The sixth grade had finally come to a close. Actually, the year hadn’t been too long or hard. The last day dragged by so slowly. Yet here it was, the end of the year, and it seemed it had all passed by in the wink of an eye. Ellen went to the end-of-the-year pool party that afternoon. The whole class was there. Twelve of the twenty-seven were leaving for other junior high schools. Ellen was staying, since she’d only been accepted to one school and she didn’t really like it. That night she lay in bed thinking about all the people who would be gone next year, and about those staying. Most of the girls leaving had been mean to her and all year she’d been happy that they wouldn’t be returning in the fall. But now she would only remember all the nice things they’d done, the funny things they’d said, and how they had changed since she met them all six years ago. Now they really felt like her family, and any past resentment drifted away. She would never see almost half of her family again. Ellen rubbed her eyes to stop the tears, but her breath was already coming up shorter so she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the crying fit in store for her. Trying to console herself, she thought of all the people staying. Most of them were her friends, but could she really call them that anymore? They had changed so much this year; they became interested in boys and makeovers and pop singers, and Laura had started dating. Ellen recalled that in fifth grade she had always felt a little uncomfortable because she and her friends were such geeks. She had thought that it was they who were keeping her from becoming cool. Yet now, she was a little girl playing with toy horses, and they were out at the mall. Now she started to cry. Whimpers and snuffles and tears grew into uncontrollable wailing until her mother came in and threw her arms around her. Ellen knew her mother understood so she made no effort to speak. She just cried and cried in her mother’s embrace till her tears would come no more. And she slept. Ellen knew her mother understood so she made no effort to speak At about one in the morning, she reawoke. Her thoughts were muddled now. She had dreamed of the first day in seventh grade. The dream began in her home. Ellen watched herself eat, dress, and walk out the door. She got on the bus, the only girl left from her grade, and rode to school. When she entered her classroom, the teacher yelled at her for being late. Her friends, Laura and Cordy, were talking about all the boys they went out with over the summer. They didn’t even acknowledge her presence. She ran to her old sixth-grade classroom. No one was there. There were just rows and rows of empty desks. She saw her own from when she’d sat in it last year. The seventh-grade teacher strode in and yelled to her to get back in her classroom. Then she woke up. Trying to figure the dream out, she finally concluded that it was best to forget it and begin her summer. She picked up a book to read until it was lights out. She turned on the lamp and saw which book she had picked out. It was her class yearbook. Each page of pictures brought another memory to her head. Her first day of school, her first bus ride, her first sleepover. Her friends had been there for each of these. They wouldn’t desert her because they were changing and she wasn’t, Ellen realized. She could always hang out with them. Half of her thoughts were released now, but she still worried about all those people leaving. Would she ever see them again? she wondered. With a sigh she turned off the lamp and went back to sleep. Her father woke her up late in the morning and handed her a list of chores. “This is stuff to do so we can go to the Cape today,” he said. Ellen looked it over. “Mostly packing,” he said, “and if you get it done quick maybe you can invite a friend down with us.” Ellen’s eyes lit up. She could invite someone who was leaving for a different school! That way it wouldn’t feel as difficult not seeing her in seventh grade. Ellen hurried through the packing and called Lizzie. She was the nicest of the girls leaving. An answering machine clicked on. Ellen hung up and tried Sarah. She had other plans. Ellen called every girl leaving that she wouldn’t mind having a sleepover with, and none of them could come. She decided then that what she’d feared had come true. Those girls had all moved on and were trying to forget middle school. And so must she. Ellen decided that the only way to move out of the past was to focus on the future. Next year Laura and Cordy would be there, so she had to think about her friendship with them. She called up Cordy. “Hi, this is Ellen. Um . . . we’re going to the Cape this weekend. Wanna come?” Cordy accepted. The weekend was fantastic. She played games with Cordy that she had been longing to play all year, like tag and hide-and-seek, games that Laura had deemed “uncool.” And on their way back home, they passed a big green van. Inside sat Ann and Abbie, two of the girls Ellen was sure she would never see again. They waved, and she waved back. There was no sting of sadness. She had simply passed by two old friends. They had moved on and she had moved on. Her family was not ripped in half and separated. She had her family always with her, in her mind, in her yearbook, and in her
January/February 2002
With Liberty and Justice for Some
“Yip!” The sharp, insistent yapping of my dog Urashima drew me sluggishly upright the day the summons came. “Yip!” “Betty,” my mother called to me from the kitchen, “quiet your dog, please!” “Yip!” I responded with an unpromising grunt, flipping the page of my book. I was engrossed in Gone With the Wind, reading it for the seventh time, and resented any distractions. “Yip!” “Betty Okubo, that means now!” I slowly sat up, dragging my feet like a run-down windup toy as I walked to the door. Pulling Ura’s collar with one hand and groping for the mail with the other, I nodded a quick apology to the postman in case my dog had disturbed him. He gave me a glare that could crush stone and hurried down the sidewalk, as if our house was liable to explode at any moment. Letting go of my terrier, I groped through the closet for the mail: a brand new Sears-Roebuck catalogue, the monthly electric bill, a notice that my library books were hereby overdue—and a printed envelope addressed to “The Okubo family.” Sucking in my breath, I opened it and prayed fervently that it didn’t hold bad news. But no notice of death, doom, or despair fell out, only a typewritten slip addressed “To whom it may concern.” I nodded a quick apology to the postman in case my dog had disturbed him I ran through the house with the force of a full elephant stampede, screaming, “Mama! Mama!” “What?” my mother asked in a tired voice as I frantically waved the paper in her face. She seized it from me and began to read, then sat down quickly as a look of shock crossed her face. “They don’t understand,” she murmured. “They will never understand.” “What is it?” I asked eagerly. Wordlessly, she passed the paper to me. I read it slowly, carefully, drinking in every dire word like forbidden fruit. 1 May 1942 To whom it may concern: All Americans of Japanese descent in Military Zone 41 must report for internment between the dates of May 1 and June 1. Please be at the First Methodist Church of Newark on May 7. You will be moved from there to an internment camp. Bring only as much as you can carry. Tardiness will not be tolerated. In a flash, everything made sense: the cold looks people had given me in the six months since Pearl Harbor; the fear in my mother’s eyes when I ventured out alone at night; the suspicious glares I received when others discussed the war; what being in “Military Zone 41” really meant, other than the fact that we were prohibited from leaving. My parents had tried to make excuses for the government: it was wartime, after all; it wasn’t just us, it was Italians and Germans as well; even though we weren’t spies, others might be. They had refused to move away before it was too late. “They just won’t understand,” Mama muttered again. I nodded in silent agreement. We were as American as the O’Neils, who lived next door, or the Smiths, who owned the local grocery. We celebrated the Fourth of July and had a picture of George Washington in our dining room. But our last name was Okubo, our hair was black and straight, and our eyes were slanted, and so we had to go. “It’s not fair!” I burst out. “We’re as American as they are!” Mama had come over from Japan when she was eight. Dad was Nisei, born here. I’d never heard of Hirohito until I saw his name in a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle. And yet we were being ordered away, just because our ancestors were Japanese. “No, it’s not fair,” Mama agreed, “but neither is life.” I scowled. My parents made me go to school the next few days, although I didn’t want to. The allures of packing won out over the drab calls to learn the history, geography, and language of a country that no longer wanted me. “Who knows when you’ll see another school,” was my father’s only comment on the topic. “Enjoy this while you can.” Every school day began with the Lord’s Prayer, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Pledge of Allegiance. I stood dutifully with my hand over my heart for the latter, but balked at the words “with liberty and justice for all.” I had just received a painful example of American liberty and justice. With that thought in mind, I closed my mouth on the last phrase. Never, I swore to myself, never again would I say those six stalwart words. Never again would I believe in liberty and justice for all. I gave tearful farewells to my friends and Ura, who had to stay behind. A less sorrowful good-bye was given to my school, which I was not overly mournful about deserting. Then, toting our three suitcases apiece, my family boarded the bus together, not knowing where we were traveling or what would happen when we reached our destination. The bus was deathly quiet except for the cries of a few babies and the mumbling of old women in Japanese. I propped Anne of Green Gables on my knee and began to read, trying to lose myself in the story as we traveled along a narrow road through a windswept desert. The camp appeared suddenly before me, its barbed-wire fences a stark reminder of our coming imprisonment. “Barbed wire, Hana?” my father asked my mother nervously. “I don’t like the look of this.” None of us did. For the first time in years, I accepted my father’s hand as we stepped off the bus. The first thing I saw was tar-paper barracks lined up in rows, as far as the eye could see. The second thing I saw was a girl about my age running breathlessly toward the slowing bus. Her black hair lay sleekly down her back and her dark eyes sparkled as she skidded to a
September 11, 2001
today is my birthday i am eight years old colored tissue and balloons then in one bright blinding moment life changes forever a thousand dreams float from the sky and scatter jigsaw over New York City Rachel Weary, 8St. Albert, Alberta, Canada
