Terrence
April 12, 1942
Sunday. Pot roast for supper. About this time, Missy and Patty would be jabbering at each other across the table like nobody else in the world existed. And afterwards, Terrence would wish he’d done his homework on Saturday, ’cause he sure wasn’t gonna feel like doing it after pot roast.
He opened his eyes, and Sunday at home disappeared. Now it was Sunday in a cell of four dirty walls, scarred by a thousand hands with nothing better to do. The stench of body odor and piss. Hacking coughs made him shudder like nails on a chalkboard.
A tiny window near the ceiling shed dim light into the cell. Must be cloudy outside.
“Hey, you. Time to get up. Lunch.” The guard opened a slot in the door and waited for Terrence to take the tray.
He took it, more grateful for the break from boredom than for the lousy food. Peanut butter sandwich. Some kind of soup. Lukewarm, like usual. Sure didn’t match up to the supper he’d been thinking about. Maybe Momma would bring him something when she came to visit later. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t very hungry anyways, what with the queasiness stirred up by all this wondering about what might happen in court tomorrow. He set the tray aside and leaned his head against the wall.
Maybe he deserved to be punished—spend the rest of his days in jail. He’d helped take a man’s life, after all.
But he also figured he deserved a second chance. He knew he’d made a mistake. A big one. One he’d regret for the rest of his life. Judge had to see it. Had to see that he wasn’t a bad kid. Jail or no jail, he’d pay for what he did for the rest of his life.
Damn! He had to stop thinking about it. It was driving him crazy. Like a pendulum, swinging back and forth. Swinging forward—the judge had to see he wasn’t like Ray and Joe, that he’d made a mistake he was sorry for. Swinging back—the judge wouldn’t see it, and he’d go to jail for the rest of his life. All for a mistake that didn’t do anything to take away the loss of his daddy. The pendulum cut.
He took a bite from the sandwich. Rancid. Dry and sticky in his mouth. A sip of soup to wash it down. Yeah, cold all right.
A prisoner across the hall threw his soup cup out of his cell. It clanked against the hard floor. “This stuff is shit,” he yelled. “Why don’t you heat it up!”
Sympathetic voices echoed through the jail.
He wondered about Nobu and his little sister. So often he heard her in the darkness of night, when her cries surrounded him like a whole other prison. He’d overheard two guards talking the other day, something about rounding up all the Japs.
Rounding them up for what? What’s that all about?
He thought about his high school baseball team—the Yellowjackets. In their junior year, he and Nobu had played for the division championship. Bottom of the ninth. Yellowjackets–4, Indians–3. Indian runners on first and third. Terrence played on second base and Nobu played on first. One out. Full count—three balls, two strikes. The pitcher threw a hard slider. The batter swung. It was a grounder straight to Terrence on second base. He dove for it. Grabbed it. Tagged the kid running to second. Threw the ball to Nobu on first. He caught it. Batter out! A double play and they’d won! Man, they’d won the division championship.
The crowd in the stands went crazy. Nobu ran to Terrence, pumping his arms in victory, while the Yellowjacket band blasted the school’s fight song. The rest of the team rushed out of the dugout toward the two team members who had saved the day. Terrence smiled. That day, everyone cheered in the stands. Skin color hadn’t mattered none.
“You got a visitor.” With the guard’s words he came crashing back to his cell.
Momma stood behind the guard as he fiddled with the lock, and hunkered down as if she was looking to hide from the yelling and whooping. Terrence knew she didn’t like being in there. He’d even told her not to come. But there was no way she was going to listen to his nonsense.
“Don’t be silly, boy. ’Course I’m gonna come see you. You my baby boy,” she’d said.
He had shuddered. “Momma. Shhh! You can’t be saying those kinda things in this place.”
She walked into the small cell, wearing her flowered church dress and smelling like lilacs. She held a brown bag, one hand on top, the other below for support.
“How you doing, son?”
“Doing okay, Momma. Just a little worried about what the judge’ll say tomorrow.”
“I know. But remember what I told you. We got to leave it in God’s hands.” She gave him the bag. “Here you go. Maybe this’ll help take your mind off your troubles.”
The brown paper rustled when he opened it, and the smell of pot roast burst forth. He inhaled. “Ah, Momma. How’d you know?”
“Your favorite, right? Mommas just know these things.”
“I didn’t think I was hungry,” he said, pushing his peanut butter sandwich away. “But all of a sudden, I’m starving.”
“Well, dig in.”
He pulled out a large covered bowl. “You want some?”
“No. It’s all yours. I already ate with Missy and Patty.”
“How’re they doing? Never thought I’d say it, but I miss those two.”
“They good. Missing you, too. Patty won her fifth-grade spelling bee this past week. We pretty proud about that.”
Steam rose from a large chunk of meat on his fork before he put it in his mouth. His stomach growled in anticipation. He chewed the tender meat, and gravy—seasoned just right—spread over his tongue.
Momma watched him, a pleased look on her face.
He rubbed his stomach. “Mmm-mmm. That was so good.”
“Glad you liked it, son.”
An awkward silence followed. Terrence avoided his mother’s eyes, gazing instead at the scribbles scratched into the wall. Stick tallies of days gone by. Stick figures making out with “Larry loves Lucille” carved below it. He’d stared at the scratches a million times before—nothing else to do in this cell.
“What you thinking about, son?”
How’d she always know when he had something on his mind? He stared at his empty bowl, stalling.
“Talk to your momma,” she said.
“I heard a couple of guards talking the other day.” He still hesitated. Maybe he didn’t really want to know the answer. Or maybe he didn’t want to raise the subject with Momma. She had enough on her mind. Whatever it was, something kept the words locked inside.
“What was they talking about?”
He inhaled deep. “Something about … rounding up all the Japanese. You heard anything about that?”
She looked away.
“Momma?”
“It’s true, Terrence.”
“Why? And what’s happened to the Kimura family?”
“Official word is that it’s for they own protection. But the talk ’round town is that they afraid them Japanese are gonna spy on us. You know, after Pearl Harbor.”
“And the Kimura family?”
She touched her necklace and moved the gold cross back and forth along its chain. “Now I’m not sure about this … but … I heard they been moved to one of them assembly center places. Tanforan Racetrack, I think. Anyways, I drove by they house and it’s empty.”
The pot roast felt heavy in his gut. His head hurt, full of churning thoughts. Nobu. His family. Sent away because they’re Japanese. Just like that day with Daddy in the hardware store. Denied service ’cause Daddy was the same color as the man that robbed the store.
And he’d beat up Mr. Kimura ’cause he looked like the Japs that killed Daddy. Hell, that made him no better than the rest of them.