You’re not the only one to get mail from your brother. You can open this when you have found your mother and brought her here.”

  I frowned.

  “Hurry now, go,” said Father, waving his hand in the direction of the door.

  I knew exactly where Mama was. I raced out the door and through the camp, kicking up dust. I turned a corner and ran right into Mama. She was making her way back from taking a shower in the washing barracks.

  “Oh! Mari!” cried Mama.

  I grabbed her arm and started to pull.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  I gave her my best smile, waggled my eyebrows up and down, then nodded in the direction of our barracks.

  “What do you want?” asked Mama.

  I continued pulling and waggling my eyebrows.

  “Oh, all right, Mari, I’m coming,” laughed Mama.

  We made our way into the space for drying laundry. The Chiba sisters were still there, folding and gossiping. I was walking backward, shuffling along as I pulled Mama. I wasn’t looking and bumped into one of them.

  “Oh, honestly!” said one Clucker.

  “Have you ever…?” said another.

  “I’m sorry. Please excuse us,” said Mama, bowing.

  The Chiba sisters continued to cluck, something about the “rudeness of today’s youth.” Mama and I bowed one more time, and I took her arm and tugged her away from the Cluckers, all the way back to our barracks. Inside we found that Father had arrayed our mail on the small table.

  “Oh, Aki, I’m sorry,” he said. “Did she stop you from taking your shower?”

  “No, no, I was finished,” she replied. “Is there mail from Mak?!”

  “Yes,” said Father.

  I grabbed the package addressed to me, flopped to the floor by my bed, and tore into it. Inside I found beautiful, wonderful things. There was a letter from Mak and a knitted army cap! I quickly put the cap on my head. It was much too big, but to me it was a perfect fit. This was obviously the best hat ever made. How could it not be a perfect fit?

  I unfolded the letter, but for some reason I just couldn’t read it. This was odd because I’m a good reader. I stared at the marks Mak had made on the paper and couldn’t figure them out. I told myself, Stop being silly and read Mak’s letter! But I just couldn’t. I was startled when drops of water slid off my face and onto the paper, further blurring the words.

  “Mari, what’s wrong?” asked Mama. “Has Mak written something sad?”

  I looked at Mama, held up the letter, and wobbled the pages, hoping she’d understand that to mean, For some reason I’ve forgotten how to read. She sat herself on the floor beside me.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said. “Here, let’s read it together, shall we?”

  Mama pulled a hanky from her pocket, sat beside me, and wiped the tears from my face. I rested my head on her shoulder and she read Mak’s letter out loud.

  Our drill sergeant is an okay guy. He likes to give us a pep talk before lights-out each night. That’s about all there is to say here. I hope you like your hat. It’s probably too hot to wear it right now, but I thought you’d like it anyway. Be good for Mom and Pop.

  Love, your brother Mak

  Mama and I sat quietly for a minute. I thought about Mak and his letter. There was something about what Mak was saying, or maybe about what he wasn’t saying, that seemed strange to me. Everything sounded so happy, as if his joining the army had all been just a sunny, fun day at the lake. It didn’t sound real. And it just didn’t sound like the Mak I knew.

  I looked around and saw that Father was gone. I hadn’t noticed him leave. My eye caught the framed photo of Mak that sat on Mama’s bureau. He wore that crooked smile of his in this photo, and he seemed to be saying, That’s right, kiddo. Can’t put anything over on you. Things ain’t what they appear in this here army.

  Mama used her hanky again to wipe my eyes and then her own.

  “I see that Mak has sent you a nice hat,” Mama sighed. “He is a good brother.”

  I grabbed the sides of the hat and pulled it down over my eyes. Mama hugged me.

  “And you are a silly girl.”

  4. DUST. FOOD. MORE DUST.

  Don’t get me started on the food. Okay, I have to say at least one thing about it. When we first arrived at Manzanar, the food was horrible. No, it was worse than horrible. How do I help you understand just how horrible? Hmmm… let me see, oh, I know—this is one of the things they gave us to eat the first week we arrived. (You better be sitting down, because this is gonna make you feel sick.) Here
we go—canned peaches over cold rice. That’s right. Peaches and rice! For dinner! They also dumped these little meat things they called Vienna sausages on top of that disgusting pile of mush. These Vienna sausages weren’t the wonderful sort of sausage you might eat with eggs and toast for breakfast. They were these little meat blobs, mushy and tasteless. It’s true that, as time went on, the food got better. It helped that Issei and Nisei (first- and second-generation Japanese Americans) with cooking experience took over the job of making the food. But c’mon, peaches and sausages on cold rice!

  Horrible, right?!

  This particular day Mama and I rose early and made our way to the mess hall. I brought my drawing pad with me. Mama had ordered me some drawing pencils from Sears Roebuck. They had been shipped to the camp, and Father had brought them home from the mail room the night before. I couldn’t wait to try them out. The wind was quiet that morning for a change, and so we arrived at the mess hall without the usual coating of dust.

  Dust. From our first day at Manzanar, we battled with the dust and the windstorms and we always lost. It didn’t matter whether we were inside or out. The dust was so fine that it found its way into everything. Our clothes, our mouths, our food, our eyes. Everything.

  We found Oba-chan Yuki waiting at the door to the hall all alone. She was one of the oldest people in the camp. “Oba-chan” means “auntie,” but she wasn’t really my aunt. We called all the older ladies Oba-chan. I liked that. And I liked Oba-chan Yuki not just because she was nice to me, but because she was a really good storyteller. Sometimes she would give us a quick story after breakfast. I liked to draw while she talked. I was glad I’d brought my sketchbook.

  “Good morning, Oba-chan Yuki,” said Mama, bowing.

  “Good morning,” she replied, bowing in return.

  The door opened. We shuffled inside with Oba-chan, got our breakfast, and made our way to a table. I was, of course, wearing my new cap. While I still felt it to be the finest cap in the world, I’d noticed that it had a definite downside—it itched. Not just a little itchy, but fiercely itchy. That didn’t matter, though. The hat could itch me until all the skin on my head fell off, and I’d still wear it.