“Now, of course, I’d kill for a peach,” he said, cheerily, as we neared the north of the Square, where we met and parted every Saturday. “I’ll see you next week, Charlie,” he said as he left. “Think about what you might like to do at the center.”
Once I was back at home, I took out the box in the closet and looked at the pictures I had of Grandfather. The first one was taken when he was in medical school. He was laughing, and his hair was long and curly and black. In the second, he was standing with my father, who was a toddler, and my other grandfather, the one to whom I’m genetically related. In my mind, my father resembles Grandfather, but in this picture, you can see that he actually looked like my other grandfather: They were both lighter skinned than Grandfather, with straight dark hair, like I used to have. In the third picture, my favorite, Grandfather looks as I remember him. He’s smiling, a big smile, and in his arms he is holding a small, thin baby, and that baby is me. “Charles and Charlie,” someone wrote on the back of this photo, “September 12, 2064.”
I found myself thinking about Grandfather both more and less since I had met David. I didn’t need to talk to him in my head as much as I used to, but I also wanted to talk to him more, mostly about David, and about what it was like to have a friend. I wondered what he would have thought of him. I wondered whether he would have agreed with my husband.
I wondered as well what David would have thought of Grandfather. It was strange to think that he didn’t know who Grandfather was, that to him, he was simply a relative of mine, whom I had loved and who had died. As I have said, everyone I worked with knew who Grandfather was. There was a greenhouse on top of a building at RU that was named for him, and there was even a law named for him, the Griffith Act, which established the legality of the relocation centers, which had once been called quarantine camps.
But it was not so long ago that many people hated Grandfather. I suppose there are people who still hate him, but you never hear about those people anymore. I first became aware of this hatred when I was eleven, in civics class. We were learning about how, in the aftermath of the illness of ’50, a new government began to take form, so by the time the illness of ’56 arose, they were more properly prepared, and by ’62, the new state had been established. One of the inventions that had helped contain the illness of ’70—which, as bad as it was, could have been much worse—was the relocation centers, which were originally located only in the west and midwest but by ’69 were in every municipality. “These camps became very important to our scientists and doctors,” my teacher had said. “Does anyone know the names of the early, original camps?”
People started shouting out answers: Heart Mountain. Rohwer. Minidoka. Jerome. Poston. Gila River.
“Yes, yes,” my teacher said after each name. “Yes, that’s right. And does anyone know who founded those camps?”
No one knew. And then Miss Bethesda looked at me. “It was Charlie’s grandfather,” she said. “Dr. Charles Griffith. He was one of the architects of the camps.”
Everyone turned to look at me, and I felt myself grow hot with embarrassment. I liked my teacher—she had always been kind to me. When the other children ran away from me on the playground, laughing as they did, she would always come over and ask if I might like to come back into the classroom and help her distribute the art supplies for the afternoon lesson. Now I looked up, and my teacher was looking back at me, the same as always, and yet something was wrong. I felt as if she were angry with me, but I hadn’t known why.
That night, at dinner, I asked Grandfather if he was the person who had invented the centers. He had looked at me then, and had waved his hand, and the servant who was pouring my milk had set down the pitcher and left the room. “Why do you ask that, little cat?” he asked, after the man shut the door behind him.
“We learned about it in civics class,” I said. “My teacher said you were one of the people who invented them.”
“Did she,” Grandfather said, and although his voice sounded the same as it always did, I could see that he was holding his left hand in a fist, so tightly that it trembled. Then he noticed me looking, and he opened his hand and laid his palm flat on the table. “What else did she say?”
I explained to Grandfather how Miss Bethesda had said that the centers had prevented more deaths, and he nodded, slowly. For a while he was silent, and I listened to the ticking of the clock, which sat on the mantel above the fireplace.
Finally, Grandfather spoke. “Years ago,” he said, “there were people who opposed the camps, who didn’t want them built, who thought I was a bad person because I supported them.” I must have looked surprised, because he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “They didn’t understand that the camps were created to keep us—all of us—healthy and safe. Eventually, people came to see that they were necessary, and that we had to build them. Do you understand why?”
“Yes,” I said. I had learned this in civics class as well. “Because it meant that the sick people were in one place, so people who were healthy wouldn’t get sick, too.”
“That’s right,” Grandfather said.
“Then why didn’t people like them?” I asked.
He looked up at the ceiling, which was something he did when he was thinking of how to answer me. “It’s difficult to explain,” he said, slowly, “but one of the reasons is that, back in those days, you would remove just the infected person, not their whole family, and some people thought it was cruel to separate people from their families.”
“Oh,” I said. I thought about this. “I wouldn’t want to be separated from you, Grandfather,” I said, and he smiled.
“And I would never be separated from you, little cat,” he said. “This is why the policy changed, and now the entire family goes to the center together.”
I didn’t need to ask what happened at the centers, because I already knew: You died. But at least you died somewhere clean, and safe, and well-equipped—there were schools for the children to go to, and sports for the adults to play, and when you got very sick, you were taken to the center hospital, which was gleaming and white, and where doctors and nurses took care of you until you died. I had seen pictures of the centers on television, and there were pictures of them in our textbook as well. There was one, taken at Heart Mountain, of a laughing young woman holding a little girl, who was also laughing; in the background, you could see their cabin, which had an apple tree planted in front of it. Standing next to the woman and little girl was a doctor, and even though she was wearing her full protective suit, you could tell she was laughing as well, and she had her hand on the woman’s shoulder. You couldn’t go visit people at the centers, for your own protection, but the sick person could bring whomever he or she wanted, and sometimes whole extended families would go in a group: mothers and fathers and children and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. At first, going to the centers was voluntary. Then it became required, which was controversial, because Grandfather said that people didn’t like being told what to do, even if it was for the good of their fellow citizens.