Southland. Nina Revoyr
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place was under different management then, but most of the employees still remembered the Takayas, their children Mary, Ben, and Grace, and Mary’s husband Frank. That night, Frank consumed more sake and beer than Jackie had ever seen him drink, and had fallen asleep, mumbling, on the car ride home. He’d taken such good care of Mary, stopping work altogether the last few months of her illness so he could always be at her side, and that night, after Mary’s funeral, he had been totally overwhelmed; it was the only time Jackie ever saw him cry. And she’d felt guilty with that death, too; she’d gradually grown accustomed to Mary’s withered half-self, so that death, when it came, seemed more like a subtle change than a catastrophe. She’d been young, and her sadness was short-lived and shallow. The night of that funeral, as the rest of her family cried, she’d wondered what was wrong with her.
But this was all too much to contemplate, so she looked across the couch at Laura. And suddenly she found herself distracted by Laura’s hair, the shape of her fingers, the three creases that formed between her eyebrows when she read something that displeased her. Finally, with a sigh, she put her textbook down, then reached over and ran her hand along Laura’s leg. Laura smiled without looking at her, but she put her hand on top of Jackie’s and squeezed. Jackie moved over and touched her face. They kissed, long and slow, and made love again. And afterward, when Jackie drifted off toward sleep, Laura already breathing slowly in her arms, she felt better than she had since her grandfather died; she knew that, at least for this one day, she and Laura had almost been happy.
INVISIBLE HANDS. That’s what Mary Takaya felt like; that was her meaning to the family. She cut the chicken and vegetables into pieces small enough to skewer; she cleaned the tables; she made sure there was always fresh rice. Her parents were the ones that everyone saw, her father talkative and loud behind the grill where he cooked the yakitori, her mother friendly and solicitous with the customers. Even her little brother Ben was more visible than her—he’d swoop in and out of the tiny restaurant between school and baseball practice, endure their father’s gruff teasing and the questions and affectionate head rubs of the tired clientele. And her older sister Grace was gone now, working as a bookkeeper in Chicago, though both her parents dropped everything for one of her infrequent calls, even shut the restaurant down for a couple of days on her annual trips home to Los Angeles.
But Mary was invisible hands. She did all the back-up work, the thankless work, the someone’s-gotta-take-care-of-it work, and she was only noticed when she didn’t do something, or when her hands were too slow, or inexact.
She couldn’t remember if it was better or worse before the war, when Grace still lived at home. In 1940 Mary had been thirteen, shuttling between regular school, Japanese school, and the restaurant where the whole family worked. She was too young to go out with friends the way her older sister did, but old enough to be jealous of her freedom. On Friday and Saturday nights, Mary would sit on the bed in the room they shared and watch her sister get dressed in saddle shoes, a Sloppy Joe sweater, and a short skirt exposing her knees. Then some handsome young Nisei boy would pick her up in his family’s car and they would go dancing in Li’l Tokyo, or sometimes, on International Night, the one night they were allowed, all the way up to the Palladium in Hollywood. Grace’s life seemed exciting and glamorous to her; it was as if she made short but regular trips to a country that Mary had never seen. She envied even the arguments Grace had with their parents, who objected to her clothes and late hours. She suspected that even when her parents waited up by the window, even when their voices rose so loud in anger that she and Ben both plugged their ears, they felt closer to their older child for the trouble she gave; their grudge had sweetened to a kind of delight.
She would have taken screaming fights over silence. She wanted only to be more than invisible hands—to have made-up eyes and sharp mouth and flailing arms like her sister, churning legs and crew-cut hair like her brother. Her parents, happily married although they’d courted through pictures, remained staunchly Japanese in their ways. The Takayas had been shocked by Grace, plunged into the cold and unfamiliar waters of raising a somehow-American child, and with Ben, their bodies had adjusted to the temperature. But Mary, the best-behaved of the children, the most devoted to them, they couldn’t quite manage to see.
And just when she was getting old enough to go to dances herself, just when Troy, from Japanese school, had given her a love letter, the war came and ruined all of her plans. She’d spent the years between fifteen and eighteen at Manzanar, the cramped space and barbed wire a particular kind of torture for a blossoming girl just getting ready to enter her life. It did free her from the restaurant, though, and the mailroom job she took at camp was far better than raw chicken and beef. Her brother didn’t mind the confinement so much—he just went to the camp school, then played outside all afternoon—and her sister worked in the administration office, spending her free time with friends from Little Tokyo.
But Grace, camp, her parents, everything, would have been bearable except for her sixteenth birthday. Her birthday fell in July, on one of the days when the heat was so powerful the whole camp was laid flat, and even the lizards were resting and still. Mary spent the day in the mailroom, cooled somewhat by the government fan, sorting mail for the next day’s delivery. A little after five, when she was getting ready to leave, a shadow fell across the doorway. She thought it was one of the workers, who’d all left for the day, returning for some forgotten item. But when she called out, asking who was there, Vince Tajiri stepped into the room. She gasped a bit, in spite of herself. Vince was the best-looking boy in tenth grade, the class vice president as well as the captain of the camp baseball team. He was taller than her father, light and muscular, with bright black eyes and tiny dimples in each of his cheeks. All the girls, including Mary, grew giggly and tongue-tied in his presence, but to Mary’s surprise, it was he who seemed nervous today.
“Uh, hi,” he said uncertainly.
“Hi,” she replied. “Are you looking for someone?”
“Yeah, you. It’s your birthday, right? I came to say happy birthday.”
She smiled, somewhat puzzled, but pleased. “Thanks.”
He took a few steps over and stopped next to the desk, where she was still seated in the straight-backed chair. He held out a small, already wilting wildflower, which she knew he’d gone all the way out to the edge of camp to pick. Two patches of sweat appeared in the armpits of his navy blue shirt, and while she usually thought of boy-sweat as rank and repulsive, she found it almost charming today. “Thanks,” she said again, taking the flower and setting it down on the desk. She looked up at him and her own nervousness was calmed by the terror she saw in his eyes. She felt the hair on her arms lift toward him, as if growing toward the sun. Then, just as the heat and closeness of his body were becoming unbearable, he leaned over and kissed her, quickly, on the lips. They both jumped away from each other. Then Mary stood up, shakily, and he moved back over. He kissed her again, and this time they stayed. Mary felt a pleasurable tingling sensation arc up and down her spine. She felt his firm, strong hands on her shoulders, on her back. She couldn’t believe how lucky she was—she! Mary Takaya!—and she was so involved in their hands and mouths and just-touching chests that she didn’t hear her sister come in.
There was a sharp, high gasp from the doorway. Mary turned, and Grace was standing just inside the door, hand clamped over her mouth. Mary was so startled she forgot to jump away from Vince. She looked at her sister (who’d come to take her back to the barracks, where their mother was going to surprise her with a cake), expecting her to say, I won’t tell Mom and Dad, or maybe, I will tell Mom and Dad. Anything but what she did do, which was laugh, at first softly, but then the sound broke the surface of her mouth and turned into a full, delighted whoop. “You?” Grace managed, between hysterical bursts. “Oh my God, oh my God, it’s so funny.”
Vince pulled away from Mary, not meeting her eyes. Finally, without saying a word, he squeezed out the door past Grace. Mary wanted to call out to him, but couldn’t risk more laughter. She hated her sister then. She