Mrs. Hicks said I don’t care where that dirty Jap goes. Her people are the cause of all this. My husband could be killed. Make her go or I will shoot her.
Mama did not know what to say. She made her lips move like she was going to speak but no words came out of her mouth. Then there was a loud explosion outside. It rattled all the walls of the house. Mrs. Hicks went over to the window. We all went to the window though Mama said we should not. The eucaliptis trees were on fire and the big pineapple field down the road. Mrs. Hicks said We cannot stay here. It isn’t safe because they will come here. A man’s voice came on the radio. He said that all doctors and nurses and defense workers should report for emergency duty. He said that Hawaii was under attack by the Japanese nation. Mrs. Hicks talked to the man on the radio. She said to the man Tell me something I don’t know. Mrs. Hicks said Let’s go. But Mama says Where do we go?? Then Mrs. Hicks said There are some caves in the hills we’ll go to them. Mama says to Mrs. Hicks Jeff wants us to stay here. Mrs. Hicks says Frieda you are a fool. Please listen to reason. But Mama just kept shaking her head.
Mrs. Hicks said that Fumiyo will slit our throats as soon as she gets the chance. She will slit our throats in our sleep. Jeffie started to cry again. And I started crying I was so scared. Fuyimo looked very scared too. Mama pointed to the door and said Get out of here Mabel!! Mrs. Hicks said You should at least keep this gun. There will be a time when you may have to use it. Then Mrs. Hicks said in a quiet voice I mean use it on yourself and the children.
Mama gave Mrs. Hicks a look I have never seen before. It was a face like you make when you smell something very bad. I thought that it was the smell of the throw up that was making mama look that way. But then I figured it out. It was the way that Mama felt about Mrs. Hicks. It was because she was scaring us so bad. It was the things she was saying about Fumiyo.
I looked at Fumiyo. There was water going down her leg. I liked Fumiyo. She made puppets for Jeffie and me when she wasn’t working and let me wear her kimono to see what it felt like. It is very pretty and has very big arms. Now Fumiyo was wearing her sleeping kimono but it was all wet from pee pee. Mrs. Hicks left. She took her gun. We all sat down on floor and listened to the sound of the planes and the guns. The radio went dead. It got quiet for a while outside but then the planes came back and started to drop their bombs again. Mama had her arms around Jeffie and me. Fumiyo was sitting next to me but she wasn’t sitting very close. Finally the planes went away and Mama told Fumiyo to go and get herself cleaned up.
Later a truck came down the street it had a loudspeaker telling people to go the YMCA or the college. Fumiyo looked at Mama. She said I go too? You go too said Mama. Mrs. Hicks is a nincompoop. These are men who bombed us. You are a girl. You are not the cause of this. Mama held Fumiyo’s hand. Fumiyo was shaking.
We went to the YMCA. There were other families there. There were other Japanese cooks and maids and gardeners there. They were part of the families too. The bad things that were happening were not their doing Mama said looking around. But some people gave the Japanese people bad looks. Mama says this will be the way it will be until the war is over. She said for me to be extra nice to Fumiyo. I made her a necklace made of pretty ribbons that a nice lady gave me to play with. Fumiyo cried when she put on the necklace.
This was written all by me Lisa Chapman but my mother made the words spell right.
1942 CERULEAN IN WISCONSIN
That first morning, the two men went deep into the forest. Wheaton’s father-in-law, Vester, took him into a new-growth stand planted a few years earlier by the Civilian Conservation Corps. “Most of our forest primeval was logged right out of existence,” Vester explained. “There’s good and bad to that, I suppose. We’ve got some beautiful young maples and paper birches down this path.”
Where Vester discerned a path, Wheaton saw nothing so distinguishable in the cluttered carpet of leaf and branch beneath his feet. “The muskeg where Dack got himself trapped when he was about twelve — I’m sure you’ve heard the story — it’s a mile or so in that direction. I’ll take you there on our loop back. It’s an unearthly, diabolical place. The ground is like sponge cake, except where there’s water underneath. Then the earth seems to ripple like something vital and alive. The Chequamegon Forest is a smorgasbord of anomalies of nature. Fascinating. Makes me sometimes regret going into the paper business instead of natural sciences.”
Vester Ostrum was in his late fifties; his son-in-law, Wheaton, in his early forties. Wheaton was too old for the draft but wouldn’t have been able to serve anyway. As a teenager, his arm had been crushed in an automobile accident. Wheaton was a quiet man. He preferred to listen to his father-in-law and comment only with a smile or a comprehending nod, or the occasional “you don’t say.”
Vester settled himself down on a mossy nurse log to catch his breath. “I get winded romping through these old woods,” he wheezed. “Not a kid anymore. And the two packs of Lucky Strikes a day don’t help much.”
Vester lit up.
Wheaton nodded as he pulled out his own box of Camels for a smoke.
As Vester was giving his son-in-law a light he said, “I can’t thank you and Monica enough for coming up here. I noticed you got a B sticker on your car. You can get yourself all the way up here and back on just an eight-gallon allotment?”
Wheaton shook his head. “But I figured we’d be here at least a week, so that’s another eight gallons to send us back to Appleton.”
“Whichever of those dry-as-dust grammar schoolteachers of mine said I’d need all that arithmetic in my later years, I’d like to give her the gold star. With every goddamned fill-up at Drummond’s pump down the road, I’ve got to calculate everything I’ve got to do and how many gallons it’s gonna take to do it. And it’s hardly a fair arrangement. The OPA ought to give a little special consideration to those of us who have to drive twenty-five miles just to buy our weekly groceries.”
Wheaton nodded.
“You haven’t asked about Ann,” said Vester.
“Monica told me some things.”
“Did Monica, when she had your two — did she get that way?”
Wheaton shook her head. “She lost a little sleep there in those first few months. We both did. It made us both a little, you know, cranky, but it wasn’t anything like what Ann’s been going through.”
“I still think it’s because Dack hasn’t been here. Christ, think of it: my boy’s got a two-month-old boy of his own he’s never even seen. It’s a hard thing for a woman to have a baby when her husband’s off at war. And I’m no good — an ornery old coot like me. More like a Dutch uncle to the poor girl than a proper father-in-law.”
“It’s good that Monica and Ann are getting to spend some time together.”
“It’s a Godsend, really. Especially after what happened last week.”
Ann and her sister-in-law Monica sat at the kitchen table drinking lemonade. The weather had turned warm (about as warm as it generally got in woodsy northern Wisconsin), and the screen door was letting in a nice breeze. It fluttered the pages of the Flambeau Paper Company’s 1942 calendar pinned to the wall next to the icebox. Ann’s father-in-law Vester worked at Flambeau as a bleaching engineer. Ann hoped that her husband Dack’s job as pipe fitter at the mill would still be waiting for him when he got back from Europe at the end of the war.