In the third week of February, on a Tuesday, I was in town to pick up grocery rations for my mother and noticed something was wrong. The Japanese-Canadian families were especially tense and purposeful. They were behaving oddly. Mrs Kadonaga loaded her chickens into a crate and stacked them onto the back of Mr Aitken’s truck to give them away. Mr Teremura gave Mrs Jones a wagon full of her family’s dishes and linens. The Sumi family had nailed boards over the windows.
Something was definitely wrong, so I ran the rest of the way to the house and burst open the front door. My father sat, hunched at the kitchen table, staring down into a cup of tea with the radio on in the background. Patch sat in the corner with his ears pressed to his head as if he could sense the gravity of the mood. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked my father.
‘The evacuation orders were published by the government today. All of the Japanese Canadians need to leave the coastal areas on April twenty-first.’
‘To where?’
‘Somewhere outside the one-hundred-mile protection zone.’ He shook his head apologetically. ‘Sorry, son, that’s all I know.’
Distraught, I sprinted all the way to Chidori’s house. A thin plume of smoke rose from the chimneys and the Cadillac was parked next to the truck. Kenji was next to the greenhouses, digging a hole for a large brown trunk that had fine china and crystal packed in it. Tosh stood in front of a huge bonfire, throwing books into it and watching the flames flare up. He was eerily expressionless.
I leapt onto the porch and pounded on the door. Chidori’s grandmother answered and bowed. ‘Hayden-san. Come.’ She turned, walked down the hall, and pointed up the staircase. ‘Chidori. Go.’ She bowed again and walked away.
It seemed like she wanted me to go upstairs, but if Chidori’s father found out, I would get my hide tanned.
Her grandmother poked her head back into the hall and gestured with her frail hand towards the stairs. ‘Go, go. Hayden-san.’
I climbed the stairs, trying not to make them creak. The first room on the right was Kenji’s. His Asahi baseball cap hung on the hook. The room on the left was nearly empty, except for the bed and a desk. Presumably Tosh’s, since he was burning all his belongings out back. Chidori’s door was closed. I inhaled and knocked softly. Nobody answered. I knocked again, then placed my hand around the clear glass knob and opened the door a crack to tilt my head in.
Lace curtains floated in the breeze with a faint hint of lavender. A floral quilt with neatly folded corners covered the bed. The pillows were cased in white cotton and decorated with pink satin ribbons. The diary I had given her for Christmas was open on the bedside table next to a silver-handled brush and hand mirror. On the wall above the bed hung framed watercolours of ballerinas, and the ones hung above the dressing table were of birds.
I opened the door wider. Chidori lay on the far side of the room, curled up on the wood floor next to the bed, hugging her knees into her chest as if she had been beaten.
‘Chi,’ I whispered.
The sound of my voice caused her eyes to clench shut. She covered her face with her hands, ashamed to be seen in a broken-down state.
I eased across the room and crouched down to lift her off the floor. She was light, like a bird, and barely made a dent as I placed her on the bed. ‘It’s going to be okay. I’ll figure something out.’ I slid down onto the mattress next to her and wrapped my arms around her trembling body.
She buried her face against my chest and her breath sounded as if she wanted to cry, but no tears came out.
‘It’s okay to cry,’ I whispered and stroked her hair.
‘No. They win if they know they hurt me.’
‘They only win if they break you. Don’t ever let them break you.’
Her fingers clutched the fabric of my shirt as if they couldn’t bear the thought of letting go. ‘I don’t know how to do that. I’m already cracking.’
‘As long as we always love each other, they can never break either of us. Always remember our love is stronger than anything they can put us through. Okay?’
She lifted her chin and stared into my eyes. ‘What if I never see you again?’
My throat jammed with a ball of emotion that felt impossible-to-swallow. I held her tighter and rested my cheek on top of her head. I didn’t know how I was going to prevent that from happening but what I did know was I would die trying. There was no point to anything if it wasn’t for her.
We remained in an embrace until it grew dark and she eventually fell asleep. The sound of her breathing was peaceful, and if I hadn’t seen her distressed face earlier, I would have assumed she was serenely dreaming. I wanted to stay, but it was getting late and improper for me to be in her bedroom. I carefully slid off the bed, placed a blanket over her, and tiptoed back downstairs.
Mr Setoguchi was reading in his chair in the living room. Our eyes met. My breath stopped moving in and out as he stared at me. When he finally focused back down at the book in his hand, without any comment about my presence, I made my exit.