Even As We Breathe. Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

      “You spoil me, Lishie. You know I won’t starve between here and Asheville.”

      “Well, you need to be ready to work when you get there. Show them you’re good help.”

      “Yes, ma’am.” I kissed the top of her silver head. “I’ll make you proud.”

      “You always do.”

      I walked to the back room Lishie had divided with a flannel sheet curtain on my tenth birthday so I could have my “privacy.” Though I’d built a doorframe and hung a door two years later, we left the curtain out of sentimentality. I took the newspaper from my back pocket and laid it on my pillow. I could hear Lishie slide her chair away from the table, change into her nightgown on the other side of the curtain, and pad into the living room as I folded my clothes into my mother’s woven sweetgrass suitcase. This was Lishie’s nightly routine. I knew she was opening her Bible to read in her rocking chair until she fell asleep. I pulled the quilt, one of many Lishie has stitched over the years, from the foot of my bed and took it in to her.

      “Thank you, dear.”

      “Thought you might get cold. Bud said it’s blackberry winter.”

      She looked up from the scripture and smiled. “Shhhiii …” She shook her head and we both laughed softly.

      Returning to my packing, I was unsure of what I would need but knew that I would return in a few days to get anything left behind. I didn’t have a heck of a lot of choices of what to take anyway. I closed the suitcase just before 9:00, went to my dresser, and pulled the folded yellow sheet of paper from the drawer with the Preacherman’s handwriting scribbled across it.

      Essie Stamper

      Pick up 5 a.m. on Monday, May 18th

      Soco Road—2nd left past trading post

      I folded the paper again and put it in the pocket of the shirt I planned to wear the day we left. Something about the girl’s name written on the paper made me want to keep it close. I sat the suitcase by my door and tidied the room as best I could. Hearing Lishie begin her soft snoring, I padded out to the living room again and helped her to her bedroom.

      “You mind if I read a little bit before bed?” I asked as I pulled the top quilt over her. Lishie was a sound sleeper, so she never really minded my reading at night by the lantern.

      “Of course not, darlin’. I’m sure you’re a little anxious. Just make sure you don’t stay up too late. I don’t want you noddin’ off on the road tomorrow. It’s a long trip.”

      “Yes, ma’am.” I changed into my nightclothes, dug out the newspaper article, and slid into my bed. The bedframe creaked its nightly distress signal. Out of courtesy, I kept the oil lamp turned so low I could barely make out the words on the paper.

      I wasn’t sure this was the same article where Bud had gotten his information, but it did tell of the foreign diplomats, foreign nationals, and US citizens who had been moved to “remote locations” in the United States to be held under surveillance. It was odd to think of these mountains as prime surveillance real estate. The newspaper identified Indian reservations out west as sites to hold Japanese Americans. I shook my head. You see, not much has changed. Axis in the country’s finest resorts. American citizens scratching around on land only fit for America’s forgotten stepchildren. I wondered how close I’d get to the prisoners. Should I be afraid? Are they afraid?

      Our local paper had taken to picking up trailers from other publications across the country. Apparently, San Francisco had woes I’d never understand.

      The women might have something to say about this, however, as the departure of the Japanese has sent them into a spin which looks, Mr. Roosevelt, like a cost-of-living spiral. Anyhow, they’re going round and round in a battle to get household help, never before equaled in intensity. It looks like total war on the distaff side.

      According to the article, the real tragedy of Japanese internment was not a loss of freedom or a pseudo-criminalization of innocent human beings on the grounds of name, language, color, or great-grandmother’s country of origin. It was that white women of upper-class San Francisco might not have someone to fold their skivvies. They may have to sweep their own floors. And, most horrifically, they had turned to stealing servants from their nearest and dearest friends.

      The bidding for household help hasn’t been equaled since Simon Legree went out of business. Fine friendships are falling apart like a tired cemetery bouquet, as women lure price[les]s human jewels from women.

      Oh, these poor women. Certainly the death of former servants is nothing compared to broken pinky promises and the end to afternoon gossip sessions. It was sickening! Did no one else see it? Now some might think that I was just sympathizing with my distant Bering Strait–linked relatives (a suspect theory). I sympathized, sure. But I sympathized as a human being, one whose ancestors knew what it was like to be forced onto a reservation.

      Empathy is fossilized in our bones.

      I thought about Tsa Tsi’s great-uncle and if I would sneak food to an internment camp if the government chose Cherokee, North Carolina, as its next prison site. Would they just throw me in with the rest of the “others” who fit into the wrong box? No one would miss me if I didn’t show up to work. For once in their lives, those Japanese Americans must have wished they were just Japanese in America, like the diplomats and nationals that I’d be serving at the inn. Being American had somehow made being Japanese harder. Citizenship by choice complicated an identity assumed at birth.

      Funny how things get twisted when people are in a hurry. I guess Bud was right sometimes.

      He was right, too, that there is value in work. Even if that work only serves those who aren’t aware of your existence. Would the next few months ahead of me help me understand the San Francisco situation far better than I really wanted? I laughed a little thinking that I might be considered some woman’s “human jewel.” Hopefully all of my orders would be coming from the inn’s remaining skeleton staff manager. He, of course, was the one who had placed the ad and responded to my letter of interest. No matter where I was, the US military would expect me to fall into their tight, neat lines. And that’d be okay for the summer. The truth is I didn’t know what to expect, and no amount of reading newspapers was really helping with that. I could be thankful the unknown was just over the mountain and not in some foreign country, like where all my cousins had been sent. Lishie would say that I should give thanks for whatever little morsel I could find.

      I closed my eyes. Whatever morsel. I had a paying job. Maybe even one that would pay enough for the first semester of college if I decided to actually go. I had a good excuse not to spend all summer at Bud’s feet, listening to his quarrelsome ranting in the muggy heat. I wouldn’t waste my life never seeing what life could be like away from Cherokee. And probably most importantly, I had the girl, Essie, to look forward to. A couple of hours alone with a beautiful girl would certainly be more than a morsel’s worth.

      Chapter Four

      The rattling gearshift seemed to rise between us, expanding into a border separating our two worlds. She smelled of lavender and honeysuckle, a scent that defied all boundaries and invaded my awareness. So I revved the engine, forgetting what my uncle had taught me: “Clutch is clutch, dammit!”

      Despite my nervousness around her, we had practically grown up together, caught in the slow churn of the Qualla Boundary, tiny Cherokee, North Carolina, hours away from Asheville, the nearest city anyone could call such. We were products of “the reservation,” pronounced low and quickly by us—rezervashun. Broken into at least five whispered syllables when spoken by visitors or neighbors across the mountain—thuh-rez-her-vay-shuuun.

      We were “cousins of cousins’ cousins, or something like that,” Lishie often recalled. A classification less about tree branches and more about confined timeless existence.

      Of course, I instinctively knew who she was. I was fairly certain I knew who she would become. Watching her was like watching