Yvonne looked at her sympathetically. “That’s good. But my dad says it’s not going to matter much longer, if Japan keeps invading. He says things are bound to change.”
Yvonne’s words were as chilling as they were vague. Change was unimaginable. Lucy had grown up in the same house her parents lived in before she was born, a white two-story on Clement Street with black shutters and a porch with flowers spilling out of baskets hanging from the eaves, a nicer house than most of her friends lived in. Lucy had always had the same bedroom, the same bathroom with its pink-and-black tile and ruffled curtains in the window. The same walk to school—down Clement to the corner, crossing Normandie, and then three blocks to 156th—since the first day of kindergarten. The only changes in her life were the coverlets her mother made for her bed, the dresses hanging in her closet and the height of the two little twisty-branched trees in the front, which her mother had planted when she and her father were first married. Each year, they grew a few more inches, and Lucy knew that someday the tallest branches would reach the eaves.
Lucy knew that her father was worried too, though he refused to speak of the war while Lucy was in the room; when her parents listened to the radio after dinner, she was sent to her room to study. Of course, she snuck out and listened, anyway. And there were the newspapers: she couldn’t read a single word of the Rafu Shimpo, but the headlines at the newsstand on the way to the market were impossible to miss. Hidden Tank Army Protects Moscow. Seven Vessels Sunk Off Italy. Still, how could the events unfolding in these far-off places possibly affect Lucy and her family a million miles away in California, where even now, in the middle of winter, the air was scented with citrus blossoms?
Two boys kicked a ball past them, coattails flapping. When they saw Lucy and Yvonne, the shorter of the two skidded to a halt. “Thought you were supposed to be lunch monitor this week,” he said, sticking a finger into his ear and scratching vigorously.
Lucy couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, she pretended to rub at a bit of dirt on the lid of her lunch pail.
“Thought you were supposed to be running home to your mama,” Yvonne snapped. “I heard her calling you. She said you wet the bed again.”
Lucy, buoyed by her friend’s loyalty, blinked and smiled shyly. But as the boy ran off and Yvonne linked an arm through hers, Lucy knew that the changes had already started, and nothing in her power could stop them.
4
That day after school, Lucy installed herself in the front parlor to wait for her father to come home.
She was tired of her parents trying to protect her from things they thought she was too young to understand. Lucy supposed that had been all right when her world was limited to the bright-colored illustrations in her picture books, the elaborate tea parties she held for her dolls and stuffed toys, the swings and the slide at the playground in Rosecrans Park.
But she was in the eighth grade now, and her world had been growing steadily for a long time. She’d read all the books in her classroom and begun on the ones on her parents’ shelves—the ones in English, anyway, most of which belonged to her mother. Some were a little melodramatic for her taste, but Lucy preferred to be bored and occasionally confused by Edna Ferber and Daphne du Maurier than by Madeline and Caddie Woodlawn.
Consulting her mother about the future was out of the question. Miyako Takeda wasn’t like other mothers: she was quieter, prone to spells and moods. Withdrawn much of the time. Easily upset. And, of course, far more beautiful, which only made her seem more delicate, somehow.
Renjiro Takeda, on the other hand, would know what to do. He was a businessman, well respected, important. Lucy pretended to read—a book called The Rains Came that had been made into a movie that she was too young to see, in which a lot of people appeared to be falling in love with each other. The book was so confusing that she didn’t intend to finish it, but it was as good as any, since she had too many things on her mind to pay attention to the words.
At last, when dark had fallen and Lucy could hear her mother moving about the kitchen getting dinner ready, the front door opened. Her father’s face lit up when he spotted Lucy reading in the wing chair, but his smile didn’t disguise his weariness. He had been looking tired much of the time lately.
“Hello, little one,” he said, removing his hat and placing it on a high peg of the coatrack. He was a natty dresser and his hat was made of fine wool, smooth to the touch, its edges turned up slightly. Next he hung his topcoat, brushing invisible specks off its tight-woven surface. Lucy liked to watch this ritual, and she waited patiently until he finished. Only then did he turn to her and hold his hands out. Lucy leapt off the chair and put her hands in his, and he swung her gently around, something she suspected she was too old for, but couldn’t bear to give up yet.
“I have something for you,” he said.
“What, Papa?”
Her father pulled a small package wrapped in shiny white paper from his pocket. Lucy unfolded it carefully, revealing a mound of sugared almonds. Sometimes he brought candied lemon peel or crystallized ginger. He owned a business packing and shipping dried apricots, and he purchased treats for Lucy and her mother from the merchants and ranchers who brought their goods to the bustling business district.
“Don’t eat them now.” Her father’s voice was teasing. “You’ll have no appetite for dinner and then Mother will be angry with me.”
“Thank you, Papa.” Lucy carefully rewrapped the package. Then she took a breath. She had to talk to him now, when her mother wasn’t listening. “Something happened today in school.”
He laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “You discovered you are actually a princess?” he pretended to guess, wiggling his eyebrows. “With a crown and a kingdom to rule?”
When Lucy was younger, her father would tell fantastical stories of apricots delivered by teams of white horses pulling wagons with silver fittings that sparkled in the sun, apricots so plump and perfect that each had a single green leaf attached to its stem, and he had to hire a pretty lady just to pluck the leaves and drop them into a basket, all day long. Lucy pretended to believe her father’s stories long after she understood that they were invented. She knew they pleased her mother. More precisely, Lucy knew that her own happiness pleased her mother, that the tableau they made, the three of them, prosperous and modern in their kitchen with its sleek metal cabinets and green tiles, was an achievement Miyako could never bring herself entirely to believe in.
Already her father was moving toward the hall. Lucy knew he was anxious to greet her mother; he kissed her each evening as carefully as if she were made of spun sugar, and the smile he gave her was different from the one he had for Lucy. It was almost shy, if a father could ever be said to be shy. Usually, Lucy liked watching her father kiss her mother, but tonight she had to talk to him first.
“Papa, be serious. I want to ask you about something. About the war.”
That got his attention. Renjiro Takeda’s shoulders went rigid, and he turned slowly to face his daughter. His skin was stretched tight across his face; the lines around the corners of his mouth and under his eyes looked even deeper. “There is no war,” he said quietly. “Not in America.”
“But there’s going to be.”
“Who told you that?” His voice hardened, and Lucy was afraid. Not of her father—he was never angry with her, he was always kind—but of what the shift in his mood signified. “Who have you been talking to?”
“Nobody. I mean, the kids at school talk.”
“President Roosevelt will keep us out of the war. You don’t need to worry.” But he didn’t sound as certain as Lucy would have liked.
“But Papa...I was supposed to be lunch monitor today.”
Her mother’s steps echoed in the hall; she was coming to see what the delay was. Lucy put a hand on