Ma was seated at the kitchen table, staring at her teacup as Lacey and I stumbled in from sleeping outside. I always knew the dog’s name, but I hadn’t wanted to get too fond of her. After she spent the entire night at my side, I had to admit she had at least earned the right to be called by her name. There were tears in Ma’s eyes when she glanced at me. ‘Hayden, what are you doing to yourself?’
‘Nothing. I’m fine.’ I clutched the back of the chair to steady my balance.
‘You won’t be able to work at the mill for Joey’s father if you keep yourself in this state.’
‘I’ll be fine. No need to worry.’
She fidgeted with the needlepoint tablecloth, visibly troubled. ‘I saw that peculiar mute girl sitting with you last night. She isn’t bothering you, is she?’
‘Mute?’ I chuckled at the irony.
‘The little Jewish orphan the Maiers are fostering. Margie or something. Wasn’t that her?’
I nodded, confused. ‘Mute?’
‘She hasn’t spoken since she witnessed her parents being killed during a bomb raid in London.’ Ma’s face contorted into an odd expression. ‘You were sitting with her for nearly an hour. Did you not notice that the poor child does not speak?’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘No. I have definitely not noticed that the poor child does not speak.’
‘Hayden, I can’t bear to watch you do the same thing to yourself that Rosalyn did. There is a church social Friday night. You can see some of your old friends and maybe meet some new ones.’
‘I’m not in the mood for socializing.’
‘At least start working. Joey said his father won’t be able to hold the position for you at the mill for much longer.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
She wrung her hankie into a tight coil. ‘If you knew for sure that Chidori has moved on with her life, would you leave the past in the past and start fresh?’
Something in her tone caught my full attention, and my body went rigid from the guilt-ridden expression in her eyes. ‘What do you mean, Ma?’ Her face sunk with despair and it took a long time before I was able to control my emotion enough to continue. ‘Do you know where she is?’
Ma avoided eye contact and stood to vigorously wash her teacup at the sink.
‘Chidori wrote, didn’t she?’
Ma dropped the cup in the soapy water and clenched the edge of the sink to brace herself. ‘I’m sorry, Hayden. She stopped writing eventually and I was trying to protect you from a broken heart. I didn’t realize you would take it so hard to believe she hadn’t written at all.’
‘I want to see the letters. Show them to me.’
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘What if reading them makes you feel even worse?’
A wave of tingling apprehension rolled up from my feet and flooded into my torso with the weight of a keg barrel. ‘Where are they?’ My voice rose with urgency.
She didn’t respond, so I scrambled around the house and searched every hiding spot I could think of – the desk, the hutch, my sister’s wardrobe, behind the loose brick in the fireplace. I tore the place apart, but didn’t find anything.
When I stepped back into the kitchen, frenzied, Ma’s neck turned red. ‘It’s been almost four years, Hayden. Don’t you think she’s settled down with someone else by now?’
‘Give them to me. Now!’
She flinched from the force in my voice and clutched at the fabric of her apron. ‘It’s best to leave the past in the past.’
‘You have no right to keep them from me. They belong to me. Where are they?’
‘Hayden, don’t you think too much time has gone by to hold onto the way things used to be?’
‘She said she would wait.’
‘That was a lifetime ago. You were so young. I don’t want you to get hurt when you find out she has a new life with someone else.’
‘If that is the case, it’s her news to tell me. Give me the letters.’
‘Don’t speak to me in that tone.’ Ma’s lip quivered and her eyes blinked repeatedly. ‘I just want what’s best for you.’
‘What’s best for me is knowing where Chidori is. Do you want me to end up like Rose?’
Ma gasped and pressed her palm to her mouth, then let it drop away in defeat. ‘They’re in the cupboard behind the canning jars. In a box labelled recipes.’
I swung the cupboard door open. There were at least fifty jars stacked two on top of each other. I slid them to the side and pulled out the box. Inside was a pile of letters tied together with a red string. When I read the address in Lethbridge, Alberta, and saw the familiar curve of how she wrote the ‘n’ in my name, I dropped to my knees, tore open the first envelope, and read the first letter.
12 May 1942
Dearest Hayden,
I hope this letter finds you well. My apologies it took so long to write to you. We spent two weeks locked up in Hastings Park. It was unpleasant to be housed there. Obaasan became quite frail. She developed a cough likely caught from the woman in the cubicle next to us. I am concerned because we were crowded together with people who might have tuberculosis. Mother has also weakened in health, not so much by the physical conditions, but by the shame of being branded disloyal to Canada.
I cannot get the unpleasant smell of the livestock stalls out of my nostrils. Why would they house human beings in animal quarters? I have inhaled floral and cedar fragrances, trying to erase the stench, but I fear it has been etched into my brain forever. Father and Kenji were housed in the men’s quarters, but luckily we are together again now. We are on a train headed for the Alberta border as I write this. Father arranged for us to work on a farm outside of the restricted area so we can stay together as a family. The other option was for Father and Kenji to work at a road camp while the rest of us went to an internment camp in British Columbia. He didn’t want that because he heard the internment camps were nothing more than tents or shoddy cabins in a field that had to be shared with other families. He felt that would be unsuitable, especially if we are forced to stay away into the winter months. Although Father had to pay handsomely for the transportation, and will have to pay rent once we are in Alberta, he was determined we not be separated. Hopefully farming in Alberta won’t be much different than what we are used to at home. Sadly, I don’t know what has become of Tosh. He was arrested for the altercation that occurred on the dock at Mayne Island before we left on the ship. We assume he is being detained in Vancouver somewhere with other prisoners. I hope he is safe.
It comforts me to know you are safe on Mayne Island. A group of men stood in uniform on the train platform as we left Vancouver. My eyes played a little trick on me as our train passed by. I thought I saw a young soldier who resembled you, but I blinked, and when I looked again I couldn’t pick him out of the crowd of green coats. I fear for those young men who are shipping off to war.
I cannot wait until the war is over so I can go back home, forget about everything that has happened in the last while, and start our future together.
Love, Chidori
I was incredibly relieved that she had not been incarcerated under guard control for the entire time, but I still worried about how uprooting and relocating had impacted her. And how her new life would inevitably change her. After reading two more letters in the kitchen as Ma watched me, I stood and headed out the back door to sit on the porch. Lacey flopped down at my feet as I opened the next envelope. The paper smelled of blossoms. I held it to my cheek for a moment before continuing to read.
9 July 1942
Dear Hayden,
I wonder if you have not received my letters yet. Perhaps your replies have been intercepted by the government because I am Japanese-Canadian. Please write as soon as you are able. I miss you terribly. We are very busy working on the sugar-beet farm just outside of Lethbridge, Alberta. As I suspected, the farming is nothing we are not accustomed to. In fact, we have helped the owner, Warren Blake, improve his productivity. Mr Blake is too elderly to do the work by himself, and the war left him very short-handed for labourers. We toil long hours, but he pays us a fair wage. And he is kind like your father.
The wood cabin we rent from Mr Blake was initially in dismal need of repair. The inside walls were covered in mould and the shake roof had gaps so big you could see the sky through them. Kenji repaired all the holes. Father wired the electrical hook-up to give us power for lights and cooking. Mother, Obaasan and I cleaned and insulated with old newspapers over the timber wall joists. We also wrapped rags around the old pipes to keep them from freezing in the winter. Alberta winters can apparently be brutally frigid, especially in comparison to the mild temperatures of Mayne Island. We will do more improvements once we save money. Mother doesn’t approve that the kitchen only has open shelves rather than cupboards, or that the bathroom is an outhouse, but she is reluctantly making do. The cabin has two bedrooms divided with two-by-fours and sheets. Obaasan and I sleep together and Kenji sleeps on a cot next to the stove. That is going to change, though. We need to expand because Tosh joined us today!!!! Isn’t that wonderful news?
He was released from a work camp where he had built roads. They reviewed his case and determined he was not a criminal threat and there was no reason to keep him detained in a work camp. He was not allowed to go back to the coast, so his choices were to go to an internment camp in the interior of British Columbia, relocate farther east and start a new life by himself, or find us here in Alberta. I don’t know how he did it, but he asked around until he found out where we had gone from the friends of a family who travelled to Alberta on the train with us. He just showed up today, walking up the dirt road with a big grin on his face. I hugged him so tightly it likely took his breath away. A little sparkle has returned to Mother’s eye since Tosh’s return.
I love you and look forward to the day when I may hug you tightly enough to take your breath away. Please write soon.
Chi
23 February 1943
Dear Hayden,
How is everyone on Mayne Island? Are Donna Mae and Joey still going steady? I sent a letter to her too, with no reply yet. Perhaps she moved away. I hope you are all okay. We were notified in writing that in accordance with Order in Council PC 469 our house and most of our possessions left on Mayne Island, including the vehicles and farm equipment, were auctioned by the Custodian and Soldiers’ Settlement Board for a fraction of the worth. We were not notified in advance of the January sale and did not consent. Apparently, the government kept most of the proceeds to pay for so-called administration fees related to the evacuation, to subsidize our time spent at Hastings Park, and to fund the internment camps that were built. If I knew we were financing our own incarceration I would have insisted on better accommodations than a livestock facility.
The Prime Minister obviously lied to the House of Commons when he stated that Japanese Canadians would be treated justly. Does he not realize that incarcerating law-abiding citizens as aliens based on racial grounds violates all charters and laws and rights? And selling off the hard-earned property of a family who has been in Canada for two generations is certainly not just.
Father was saddened most about losing his Cadillac. He saved for a long time to be able to afford it. Were you aware they confiscated and sold our belongings? Perhaps you were able to go to the auction. Although I didn’t have anything of much value, many of my journals were still in my room. If you had the opportunity to save some of them, I would be eternally grateful. I hope the reason you have not written back is not because you have changed your mind about how you feel about me. I will never change my mind about how I feel about you. I fear the reason is because you have gone off to war, which is utterly devastating for me to admit.
I miss you so much my soul aches.
Chi
I stood and paced on the porch, troubled to think how much pain and sorrow she must have felt when I didn’t write back. If I had been home when the government sold their home and belongings, I would have bought all that I could afford. If my mother had promptly given me her address in Alberta, I would have written her every day that I was overseas – even while I was imprisoned – in hopes that the letter would reach her. Frustrated by all the missed opportunities, I tore open the next envelope and sat on the railing to continue to read, letter after letter.
19 August 1943
Dearest Hayden,
As the months pass here on the Blake farm, the routine of our life has become very familiar. Mother has decorated the cabin in her impeccable style, although obviously not as grand as our previous house. For a spell, she seemed very sorrowful, and only left her bed for short periods of time. To cheer her up, I recreated the rock garden she had built at home on Mayne Island. It is an almost perfect replica that took me two weeks to complete. To my delight, she now spends time walking along the path every day. The boys attend dances and watch movies at the theatre in town. I read and play my violin. I also have four music students now. We all go about our farming chores and spend time together as a family, much as we always did. But despite those glimpses of normalcy, it is still not the same as being home with you. What have you been up to? I am going to pretend you have not gone overseas, even though my soul feels the dread of you fighting. The thought that you might be injured or worse is simply too much for me to fathom. So, I will fool myself into believing you are safe and happy on Mayne Island. Do you still go to the movie theatre in Victoria with Joey? Are you working at the mill? Are you taking classes at the university? Or, have you moved? Or, perhaps you don’t want to communicate with me? I hesitate to entertain the last option nearly as much as you being in combat.
Freedom is such a relative thing. We seem free, but we really aren’t. We aren’t free to go home. We aren’t free from discrimination. Kenji was tripped coming out of the general store last week, which caused him to spill the bag on the sidewalk. Grown men picked up the items, and instead of the decent thing, returning them to Kenji, they spat at him and walked away with the groceries. Can you believe the nerve? We still live in fear. My father asked my mother to sew a pocket on his pyjama top so he’ll never be separated from his enemy alien card, even when he’s sleeping. He frets about being caught without his identification in case someone comes looking for ‘Japs’ to deport. I hate that my father is afraid. I hate that I’m afraid. I hate that word.
My heart breaks in anguish for you, over and over again,
Chidori
Chidori’s letters over the rest of 1943 became progressively more disillusioned, and her hope of ever seeing me again began to disintegrate. The post stamp on her last letter was dated for 12 June 1944. More than a year had passed since she had sent it. Only a few reasons existed for why she would have stopped writing, and none of those reasons were a truth I wanted to accept. I didn’t open the last envelope because I dreaded knowing why she had stopped writing.
Instead, I slid it into my pocket and walked to her old house to be reminded of a time when she loved me. Her bedroom window was open a crack and the lace curtains fluttered in the breeze. I sat with my back against an arbutus tree, imagining her blowing me a kiss from the window.
After a while, Marguerite quietly crouched down on her knees beside me. Her dress was actually a perfectly typical yellow little girl’s dress with ruffles. Her straw hat was something else entirely, though. She had woven an entire garden of roses, peonies and daisies around the brim. And a fake bird made of real feathers was perched on top, stuck with a hat pin.
‘That’s quite the hat.’
‘Thank you. I made it myself. Here, I brought you some of my foster mother’s homemade soup to make you feel better.’ She placed a Mason jar on the ground next to me.
I pushed it away without looking at it. ‘I don’t eat soup.’
‘It’s jolly delicious, really. You should at least try it.’
‘I can’t eat soup any more. Take it away. Please.’
Marguerite stared down at the jar for a moment before placing it behind her. ‘Is that because you were a prisoner in the war?’
I nodded. She straightened out the fabric of her skirt to tug it over her knees. Then she reached down and let a ladybug crawl up onto her finger. It scampered around on the back of her hand for a brief while before it flew away.
‘What’s this I hear about you not talking to anyone?’ I asked.
She shrugged and her cheeks turned pink.
‘People think you’re mute.’
‘Sometimes I have nothing to say, is all.’
I laughed. ‘How come those sometimes never occur when you’re with me?’
Her mouth turned up in a sheepish grin. ‘Don’t you enjoy talking to me?’
‘I didn’t say that. I’m just having a hard time imagining what it would be like if you weren’t chattering constantly. Do you at least talk to your brothers?’
‘Not any more. You’re the only person I’ve talked to since my parents died.’
Her disclosure was both heartbreaking and strangely comforting. ‘Why?’
‘I told you, I have nothing to say.’
‘I meant why me?’
She tugged at the grass. ‘I have nightmares about the bombings. I see my parents’ dead faces every time I close my eyes. You are the only person who really knows my sad.’
I studied her for a spell, then nodded because I did know. We were a strange and unlikely pair.
She caught and released another ladybug, then asked, ‘What did you love best about growing up on Mayne Island?’
‘Chidori,’ I said without even pausing to think about it.
She pointed at the envelope that half stuck out of my pocket. ‘Is that from her?’
I nodded.
‘Really? Oh my goodness. Why didn’t you say so earlier?’ She sat up excitedly and pressed her fists to her lips in excitement. ‘What does it say?’
I sucked in air and choked out, ‘I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to read it.’
She stood and spun around. ‘Why in the world not?’
I closed my eyes and exhaled to steady my erratic pulse. ‘Too much time has passed since she wrote it.’
‘Just read it and get it done with.’ She stomped her foot on the grass and gestured wildly with her arms. ‘The suspense is killing me.’
I sucked back a few steeling breaths and handed the envelope to her. ‘I can’t. You read it.’
She tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper. Then, as if she were public speaking in school, she straightened her posture. ‘My Dearest Hayden.’ She looked over and raised her eyebrows in encouragement. ‘That’s a splendid start.’
Not sure it was, I waved for her to keep going so I could get the torture over with.
‘I hope this letter finds you well. My greatest wish is that you are safe and happy wherever you are. You may not be aware that I wrote numerous letters after we were first separated years ago. So many things have changed since then, including us, surely. Our life together on Mayne Island seems only a distant dream now. It was such a wonderful dream, and it still brings delight to my heart whenever I think about that peaceful time. Sadly, it is gone now. We were young and naïve about the world when we promised to wait for each other—’
‘Okay, stop reading. I don’t want to hear the rest.’ I stood abruptly and rubbed my palms on my trousers.
Marguerite paused and her eyebrows creased together. ‘Why? You don’t know what she’s going to say.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘No you don’t. Shush.’ She focused back on the letter and tracked the page with her finger until she found the spot where she had left off. I headed for the forest but she followed and read as she ran to catch up to me. ‘You have certainly gone off to war and I pray the reason you haven’t written is not tragic. I prefer to convince myself that you have built a nice life for yourself on Mayne Island. There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to return to Mayne Island to be with you, but with regret, that is not how things worked out for me. I have had to rethink my future and come to the difficult acceptance that it will not include Mayne Island. Or you.’
‘Stop reading, Marguerite.’ I walked faster and rubbed my eyes with my sleeve. The crushing in my airway was worse than when the white-haired, nasty-nosed guard had dug his heel into my throat. Marguerite chased after me, and in her attempt to read and keep up, she tripped on a log and landed on her face without putting her arms out to break her fall. Her fantastic garden hat fell to the ground and the flower braid broke apart. After a shocked delay, she started to cry and flung her hands up to cover her cheek. I rushed back and scooped her up, then sat on a stump with her seated next to me. ‘Let me see.’ I gently pulled her wrist to check the injury. A superficial scrape covered a large portion of the left side of her face.
She inhaled to compose herself, wiped her tears, and brushed her knees, which were also scraped.
‘Do you want me to give you a piggyback home?’ I asked as I picked up her hat and reassembled the flower arrangement.
She shook her head. ‘No. We have to finish reading the rest of the letter.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll read it after I take you home.’
‘No.’ She pushed off the stump and bent over to pick up the letter from the ground. I didn’t have the heart to argue with her when she was hurt, so I closed my eyes and braced for impact as she reread the line she was on before she tripped, ‘I have had to rethink my future and come to the difficult acceptance that it will not include Mayne Island. Or you. I wish that were not the case because I have never stopped loving you.’
Marguerite’s head snapped up to grin at me. ‘Did you hear that? She never stopped loving you.’
I nodded, cautiously optimistic.
She kept reading, ‘I think about you with every breath I take.’ Marguerite’s eyes popped open with thrilled anticipation. ‘If you want to stay on Mayne Island and live out the dream you started before the war, I completely understand, but please know that I will never stop loving you. You probably think I’m foolish to have kept our promise to wait for each other for all these years, but you once told me our love is too strong to be broken. I believed you. I honestly do not want to ever be with anyone else, so the promise has not been difficult to keep. There is a part of me that hopes you feel the same way. There is also a part of me that reluctantly accepts it may not be true for you any more. And even more dreadfully, I have to accept that perhaps you are not alive to receive this. I believe I would have felt the loss in my soul if that were true, but I fear that possibility.
Although I have changed in so many ways both from age and circumstance, it is perhaps more remarkable that there are traits about me that have remained exactly the same despite the adversity. I recently read this passage by a French philosopher and writer named Albert Camus that helped restore my faith that good will prevail:
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.
I pray you have also discovered the summer inside you and are pushing back against the winter. I will never forget the life we had before. You were, and will always be, my one true love. I forgive you if you do not feel the same in return. I also forgive you if you are gone. I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself, so this will be the last letter I write to you. I wish you nothing but the very best. Love Chi.’
Marguerite clutched the letter to her chest with sheer joy. ‘Golly. You need to go there as soon as humanly possible.’
I nodded and then shook my head, overwhelmed by the intensity of my adoration for Chidori and my distress at the probability that I had already lost her forever. ‘What if it’s too late? She wrote that over a year ago.’
‘You must go and find out for sure.’
‘What if she has a husband? I can’t just show up.’
‘Ring her up.’
I exhaled, not sure what to do, then took the pages from Marguerite to devour the letter again.