by Mariko Nagai
but to learn. There is a teacher,
Miss Tanaka. There are twenty or so
sixth graders just like me.
There is no bowing to the Emperor
like we used to do.
There is no combat training.
And there is no book we read out of.
The blackboard is covered with messages,
messages from people who are looking
for their families, Misako Shinoda was here
but moved on to the Manchurian Film Production building;
Mother and Shizuko dead, I’m looking for you, Father.
Miss Tanaka says that there is no textbook,
there is no paper, there is no chalk,
so instead, she recites a passage
from The Tale of Genji, and we repeat
it, word for word, line by line.
And my heart feels light for the first time
in so many months, and I forget
about everything, my hunger, my life
in the closet, Asa, Auntie, what I’ve been
through. Even Tochan.
DEAD DOESN’T NEED IT ANYMORE
A little girl lies atop the pile
of bodies still wearing
her coat and shoes.
(I look and I don’t feel anything.)
A dead little girl lies
fully clothed amid
the dead, her eyes closed.
She looks almost asleep.
(I look and I don’t feel anything.)
I go down the steep ditch.
I stand atop the dead bodies.
(I look and I don’t feel anything.)
I pull off the shoes from her stiff feet.
I take off her socks.
I take her coat off, and her sweater as well.
(I see and I don’t feel anything.)
Asa needs shoes.
The dead girl doesn’t.
(I do this, and I don’t feel anything.
What is happening to me?)
A NEW YEAR
Instead of sorghum gruel,
we each get two pieces
of toasted sticky rice.
When I ask
what’s the occasion,
the Japanese Community men say
that it’s New Year’s Day.
I take a bite out of one piece,
and it tastes almost like home.
But not quite.
“Happy New Year,”
Asa says seriously
as she bows deeply,
just like we used to back home.
“Happy New Year, Natsu,”
Auntie says, “sorry I can’t give
you New Year’s money,
but I can give you some fleas.”
And she laughs. Asa laughs.
And like all laughter, it catches
me, and lightness bubbles up
from my stomach to my nose
and I can’t keep it in:
I laugh and laugh
until tears fall from my eyes.
And I keep laughing still.
SEEING
Today, I saw, in front of me,
Tochan, his back bent, his hair long,
wearing the khaki of the army, walking
away. I pushed an old woman in a fur.
I pushed people aside and they cursed at me.
But I didn’t care. “Tochan, Tochan!”
I yelled but he kept walking away. So I ran
after him. I pushed people out of the way,
and finally reached him. I grabbed his arm, “Tochan,”
but when he turned around,
he looked at me strangely.
It wasn’t my father. I apologized,
the words freezing into white breath
with each and every syllable.
I kept saying that under my breath, apologizing
until I got back to the school.
I pushed away the Chinese
people looking for brides and children
to adopt, pinching hard
the hand that grabbed
my arm wanting me, and I ran into the closet
and into Auntie’s arms and she asked
what was wrong, and I said,
“I thought I saw Tochan.”
And without saying a word,
she pulled me close to her
and pressed me against her chest
and something broke inside of me.
And I cried and cried and cried
and she coughed with each of my sobs.
THE QUIET GROUND
The snow falls quietly,
again covering the whole
land into an empty space.
Underneath this emptiness
there are mothers,
daughters, sons, and sometimes no
one special because they died alone,
waiting for spring to thaw
the winter away, so they can be
properly buried to go to the other world.
But if I look closely enough,
I see a foot or a hand sticking out
like a shoot of a plant
in early spring.
PART SIX
DEPTH OF WINTER
THE PAST IS GONE
I still think of the bright red sunset
that bursts out on the horizon
then sinks slowly as the night comes.
I still think of the smell of the hay,
the smell of Horse’s mane,
and how her heart would beat fast
between my legs as I rode her.
I still think of the chickens that were frightened
of me whenever I kicked them
when I was angry, and how perfect
their warm eggs were in my hands.
I still think of Tochan’s laugh
and his strong arms lifting the handles
of the wheelbarrow full of cabbages
and carrots and potatoes.
I still think of our life back north
where we woke up with the sun,
where we slept with the moon,
where things were simple
and we were happy.
Our old neighbors have scattered
to this or that refugee camp,
and our new neighbors are strangers.
But what matters is today,
not the past, never the past.
I can’t think of the past
if I want us to stay alive today.
THE CHINESE NEW YEAR
The city turns bright red like the horizon up north
in ghost-Manchuria except that it’s the lanterns
and posters and cloths the color of blood,
the color of the Soviet flag, red and as bright as the sun
of the former Japanese flag. The dragons snake around
the streets followed by bangs and gongs of steel drums,
the firecrackers going off like bombs here and there,
never-ending until late at night. And with the pops and cracks
the soldiers shoot their rifles into the air drunkenly,
and we cower, knowing that soldiers do things when they’ve
had too much to drink and they feel too happy
to care about the freezing temperature.
We stand in the alley, Auntie, Asa, and I,
bundled up in our best rags. Auntie coughs. Asa just leans
closer to me without saying a word, her body so light
next to mine she seems almost a ghost sitting next to the living.
A happy new year? A lit firecracker lands by our feet.
I kick it into the crowd. A happy new year? Not for us.
ALMOST SPRING
Auntie spends most of the day
curled up, coughing weakly,
holding her mouth against
the thinned sleeve of her coat,
trying to be quiet.
Her body shakes, racks,
as if she is the cough itself.
She shakes, she trembles,
she shivers. She is hot
to my touch. Auntie does not
say anything; instead, she curls up
on her side, bearing it all down.
She is getting smaller,
though she is still tough
as Horse’s teeth,
but even her stubbornness
seems to be becoming
soft as newly fallen snow.
She pushes Asa away
when she lies next to her.
“You’ll catch what I have.”
Miss Tanaka, my teacher, stops by,
worried about me being absent,
and then becomes even more worried about Auntie,
but the rest of the time, it’s as if
everyone is afraid of her. The only thing
I can do is to give her my half
of the gruel, and rub her back
again and again when she coughs
like the thunder in the prairie up north.
I rub and rub in a prayer,
“Please get well soon.
Please get well soon, Auntie.”
I don’t say, You’re my family.
You’re like the grandmother
I never had. I love you.
ALL IS NOT WELL
Asa comes back with a bowl
of water from the well,
her hands red from the cold.
I lift Auntie’s head and pour
some water down her throat.
She coughs, and it comes trickling
out like a broken well pump,
a little at a time.
Asa wipes Auntie’s mouth
with her sleeve.
We get out of the closet
so that Auntie can rest.
Asa looks at the bowl
and suddenly asks me,
“Is Auntie going to be like Kachan?”
Words are caught in my throat.
LIGHT AS A SMALL CHICK
Auntie weighs nothing
when I pull her up
so she can change
position. She keeps
her eyes closed
when I try to feed her.
“Open your mouth, Auntie,
you have to eat,” I tell her,
and in response she opens
her mouth like a small chick
that was hatched out
of the egg only a minute ago.
I push in a spoonful,
and she takes half a sip,
then coughs, her small body
trembling and shaking.
I press a broken-off icicle
against her forehead.
My eyes sting, but I push away
the tears. I can’t cry right now.
I need to be brave.
I’m the only one
who can take care
of Auntie and Asa.
THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO
I take Kachan’s ring and her gold fillings
from the bottom of the pack and hold
them in my hand. They sit cold
like hailstones in late spring.
Asa and I look at them.
“Tochan told me never to use them
but it’s an emergency,” I say,
and Asa nods, “This is an emergency.”
I leave Asa to look after Auntie;
I tell her I will be back. I put on a jacket
Auntie gave me for school. A hat
and pants she made out of burlap sacks.
I put Auntie’s shawl around my face.
I am ready. I go out of the school,
pushing away the Chinese
people chanting, “Sell us your children”
to the doctor’s clinic five blocks down
through sheets and sheets of blizzard
to knock on his door. I tell him
I require his service, that my auntie is sick,
and he puts his coat on and follows me home.
The doctor holds Auntie’s wrist
and closes his eyes, feeling the pulse
of her life. He takes out a stethoscope
and listens to Auntie’s heart.
He tells her to cough, and she coughs,
then she can’t stop. He asks me
about my mother. I tell him
she’s dead. I tell him Auntie is my family,
she’s all the family we’ve got.
After we leave the closet, he looks
at me for a long time. He looks
at me like he is weighing me. I look back at him
without looking down. He looks like
he’s about to laugh or cry, I’m not sure.
“Your auntie’s very tired. She needs rest,
she needs food, she needs to be
somewhere warm and needs
a hot bath,” he says very slowly.
And I tell him, “I got gold. I got
money. Tell me what I have to do,”
and I show him Kachan’s gold ring
and gold fillings. “Take it. Make Auntie
better.” He shakes his head. “I don’t
want your money…” and he asks
for my name. “Natsu, I don’t
want your money. But I have no
medicine. I have no food. I can’t
do anything for your auntie.”
My eyes sting, I throw the gold
at him, “I have gold. Make her better.
You’re a doctor. That’s your job!”
He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry.
There’s nothing I can do.”
MAKING HER STAY
I press my body against Auntie’s curled-
up one. I curl up just like we used to
when we first arrived here, and we curled
up against one another to keep one another
warm, except this time around, I want
to take away her fever, so she can be better.
“Natsu, don’t get close to me,” Auntie coughs.
“I don’t want you to get sick.”
I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.
“You have to stay healthy for Asa.
If something happens to you, how is she
going to keep going on her own?”
I don’t care. I don’t care about anything
except for Auntie. “Listen to me, Natsu,”
she slowly turns around, gasping each time
she adjusts her body, “Listen to me,”
she faces me, “You lose when you die,
do you understand? You lose when you die,
so you have to keep living. No matter what.”
I press my face into her chest. She puts
her arm around my body.
I put my arm tighter around her
but she feels like she’s about to float away,
so light, so small she is. “I don’t want you
to go,” I whisper into her.
Auntie’s hand presses hard against my back.
“I promised your father I’d look after you two,
but I don’t think I can keep that promise.
Natsu, promise me this: you’ll remember
that no matter what, no matter what happens,
you have to stay alive, do you hear? For Asa.” The only thing
I can do is nod to keep the wail that’s about
to erupt like a volcano from coming out.
I will hold her as long as I need to,
only if she will not fly away like Kachan did.
I will hold her down here with me and Asa
as long as she can
stay here with us.
PRAYERS
I pray to Kachan.
I pray to Goat.
I pray to Buddha.
I even pray to the Emperor,
Make Auntie get better.
Make Auntie well.
I promise I’ll do anything.
You can take my life
if you just let Auntie
get better. No one
answers as Auntie gets
worse and worse,
her fever never coming
down, her eyes becoming
more and more unfocused.
Don’t go, Auntie, please.
No. I can’t. Keep going.
If I. Lose you.
AUNTIE
I smooth down Auntie’s white hair.
Asa takes a rag and cleans Auntie’s face.
I take out a photo of Auntie’s family,
Taro and Auntie’s husband and her—
and open Auntie’s clawlike hands, one finger
at a time, and place the photo there.
Asa draws a picture of the two of us
on an old newspaper
and puts it in Auntie’s pants pocket.
We fold her body into the sheet
we bought with Kachan’s ring and gold fillings
and sew her in with her needle so she won’t have to lie
in the hole, freezing even in the other world.
We follow the men from the Japanese Community
carrying Auntie’s body out of our closet
through the hallway, where people look away
as soon as they see that someone has died,
as if death is contagious and just acknowledging it
would kill them immediately; we follow
them out of the door into the freezing yard.
And they swing her body, once, twice,
then throw her into the hole.
Her body falls atop the others.
The men put their hands together and pray quickly.
We wait until they are gone
before we throw snow atop her body
so no one will try to steal her clothing,
so that she will be hidden under the snow,
so that she will be able to rest at peace.
I killed her because my love for her
was strong enough to keep us here.
Just like Kachan, she died and left us all alone.
THE EMPTY SPACE
The space between Asa and me,
where Auntie used to sleep
with her arms around us,
is empty. I clutch her worn backpack
as close as I can to keep it
for when she comes back,
though she’s never coming back.
I keep it next to me so I can keep
smelling her. And when I need
to cry, I can bury my face
into the pack without Asa