Home Leaving Home

Home Leaving Home

The day we lost our freedom, it fled with barely a sound, like a teaspoon against the lip of a porcelain cup. Ping. I had just turned 15 - too naive to understand that the small comforts of my life would slowly dissolve like sugar in tepid tea.

That December afternoon, rain slicked the sidewalks into mirrors. Streetcars hissed and rattled along tracks. The city smelled of damp wool, tobacco smoke, and seawater drifting inland from the bay. Somewhere farther down the block, a radio crackled with static, and voices too harried to make out.

The bell above the shop door made its usual cheerful ping - a warm greeting that belonged to smiling customers with dripping umbrellas and pockets full of coins. Papa believed a good bell mattered. Folks should feel welcomed upon entering, even if they didn't purchase anything.

I was slicing oranges behind the counter, the rind spraying citrus into the air, tangy and clean, when the first man entered. He wore a dark suit under a trench coat and removed his hat but not his gloves.

“Good afternoon,” Papa said.

Without a word, the stranger's eyes traveled over the shelves of imported teas, jars of pickled plums, sacks of rice stacked like sleeping animals, and skillfully wood-carved signs. The only sound was the steady ticking of the old clock above the register.

Papa stepped around me, leaving a faint scent of ginger and soap, and emerged from behind the counter, drying his hands on a towel.

“Can I help you?”

A second man entered before the first one answered. Then a third.

Ping. Ping.

When the bell stopped, the shop no longer belonged to us. The tallest man held a folded sheath of papers and snapped them open.

Mama paused midway through arranging pears in the front window. Their skins glowing golden green in the rain-muted light.

“What is this?” she asked. No one answered her.

The first man finally looked at Papa. “You need to vacate the premises. You have 72 hours to prepare.”

Papa blinked once, slowly, as if clearing smoke from his eyes. “There must be some mistake.”

The man’s face stayed perfectly smooth. “You are required to cooperate or be arrested. Running will result in your deportation.”

Papa set the dish towel on the counter. His fingers trembled.

“Deported where? We were born here in California,” Mama protested, while I stood frozen in place.

The men didn't acknowledge her.

The radio down the block suddenly blared louder, clearer this time.

Catching the fox unaware...Attack...Burning...Death.

Our world tilted. Not with explosions or screaming. Just the steady voices of a new reality surrounded by rainwater flowing steadily through the shop's gutters, raindrops pattering like tiny fists on the green awning outside, and Mama’s shaky breaths.

One of the men moved toward the shelves with a pen and notebook in hand. Another carefully inspected the radio beneath the register as though it was capable of treason all by itself.

Papa’s jaw tightened.

“Hideo,” he said in his calm voice, never taking his eyes off the men, “go upstairs and help Mama pack.”

The word 'pack' made my stomach lurch. I didn’t understand what was happening.

“Where are we going, Papa? For how long?” I asked. Nobody answered that either.

"Now, son," Papa said, sternly this time.

Upstairs, the apartment held the scent of lavender powder Mama dusted into the futons every spring. She began folding clothes with terrifying precision. Shirts, slacks, dresses, socks. Her hands never stopped moving.

“Who are those men?” I whispered.

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

From downstairs came the scrape of furniture being moved. Drawers clattering on wooden floorboards that were laid with pride by my Jiiji so long ago. The shop had been our home since Papa was a boy my age.

Jiiji had arrived in California more than half a century ago with nothing but the clothes he wore, a few yen, carpentry tools wrapped in burlap, and an English dictionary missing several pages. He'd worked for years doing demeaning labor to make a living and provide for his growing family. Jiiji used to say that his shop was built on a foundation of great sacrifice and survival.

These strange men touched everything as though none of it belonged to us.

Mama gingerly wrapped a framed photograph in newspaper. I watched her hesitate over the picture: a teenage Papa and Jiiji standing proudly beside the shop's entrance on opening day, sleeves rolled to their elbows, eyes squinting in the bright sun, smiles crooked from exhaustion.

She tucked the wrapped photograph in the suitcase, the only thing we carried with us besides the few articles of clothing. When we came downstairs, the shop was ransacked; the shelves already looked bare and exposed.

“You’ll be informed tomorrow by telegraph of precisely when and where to report," said the first man.

“Report? But we have proper identification," Papa pleaded.

“Temporary relocation," the man said, stiff as a zipper.

Relocation. Such a harmless sounding word. Like changing pews at church. Certainly not a word to describe what awaited us.

The bell pinged only once when the three men left. It suddenly sounded cold and unwelcoming.

Papa locked the door behind them, even though there was no point in it. Outside the shop, people began gathering despite the stormy weather.

Mrs. McNary stared through the open door of her bakery as it exhaled sweet aromas. The butcher across the street suddenly took great interest in futilely sweeping water from his sidewalk in the teeming rain. A girl I sat next to in school every day looked away when our eyes met.

On the second day, notices appeared nailed to telephone poles. All persons of Japanese ancestry... - those words hollowed me out more than anything else.

Not citizens. Not Americans.

Ancestry. As though blood itself had committed this unimaginable crime.

No customers came after the three men. Very few food reserves were left anyway. Milk spoiled in the icebox. The pears browned in the front window.

The city carried on around us as though we were invisible. Doors slammed shut when we approached. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Newspapers screamed words like enemy, threat, and disloyalty.

On the last day, Papa sold the shop for a pittance to a heavy-set man who reeked of cheap cigar smoke and impatience. He kept assuring us this was “the best arrangement possible given your situation.” There was no time to untangle our situation before we were herded off into an unknown future.

I watched Papa hand over the keys. The metal rested in his palm for one long moment before dropping into the stranger’s pudgy hand. The sound they made haunted me more than the government notices did. A tiny metallic kiss goodbye. Ping. Like, home leaving home.

At the train depot, guards directed us into lines. Suitcases bumped against knees. Babies cried. Steam from the train curled through the cold morning air. A young woman carried a bird cage, without the bird. An elderly man held only books. Mama wore her best coat as though dignity might still matter where we were going. People brought all the wrong things because nobody knew how to prepare for stolen lives.

That was when I first noticed her.

A silver-haired woman sat alone on a bench near the tracks; her hands folded atop a cane polished smooth with age. Her wiry hair was pinned carefully beneath a hat too elegant for the circumstances. She saw me staring at her cane.

“Hickory,” she said. “Strong enough to survive fools.” Her voice held amusement.

I almost smiled. “I’m Hideo,” I said awkwardly.

“I know,” she replied. “Your mama has yelled your name ten times in the last hour.”

I looked toward Mama, who indeed kept scanning crowds for me every few moments as though afraid I might disappear.

"Nice to meet you, Hideo. I’m Mrs. Sato.”

The train arrived shrieking metal against metal. Inside, the seats smelled of stale smoke and musty rags. Windows fogged with breath. Nobody spoke much. The rhythm of the tracks swallowed conversations whole.

Mrs. Sato sat nearby, knitting something shapeless from beige yarn.

“You should sleep, Hideo,” Mama whispered.

“I can’t.”

“Neither can anyone else,” Mrs. Sato said. “That’s why trains were invented. To give worry somewhere to travel.”

Mama looked at her disapprovingly. I didn’t understand why.

Days later, the desert appeared outside the train windows. Flat land stretched forever beneath a white sky. The camp held thick, cloying dust - it got in our hair, behind our teeth. Then came the stench of manure, quickly followed by fear.

Long black dilapidated buildings crouched beneath guard towers. Barbed wire glittered in sunlight like fishing line. Children cried from hunger. Somewhere nearby, a baby coughed continuously. An armed guard directed us toward our assigned block.

Inside the barracks, the residue of rusted nails hung heavy in the air. Thin mattresses coated in dirt lay atop flimsy metal frames. Mrs. Sato lowered herself carefully onto one of the beds.

“Well,” she sighed, “I’ve certainly slept in worse places.”

Mama laughed despite herself.

That was Mrs. Sato's gift. She bent misery slightly sideways so people could have an ounce of hope.

By day, after menial labor, food arrived on dented tin trays: watery stew, canned peaches, rice cooked into glue. Mama complained that the coffee tasted burnt. At night, cold wind gusts screamed across the desert hard enough to shake walls and push through whatever fit between the cracks.

Papa grew quieter by the day. Sometimes I caught him staring at his hands for long stretches, as though unsure where they belonged. One evening, I found him sitting outside the barracks watching a bruised sunset bleed across the desert sky.

“I should have protected it,” he said bitterly.

“The shop?”

“What was rightfully ours.”

I didn’t know how to respond.

Mrs. Sato appeared beside us, carrying three tin cups of weak tea.

“When I was a girl,” she said, settling herself carefully onto the barracks' steps, “my father lost his fishing boat in a storm off the Noto Peninsula.”

Neither of us spoke.

“He brooded in silence for weeks afterward. Then one morning, he stood up and planted tomatoes.”

Papa frowned. “Tomatoes?”

“He said grief is a terrible gardener. If you leave it alone too long, it grows wild.”

Steam curled from her cup into the cooling evening air.

“He never rebuilt the boat,” she continued. “But those carefully tended tomatoes were delicious. He’d reclaimed something else worthwhile.”

For the first time since the men had arrived, Papa smiled. Only briefly. But it was there.

Life inside the camp settled into strange routines. Laundry snapped in the desert wind. Men huddled, sharing cigarettes and secrets. Women swept dust from floors that would never stay clean. Children played with discarded cans because there was little else to occupy their imagination.

One afternoon, a group of boys argued beside the barracks, playing a game in the dirt.

“Marbles roll, pebbles don't; it’s not fair,” one boy muttered.

“No, it ain’t fair,” another boy agreed.

“So what?” an older boy said, angrily kicking the pebbles out of the dusty circle.

Mrs. Sato watched quietly from the steps, knitting needles resting idle in her lap. For weeks, she had been working carefully with the same beige yarn she’d carried onto the train. The skein had grown smaller each day until only a loose handful remained.

That evening, she called the children over.

“I have something for you.”

They approached cautiously.

Mrs. Sato held out a tightly wound ball of yarn no larger than an apple. She had woven it, layer upon layer, until it sat, surprisingly round and dense, in her weathered palm.

One of the boys blinked. “That's a ball?”

“A terrible one,” she agreed. “But I bet if Joltin' Joe DiMaggio were here, he wouldn’t complain.”

The kids crowded closer.

She turned the solid yarn ball over a few times before placing it into the smallest boy’s hands as gently as though she were returning something sacred to the earth. Then, she handed her hickory cane to the oldest boy.

“The cane will outlive me. But that ball won’t last forever,” she warned.

“Neither will we,” a girl said solemnly.

Mrs. Sato grinned. “Exactly why you should quit your bellyaching and have some fun while you still can.”

That night, the children played baseball beneath the tower’s lights. Laughter rose into the desert darkness, sharp as the stars. The yarn ball sailed from the cane, back and forth through the dust while guards watched and cheered from above, rifles hanging uselessly at their sides. For a few hours, the fence seemed to disappear entirely.

Mrs. Sato and I sat side by side quietly observing. She finally spoke.

“You know what freedom is, Hideo?”

I thought of trains, locked gates, and guards with rifles.

“No,” I admitted.

She pointed beyond the fencing where mountains floated blue against the horizon.

“Freedom is remembering who you are even when they insist you are something else.”

As the wind lifted silver strands of her hair, she sighed. “They can take your shop. They can take your home. Even your name if you let them. But there is one thing people surrender long before it can be stolen.”

“What’s that?”

She turned to face me. “The belief that they belong to themselves.”

I didn’t understand.

The following December, snow fell unexpectedly across the desert. Children ran joyously between the barracks while white powder softened the ugliness of everything for a few precious days.

Mrs. Sato stood beside me, momentarily looking towards the grey sky as snow settled into the deep lines on her face. She laughed aloud for the first time since we’d met. Her attention turned to the snow melting along the barbed wire.

"Such a beautiful sight,” she murmured.

I stared at the fence. “I don’t understand.”

“Mother nature doesn’t care about fences or bloodlines," she said.

More than a year later, when our release finally came, nobody celebrated the way I imagined they would. Freedom had changed shape too many times by then. We boarded the train carrying the same downtrodden families and their battered suitcases back to the coast. I never saw Mrs. Sato again, but I would never forget her.

When we eventually arrived at what had once been our home for decades, we’d become unwelcome strangers.

That day, it was raining as if it had never stopped in all that time. Our shop was gone. In its place, a shiny hardware store stood. The windows displayed hammers where hand-polished pears once gleaned.

Papa stared at his reflection in the glass for a long time. I imagined he saw himself back in the shop that he and his papa had built with their bare hands. He swiped tears away as if sorrow was an annoyance.

Then he bent down and reached deep inside the gutter where water poured forth from the hardware store's roof. He removed something he had somehow hidden all those months ago.

He turned to me. “I am proud of you, Hideo.”

Holding the item tightly in his dripping palm, he took my hands in his. He slipped the once-shiny bell into them. I felt a lump rise in my throat like yeast, but swallowed it down as I closed my fingers around it.

“You have the strong hands of a man, like Jiiji,” Papa said.

The rusted bell gave a faint ping against my palm, and this time, I finally understood.