She wasn’t sure if he was lying—she just couldn’t tell. “What did you do for it?” she asked suspiciously.
“I put Mimi on my back and knocked on every door asking if they had a purple kimono. I said I would work for it. Not in this village, in a different one. Mimi and I have walked a lot.” He held up one of his shoeless feet, and Hanako saw it was raw.
“Oh! Does it hurt?”
He laughed—at her, like she wasn’t very bright. “I was in a bomb—I don’t care about the bottom of my feet!”
She glanced toward the door. “Maybe we have a bandage.”
He shrugged, as if uninterested.
“Well. Thank you very much for the beautiful kimono. It’s a gift for my grandmother. And thank you for being honorable.” She bowed to him, and he bowed again. “But where is Mimi now?”
“She’s in the orphanage in the city. Sometimes we stay there. I left her there because it’s raining so hard. Usually she’s with me every second. I walked here in the rain.”
“So you live in the orphanage now?”
Kiyoshi frowned. “No. I don’t like it. Too many rules. It’s not like the way my family treated me. I always got my way at home.” He stuck out his lower lip petulantly, just like Akira might, then idly scratched at where his ear had once been. “My scars still itch . . .” He began to scratch quite hard—furiously, even.
“Don’t hurt it!” Hanako called out, as if he were ten feet away.
He looked at her like he was certain now that she was very stupid. “It doesn’t hurt! It itches!” Then he tried scratching his back. “I don’t know why, sometimes I itch all over at the same time! Scratch my back for me!” He sounded frantic over how itchy he was as he turned his back to her.
Hanako reached out, her hands lingering doubtfully near his back. Her hands dropped, then lifted again to twist her braid nervously . . . but it was gone. Kiyoshi wasn’t wearing a jacket today; finally, she lifted his wet shirt with her left hand and tried not to gasp. His back was covered with scars. They were raised up from the surface of his skin at random, some like splashes and some bigger and attached to other big ones. She felt almost panicked, just at the pain and what must have been the terror in the moment when he got those scars. The noise . . . the horror. Then, as strange as it was to scratch the back of someone she didn’t really even know, she began to anyway, as gently as she could.
“Harder!”
But she couldn’t. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Mimi scratches harder than you!”
So she scratched harder. His scars were so bumpy! And he was so skinny! His waist was smaller than hers.
“Harder, I say!”
She felt like she might swoon, like one time when she cut her knees and they bled profusely. She had been running wild with some other kids and had slipped and scratched both knees. How she had cried! It had hurt! But her scratches hadn’t even left marks—nobody could even tell where she’d been hurt. Now she pressed into Kiyoshi’s scars, moving her nails up and down and across his skin. His scars turned red as she scratched, and it made her feel seasick.
“Ahh, thank you, that’s enough,” he said. “Thank you. My back hasn’t felt so good in a long time! You did a better job than Mimi.”
She let his shirt drop down. She didn’t know what he saw in her face when he turned back around, but he snapped, “Don’t feel sorry for me—I don’t like it.”
“I don’t! I mean, I’m sorry. I mean . . .”
He touched the front door. “I had a door once,” he mused. “We had a pretty good house.” He patted a wall. “A very solid house. My father and uncles built it themselves.” He looked at her like Mama did sometimes, when she was trying to see into Hanako’s brain. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?”
“Yes,” she said eagerly. She didn’t want to think about his old house, his scars, the bomb.
“This is something I will never tell Mimi. But I’ve wanted to tell someone since it happened. I was reaching up into our apple tree when the bomb went off. I loved apples. I was knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, my back felt like it was on fire. . . . Maybe it was on fire. I looked around for my parents to help me. I was supposed to be at the factory like all the kids from my class, but I felt so tired that day that my parents let me stay home. That’s why we were at the apple tree, because my mother always said apples were one of the healthiest foods. She was hoping one was ready to pick, though it was only August.” He was talking swiftly, like now that he had started telling his story, he had to get it out all at once. “Anyway, I woke up after the bomb, and I saw a—I guess you could call it a person . . . wandering nearby. I didn’t know if I was looking at the front of their body or the back. They had no face and no hair. Then I realized it was my mother. I don’t know how I knew.” He looked at Hanako as if she could help him somehow.
Hanako couldn’t move, her arms raised slightly, her mouth slightly open. All she could think of to say was “Oh . . .” Her mind went blank. She started to say she could scratch his back again, but . . . the pleading look on his face—what did it mean? She picked up one of his hands and held it in hers. “I—I can picture it. . . . You’re doing a good job telling the story.” Was that a stupid thing to say?
But he looked relieved. “Can you picture it? Can you? I want someone to understand! So I picked up a board. I was going to kill her so she wouldn’t suffer, but then I couldn’t.” His face got all contorted, his eyes squeezed shut. He opened his eyes again, now filled with tears. “I was a coward. I’m disappointed in myself. I hate myself. We just stood there looking at each other. She tried to reach out, but she couldn’t really lift her arm. I think she was trying to talk, but she couldn’t—she didn’t have a mouth. Maybe a minute passed while she suffered. Then she lay down, just like she was lying down to sleep. She didn’t collapse—she lay down gracefully. She always did everything gracefully. My mother was the most graceful person I ever knew.” He was crying now but managed to say proudly, “Mimi is going to be just like her.”
And so. And yet! Hanako’s mind went back and forth. She wanted to give him rice, and yet . . . she loved her brother so much. She loved her whole hungry family. So much! But then she thought of how her father had said, “Do everything you can.” Maybe . . . maybe? So she asked, “Can you work in the fields for my grandparents? Your hand . . .” She glanced at his claw hand that she was still holding.
Fury—maybe even hate—flashed across his face. “I can do anything with my right hand that I can do with my left!”
“Maybe I can ask my family if you can work for them? They will need help. They raise wheat and rice and vegetables. They could pay you with food . . . maybe.”
His eyes suddenly got that evaluating look, the one that scared her. Like he was trying to make sure whatever she was saying was a good deal for him, or whether in fact he could manipulate her into a better deal.
“That might be a good idea,” he finally decided. “But for rice. I’ll only work for rice,” he added, bargaining.
Hanako nodded, bobbing her head up and down over and over. “I’ll ask them. How will I find you?”
“I’ll come back when I can. I might have to go to school if I stay longer in the orphanage.”
“All right. Well . . . Thank you for the kimono. I’ve never seen one like it.”
He bowed his head stiffly and held up his hand in a casual wave, but before walking off he asked, “What’s your name again?”
“Hanako.”
“I’ve never met a Hanako,” was all he said.
She paused before asking, “Kiyoshi? And then? What did you do next? After your mother died?”
He cocked his head and looked at her with genuine curiosity, as if he had asked her a question. Then he said, “I looked for my father and saw him in a heap. I rushed away—it was too awful to see my parents like that. So I wandered around in a daze, and I saw many other people wandering. People with blackened skin, bleeding people, p
eople who looked like they must be dead, and yet they were walking. I headed toward the countryside; even through the pain, I kept walking. Then I had to stop. I just lay down and decided to die. It was time to die, for certain. The pain in my whole body was everything in the world as I lay there. I guess I passed out, and when I opened my eyes, it was night. It was while lying and looking up that I really noticed, for the first time in my life, how beautiful and full of stars the night sky was. I had been working so hard, and there was so much going on during the war. I never had a chance to look at the night sky like that before. That was when I decided to live after all.”
He turned around and walked off into the rain. She wanted to ask him to come in and wait out the downpour, but at the same time she found herself actually a little scared of being alone inside with him. He was a boy who might try to be honorable, but he was also a boy who would do what he had to do for his sister. She knew this like she knew her name.
It was raining furiously by now. She couldn’t even see where Kiyoshi had gone. “Kiyoshi!” she shouted. She should invite him in after all! She ran down the steps and called again. “Kiyoshi!” For a full minute she stood shouting. Then, standing there alone in her coat and underwear, the rain falling as hard as she’d ever seen it fall, falling almost in sheets, she burst into tears. She cried for . . . everything . . . for the girls and boys with perfect hair locked up in camp, for the way her father’s face had aged, for her sweet, sweet grandparents. But mostly, right at this moment, she cried for the horrible pain Kiyoshi must have felt the day the bomb fell. The pain outside that she hoped was gone for him now, and the pain inside, which she knew would never leave.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
Hanako hid the purple kimono in the closet, in her mother’s empty suitcase. She was afraid of wrinkling it, but she did not know where else to hide it. Though she kept a lookout, she did not see Kiyoshi anywhere. Days passed, then weeks. Thinking of him, she also looked for an opportune time to ask her grandparents if they needed help in the field. But when she finally did, they said not now.
Spring vacation from school started in March. Jiichan was extra busy preparing the paddy for the rice planting while Baachan made a special bed to plant the rice seeds. Later, once the seeds sprouted, they would be transplanted into the paddy. At that point Mama, Hanako, and Akira would help with the transplanting. The reason they weren’t helping now was that Jiichan and Baachan needed everything perfect so that they would get a good crop. “I cannot concentrate enough if I know you watch,” Jiichan explained. “And you cannot help, because it must to be perfect.”
The transplanting would also need to be done perfectly, but Jiichan was most worried about the “foundation.” He kept saying, “Foundation must be best you ever do, every year.”
When it was time to transplant, the five of them stood looking upon the field. Jiichan, wearing a bright blue shirt that had been hidden away in a closet, was holding an old taiko drum. Baachan wore a bright blue cotton kimono and her big straw hat. Jiichan said he didn’t know the ancient rice-planting rituals, nor had he ever been to a modern rice-planting festival such as some villages held. But he and Baachan performed their own small ceremony every spring before the transplanting. “If last year crop good, we do same ceremony again. Otherwise, we make small change to next year,” he told them, then added, “In spring spirit come down from mountain to watch over all the rice field.”
He used his fingers to play a simple but hypnotizing rhythm on the drum. He and Baachan swayed their bodies with the drumbeat, so Hanako, Akira, and Mama joined in. “I pray for many good rain to help rice grow,” Jiichan called out.
Baachan said loudly, “I pray for many rice to feed my grandchildren.”
“Hanako!” Jiichan shouted.
She reared back in surprise—she didn’t know she was expected to speak! What should she say? Arghh! “Uh, springtime is . . . uh, the time for planting rice!” she cried loudly into the wind.
Akira was ready:
Cool melons—
turn to frogs!
If people should come near!
Mama seemed a little self-conscious, but then shouted fiercely, “Please, fields, feed my children!”
Then Baachan and Jiichan took off their special clothes, revealing their regular outfits underneath.
Everybody got to work. The seedlings were several inches high. A pleasant breeze blew ripples across the long stretch of muddy water in front of them.
“Perfect planting weather,” Jiichan proclaimed. Then he turned to his grandchildren. “I make this long time ago for when I have helper,” and out of a bag he drew two long pieces of heavy twine secured at both ends by pegs. There were beads tied into the twine. Jiichan gave an end to Hanako and pulled her over to one side of the paddy. Then he stuck in a peg and instructed, “You hold this in. Do not let it move. I beg you for not let it move.”
He walked across the paddy as Hanako rested a foot on her peg. When Jiichan reached the other side, he began to push his own peg into the mud, pulling the twine taut. Hanako was so busy watching him that she lost focus, so when he pulled on the twine, her peg slipped loose. She quickly put it back, pushing her hands deep into the mud. When she stood back up, her grandfather was watching her with his hands on his hips. Then he stuck his peg in. Hanako hung on to the peg for dear life!
Baachan, cupping twenty or so seedlings in her hands, said, “Now I show you how to do. You take seedling”—she held one up—“and plant into ground like this. Put it right here at bead.” She plucked the seedling neatly into the mud, and it stood straight up like it had been growing there all along! It actually looked happy! Then she quickly and efficiently set two more in at the next two beads. “Now you put one at bead.”
Baachan handed one to Hanako and watched. Hanako carefully stuck hers into the ground. It tilted at an angle. It looked sad! She looked up doubtfully at Baachan, who was looking very, very disturbed.
Then Baachan cheered up. “I show again.” She gently pulled out Hanako’s seedling and placed it so that it stood straight up . . . and somehow looked happy.
Hanako tried again, and her seedling didn’t stand straight, but it did stand straighter than her previous attempt. She was rather pleased, but when she looked at Baachan, her grandmother’s lips were pressed together.
It took twenty minutes for Hanako to get it right. She was shamed, because Akira was working with Jiichan, and her brother’s seedlings were flawless. He was spending a long time on each one. He stared at the mud like a chess player thinking out a move. Then he moved in slow motion and plunked the seedling into the mud.
She’d noticed that in all the fields she’d seen in Japan, the plants were perfectly aligned.
The field used one of the nearby rivers for irrigation and was deliberately flooded, the water reaching halfway up Hanako’s calf. On her own now, Hanako delicately placed a seedling into the mud and was surprised that it stood straight up. She did another, but she could see that the plant wasn’t exactly straight. She wondered whether it really mattered whether it was straight up or not. She pulled it out three times to get it right, but then she worried that it was worse to keep pulling it out than for it to grow slightly crooked. What if she were hurting the seedling? It would never be happy!
Hanako did twenty feet, and it took her about an hour. Meanwhile, she couldn’t even count how many rows her grandparents had done. Her mother was third fastest. Akira was the slowest, but to Hanako, his little row seemed like a work of art.
She stood up and arched backward. Her spine was already bothering her. She worked for another two hours, and finally Baachan came over and said, as if relieved, “That enough. You work hard enough. We all take break. Except your jiichan. He don’t like break.”
Hanako had never been so glad for a break in her life. But just as she stepped out of the paddy, Akira squealed, “Look at Hana’s legs!”
Hanako looked down and screamed. Leeches!
Mama
and Baachan hurried over. “What happen?” Baachan asked.
“Leeches!” Hanako cried, pointing. There were three of them attached to her shins. They were dark green and ridged and longer than her pinky. She had never seen a leech before except in books. They were so ugly, they were otherworldly. And they were attached to her leg! As if they thought it was theirs!
“Ah, yes, field has leech.” Baachan reached into a pocket and pulled out a slender piece of plastic. “Guitar pick. Your jiichan use to play. You put pick under jaw of leech.”
She flicked off each leech. Blood trickled down Hanako’s ankles.
“Leech make blood not clot,” Baachan explained. “Maybe you keep bleeding, but don’t worry. You take break now.”
Akira stared, fascinated, at Hanako’s leg. He didn’t seem sure if he should be worried or excited. Then he settled on worried. “Where will she get more blood?” he asked doubtfully.
“Oh, she don’t lose too much. This I know. It look like many blood, but you have many, many, many blood inside you.”
The blood looked like bright red watercolors running down Hanako’s leg. But she couldn’t feel a thing.
Baachan started to wipe it off with a tenugui, but Akira said, “Wait, can I look at the blood more?”
So Baachan let him watch, and then he wiped down Hanako’s leg himself. “I’ll take care of you,” he told her confidently.
When Mama and Baachan returned to work, Akira ate his lunch of boiled cabbage. They’d run out of rice yesterday, even though Papa had sold the “stolen” wheat. He sold it for paper money. At work Papa was getting paid in salt, because he felt it was worth more than paper money, but he had not been able to find rice the last time he was at the black market.
Watching her brother devour his food, Hanako thought about America, where he would be able to eat all he wanted someday—in a year or two or three, she wasn’t sure. Papa said he had called Auntie Jean and Uncle Kent, to see if they would help Papa, Mama, Hanako, and Akira when they got to America. Auntie worked as a maid and Uncle as a janitor—same as before the war. They lived in a one-room apartment, so they were able to save money. They had two children who never got anything special except a little rice candy, even before camp. And they had not lost money before the war because they had not owned much that they had needed to sell. All they’d had was in savings from a life of hard work. They were saving money so that they could be sure to have enough to send their kids to college. Hanako did not know them well, just saw them once a year at Christmas. She used to think about how they seemed so cold, and yet all they did was work for her two cousins. Anyway, even though their apartment was small, they had agreed to take Hanako’s family in until Papa found good work.
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