My mother and I visited Manzanar in the summer. We raised our cameras to everything we saw. Our first stop was the sign, a wooden board hanging between two posts like a stretched hide tanning in the sun. Manzanar War Relocation Center, it proclaimed. My mother was a gust of desert wind. She kicked up dust as she circled a nearby guardhouse with her camera. Occasionally, she would stop to look at me, her eyes widening. I watched her and felt heavy with our family history. Here, sixty-five years later, the daughter and granddaughter of a former internee had returned to continue the story. That afternoon, my mother’s fervor was so large it was almost unbearable. When I looked to the mountains, I could not tell which was bigger.
Some days I wake up and the internment is at the foot of my bed, prowling. I look at it, a hair-balled thing, and want to shoot an arrow straight through its heart. On these days, it follows me wherever I go. It is always at my heels, nipping. Sometimes, I wait until it isn’t looking and try to kick it in the side. I hate it because so often it feels like it is trying to define me. It’s as if my whole life gains meaning solely from it, a detail so rich I could hold it in my hands and mistake it for gold.
It defines my mother, also. She bends to it, has been bending to it her entire life. It encompasses her world like a giant cloud. She breathes it in. When confronted with it, she goes into a frenzy.
The histories we are born from, so often become us. We arrive into this world already carrying stories, and even though all we can do is take milk and stare into our mother’s eyes, they are busy forming us. In the hands of our histories, we are clay.
In my house there is an unframed poster of Executive Order 9066. Until recently, it was rolled up and placed in a corner of my childhood bedroom. Now it is rolled up and sitting on my writing desk. The sticker on the back says I paid $10.00 for it at the Manzanar gift shop. It has remained unframed all these years because a part of me feels shame for owning it. We open our wallets for many things, but when is enough enough?