Thin Wood Walls by David Patneaude

Author:David Patneaude [Patneaude, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Eleven

We settled into a routine. The days passed, slowly at first and then in a blur of sameness. Letters came from New Mexico, from Dad. He didn't say much, but what he didn't say told us a lot. My imagination filled in the unsaid, the cut out, the inked over. My imagination gave me words and images and restless nights.

August swept by, September arrived. School started. As far as I knew, our teacher, Mr. Moffitt, didn't rise up out of the cemetery every morning. He didn't come to school wrapped in strips of cloth. He was livelier and less scary than a mummy. But he did his job blank-eyed, handing out assignments without a smile. At the end of the first week, he still hadn't called anyone by name.

"You," he said one day, looking in my direction. "Give me the subject and predicate of the sentence I've written on the board."

"Me?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "You. The one with the window-shade eyes." Then he smiled for the first time. His teeth were yellow from the cigarettes he chain-smoked. "Forgive me," he said. "You all have window-shade eyes, don't you."

I knew his subject and predicate, but I couldn't answer. The room went silent. I sat, a mummy, longing to be back in Mrs. Lynden's classroom. "I don't know," I said finally.

I decided Mr. Moffitt had probably learned how to be a teacher from one of those matchbook-cover colleges. I wasn't sure where he'd learned to be a person. I didn't look forward to seeing him every day. But school—doing the work—was okay. At home we'd had chores and jobs. At Tule Lake there were no jobs for us, and at first that seemed like a gift. But it got boring in a hurry. The adults at least had a chance to work, either in the camp or on the farms. Mom took a job as a cook in one of the mess halls.

Mike's second week at the high school, he brought home a piece of paper he'd decorated with rows of letters and numbers inside little circles. I asked him what it was.

"Mrs. Watanabe had us draw these," he said. "So we can practice typing."

"On a piece of paper?"

"There aren't any typewriters," he said. "And she can't afford to buy even one. They barely pay the Japanese American teachers."

Mom examined Mike's drawing. She lay it down and let her fingers play over the pretend keys. "Quiet, at least," she said.

"Shameful," Grandmother said.

"Tomorrow we learn how to write with imaginary chalk," Mike said.

The harvest had been coming in since we'd arrived, and now it was at its height, yet we kids weren't allowed to work the fields, even to pick our own food. But one day after school, Sandy came to our barracks driving one of the old farm trucks.

"You and Mike want to go out to the farms, Mr. Twain?" he said.

I couldn't believe it. I said yes, Mike said yes, Mom gave her approval. Grandmother looked worried but nodded. I asked Sandy if Mae could go.

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