A Diamond in the Desert

Gila River was the place where my eight-year-old sister, Kimi, learned to go to the bathroom with a white cotton pillowcase pulled over her head. It was Mama who came up with the idea after a week of Kimi refusing to go.

The pillowcase, Mama said, took the place of the walls and doors that weren’t in the latrine, and gave some privacy from others sitting close by trying to use the bathroom, too.

“No one will see you through it,” Mama promised. “Yes, you’ll be able to breathe. The air can get in.”

Then she stood for three long minutes with the pillowcase over her own head to prove this.

“But what if it takes me more than three minutes in the latrine?” said Kimi,

Mama didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled the pillowcase back over her head, sat down on the concrete floor, knees bent, shoulders curled in. Stayed there until the desert bats came out and the sky turned dark orange.

Kimi walked a circle around her, and you could see her deciding that this idea might work.

“Can you still breathe?”

And each time Kimi asked, Mama nodded. But I don’t think Mama was taking all that time to show Kimi she could breathe. I think Mama was hiding the sadness she didn’t want Kimi to see.

Gila River was a place where my dog, Lefty, couldn’t come.

After Executive Order 9066 was issued, ordering all persons of Japanese ancestry to internment camps, our neighbor drove Mama and me and Lefty ten miles away to Mr. Nestor’s strawberry farm, where dogs were boarded. I had to give him away, because that’s what was best for Lefty. Because internment camps don’t take dogs. Because a strawberry farm is a good place for a dog while his owner can’t take care of him. It took Lefty only one before he ran away from that farm.

Mr. Nestor’s letter came late. I got it after we’d already been moved from the horse stall we had lived in at the Tulare Fairgrounds Assembly Center while the government decided what was next for Japanese Americans. People were suspicious of anyone who was Japanese after those pilots from Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. It didn’t matter that we’d lived here our whole lives or that we were American citizens.