All Good Women: A Novel

By Valerie Miner

As World War II rages abroad, a group of women forge the bonds of sisterhood in America

In 1938, while tensions in Europe are reaching a boiling point, four young women with big ambitions enter secretarial school in San Francisco. Motivated to attain the financial stability that eluded their parents, they go to battle for their futures. Moira, of Scottish descent, dreams of being an actress. Ann yearns for the education her Jewish immigrant parents provided for her brother, but not for her. Japanese American Wanda experiences firsthand the racial injustices running rampant in the United States. And Teddy, who left the Dust Bowl for sunny California, comes to startling realizations about herself as the war progresses. These women will be both buoyed and challenged by their dreams, experiencing love, loss, and everything in between. Against the backdrop of a nation gripped by fear and paranoia, Miner eloquently captures the spirit of wartime on the home front.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Aug 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497621572

Valerie Miner

Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fourteen books, including novels, short fiction collections, and nonfiction. Miner’s work has appeared in the Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, the Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, the Gettysburg Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Women’s Review of Books, the Nation, and other journals. Her stories and essays have been published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish, and Dutch. She has won fellowships and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, Fundación Valparaiso, the Australia Council Literary Arts Board, and numerous other organizations. She has received Fulbright fellowships to Tunisia, India, and Indonesia. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. Her website is www.valerieminer.com.

Book preview

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Chapter One

Spring 1942, San Francisco

AMERICANS SURRENDER ON BATAAN

RAF BOMBS LUBECK

BRITISH LAND IN MADAGASCAR

AMERICANS DEFEAT JAPANESE AT MIDWAY

‘SHE’S GOING TO HATE this. She’s going to hate us,’ said Moira, her damp eyes on the faces of the two friends beside her as she steered down Borden Street. Her cheeks were flushed and her normally bouncy red hair straggled over the padded shoulders of her green polka dot dress. ‘She’ll never talk to us again.’

Three years, thought Moira. The four girls had shared a house in San Francisco like family for three years and now they were being split apart.

Gently, Ann squeezed Moira’s chin and moved her friend’s face back in the direction of traffic. ‘She’ll feel even worse when we don’t make it alive.’

Ann’s voice was low, as if she had one of her headaches. Teddy noticed that Ann’s olive skin looked even darker at times like this, as if the migraine cast a shadow.

‘Maybe Moi’s right,’ drawled Teddy, who always sat near the window when they borrowed Randy Girard’s Studebaker so as not to block the view since she was the tallest of the four women. Three women, now that Wanda was being interned, arrested, imprisoned, evacuated with all the other Japanese Americans. None of the words sat well with Teddy, who was feeling especially blond today. She thought of those thin, grey men who hid behind FBI files, sidling up to the house to protect the USA from Wanda. Ridiculous, the curfew which meant she had to be home before eight o’clock every night and the order that all her people had to turn in ‘contraband’ such as binoculars and cameras. The orders became crazier and crazier and now this; now they were taking Wanda away.

‘Moira,’ scolded Ann, pointing again to the road. ‘This was your idea, remember?’ She spoke with affectionate exasperation. ‘You were the only one clever enough to find out where the bus was leaving from.’

‘It’s just that Wanda can be, you know, so private,’ Moira worried, ‘and she’s not exactly going off to college while we wave pompons.’ She grew quieter. ‘Where’s she going, anyway?’

‘I told you yesterday.’ Teddy tried to steady her voice. She didn’t want to be short, but Moira’s frenzy left no room for anybody else to be agitated. ‘An assembly center, whatever that means.’ Teddy spoke directly to the two gardenias she had brought for Wanda and her mother, Mrs Nakatani. Their warm sweetness saturated the car, enveloping them all in a spring which refused to dawn this foggy April morning. If she closed her eyes and inhaled the heavy perfume, she could pretend this was all a dream, that Wanda had never left home, that they were all sleeping safely in the Victorian house on Stockton Street.

Yet, thought Teddy, this was as irrevocable as Mr Nakatani’s death. Suicide, not death. She was just becoming aware of the importance of precision. Words cut sharply during a war.

It was because of his suicide that Wanda left Stockton Street to return to her family. And it was just three weeks after the funeral that the Nakatanis received the family ‘evacuation’ order. Teddy had seen her friend once in the last month, on the day Wanda and her brother Howard moved their family furniture into the Stockton Street basement for safe-keeping, for ‘the duration’, whatever that meant. What was unimaginable in December when war was declared — that Wanda would be seen as an enemy — was only one part of the craziness now. Everywhere she turned Teddy saw headlines screaming ‘Jap’ this or ‘Jap’ that. ‘Jap Invasion of West Coast Expected’. All San Francisco Japanese merchants were holding ‘Evacuation Sales’ hoping to sell their goods before the windows were smashed. Wanda told her some boys had scrawled graffiti outside her uncle’s cannery, ‘Rome, Berlin, Tokio’ and ‘Down with Slant-Eyed Spies’. Wanda said she was lucky the Nakatanis could store their furniture. Many of her friends had lost money selling precious belongings to unscrupulous second-hand dealers. So they had crammed as much furniture as possible into the basement and into Wanda’s­ room.

Moving day had grown more painful with each load, as if they were taking things away rather than moving them in. Moira, Ann and Teddy stayed around to help. The storage turned into a funeral, each of the pallbearers silent until the tables and bed frames were laid in the cellar. Teddy remembered Wanda on the first day of typing class four years before — the shy, determined girl, so pert in her red suit. She had aged ten years these last two months.

Moira spotted the dispersement center as they passed San Angeleco Avenue. The large, gravelled lot was crowded with growling Greyhound buses. Such confusion: babies wailing and women squeezing ‘just one more’ parcels on to the buses, past the drivers who stood, arms across their chests, shaking their heads. Policemen hovered everywhere, watching. At the far end of the lot, one bus roared; the doors shut and it began reluctantly to roll, gorged with people and furniture and bundles of food.

‘Oh, no, we’re going to miss her,’ shouted Moira. Frantically, she swerved Randy’s car to the curb and switched off the ignition. ‘They said they wouldn’t leave until 10.00. It’s only 9.30.’

Ann followed swiftly. ‘Moira, I don’t believe you. Where did you develop this abiding faith in the United States government?’ She shook her head and rubbed a muscle at the base of her neck. She didn’t believe herself. This wasn’t the time to argue with Moira. They had to find Wanda before it was too late.

Too late. Ann thought of Uncle Aaron’s last letter. They were taking Jews to camp, he said. Don’t believe the newspapers. He’d heard rumors of torture and … worse. At first Ann had thought he was exaggerating, suffering from the root paranoia that would hit anyone whose land was under siege. He was, after all, Mama’s brother, the child of highly dramatic Galitian Jews. In this instance, Ann preferred the cool Frankfurt reason of her father’s family. Yes, she dismissed Uncle Aaron impatiently. After all the Americans had kept diplomats in Berlin until last December. But as time passed and the next letter confirming their safe arrival in Amsterdam never came, Ann grew less and less confident of her doubt. This uncertainty was even more frightening because it made her believe that, with her crazed premonitions of terror, Mama had been right all along. Ann had to admit she was as scared of madness as she was of death. When the two of them coincided like this — when only through delusions could you see danger clearly — she was terrified. Her migraines had been terrible these last few weeks. Despite the fire splitting up her neck, it was Ann who saw Wanda first.

At a window seat, near the back of bus number five, sat Wanda, her eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil in the parking lot and the cacophony on the bus. Likewise silent were her mother beside her as well as her sister Betty and brother Howard in the next seat forward. Their muteness raised a wall of privacy between them and the other eight families in the grim vehicle.

Wanda was thinking of Uncle Fumio burning memories of Japan — photographs, letters and diplomas — trying to create an innocence against the inevitable charges of subversion.

‘Ba-ka-ta-re,’ Papa had said. ‘Stupid. Stupid to burn these pieces of paper. You cannot change who you are. All they need is one look. They will know your family does not come from Stockholm, Fumio.’

Papa would not destroy his documents. He waited, bitterly, for them to take him as they had arrested so many of the older Issei immigrant generation. And it was them — the FBI men, not his family — who found him, holding the note in his rigid hand. His body they could retain. But his spirit, his Japanese-American spirit, had already been evacuated elsewhere.

Since Papa’s suicide, Wanda had moved as if in a trance, preparing to leave her home for the resettlement communities intended to hold tens of thousands of Japanese Americans. Sometimes she questioned what held her together. She looked over to Mama. Was there an unstated pact between them that they would not fall apart? At night, alone in bed, Wanda couldn’t help wondering how her father had done it, considering where he had purchased the poison, how long he had planned his exit, how he had convinced the family to go to Sebastopol for the day, what he was thinking when he saw them off in the morning. Had the poison hurt? Was it all finished quickly? She mulled over their last evening again and again, but there had been absolutely nothing unusual. Sometimes Wanda was filled with admiration for Papa’s courage. Sometimes she was furious with him for leaving them — as he had always done — to go his own way. Then, she became angry at the government for killing his pride. Lately, she had felt overcome with grief and despair. What could she do — about Papa? About the evacuation? Was she becoming like her uncle and aunt?

‘Shikata ga nai,’ Uncle Fumio said. ‘It cannot be helped.’ Each day this month, she felt stunned by the good deportment with which people accepted the move. Of course those who fought back met severe punishment. That man in Oregon who protested the curfew was thrown into solitary confinement for months. And in a way, Wanda was relieved to escape the hostility that had surrounded them since Pearl Harbor. Personally, her only persecution had been contemptuous glances in the shops and on the streetcars. But Joyce Shimasaki had been cut with flying glass from her front window. Mr Hata’s nursery had been vandalized. The FBI had randomly ransacked homes for months. She did know she was glad to be with her people, apart from the Caucasians. Safe on her way to what the government described as ‘havens of refuge.’

After Papa’s death, the hardest part had been leaving the house on Stockton Street. She kept intending to return after they moved the furniture. But there had been a thousand delays until she realized that consciously taking leave of the house would be the ultimate violation, the real arrest. The way she had left — to tend to Mama’s grief, to mourn Papa — had been a private movement in a time of deep numbness. The evacuation was an extension of that separation, spreading into a great public affliction. To leave Stockton Street fully aware that she could not return would fill her with uncontrollable rage. Instead, she telephoned. She hoped that Teddy and Moira and Ann would understand. But how could they when she, herself, did not understand? What was happening to her? To all of them? Perhaps when she awoke, the bus would have taken her back to Stockton Street. She longed to curl up on the lumpy old couch in the front room and hear Moira singing from the kitchen. She longed to step out into the small back garden and dig in the fresh, brown earth with Ann. She longed to sit quietly with Teddy at the dining room table, both of them lost in thought over steaming cups of coffee.

Wanda looked out at the gravelled lot now and remembered the stories from Moira’s and Ann’s parents about Ellis Island. Was being deported the same as immigrating? She should ask Emma Goldman, now there was a woman who knew both sides of the tale. Surely it looked the same. Next to bus number four, an old man was being frisked by two tall Caucasian policemen while his family stood quietly by, waiting for ‘permission’ to enter the bus. Over by the entrance, she watched a camera crew filming departing groups. The government was recording its own crimes. This was madness. Well, what did she expect?

Moira and Teddy raced after Ann, across the gravelled lot. Teddy noticed with dismay that the gardenias were browning on the edges where she had touched them.

They reached bus number five and waved frantically to Wanda, whose face had turned to rock. Finally Howard noticed them, grinned and swivelled to his sister. Wanda looked out and smiled thinly.

‘I told you we shouldn’t have come,’ panted Moira, the color rising up the right side of her neck. ‘She’s mad at us.’

‘No.’ Ann spoke heavily. ‘She’s mourning. It’s good we’re here.’

‘Can you come down?’ Teddy shouted.

Wanda looked closer, as if staring might catch edges of an echo. Truthfully, she had heard Teddy. ‘Can you come down?’ Did she mean would they let her, or did she have the spirit to leave the bus, knowing she would have to climb aboard again?

‘Can-you-come-down?’ Teddy repeated, shaping the words carefully so Wanda might lipread.

Wanda shook her head. She stared past them, trying to re-enter the numbness of a few moments before. Oh, why had they come? How had they found the place? Of course if they hadn’t come she would never have forgiven them. But she could have dealt with that later. Now their presence forced her to open up, to see them, to hear the familiar voices, to feel all the loss and confusion and anger that she was trying to evade in order to survive in one piece.

The bus sputtered into ignition although one family was still loading suitcases. The old mother spoke rapidly in high-pitched Japanese to her two sons who were approaching with a bulging duffle bag, marked with the family number.

Ann waved to Wanda, her left hand in a wiping motion.

Moira blew kisses to Wanda, Howard and Betty. Mrs Nakatani huddled in a shadow.

Suddenly all heads on the bus turned toward a tall figure in the aisle.

‘It’s Teddy,’ shouted Moira, amused. ‘Look, Ann.’

Inside the bus, an astonished driver caught sight of a blond head in his rearview mirror. ‘Hey, hey, how’d you get on? You can’t be in here.’

‘I was helping Mama-san with her parcel,’ drawled Teddy, nodding to the old woman who had been calling nervously in the yard. ‘And I came to say good-bye to some friends.’

‘We’re leavin’ any minute.’ He raised his voice and stared at her firmly through the mirror. ‘So you’d better make fast farewells or you’re off with the rest of ’em.’ He had an Oklahoma twang and Teddy noticed he looked like her brother Virgil around the eyes.

She turned to Mrs Nakatani and bowed. Then she pinned the gardenia on the woman’s beige wool coat.

Wanda fought back tears as her mother nodded stiffly and said, ‘Thank you, young lady.’

But Wanda could not stand and come so far as the aisle. Teddy reached over, squeezed Wanda’s hand and gave her the other flower. Teddy sniffed, wiping her navy sweater sleeve across her eyes. ‘Bye, Wanda. Will you write to us when you can?’

‘Yes.’ Wanda struggled to contain an affectionate smile. If she didn’t contain it, who knew what would flood out. She would write about this in her diary tonight; then she would sort out the emotions.

‘I mean it, lady,’ barked the driver, opening and shutting the door several times as if flexing his muscles.

‘Bye, then,’ said Teddy. She winked at young Betty and rubbed Howard’s shoulder, upset with herself for not bringing them presents, also. She strode down the aisle, too choked to look back at Wanda.

The bus moved the minute Teddy stepped down. So she didn’t have a chance to join the others in shouting good-bye.

Wanda looked out to Ann and Moira, waving back slowly.

Then, as the bus passed Teddy, in spite of herself, she blew a kiss.

The three women stood in silence, watching the Greyhound haltingly follow another bus off the lot and then down Borden Street.

Ann and Moira turned toward the car. Teddy held back a moment, with an urge to wave to all the people on the remaining buses. Eventually she caught up with them.

‘I know you’ll say it’s naive,’ Moira was talking to Ann, ‘but I can’t swallow my fury about the unfairness, the bloody injustice! I mean what would Wanda or poor Mr Nakatani — of all people — have done to threaten the national security?’

Teddy found it odd to refer to Wanda’s father as ‘poor Mr Nakatani’. He seemed the toughest person she had ever met.

‘Exist.’ Ann answered in a voice that was colder than she intended because she admired Moira’s indignation. She wanted to say more, but the headache had taken over now, with nausea as well as excruciating pain.

‘You’re not naive,’ exclaimed Teddy. ‘You’re a good person.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ Ann cut through. ‘Goodness is worth nothing now. We’re all so innocent. We’re all good women.’

‘This is the end of the house,’ declared Moira. Tears streamed down her hot cheeks as she unlocked the right side of the Studebaker and walked around to the left. Once seated, she lost control, leaning her head on the steering wheel and sobbing. ‘Poor Wanda. Poor Wanda.’

Ann rubbed her friend’s shoulder.

‘Everything is over for us, too,’ cried Moira, ‘the house, everything.’

Ann looked out at the decaying street and the faded sign over the old bottle factory across the alley. The sky was a milky grey — as if April shunned violated countries.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Teddy angrily, rolling down the window for fresh air. She recalled holding on to Virgil’s leg, years ago, to keep him from falling out of the truck somewhere in Arizona. She felt a sudden relief in her lungs as she whispered, ‘Nothing’s over.’

Chapter Two

Spring 1938, San Francisco

GERMANY MOBILIZES

FORTY HOUR WORK WEEK ESTABLISHED IN USA

CHOLERA EPIDEMIC RAGES IN INDIA

ITALY SENDS GOOD WILL MISSION TO JAPAN

JAPAN BOMBS CANTON

MOIRA WALKED THE BLOCK three times before she looked up and found the shingle hanging from a second floor window­: Tracey Business School. They weren’t exactly grabbing customers. How did this bode for their promise of ‘One Graduate­/one job’? Moira was counting on Tracey Business School and today’s entrance was not auspicious.

Green, should she have worn this green dress or something more sober, like the white blouse and black skirt? She wanted to start out right. Tracey Business School was a means to an end. It got her out of Los Angeles, away from her parents and the depression she had felt in the year since high school when she had sat at so many soda fountains waiting to be discovered by a movie producer that she had gained 10 pounds. Now a slimmer, more determined Moira was beginning a new life in San Francisco and she resolved to subordinate her temperament to the task at hand. 8.10. Did she have time to comb her hair? Well, in this game appearance was important.

Staring critically into the mirror, she saw large green eyes; a small, slightly too-pointed nose; a full, heart-shaped mouth, which when she smiled revealed straight teeth, unless you looked to the left and noticed the two that overlapped. The red hair was her greatest asset. She reached up her skirt and pulled down her satin slip. There, she stepped back, admiring the effect. Drool on, Tyrone Power.

8.15, she had better get a move on.

By the time she reached room 105, she could hear clattering typewriters. Calm down, Moira, this isn’t Immaculate Conception High School. The old wooden door squeaked loudly. A few heads turned, but most of the girls concentrated on their typing. A skinny woman stood at the front of the class, tapping a pointer on her broad oak desk. Moira smiled at the teacher, who frowned and nodded to a seat at the back. Moira walked with as much poise as she could summon — Katharine Hepburn spurning Spencer Tracey — and sat down in a desk next to a pretty, olive-skinned girl.

The girl turned, smiled briefly, and, by the time Moira had the composure to smile back, the girl had returned to work.

The skinny teacher didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Moira as she stood in front, tapping out the rhythm on her desk. She looked like an army sergeant. Shouldn’t let the thinness fool her, she was probably total sinew under that ridiculous grey tweed suit. Why did she pull her hair back in such a tight bun that it made her look old? What was she really — fifty, fifty-five? Not a trace of make-up. No accessories, not even a brooch and didn’t all old maids wear brooches? Enough Moira, you don’t want to get scared away the first day. She looked around the room, which at first had seemed filled with blond actresses. No, Moira inhaled and counted again, there were only four or five blonds in the room — if you included that woman with the dirty blond colour. Moira wished she didn’t fixate on fair women. She knew it was a silly obsession, but she couldn’t help it.

The dirty blond girl was interesting. Tall and strong, you could tell even when she was sitting down. She had a nice face — hardly pretty, but gentle and easy. Not your average secretary. Moira wondered about her talent for making friends with outsiders.

‘For those of you who were late.’ The toothpick was speaking to the back wall, but Moira knew she was being personally addressed. ‘We have been doing an initial exercise to test coordination and reflexes. Now we will spend 5 minutes having people introduce themselves.’

‘Connie Bently.’

Moira missed the next couple of names because she was staring at the girl in the middle of the first row, a beautiful Oriental girl. Moira had never had a friend who wasn’t white. Would this girl talk to her? She was quite stunning and Moira admired the neatness of her outfit — the simple, trim lines of her red suit. The color was terrific with her shiny black hair. What kind of shampoo did she use? Moira pulled a pencil from her handbag.

‘Wanda Nakatani,’ the Oriental girl said.

Moira wrote down the name, wondering if she spelled it right. She took a closer look at the blond women and none of them appeared to be movie material. Too thin or egghead. Then the one with the dirty blond hair spoke. Moira wrote down, ‘Teddy Fielding’. Teddy, what an unusual name, and she talked with a drawl. Was she Southern? Moira had always been interested in the South, ever since Gone With The Wind. The neighboring girl touched Moira’s shoulder, whispering, ‘Your turn.’

‘Moira Finlayson.’ Moira raised her head.

‘Ann Rose.’ Her neighbor followed. Moira wondered if she were Jewish, with such black hair and dark skin. She seemed a very sympathetic person. Moira peeked at Ann’s typing exercise and observed that she made it all the way down the page whereas a girl in front of them had only finished the first line. Yes, this one would be worth getting to know, too.

‘Miriam Schwartz.’ ‘Penny Lentman.’ ‘Dorothy Buckley.’ ‘Amelia Freitas.’ ‘Eleanor Mirelli.’ ‘Eve Smithson.’ ‘Gloria Porter.’ ‘Julia Tripp.’

Moira sighed back in her chair. This would be an adventure. Lots of new girls. A strange, witchy teacher. And what could be so hard about a little typing? If she could sew and knit — not that she did either brilliantly — she could type.

‘Very nice, very nice,’ said Miss Fargo. ‘Now let’s try that exercise again. Insert the paper carefully …’

Moira watched Ann Rose put the sheet behind the black roller and twist a knob on the side of the typewriter. Nothing to that, she decided, managing to insert three sheets of paper crookedly. She missed the rest of Miss Fargo’s instruction.

Ann whispered, ‘Put your fingers like this and type asdfghjkl­;.’

Moira jotted down ‘asdfghjkl;’ under the names Wanda Nakatani, Teddy Fielding and Ann Rose.

‘No talking, please,’ Miss Fargo called. Ann simply concentrated on the typewriter. Moira resolved to follow Ann’s reactions to Miss Fargo.

Moira remembered being petrified how to act in grade school until she found the secret: she picked the smartest girl and copied her behavior. Susie Fitzpatrick was not only teacher’s pet, but most popular girl in school. Moira noticed that Susie never talked when Sister was watching but rather waited until Sister’s back was turned or she had left the room for a moment. Then she noticed that Susie always did her homework right away. Susie didn’t have to fret about the delays which imprisoned Moira every night about seven o’clock. On the playground Moira saw that Susie didn’t go out of her way to make friends, but neither did she spurn anyone. She wasn’t a snob. And she certainly didn’t suffer from shyness. It never occurred to Moira why Susie knew things naturally and Moira, herself, had to learn them. She just practiced being Susie Fitzpatrick.

At Immaculate Conception High School Moira continued to observe her friends and to compete with them. Sometimes this got out of hand. She had stolen Maria Ramos’s boyfriend and then realized that what made him attractive was that he was Maria’s. Moira defeated Elizabeth Getz in spelling, not because she cared about the spelling bee — in fact since then she had forgotten all the hard words like ‘Philippines’ and ‘vacuum’ — but because Elizabeth considered the spelling trophy worth seeking. Was she envious of her friends? No, Moira was afraid it was crazier than that. She didn’t know how to live. Outside the rivalry, she was paralyzed with fear or boredom. She continued to compete until she could act anyone’s part. Finally, Sister Lawrence noticed Moira had a gift; she was a magnificent actress. This was something for herself alone. Of course all the girls used to talk about John Barrymore, but none of them were serious about acting. Susie wanted to be a nurse. Elizabeth was going to marry a millionaire. Maria wanted to work at Woolworths. So the acting was Moira’s alone. And she was going to succeed.

‘Break ladies,’ Miss Fargo called. ‘Five minutes break.’

‘Hello, my name is Ann Rose.’ The girl across the aisle smiled.

‘Yes, I remember from the go-round. My name is Moira Finlayson.’

‘Finlayson.’ The darker woman smiled. ‘That’s Scottish, isn’t it?’

‘How did you know? Most people think it’s Swedish or, oh, I don’t know, Outer Mongolian.’

‘Well, I make a habit of collecting unusual names. Your family’s from Scotland?’

Moira glanced at her watch: three more minutes. She started to explain and found herself revealing more than she intended. ‘My parents met at MacBrides, that’s a department store in Glasgow. Dad worked in the stockroom and Mother was a salesgirl. Mother had these hopes of coming to America, where it would all be different.’ Moira paused, checking Ann’s face to discover she was following closely. ‘They chose California because my Dad — funny I’ve never called him that out loud — had lung trouble. Turned out to be tuberculosis. He died a year after they got here. Three months after I was born.’

‘Sounds tough,’ Ann sighed, ‘for everyone.’

‘Yes, Mother had a hard time, but she didn’t want to return to Glasgow a failure. She met Daddy, my step-father, and they settled in Los Angeles.’ Moira heard her voice shaking and changed the tone. ‘It’s almost time to return to our fascinating work. How about lunch tomorrow? I mean I have an appointment today, but tomorrow?’

‘Good.’ Ann nodded solemnly. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

‘Asdfghjkl;’ ‘asdfghjkl;’. Ann liked Moira. She had learned that a lot of girls who wore make-up and frilly clothes simply used their femininity as protective covering. Moira was bright and ironic. Ann suspected she would need friends to get her through two years of Miss Fargo’s lectures. Poor woman, what a caricature of the cold spinster. Yet she couldn’t be more than forty-five. Must be difficult to teach office skills to a group of women twenty years younger, most of whom wanted to be someone very different from their stern, gaunt teacher. Ann imagined herself ten years from now visiting Miss Fargo with her diploma in classics.

Ann wouldn’t have selected Moira out of a crowd. She looked Irish with that red hair and the freckles. Ann remembered Mama’s stories about the Catholics in Europe, the worst anti-Semites. Why was she so conscious of race this morning? First day defensiveness. She couldn’t help noticing that there was only one other Jewish girl, Miriam Schwartz. She looked around the class now. Well, what’s-her-name Lentman could be Jewish, even with the blond hair and blue eyes and turned-up nose. Papa had warned her not to type people. ‘Jews come in all sizes and colors,’ he said, ‘as do Gentiles. Besides we’re in America now, where things like that don’t matter.’ Ann wondered often about her father’s capacity for self-deception.

She sat straighter in front of the typewriter, aware of the strain at the base of her neck.

‘And now the top row ladies, qwertyuiop, qwertyuiop, ‘qwertyuiop’. Let me hear it evenly, tapping to a regular rhythm. Practice. Practice, it’s all in the rhythm.’

Ann obeyed, ‘qwertyuiop’, ‘qwertyuiop’. She had always been obedient. A loving daughter. A model student. She recalled how Mrs Bird punished the second grade class, making everyone sit with folded hands. Ann obeyed and half an hour later Mrs Bird exclaimed to the whole class what a good girl Ann was. Here she sat, after all this time, with her hands folded on her lap. Imagine, said Mrs Bird. Imagine, Ann did try, but it always seemed smart to follow directions. Occasionally Ann felt as if she were born middle-aged — ever responsible and even-tempered. No one would guess she had these terrorizing headaches, ‘qwertyuiop’, ‘qwertyuiop’. She hoped for some sentences, at least words, by afternoon, ‘qwertyuiop’, ‘qwertyuiop’.

Ann was supposed to be grateful Papa was subsidizing business school. In fact she was grateful for the extra money because — with her part-time salary — it allowed her to move to Turk Street. Her throat caught at the thought of Turk Street; she had to forget the incident. After all, she had not been harmed; she had screamed so loudly the intruder had fled. Still, it was hard to sleep at night, imagining the man creeping in the side window with the paper bag over his head. All she could remember for the police were those big white hands with the long, well-manicured nails. She would like to move from Turk Street, but not so long as the only alternative was back to her parents’ flat.

Ann nodded encouragement to Moira. Funny how this connection had become so important to her in the space of an hour. Ann had dreamed all her life of a few deep friendships. She thought she had found this in Ilse Stein in the third grade and then again with Carol Sommers in high school, but she had lost both of them.

What an exaggeration. She knew exactly where Ilse Stein was. Aunt Ruth had written last year to say she was playing concerts all over the East Coast. She had even sent an address. Of course Ann could get back in touch. They had corresponded for years after Ann’s family left New York. They promised passionately to stay in touch. They were going to be room-mates at Barnard. They even talked about their majors and the color of their bedspreads.

Concentrate, how could an intelligent person concentrate on ‘qwertyuiop’? Humility, Ann, humility.

Could you count on anything remaining stable? She mourned for Ilse, but she knew they would never recover the old trust. Look at Mama, who hung on to the past like a drowning woman clutching an anchor. Sometimes Ann frightened herself by looking in the mirror and seeing Mama’s hazel eyes. She even had the same brown speckle in her left eye. Spots on the eyes, now what did that portend? Did she really believe in things being portended? No more and no less than she believed in prayers. From moment to moment you had to believe in something. Thinking about Mama always caught her in these conundrums. Mama, Mama. How had she changed from that big, warm woman who banished all her children’s troubles to a heaving mass of sobs and, finally, of silence? Was it Papa’s fault? Surely Mama could have said, ‘No, David, we are not going to America’ or at least ‘We will teach the children Yiddish.’ Instead she strained to create an all-American home for him, unable to contain the confusion and grief and rage. The Yiddish slipped out — first as she talked to herself cooking supper or hanging out the wash, then in small endearments. So Ann was Chanela or Hanna or Anna when Papa wasn’t around. She picked up a lot of the language when Mama was conversing with her friends, before the friends stopped coming in person and Mama began to conjure them.

‘That’s it, ladies.’ Miss Fargo’s voice cracked above the clatter. ‘Lunchtime. Let’s rest those fingers a while.’

The cafeteria was a cold, damp room in the basement. Ann’s stomach turned as she considered what might have been boiling for years in the huge tureens. She was disappointed Moira couldn’t eat with her. She noticed that several tables were already filled with girls chatting and laughing. They all seemed quite stylish. She looked down at her straight green skirt and plain pumps. Perhaps she should dress up more tomorrow. But it would take more than a colorful dress to fit in. These girls had a carefree verve. Actually, they were probably just as nervous as she. That tall, skinny blond woman at the front of the line looked as if she might die of shyness. What about Miriam Schwartz? Ann wondered. She turned and saw her gossiping with the Lentman girl. Now, how did she know they were gossiping?

‘Excuse me.’ Ann had run her tray into the one in front of her. She looked up to see it belonged to the Oriental student. The girl smiled self-consciously.

Ann smiled back. ‘You look familiar.’

Wanda blushed. ‘Aren’t you Ann Rose from Lowell High School?’

‘Yes.’ Ann looked at her quizzically.

‘Wanda Nakatani. I was the year behind you. My brother Howard was in your class. And I heard you speak at his — rather your — graduation.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember Howard. What’s he doing?’

‘Soup or sandwich?’ demanded the woman behind the counter.

‘Sandwich,’ Ann replied cheerfully. ‘Egg salad please.’ She paid the cashier and said to Wanda, ‘Shall we sit together?’

‘Oh, yes, I’d like that.’

Ann thought how much Wanda resembled her brother. Why hadn’t she recognized Wanda? Of course seniors didn’t talk to juniors. Now she regarded Wanda as a long-lost sister. ‘I remember, you were interested in journalism. And you wrote poetry, too.’

Wanda nodded. ‘Still do. In fact I had quite a lot running through my head during those gruesome typing exercises. Got to do something to preserve your sanity.’

Anna gobbled the rest of her sandwich, surprised at her appetite.

Wanda could barely conceal her pleasure about eating with Ann Rose, the girl she used to admire from a distance. ‘Is your father still at the factory?’

‘Good memory. You’ll make a great writer. Yes, but he got promoted to foreman last year. Mind if I smoke? Would you like one?’

‘Go right ahead,’ said Wanda, ‘but no thanks.’

Ann watched the smoke rise. She noticed Wanda biting her fingernails. First days were tough on everyone. ‘Who were your friends at Lowell?’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t have known them.’ Wanda grew shyer, intensely aware of the differences — Ann a year older and the school brain — but she had resolved to be more forthright with people in this new course. ‘Emmy Yamamoto and Sarah Murdoch.’

‘I think. I knew Sarah. Wasn’t she in art studio?’

‘Yes,’ Wanda said. ‘She knew your friend Carol Sommers. Whatever happened to Carol? I always thought she was going to New York to make it big.’

Ann inhaled sharply. Then she stubbed out her cigarette and looked at her watch. Hell. She thought everybody knew. She considered excusing herself to the lavatory and then caught the panic on Wanda’s face. She breathed deeply; if she told this story often enough, she might start believing it.

‘She did go to New York.’ Ann could smell the anger in her sweat. ‘And it was very hard for her.’ She struggled to hold back the tears.

Wanda wished she hadn’t asked.

‘Too hard,’ Ann blurted. ‘They found her in a bathtub, with her wrists slit.’

‘How tragic for you.’ Wanda reached for her hand.

Ann looked up, startled. No one had really consoled her in the year since Carol’s death. ‘Such a waste.’ ‘So sad for her family.’ ‘If we had only known, we might have been able to help her.’ But no one had acknowledged Ann’s feelings. She was only a friend.

Wanda watched Ann carefully.

‘Yes.’ Ann’s voice was steady.

‘I remember how close you were.’ Wanda forced a smile. ‘I always envied your friendship. The two of you going to football games together. And didn’t you have the same coats — dark brown with black collars?’

‘Yes.’ Ann smiled, herself. ‘Yes, she was a good friend and I miss her.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Wanda pulled back her hand. ‘And I’m sorry I brought it up.’

‘No, no,’ Ann began, ‘it’s fine. You didn’t know …’

A buzzer rang. The two looked at each other. ‘Like being back at Lowell,’ they said in unison and laughed.

‘Except that we have the same teacher all day.’ Wanda shook her head. ‘What a Lulu.’

Upstairs, they parted for their desks. ‘Lunch tomorrow?’ Wanda asked boldly.

‘It’s a date if I can bring another girl, Moira.’ Ann was cheerful. She had no good reason to refuse — only a nagging sadness about Carol. Well, best to get her mind off that. They would talk about other things tomorrow. Ann had hardly asked about Wanda.

Wanda walked back to her desk grinning. She was in the same class with the famous Ann Rose. Howard would be pleased. And Mama would be very impressed. Perhaps this would stop her questions about whether Tracey was the right place. Wanda could hardly believe it. Throughout high school she had wanted to be Ann Rose: the beautiful, brilliant girl who didn’t know she was the awe of teachers and students alike.

‘Asdfghjkl;qwertyuiop’. What would Mrs Longnecker say when she found out her star writer was taking secretarial lessons? Of course journalists had to learn to type. Wanda felt another pang; how could she tell Mrs Longnecker she was still working at the cannery? She thought she would get a job on a newspaper any day. But one look at her Asian face and editors said, ‘No, that position was filled yesterday … an hour ago … in the last five minutes.’ Sometimes the rejection panicked her. Maybe she was crazy — there were few enough women and no other Nisei she knew — who became reporters on the mainstream papers. Sometimes the rebuff focused her. She would show them. She would go to college. Meanwhile, the first step was getting out of the cannery and a decent secretarial wage.

Wanda listened to Miss Fargo’s slow, precise instructions which made her feel as if she were in the first grade. Had she been especially slow and simple with Wanda?

Relax, Wanda. Tonight you can tell Mama about your suspicions and Papa about the day’s adventures. The difference between her parents’ temperaments always amazed Wanda — Papa so optimistic and energetic about American possibility and Mama low key, resentful about the broken promises. Maybe it was because Papa, coming from a poor Yokohama family, was used to hardship, while Mama left her middle-class comforts out of love for Papa and hopes of starting a new life. Wanda considered how they had met in a small socialist circle in Japan and carried their ideals across the Pacific. Surely they would never breach their class difference in Yokohama. First in Seattle and now in San Francisco, they held to their beliefs about a workers’ state and shared wealth, but they found few Issei following such politics. Thus they had made more white friends than many Japanese–American families. They lived inside and outside the Nihonjin community. The Nakatanis, Wanda shook her head, were always iconoclasts. Maybe the distinction between her parents was that Mama was more conscious of her children’s sacrifices. She had no tolerance for bigotry, yet as a Japanese lady she hadn’t built up adequate defenses. Papa saw himself as a pioneer and was prepared for hardship.

Wanda thought about the time Howard came home crying because he couldn’t join the same Cub Scout troop as his Caucasian friends. Mama was so furious Howard feared he had done something wrong. ‘What kind of democracy is this, Yas, where children are not equal?’ Wanda still wondered if Mama would have been exercised about the Brownies. Well, the boy was most important, that was that.

‘What would you have us do, Miné?’ Papa addressed Mama in Japanese. ‘Return to Japan before our dreams are realized?’

‘Our dreams? You are welcome to them. Yes, sometimes I think it would be better to return to Yokohama. At least we would only suffer poverty — and not this mad bigotry.’

Papa shook his head again. ‘Wait, Miné, you’ll see. Our people will become great Americans — scientists, writers, doctors — our own son.’

Mama pursed her lips and returned to the kitchen. She was a dutiful, if sometimes irritated, wife who allowed Papa the last word.

Traditions, it was hard to follow which traditions they would keep. Wanda: her very name was atypical. Most of her Nisei friends had Japanese names or at least more sedate Anglo names. But Mama insisted on naming her daughter after a favorite English teacher in Japan. ‘Wanda Nakatani’ — sometimes Wanda thought there were too many ‘a’s’ in the name, that it left her too exposed; sometimes she liked the name’s distinctiveness, which camouflaged her own bashfulness.

Wanda marvelled at the way Mama — who thought religion was a wasteful, deluded indulgence — put flowers by her parents’ photographs on the anniversary of their deaths. A few Buddhist practices were all right, Mama finally decided; at least she hadn’t converted to Christianity like Uncle Fumio. And if English was spoken when Caucasian guests were present, Japanese was the main language between Mama and Papa. Wanda grew up speaking English with Howard and Betty and her friends and almost understanding her parents’ Japanese. Her life, like her name, was half Japanese and half American. Half not Japanese and half not American. She was an amphibian, her mobility versatile to compensate for the lack of belonging. All the legacies were contradictory. She inherited from her parents a deep idealism about achievement as well as a grave fear of failure.

Papa had not quite fulfilled the prediction about himself — not yet, he was always quick to say. While most Issei in California farmed or fished, Papa still loved lumbering. He loved the sharp scent of evergreen forests and the independent life and the possibilities of fortune. Not until he was forty did he join his brother Fumio at the fish cannery.

Wanda admired Mama. Where would the family be without her? While she wished Mama were softer, she was grateful Mama hadn’t imprisoned her in origami and Buddhist practices and a marriage arranged by the Baishakunin. Mama had cleared a way for Wanda to have more freedom than she had. She insisted her daughter make a variety of friends. Sometimes Wanda felt as if she were standing on Mama’s shoulders, as if each generation of women in her family were supposed to stretch further. Mama’s contribution had been immigration to this strange country. Now Wanda was supposed to make an independent life. But if you led an independent life for your parents, you were not independent. At times Wanda envied cousin Keiko who, although she might feel suffocated by convention, was spared Wanda’s own confusion.

‘As we, as we, as we … You should have that down, ladies. Shall we try a longer word? Put your right index finger on the h, now the fourth finger of that hand on the o, now the pinky on the p. That’s it. Try hop hop hop hop. Then put it together. As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’

Wanda suppressed a smile. Really, if she thought this was embarrassing, how must stern Miss Fargo feel up there dictating to all of them? She didn’t look like she had had a good hop in forty years.

She would record this in her diary tonight. Wanda found that as soon as she told her family stories, they lost flavor. The diary was Mrs Longnecker’s greatest gift. Wanda had filled the fancy, engraved green book years ago. Now she was on her fourth volume, making sense of things in her own words — her crush on Martin Kogowa; her ideas about Roosevelt. In addition to testing out emotions and opinions, the diary was a good place to meditate. When she was sitting alone in her room with a cup of tea writing, she seemed to leave her body. She lived on the page. Wanda was afraid to feel too good while she was writing, afraid that she didn’t deserve the happiness. She told herself she wanted to be a writer because so many social issues needed to be addressed. This was true, but there was also the sheer satisfaction of writing.

Miss Fargo was just two girls behind her now. Wanda tried to relax. She would forget Miss Fargo’s original coldness to her. Probably everyone found her too formal. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’ She continued typing at the same, even pace. Miss Fargo stood over each girl and pointed out errors. But, Wanda noted proudly, many of them couldn’t get the letters straight while she hadn’t made a single error since the ‘Aw we hop.’ on the first line. Maybe Miss Fargo would overlook that when she saw the rest of the sheet. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’ Wanda continued. She could smell Miss Fargo’s carbolic soap now. Of course she wouldn’t wear perfume and she would need something strong to remove ink from her fingers. Maybe after class Wanda should inquire about the correct brand of soap. She grimaced at her own eagerness to impress.

‘Miss Nakatani,’ Miss Fargo stood over her.

Wanda looked up, absurdly wondering for a moment, whether it was correct military procedure to keep on typing and talk at the same time. Maybe she should type out her response?

‘Your work is indeed very neat. And save for that unfortunate mistake on the very first line, you seem to be doing fine. However,’ Miss Fargo bent lower, as if she were being confidential, ‘I wouldn’t wear such bright colors if I were you. They create a distraction in an office. I rather suspect you’ll want to blend in as much as possible.’

Wanda’s cheeks turned the color of her suit. Blend in? Would she say this to any of them or was she saying that, as an Oriental, Wanda should try to be inconspicuous? How should she respond? ‘Yes, Mam’? ‘Thank you’? Her fingers took over typing. ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’

It was so ironic — she had started wearing red because it did make her stand out, because it countered her preternatural shyness. At the mirror this morning, she worried about how unJapanese she looked. Was it her? Well, she wasn’t going to dress for the sake of cliché. Yet every time she wandered from the norm, she fretted the balance between stereotype and authenticity.

Miss Fargo criticized the next girl for several spacing errors. See, Wanda, she’s critical of everyone. But she hadn’t commented on anyone else’s clothes. Wanda wanted to scream and cry at the same time. It made her angry to be angry like this. She really hated to believe that people disliked her for race reasons. Her first instinct was to give the benefit of the doubt. Then she was surrounded by an immobilizing depression, a cloud of similar memories. Now her fingers grew stiff; she was furious at this silly exercise. Angry at all the white girls in the room obediently typing, ‘As we hop. As we hop. As we hop.’ How could she go on? The diary. She would write about it in the diary. Yes. She would write about distraction. ‘Blend in. Blend in.’ Wanda regarded her sheet now. ‘As we blend in, blend in, bland in.’

Wanda leaned against the streetlamp at the bus stop. Closing her eyes, she pretended to store all her worries in a high cupboard. If she still hated Tracey Business School by the end of the week, she could quit. She imagined shutting the door to the cupboard. She let a long breath run through her body.

‘Hi.’

Wanda didn’t want to be sociable. The voice was from a tall woman. Wanda tried to guess who it was.

‘Say, aren’t you from the business school?’ the voice added quickly.

A slight drawl, were there any Southerners in the class? Wanda opened her eyes and registered a thin, blond woman wearing a faded flowered blouse and a blue skirt. She didn’t remember her at all. Embarrassed by her reverie, she stood straighter and extended her hand. ‘Yes, I’m Wanda Nakatani.’

‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Teddy Fielding.’

Teddy’s large hand was roughly textured. Wanda considered the woman’s kind, open face. Any other time she would have been pleased to meet her. Could they postpone this until tomorrow?

Teddy, too, seemed embarrassed after the enthusiasm of her own initial greeting. ‘I don’t know, I don’t have much to say, except I thought it would be good to talk to someone from class. I was too shy at lunchtime.’

Wanda smiled, here was someone more scared than she. ‘Where are you from, Teddy?’

‘Oh, Renfrew Street.’

‘I meant, where are you from originally? I noticed your accent.’

‘Oh, yeah, some time ago, seven years or so, my family

Reviews for All Good Women

[majesdane-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found the book to be quite depressing. The characters struggle with personal conflicts throughout the war in ways that profoundly change them, forever altering their friendships. The realism of the story impressed me, but it also left me feeling quite disheartened. That being said, I think it's definitely worth a read.