Garden of Stones - By Sophie Littlefield Page 0,58
things had never changed, that she could close her eyes and return to the kitchen on Clement Street, her mother pouring tea from her great-grandmother’s porcelain pot, serving the little dumplings they bought at Paris Bakery.
But then Miyako’s voice dragged Lucy back to the present. “If it was George, then there is no hope.”
“Miyako...there is something you should know. He apparently has witnesses tying you to the theft.”
“But I’ve never even been in the warehouse!”
“I know, but he has people who will testify that they saw you there.”
“Oh, Aiko...”
“Don’t think about it now,” Aiko said soothingly.
“I’ll be found guilty for sure. No one will come to my defense. And when I’m found guilty, they will separate me and Lucy.”
Her mother’s words stunned Lucy. Why would Rickenbocker accuse Miyako of stealing? And how could they take her away when she had done nothing wrong?
It had never occurred to Lucy that they might be separated. How would she survive without her mother? How would Miyako manage to take care of herself?
“Listen, Miyako,” Aiko said hesitantly. “There is one thing we haven’t tried. If someone could go to George and speak to him about the baby. Appeal to his sense of responsibility, of—”
“No,” her mother interrupted, her voice breaking. “No.”
But Lucy barely heard her mother, caught up short by Aiko’s words. Baby. Lucy turned the word in her mind, and as she did, a dozen other pieces shifted and slid into place, and the mystery of her mother’s illness faded. The dream she’d had of her mother suddenly made sense, her body shriveling to a skeleton, the life leeching from her, only her stomach growing, grotesque and distended. The smell of vomit and despair, faint blue lines in her mother’s skin, tea growing cold in the cup.
Her mother was pregnant, and George Rickenbocker had made her that way—and now he was trying to send her away, to get rid of the evidence of their sins. No wonder her mother’s behavior had changed. It wasn’t that Miyako had refused him, as Lucy had assumed—but Rickenbocker, once he found out about the baby, no longer wanted her.
Lucy pressed her hands against the cold, splintered wood of the building, the bile roiling in her gut. Her mother was pregnant with a child who would be half Lucy’s brother or sister and half the tainted, poisonous issue of George Rickenbocker. And now he had turned away from Miyako and his hungry, foul eyes had found Lucy.
“After everything I did, I tried so hard to protect her,” Miyako mumbled. “I thought that if I just went along, I could outlast him. That the war would end, and if he had me, he would never go after her.”
“Miyako, no one is going to hurt Lucy,” Aiko said. “She’s just a child.”
“I was only a child!” Miyako whispered fiercely. “That didn’t stop them.”
“That was different, you have to see that. You were alone—there was no one around to help. Here, there are people everywhere you turn.”
“But George—”
“Hush,” Aiko said. “You have to stop thinking this way. George won’t go after her. I hear he’s already found someone new, a girl from steno.”
Lucy felt frozen, remembering the way Rickenbocker had looked at her, how strong his hands had been when he squeezed her flesh. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon, he had said.
“You don’t know him the way I do. Those other girls are nothing to him. He was only happy when he was hurting me. The ones who let him—he doesn’t care about them. He’ll go after her to hurt me, don’t you see?”
“That’s crazy,” Aiko exclaimed, but Lucy heard the tiny note of doubt in her voice.
“Look at her, Aiko, see what I see,” Miyako implored. “She is ripe now. And when I’m gone—”
“If you are gone, then I will watch over her.”
“You’re at the net factory all day long!”
“And she is at school. This war is going to end, you must never forget that. We just have to endure. A little longer, Miyako, for both of you.”
“I have no more time.” Miyako’s words turned to sobs, choked syllables of grief, of despair. “I am cursed. We are both cursed. I should never have had her.”
Aiko shushed her, soothing, denying—but Lucy was savaged by her mother’s words. “Mama,” she whimpered, but her voice was stolen away by the wind.
21
With dawn came shouting. At first it was distant, maybe one or two streets over, and then people were running outside the thin walls of their barrack.