Kira Kira

chapter 7

My FATHER'S HOURS changed sometimes. His newest schedule was to work for ten to twelve hours, then eat and sleep a few hours at the hatchery, and then get up and work six hours. When he wasn't working at his main hatchery, he worked at a different one in another town. My mother's current shift ran from 4:30 A.m. to 1:30 p.m., plus three hours of overtime.

When school let out for the summer, Lynn spent the first week at Amber's house. Mrs. Kanagawa couldn't watch Sam and me that week because she was tending to her sick mother in Oregon. Since I was almost eleven, I felt I was old enough to take care of Sammy and myself all day. But my mother didn't think so. She decided that Sam and I would have to go with her to work every day. We could sleep in the car until her shift ended.

The poultry processing plant where she worked was in the next town, about an hour from our house. The same man who owned the hatchery for egg-layers where my father mainly worked also owned several processing plants for his roasters and fryers. His name was Mr. Lyndon, and he was the richest man in the county and one of the richest men in Georgia. I'd never seen him, but my father had seen his car once—a Cadillac—and a girl at school said she once saw him from behind. He never came to his processing plants or the hatchery. If there was a problem that needed his attention, he sent an assistant. He was an invisible legend in the county: the big, mean, rich Mr. Lyndon. His great-great-grandfather, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father had all lived in Georgia.

I thought of him as my mother drove up in the darkness to the processing plant. His wife was supposed to be very beautiful, with fingernails one inch long. Once when President Eisenhower had visited Georgia years earlier, he supposedly ate dinner at the Lyndons' home. Their home was a former plantation mansion. He had torn down the old slave quarters on his property. In its place his wife had hired gardeners to create an azalea garden that was supposed to be gorgeous. Her garden was supposed to be so big, you could get lost in it. Such a world as they lived in was difficult to imagine. Someday when we owned a house, I would get my mother an azalea plant so she could start her own garden.

Previously, my mother used to have to drive my father to his job and then drive herself back to the plant. But now we owned a new car. That is, it was an old car, but it was new to us. Rust was eating away at its paint, but my mother said that in its heyday it had been lovely. She had bought the cheapest car she could find. She didn't want anything to take away from the house she longed to buy.

I got to sit in front, which was a treat and made me feel like a grown-up. My brother slept in back. I'd sat in front only once before in the truck with Uncle Katsuhisa. You could see everything in the world out the front windshield.

The road was empty, like so many roads we had driven on in my life. The highways in southern Georgia were famous for how dark they were, no light anywhere—no farm lights or streetlights or town lights. We passed a swamp, and I locked the door. The biggest swamp in Georgia was across the state. It was called Okefenokee Swamp, which means "Land of Trembling Earth" in Seminole. Our local swamp was called Brenda Swamp, named after a girl who died there way back before I was born. Her ghost lived in the swamp. It was looking for her parents. I stared out into the darkness, saw the moss hang like drool from the pines. When the wind blew, the swamp did seem to tremble.

How I would hate to wander in that murky water for the rest of eternity looking for my parents! I looked over at my mother, but she was lost in thought. I looked back at my brother, who was sleeping peacefully. I looked back out at the swamp and thought of Brenda. She was ten when she died. I thought I saw something move out there, but then I didn't see it anymore.

I tried to stay awake to enjoy the ride in the front seat, but I fell asleep, and when I awoke, we were slowing down and I saw the first light I'd seen in awhile. Four tall lampposts stood near the fence surrounding the plant. Insects were like death to a poultry plant, so the lights were allowed to shine on the building but no lights could be attached to it. Inside, my mother said, everything was made of aluminum and steel. There was no wood, even in the chairs and tables in the reception office. Wood attracted insects. There was no vegetation inside the fence.

Poultry was one of the biggest industries supporting the economy of Georgia, but that didn't stop many people who did not work with poultry from looking down on those who did. That and the fact that I was Japanese were the two reasons the girls at school ignored me.

Sometimes when Mom and I ran into the girls from my school with their mothers, the other mothers would not even acknowledge mine. My mother did not have to work. My father would have been happy to support all of us; in fact, I think he would have preferred it. But there was the important matter of the house that we needed to buy.

Even within the plant, there was some snobbism. When we first moved here, my mother had started out working in the so-called dirty areas of the plant. That was where the blood and guts and feathers and such were handled. The workers from the clean sections weren't allowed in the dirty sections, and the workers from the dirty sections weren't allowed in the clean sections. The dirty-section workers were the lowest of the low.

The previous year my mother had been promoted into a clean section, where she worked cutting drumsticks and thighs off the bodies of the chickens. She was good with her hands and she wore gloves while she worked, but even so, little cuts often marred her delicate hands. And her wrists were so sore some days, she could hardly move them after work.

She drove into a dirt parking lot outside the fenced area and parked near the few trees. There were already hundreds of cars parked. I looked around. It was so terribly dark. She looked at me. "Keep the doors locked," she said. "I'll come out on my break."

"Okay" I gazed across the parking lot to the dark highway. "Why can't we sleep inside while y'all are working?"

"You might steal a chicken."

I knew she didn't mean me in particular, but anyone. There were two things the factory manager possessed a morbid fear of: insects and stolen chickens. Where I might hide this stolen chicken was another matter.

My mother looked at her watch. "I'm late for my shower. Stay in the car unless absolutely necessary." There weren't quite enough showers for all the employees at once, so everyone was assigned a shower time. My mother got out and hurried toward the plant.

I locked the doors and climbed in back to be near my brother. I laid his head in my lap. When he was sleeping, he was like a rag doll. Nothing could wake him. I ran my hand over his head. I liked to feel his new bristly crew cut. A long truck moved through the gate at the fence. I could hear the clucking and squawking of chickens. The truck moved behind the building. I couldn't see, but I knew the chickens were being unloaded.

A big man walked slowly around the building. He didn't see me. Maybe he was checking for people stealing chickens.

Another car drove into the lot and parked near me. A woman about my mother's age and a girl about my age got out. The girl glanced at me, hesitated, and then walked over. I lowered my window. Her mother glanced over but kept heading toward the plant.

"Hi," said the girl.

"Hi."

"What're you doing?" "Waiting for my mother. What're you all doing?"

"I do the laundry every morning. Then my uncle comes and picks me up on his way to work, and I hang around his office." She paused, then repeated proudly, "My uncle works in an office."

"What kind of office?"

"Insurance." She spoke casually but was obviously very proud. I wished my father worked in an office! "I do the load for the shift that gets off at four thirty in the morning. Then my uncle brings me back during his lunchtime and I do one more load, and then my mother takes me home. I'm saving for a new school dress."

"Can I come in and see the plant?" I said.

"You might steal a chicken!" she said, as if scolding me. I saw the man walking around the building again. She saw me studying him and said, "That's the thug."

"What's a thug?"

She looked at him. He was watching us now, but then he kept walking. She leaned toward the car. "Didn't your mother tell you? The workers are trying to unionize. The thug works for Mr. Lyndon. He discourages union activity. He doesn't let any of the employees gather in the parking lot, even if they're not talking about the union." She checked her watch and said, "Gotta get the first load going!"

She ran to the building and disappeared around a corner. Insects clustered around the lights at the fence. I wished we would get a house soon so my mother could stop working here. After a pause I decided that I wished that the girl I'd just met would get a house too, and maybe a new dress. My leg was falling asleep, so I shifted Sammy's head in my lap. He looked so cute. I rolled up the window so the thug couldn't get in and harm him.

When I next woke, the hot sun was slanting through the windshield. I saw that Sam was still asleep. We used to joke that if nobody remembered to wake him, he would just sleep through the day and night and not get up again until we called him for breakfast. Lynn was like that too. That girl could sleep. Sometimes she slept for twelve hours in a row. But me, I slept restlessly a lot, and sometimes it seemed I barely slept at all. It was funny, because even though I was bad a lot, I also worried a lot about how bad I was. When I worried, I couldn't sleep.

Perspiration spotted Sam's forehead. I wiped him off with my shirtsleeve. I opened a window, and a muggy gust of air shot across my face. If I'd known how to drive and had the keys, I would have driven the car into better shade. Then I saw my mother rushing across the asphalt surrounding the plant. She seemed even smaller than usual as she hurried over. Lynn was already a few inches taller than our mother. I pushed the car door open.

"I was so worried!" she said.

"I saw the thug walking!" I said.

"What thug?"

"The man who works for Mr. Lyndon to keep anyone from gathering and doing union activity."

"Who have you been talking to?"

"A girl. I kept the door locked!"

"You are not to talk to that girl again. And you are not to call that man a thug. He is an employee of Mr. Lyndon. Do you understand me?"

'Yeah—yes. But, Mom? What's 'union activity'?"

"A union is when all the workers get together and fight the very people who have provided them with a job and the very people who pay the employees money to give them the means to buy a house someday." "So a union is bad?"

"It's wrong to fight the people who are trying to help you."

She looked at Sam sleeping so peacefully. I felt proud of myself that we were doing fine. She noticed the sweat on Sam's face and got in and started the car. She pulled directly under a tree but kept the motor running. She tried the air conditioner. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. This time it worked. The noise was loud, though. Once, we had turned on the air conditioner and driven through various neighborhoods where my mother could admire the houses. Now she lay back against the car seat. I noticed a few white hairs that I'd never seen before. She was thirty-three, two years younger than my father. She was starting to look tired all the time. Usually when my parents were home, they were eating or sleeping. They didn't eat with us because we ate earlier. We never did anything together anymore.

Later I read some books to him, and afterward we slept some more. When our mother drove us home, we were tired from doing nothing all day in the hot car. My mother smelled funny. The factory workers weren't allowed to take unscheduled breaks, so they all wore pads in case they needed to use the bathroom. It smelled like my mother had used her pad. I decided that someday when I was rich, I was going to buy the factory and let the workers use the bathroom whenever they wanted.