We Are Not Free by Traci Chee

Author:Traci Chee [Traci Chee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358330004
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2020-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Dad and I fight all the time now. It always starts out quiet: Dad hissing at me for stomping around the apartment, for not tucking in the corners of my sheets. Because God forbid any of our nosy neighbors hear that Katsumoto-san’s daughter doesn’t make her bed properly.

But it doesn’t take long for things to escalate to Dad snapping at me for not helping around the barrack enough. I should be sweeping the floor. I should be doing the laundry. I should be giving my mother a break.

“You made me go to Japanese school, remember?” I grumble. “What’s your excuse?”

Dad’s face contorts into something ugly and mean. Here it comes.

“I am the head of this family!” he roars. “You will listen to me when I—”

What about Stan? I want to say. I don’t see you yelling at him.

But I shut my mouth. Let Dad yell.

I don’t know what Stan does—I don’t even know where he is right now—but he doesn’t have a job either, because the WRA cut back on jobs to save money, and Dad’s not always harping at him about refilling the kettle or mopping the floors or whatever.

Since we’ve come to Tule Lake, no one’s been able to find work. Mom should be working in the mess hall, because the food they serve stinks, literally, and there’s hardly any rice because one of the cooks is stealing it for his sake still, but the old Tuleans have all the good jobs, and with the work shortage, there’s no way they’re giving them up to us.

“—if you don’t change your attitude—” Dad’s still shouting. He slams his fist on the table. Something something. “—intolerable—” Something something. “—ungrateful—”

I throw down the coal bucket. Grateful? There’s a leak in the ceiling, and we have to put a cup under it to collect the water when it rains. For this?

He’s still yelling at me as I jam my arms into my coat and my feet into my shoes and storm out the door. Surreptitiously, our neighbors peer through their windows. They want to see Katsumoto-san’s ungrateful daughter, I guess. But I’m too mad to care, and soon I’m too far away for them to spy on me anymore.

Outside, the camp is gray. Everything is gray here. The gunmetal gray of the tanks. The gray of the silt from the old shallow lakebed where the camp now stands. The gray of smoke from the coal stoves. Primitive street lamps buzz and flicker from their brackets on the sides of the barracks, illuminating gray streets and gray walls and nothing else.

In San Francisco, you’d be able to see every street lit up like it was Christmas, crossing signals flashing red and yellow and green, windows glowing with life from within. There’d be the sounds of cable-car bells, the foghorns in the distance, people yelling and moaning and listening to Your Hit Parade.

Here, there’s nothing. Because we’re nothing, I think.

Bang. Somewhere nearby, there’s a sound like something dull striking something hard. Like a fist against a door, maybe.

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