All Good Women by Valerie Miner

took another swig of beer, parched just remembering her housecleaning schedule after high school classes. But Mom insisted on school — almost pushed her — because one of her kids was going to graduate. Teddy had astonished both of them by winning the church scholarship. Now she felt she had used it well, really applying herself at Tracey and getting a decent job at the Emporium. She managed to send a little money home every week. Pop accepted it. ‘Just for the meantime, just till I’m back on my feet.’ Hank had barked, ‘When Teddy has already filled your shoes?’ Lucky for Hank, Pop was half way through his bottle because if he had been sober that would have been the last crack from the boy for a long while.
    Teddy surveyed the living room and pondered just why she loved this house. It was more than a refuge from the crowd at home. She relished the evenness of life here, the way they were equally responsible for the rent and the cleaning and each other. Of course everyone had her little faults — Moira’s temper, for instance, and Ann’s sharpness — yet they seemed to balance each other, more than she had ever known in her family and more than she could imagine in a marriage. Marriage, she couldn’t picture it — doing her ‘partner’s’ housework. Lunatic arrangement.
    â€˜What are the choices, the alternatives?’ Wanda asked. Angela Bertoli demanded. Ann sighed. Various options crossed Teddy’s mind. Always she gave the same answer, ‘This house is one choice, for now.’
    Upstairs, Wanda tried to concentrate on her sewing and to follow the argument between Fibber and Molly, but all she could think about was Howard’s story of the ‘Yellow Peril’ letter and her mother’s notions of returning to Japan. Mama’s parents were failing now, and she worried about the war growing in the Pacific. Besides, she knew how proud Americans were and she did not want to be an enemy stranded here. Wanda didn’t want to believe in war, however, she knew her mother was right. They who were being treated like threats, were themselves being terrorized! Everyone knew about the arson at Fukahara’s orchard in Fresno last month. And the FBI were investigating Buddhist priests because the temples received money for Japan. Now Howard, himself, had got an anonymous letter. ‘We’re watching you, Yellow Peril.’ A warning? A joke? Howard shrugged it off, but Wanda was more cautious.
    At the cannery, too, she felt strange. Orders had declined in the past two months. And last week a FBI agent phoned to say he would come for a ‘routine check’ of the accounts. Since then, Wanda had hardly been able to sleep. All right, it would be rough here, but Mama was mad to talk about Japan. She was so Americanized that it would be worse for her there. And what about her children? Betty and Howard and herself were neither Japanese nor American now. Would she leave her children in ‘enemy hands’? Papa, predictably, would not consider leaving. Somehow his fierceness frightened Wanda more than her mother’s determination. Rarely was there such a serious rift between her parents. Mama ruled the house while Papa supported them in his own idiosyncratic way. Wanda had never before seen them argue as they had last Sunday at supper.
    â€˜Miné, I cannot imagine …’
    â€˜Of course you cannot imagine,’ Mama had scolded him. ‘Your imagination is spent on other things, like political injustice and talk of Emma Goldman. Workers’ rights and birth control. See where it got her. Deported. Perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to get deported.’
    Papa nodded evenly.
    Wanda wanted to jump in and defend Papa, for she knew it was Mama who had first told him about Emma Goldman and how she wrote to protest the execution of Kotoku in the Japanese Free Speech Trials of 1910. Perhaps as Papa’s radical ideas had