A Pledge of Silence (23 page)

“Oh, my!” Margie said.

Helen looked up.

Margie waved the letter. “Frank. My kid brother. He’s in the army, and he’s
married
.”

“I thought you said he had a heart murmur.”

“He does. He did. I don’t know.”

Margie continued reading. Frank had gotten drafted. The army needed men and its minimum requirements were not as strict as the navy’s. He trained as a medic, then shipped out to join a rifle platoon. His letters were censored, of course, but they thought he was in Sicily. Before deploying, he married Irene, a young woman he met at the university. She lived with them now, and worked as a bookkeeper at the Ford plant. The house felt lonely with just her and Daddy there, and Irene was good company.

“Wow,” Margie murmured. Her wisecracking little brother—a medic in the army, and a husband? It didn’t fit it into her frame of reference for him. She heard Helen chuckling.

“It’s my cousin Mabel,” Helen said, containing her laughter with considerable effort. “Mum says she has a new beau. They sent away for a dancing course, the one with brown-paper templates of feet labeled Ladies and Gents? Mum says it’s hilarious watching them practice. They get all tangled up.”

Margie chortled.

“Here’s the kicker, Margie. They entered a dance contest and won first prize for the fox trot! They won a lamp!” Helen’s laughter cackled, her whole body jiggling with glee. “A lamp!” Her tears of amusement suddenly turned into a sob, and she slumped back. “What I’d give to see that stupid lamp!”

Margie felt Helen’s sadness; her own tears always stayed close to the surface. She asked, “How’s the rest of your family?”

Helen sniffed. “Ian’s in Sicily or Italy, they think. They never know for sure, but they get letters. Mum’s been spiffing up the house. She had Pop whitewash the walls and stipple them with green. She made a new rag rug for the bedroom. I’ll bet it’s really pretty.” Helen went back to reading silently.

Margie examined her other letter. Postmarked Australia, she recognized neither the handwriting nor the return address. Curious, she opened it carefully.

April 14, 1943

Darwin, Australia

Dear Margie,

I am Captain Mark Davies, and I was a good friend of Abe Carson. He asked me to contact you if anything should happen to him. It is with deepest regret that I keep my promise. Abe’s plane was shot down by a squadron of Japanese Zeros on April 10, 1943, on a mission over the Indian Ocean. Before he went down, he put up one hell of a fight, taking two Nips down with him. He was a real fighter and a real hero.

Abe was looking forward to the end of the war, when he could go back to Michigan and open a flying school. That was his dream. He was a good leader and a first-rate teacher. He enjoyed working with the newer pilots, and had many friends here. We are all sad that he is gone.

He talked about you a lot, saying there was nobody who could measure up to his Margie. You must be one wonderful gal. He wanted you to have his pilot’s ring. It will be sent back to Michigan with his other things.

Please accept my heartfelt condolences.

With sympathy,

Mark

Margie cast the letter away, an eerie bawl erupting from her like the howl of a dying animal.

“Margie, what’s wrong?” Helen reached over and thumped her on her back. “Margie? Margie? Oh, honey, it’s bad, isn’t it?”

She could barely gasp, “Abe!”

Helen wrapped her in her arms while Margie rode waves of grief. Her voice thick, she muttered through her tears, “He just wanted to live life his own way.”

Over the next several weeks, images emerged from the recesses of her memory like ghosts—she saw Abe’s face morphing in the clouds, heard his voice above the din of a crowded room, or recalled his cocky attitude when she glimpsed little boys playing. Her thoughts went out to his parents’ anguish in their own little corner of hell, and she grieved for them too.

Miss Kermit gathered her nurses together. Her face haggard, she spoke in a monotone. “My friends, you need to know about the coming changes.”

The gray-skinned women stood around her pinch-faced, their arms crossed over their sunken chests. Shapeless dresses hung on their bodies, wooden sandals protected their feet, and cotton turbans covered their thinning hair. They had been prisoners at Santo Tomas for 18 months.

The War Prisoners’ Department of the Imperial Japanese Army’s assumption of the camp’s administration had set rumors flying. Margie didn’t expect anything good to come from this meeting.

Miss Kermit stoically delivered the news. The new commandant had disbanded the Executive Committee, discontinued funds to support the camp, closed the stores and shops, evicted Filipino vendors, and chained the gate shut.

She warned her staff to scrupulously mind the new curfew. The number of guards had increased, and they all carried bayonets. She read off a list of mandates: roll calls would be held twice a day; monitors would be selected to supervise food distribution and report illnesses to the guards; all activities, social events, and gatherings required prior approval by the commandant. “Girls,” she said softly, “we must find ways to keep our spirits up, but we have to be very careful.”

Margie found herself slipping away to the place inside her head where an orderly vegetable garden grew, now abundant with the fall harvest. She filled a basket with tomatoes, and as she bit into one of the warm red orbs, juice dribbled down her chin. She reached up and wiped it away. She spent more and more time now living in these worlds her imagination created, where she was safe, surrounded by family, and there was always enough food to eat.

As the meeting adjourned, Margie saw Wade and Kenneth in a group of bone-skinny men carrying lumber and tools. “What are they building?” she asked Gracie.

“More guard sheds and sentry houses. Other men are stringing more barbed wire around the perimeter of the camp.”

“What’s the sense of it?”

“There is no sense. The commandant’s insane.”

Within a few days, the increased bowing, roll calls, curfews, harassment, looting, inspections, and restriction of their movements paled in importance as food became the major concern—there simply wasn’t enough of it. What the Japanese supplied was often rotten, wormy, and only half the amount needed to feed 4,000 people. The signs of starvation set in—lumps under the skin, swollen hands and feet, tingling and numbness, sore tongue, lost teeth, thinning hair, dimming vision, mental confusion, and extreme fatigue.

One morning Wade slipped into the shanty where Margie and Helen lay motionless on their cots. The chess set he carried hid a bulge under his shirt that proved to be three bananas. He gave them each one.

Margie smelled the banana, taking long breaths, letting its essence fill her senses before she peeled off the skin and took a tiny bite, allowing it to melt on her tongue and fill her mouth with flavor. She swallowed, feeling it slide down her throat, and then nibbled again, making that precious banana last a long time. After finishing the last bit, she wrapped the peel in a scrap of cloth and hid it under her mattress to savor the smell and chewy texture later.

“I’m scheduled to work.” Helen sighed tiredly. “It takes me forever to get there. My legs don’t want to move.” Making a great effort, she got up and straightened her clothes. “Have you noticed how quiet it is? I heard some mothers give their kids rock salt to suck. When they drink water, it fills their stomachs.” With that, she limped out.

Margie whispered, “They could at least feed the children. I saw a Red Cross truck at the gate piled with milk and boxes of bananas. The guards turned it away. What would it hurt them to give milk and bananas to the children?” She and Wade sat on her bed, staring at the chess board he had set up, but they didn’t have enough energy to play. They lay down together, sharing a pillow.

Wade said, “My mother made the best banana cream pie. Real cream, fresh eggs, and vanilla. She whipped the cream up with powdered sugar and spread it on top.”

“My mother made chocolate pie. It took a special kind of chocolate that she shaved into hot sugar and cream. I’ll make you both pies. We’ll have a picnic. Fried chicken, of course. And potato salad. You’d love my potato salad with sliced tomatoes and green onions on the side.”

“Don’t forget the baked beans. My mother cooked them all day with molasses and brown sugar.”

“Molasses, I forgot about molasses. I could drink a bottle right now. It’s full of iron, you know.” She snuggled into Wade and kissed him lightly.

His arms around her, he gently massaged her back. “I’ve fallen in love with you. You must know.”

“I do.” Enjoying the comfort of his touch, she ran her fingers over his skinny arms and skeletal ribs. They lay together cuddling, petting, and soon they were entwined. He pressed into her, and she wiggled out of her G-string. They made love for the simple pleasure of it.

While still in the afterglow, he soberly whispered, “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay. I wanted to.”

“It’s dangerous if you get pregnant. What are the chances?”

“Slim, I’d guess. I doubt if I’m ovulating. My periods are scanty and irregular. I wish they’d stop. They’re a nuisance in the best of times, but they’re life-sapping now.”

Over the following months, they continued to make love for its closeness and comfort. Wade regularly shared his black-market booty—a piece of fruit, a loaf of bread, an egg or two. Occasionally, he brought something resembling a monkey, and Margie ate it with no thought of questioning its origin. Anything edible was a godsend in this desolate place where a day’s meal was sometimes nothing more than a bowl of grass soup, or a handful of weeds fried in cold cream.

Chapter 16

Santo Tomas, December 1944 – February 1945

Twenty-six months had come and gone since Margie arrived at Santo Tomas Internment Camp. Struggling to carry a bucket of water to the garden outside her Broadway shanty, she stumbled in a rut and dropped it. Refilling the bucket meant returning to the spigot on the other side of the compound, but, short of breath, she couldn’t do it. Turning the empty bucket upside down, she sank down upon it.

Not much was going on in Broadway this afternoon, or anywhere else in the camp either. Stringent new regulations confined prisoners to the campus buildings from six in the evening until seven in the morning. The daily routine had narrowed to lining up for roll calls, enduring endless inspections, and gathering for watery meals. Nonetheless, Margie persisted in tending her garden. She felt most at peace there, the smell of the earth transporting her home.

An airplane roared out of the clouds, the noise hurting her ears. Since the Japanese stepped up aerial surveillance of the camp some weeks ago, such annoyances were common. Squinting against the light, she could make out white stars inside blue circles painted on the plane’s fuselage and wings. Riotous shouting and whistling erupted as people realized the plane was American. Overjoyed by the sight, Margie jumped up and waved her arms. “We’re here! We’re here!”

Throngs of guards descended on the shantytowns, manhandling the occupants toward the campus buildings, but the rough treatment couldn’t quell Margie’s elation. Back at her room, she hurried to the window where the other women gathered. Elbowing her way to a spot near the front, she anxiously scanned the sky.

“It was an American plane! I’m positive!”

“It dipped its wings!”

“They know we’re here!”

“We’re going to be rescued!”

The B-24 didn’t return, but Margie heard explosions in the distance and saw fires in the sky. In retribution, the guards lashed three men to posts, forcing them to stare at the sun for hours. Despondency settled back on the camp like a shroud.

The vegetables Margie grew in her garden improved a scanty diet of rice and sap-sap, the finger-sized, foul-smelling fish supplied by the Japanese. Pulling weeds around the leafy swamp spinach, sweet potatoes, and tomato plants, she separated the edible weeds from those that weren’t. Looking closely at her crops, she saw a promising sight. Something had nibbled the tops of the spinach, maybe a rabbit. She would borrow the trap Wade had made from braided vines and set it. With any luck, rabbit stew would soon top the menu, followed by soups and sausages until every edible morsel of the rabbit had augmented a meal.

Her knees creaked as she stood up, causing her to limp a few steps before the soreness eased. As she went to wash up, she found the water bucket kept by the shanty door for general purposes empty, and the sliver of soap that rested on a shelf just inside the door missing. Annoyed, she asked Helen, “Have you seen the soap?”

“It’s by the door, where it always is.”

“No, it’s not!” Margie snapped. “I can’t find the soap, and there’s no water. Criminy! Why can’t
you
fill up this bucket sometimes?”

“I
did
fill the bucket and I
don’t
know where the soap is. Tildy was here earlier. Maybe she took it.”

“Tildy wouldn’t take our soap.”

“Yes, she would. She took my hairpin last time she was here. It was my last one, too.”

Margie snatched up the bucket to refill it at the tap, stopping at Wade’s for the rabbit trap on the way. She found him asleep, wearing only a thong, his body stretched out in full view. His hands were leathery, skin pulled taut over swollen knuckles. He sometimes remarked that his feet had gone numb. His hair had thinned, and his beard came in patchily. He complained of a constant ringing in his ears. At 34, he looked more like 70. Vitamin deficient, dehydrated, and slowly starving, each day he grew physically weaker and mentally vaguer. Just like all of them. It seemed the easy out for the Japanese. What to do with the prisoners: don’t feed them and let nature take its course.