every day she had to practise her walk, an old pair of pantyhose tied around her thighs under her skirt, binding her legs together in delicate, mincing steps.
With each step, she relived her moment of glory, or near-glory at least. Men of all ages had sat in the front rows, staring with appraising smiles at the girls. Receiving so much attention was novel and intoxicating, and she loved how it continued after the contest was over as the men lingered by the curb waiting for the convertible draped in red, white, and blue bunting to drive through Little Tokyo and part of downtown LA. The queen’s crown glittered like shattered glass as Lily sat in the back seat. First runner-up. How tantalizingly close she’d come to wearing that crown.
“Can’t I take your picture, miss?”
She shook her head, backing away as he looked inside that strange wooden box — his imaginary camera. Sweat had soaked through her dress in grey blotches, making her all too aware of the astringent smell of her own basting flesh.
“Don’t worry. I’m not working for the government. I’m not making a documentary. I just like to take pictures of beautiful things.”
“I’m not even supposed to be here.” The words flew from her lips with the authority of a headmistress, as though it were all some administrative mistake that her name had been put on the list.
“None of us are supposed to be here.”
Her cheeks on fire, she turned away. The sun beat down and she continued to walk until everything started to look the same throughout this godawful place. The tarpaper barracks went on and on, block after block. Thirty-six blocks and counting. At the southern end, she saw men — her men — swinging axes to clear the sagebrush. Their chests glistened as they worked with a force that scared her.
It was unsettling to see these once distinguished men reduced to beasts of burden. The stoic, polite behaviour, once said to elevate the Japanese above the other Oriental races, was slipping away, rapid as the windblown sand. Out here no one knew how to behave — or who they even were. Would Mrs. Sato have gotten into a screaming match with that surly Matsumoto boy in the old days? Unheard of. Would bags of sugar vanish in the night, dragged off by God knows whom? A fistful of dollars exchanged for a few burlap bags. There are bad apples here, people were whispering.
The ground began to waver and clumps of brush on the horizon reminded her of ocean waves, frozen at an instant.
The art building had to be around here somewhere, but she might have already walked past it, and dust was getting trapped in her eyes and nose and ears. It flew up her skirt, sticking to her thighs, and she couldn’t stop thinking how much she missed the ocean.
A fuzzy feeling crept into her head, a great dark pressure expanding across her brain. A wave of light-headedness, sweat dripping down her back. The wind had muted to a strange buzz and everything was moving in a kind of slow motion, like the blades of a fan in those seconds after it’s been flicked it off. Her thoughts also ran in circles…. The nerve of him — speaking to her like that. None of us are supposed to be here. She struggled to hang on; the gritty air forced its way into her lungs. She’d show him. In the next pageant, she’d walk across the stage as delicate as a little boat floating in the breeze.
The sky covered her and she fell to her knees, everything spinning, until the thud of darkness.
You dream when you faint?
Her vision was being tunnelled while everything faded to black and white, the contrast between light and dark so extreme. Yet she was still here, at camp. She knew by the sickly apple trees, gnarled as the toes of an old man. Then in a flash, like some trick of moviemaking or time-lapse photography, everything sped up and the trees were rejuvenated to a sea of cherry blossoms in full bloom, stirring her soul to life — little ballerinas.
Something was pulling under her chin, a peculiar bonnet. She was dressed like a pioneer woman, a rancher’s wife, but her husband was nowhere to be seen. She stared down the road at the Inyo Mountains, rising higher than God himself through the haze, and felt the sad presence of the Indians, who used to range across the valley, back before the Spanish ranchers kicked them out. Blood on both sides ended up soaking the sand, so the few survivors called the place Matanzas. Spanish for massacre.
Lily scanned the sand at her feet, searching for bloodstains. The wind whipped it up into her eyes as she began to wake up.
Blinking, she looked up: a stubbly chin, eyes darker than her own. In the dream state she was still slipping out of, immersing herself in the grassy, ripe odour of this stranger’s body felt oddly lulling. She settled back in the hammock of his arms, awash in a feeling she couldn’t quite place.
He carried her through a set of doors down a long white corridor and laid her down on a bed covered in fresh white sheets, the freshest she’d had in months. An artificial meadow smell, intoxicating and familiar. Everything about the room looked very clean and impressive, like the walls were glowing with a fierce white aura.
“She fainted,” the guy said.
A stout, iron-haired nurse rushed over with a basin. She began pouring cool water over Lily’s wrists.
Now, as he backed away, Lily could see him better: a tall, lanky fellow, perhaps a couple years older than she, twenty maybe. He seemed uncomfortable, hands jammed in his back pockets.
The doctor came over. A small, lithe man with cheeks smooth as pebbles, his lab coat blindingly white. Dr. Takemitsu. Seeing him from a distance, Lily had assumed he was in his forties, but up close there was something younger looking — ageless almost — about his glowing skin, his serious, all-seeing eyes. A hush fell over her stomach. This was her first time in a doctor’s office; there were very few doctors in the Japanese-American community. Whenever their wives used to come to the shop, her father’s face would light up and he’d give them special treatment, discounting prices, expediting orders. It was more than just the fact that these men were leaders in the community. They were touched by some mysterious, near magical power, holding the health and future of the entire community in their ivory-smooth hands.
“What happened?” Dr. Takemitsu said.
“Girl got too much sun, I guess. I dunno.”
“You were following her? Kaz has nothing better to do than chase skirt all day.”
“Hey. I was out walking. I happened to see her collapse, so I went over. Okay, Dad?”
“Well, she’s lucky he was following her,” the nurse said. “Otherwise, she’d still be slumped in the sand.”
So his name was Kaz, and he was the doctor’s son? Really? His sloppy clothes, his scowling expression…. He wasn’t one of the guys she’d seen flipping and swinging girls across the dance floor at the mixers the JACC organized in tinsel-clad mess halls. He wasn’t blowing his brass like some would-be Benny Goodman in the bands that everyone and his brother had joined to pass the time.
But upon closer examination, Lily wondered if there wasn’t something a bit too clean-shaven about this Kaz fellow, after all. She looked at his smooth, slender hands, and those weren’t the fingers of someone used to digging through soil. The soft-gelled wave of his hair appeared at odds with the country-boy image he seemed to be cultivating. The crumpled bandanna around his neck suddenly looked no more real than a costume for a school play, the slight grime on his cheeks like stage makeup.
Kaz. The name had an appealing intensity. Her admirer, her rescuer…. In a flash he’d been redeemed: transformed from some lunatic
