“Shut up,” she said. “You don’t care.”
“What’s the point of caring?” he asked. “No point.”
Miyuki knew her brother would not say such things if their mother was with them.
If their mother was with them, he wouldn’t want to.
But their mother was swimming in the sea, a long, long swim. A five-day swim now, and counting. They all watched the water, waiting for her to come kicking her way to shore, buoyed up by part of someone’s roof or clinging to a board that used to be a piece of someone’s floor.
“She’s probably dead by now anyway,” said Tani.
“Who?”
“That stupid donkey. Who do you think I’m talking about?”
“Don’t you want to know for sure?”
“Don’t care,” said Tani. “She’s an animal. She’s down here.” He put his hand two feet from the floor. “Man is up here.” He reached for the sky. “Girls are down here.” He put his hand flat to the floor and squished it down, trying to go even lower.
“You’re a chauvinist pig,” Miyuki said. “No. I take that back. That’s an insult to pigs. You’re just a chauvinist.”
Tani laughed, but it was a hard laugh, without humor.
“You care about that donkey so much, go and get it. Stop talking about it. All you do is talk.”
Miyuki looked at her brother. He was crying again. He cried easily these days.
“You won’t go, will you?” he said meanly. “You won’t go, and you won’t stop talking about it. You make me sick.” He shoved her, hard. “Get away from me. Go sit with the old ladies. Go sit with the babies. Go anywhere. I don’t care.”
Miyuki could have argued with him. Being two years older did not give him the right to talk to her like that. But everything he said was true.
She got up off the mat and walked away.
It was not easy to cross the gym. Evacuees were everywhere. Some were on cots with their eyes closed, trying to sleep even though the lights were on and it was only nine o’clock at night. Some were playing cards or dominoes or just talking.
People gathered around tables piled high with donated clothing. They looked over the snack tables for something to eat or drink. Children ran around where they could find space to run, tired of being scared and away from home. Volunteers in orange vests brought diapers to mothers, blankets to old people and gave presentations on signs of radiation poisoning.
“You might feel very weak and tired,” a volunteer said, holding up a poster with information on it. “You might have an upset stomach or a headache. You might notice that your hair is falling out. Be sure to take your potassium iodine to protect your thyroid.”
Miyuki had heard this information so many times she could recite it from memory.
She finally found a place to sit near the back of the gym. She hugged her school bag to her chest, wishing she could hug her mother instead. But she didn’t know where her mother was.
She knew where her mother’s donkey was, but she was not brave enough to go there.
Miyuki had never gone anywhere by herself. Her mother drove her to school or shopping or anywhere else she needed to go. The evacuation center was five kilometers outside the danger zone. Her home was eight kilometers inside the danger zone. How could she walk all that way?
It was a thing she might do in her head, but she would never do it in real life. That was not who she was.
She was a girl who complained — a little — and asked questions — a few. But she was mostly a girl who did what people expected.
“This is who I am,” she whispered to the floor. “Tani is right.”
The words were bitter to her. The sound of them made her mad.
“My brother doesn’t get to decide who I am!” she said. “My father does not get to decide who I am!”
What if, she thought. What if I put some water in my school bag?
She and Hisa would both need clean water to drink. There were many bottles in the hall. The volunteers regularly urged the evacuees to “Drink, drink!” Miyuki had as much right to that water as anyone.
It would be a simple matter to act in this small way.
“Will I do it?” she whispered. “Is this who I am?”
Miyuki stood. She went to one of the tables full of water and put four bottles into her school bag, then added two more. Hisa would be thirsty. She moved to the snack table and added packs of Senbei rice crackers, steam buns filled with red bean paste and three apples.
No one paid any attention to her as she moved through the crowded gym and walked out of the school. Small groups of volunteers and evacuees sat on the front steps watching the moon rise over the bay below. Miyuki tiptoed across the porch and went softly down the stairs at the side. She walked across the parking lot. The street took her up a hill and around a bend.
After almost an hour of walking, Miyuki got to the end of the safe zone. Across the street, a low wooden barrier with flashing lights and a Keep Out sign marked the beginning of the danger zone.
Miyuki looked across the road at the barrier she needed to cross. No cars were coming. There was no one else in sight.
She took a deep breath of safe air, then ran across the street. She ducked under the Keep Out sign. She held the safe air in her lungs as long as she could, but before long she had to exhale, then breathe in again.
The dangerous air seemed the same as the safe air.
Miyuki kept walking.
She walked on streets she’d driven on with her family, through villages she’d known all her life. The electricity was off. The only lights working were the solar-powered ones.
The silence was eerie. She stomped her shoes on the sidewalk just to give herself something to listen to.
She passed shops with no customers and a railway station with no passengers. She left the sidewalk and walked down the middle of the street, just because she could, and because it gave her some distance from the shrubs in people’s gardens. In the moonlight, they looked a bit like ghosts.
A soft rain began to fall. It picked up intensity and Miyuki responded by picking up the speed of her steps.
The rain will wash away the radiation, she thought. Then she wondered if she was right about that.
By the time she arrived in her village, she was in a deluge. She was totally soaked when she turned into her street.
Miyuki did not care. She started to run.
Would Hisa still be there? Would she have gotten out somehow and be lost now?
The worst thing would be if Hisa was there, but dead.
Miyuki ran to her house, up the driveway and across the backyard. She saw the donkey pen in the corner with its small three-walled shelter.
At first she could not see her mother’s donkey. It was too dark in the yard, and the rain in her eyes made it hard to see anything.
“Hisa?” she yelled. “Are you there?”
Miyuki threw herself at the pen. Now she could see the outline of the animal crouched in a corner of the shelter. In seconds she was inside the pen and down by the donkey’s side.
Hisa raised her head and put it in Miyuki’s lap. Miyuki opened a bottle of water and tipped it into the donkey’s mouth. Hisa drank it like a baby, and then she ate the apple Miyuki gave her.
“Can you walk?” Miyuki asked. Hisa got to her feet. Miyuki looped a rope loosely around the donkey’s neck and they left the pen.
She looked up at her house. It was dark and looked abandoned. She realized she’d been hoping her mother would be there, but there was no one.
She led Hisa out of the yard and down the street.
The rain eased off to a drizzle. Miyuki’s legs and feet were sore beyond sore. One step, then another. She kept going.
They were passing the empty train station when Miyuki heard the sound of something running up behind her. She s
pun around to see a small white dog. It stepped back when it got close to her and whimpered.
“Where did you come from?” Miyuki asked. “Do you want to come with us?” She poured some water into her hand and the little dog lapped it up. “Come on, then.”
The little dog barked. Miyuki heard another dog bark in reply. She followed the sound and found a larger dog, a black one, tied to a tree.
“Don’t be afraid,” she imagined her mother saying. Miyuki shared a steam bun between the two dogs and poured out more water for them. She untied the rope from the tree, and the four of them moved through the empty streets.
Hisa was nervous about the dogs at first, but she trusted Miyuki and kept on walking.
The next time Miyuki turned around, two more dogs had joined them.
“Are you sending them to me?” Miyuki called up to heaven. She felt her mother smiling at her.
The dogs and the donkey were good company. The walk back seemed shorter with friends to share it.
The sky was now more gray than black. Morning was coming. Miyuki had walked all night.
She knew the barrier was coming up. Soon after that, she would be back at the evacuation center.
She wondered if anyone would be happy to see her.
“Maybe I’ll be arrested for breaking the rules.” She scratched Hisa between her ears and decided she didn’t care if she was.
“I am someone who rescues animals,” she said. “I am someone who walks a long way, alone, at night, and in the rain. I am someone my mother would be proud of. This is who I am.”
She rounded the bend and was met by bright lights on the other side of the barrier.
“There she is!”
That was her father’s voice.
“I see her. She’s all right!”
That was her brother’s.
Miyuki heard the crowd cheering behind the lights. They were cheering for her! As she got closer, the dogs ran ahead, jumping into the arms of the people who’d had to leave them behind.
The police pushed aside the barrier for Miyuki and Hisa to go through.
“Stand back,” the police said. “She needs to be decontaminated.”
Tani and her father ignored the warning. Tani was crying. He threw his arms around the donkey.
Miyuki’s father was crying. He bent down to hug her.
“You are just like your mother, Miyuki,” he said, holding her close. “You are just like your mother.”
Call me Nariko, she thought, with her face pressed against her father’s jacket.
I am thunder.
8
The Freedom Chair
Day One
Mike is sitting on his heels on the floor of his cell.
His head is bent low. His hands are pulled tight behind him. He is weighed down by the pressure of a knee pressing into the small of his back and by four men leaning into him. It is hard for him to breathe.
“Keep your hands behind your back! Head down! Don’t move until you hear the door shut!”
One by one, Mike feels the corrections officers loosen their grip on him and back away. The last one, Knee-in-Back, uses his knee like a fist to give Mike an extra poke in the kidney. Then he, too, gets off him and the cell door slams shut.
Mike does not move a muscle. He stays as he was placed while the COs congratulate themselves and laugh.
Mike hears the outer door of the Administrative Segregation pod shut and lock.
He is all alone.
He flops over onto his side, draws his knees up to his chest, buries his face and silently cries.
Just for a moment. Then he bounces to his feet, ready for whatever might come next. His eyes are wiped and his face is dry by the time he hears the Ad Seg door unlock again and the peephole covering in his own door slide open.
“You all right in there, 75293?”
Mike knows the voice of CO Jenson. It is the voice of the devil.
Mike does not answer.
“Don’t go crazy in there, y’hear?” CO Jenson taunts. Then he slides the peephole door shut again and rejoins his buddies.
“Don’t go crazy,” Mike whispers. “Don’t become like you, you mean.”
He keeps his voice low.
“Don’t talk in Seg,” the boys in his cell block told him, sharing their stories of how tough they were. “They’ll mace you if you do. The only ones who talk in Seg are the ones who’ve gone bat-strapped loony, and they scream more than they talk.”
Mike looks around his new cell, which takes all of five seconds.
There is a concrete slab for a bed. It has a thin rubber mattress that smells like pee and disinfectant. There is a metal toilet with a small sink on the top of it. One roll of toilet paper sits on a small shelf. There is one gray blanket. These are the only things in the room.
“Sixty-seven days,” Mike whispers. He wonders if this day counts as one, or if the count doesn’t start until tomorrow.
Sixty-seven days.
Sixty-seven days.
Sixty-seven days.
Day Two
The flap at the bottom of the cell door clangs open.
“Grub,” someone says.
Mike spent a long night trying to sleep. At least he thinks it was night. The lights stayed on so he couldn’t be sure. Now he is having trouble sitting up.
“Hurry up, inmate. I got others to feed.”
The voice is more boy than man. There is something young about it. Mike bends low and takes the covered plastic tray from the shelf in the door.
The face of another inmate, an older boy, looks back at him. The older boy winks.
“Be cool,” the boy whispers.
“Do I have to come in there?” yells a CO.
The flap is closed and the Ad Seg pod door shuts soon after.
Mike takes the tray to his bed, then changes his mind and sits on the floor. He is hungry! He got no food yesterday because he was in the chow line when he got thrown into Seg.
“We’re in apple country,” he said when a scoop of canned applesauce was plopped down on his tray. “It’s harvest time. Real apples are cheap right now.”
“What’s that, inmate?” asked CO Jenson, barreling up to the conversation. “Are you complaining about the food the taxpayers have provided to feed your sorry self?”
“I’m just saying, you can buy a bushel of seconds for a couple of bucks. The taxpayers pay less and we could have real apples. There’s no food value in canned applesauce.”
He knows this because his mom told him. He also knows it is dead easy to make good applesauce from real apples because he’s done it, but he didn’t get the chance to say that because Jenson slammed his fist on Mike’s tray, sending it crashing to the floor.
When Mike said, “Hey!” the COs swarmed in and hauled him to Ad Seg.
Fifteen days for spreading dissention.
Fifteen days for the “Hey!”
Fourteen days for saying two curse words when the COs knocked him down.
Fifteen days for speaking without first being spoken to.
Eight days for making a mess when his tray got knocked away.
Sixty-seven days.
Mike already spent time yesterday wondering why two curse words were worth less time than one single “Hey!” and decided that this was a puzzle that could not be solved.
He is so hungry now that even the canned applesauce will taste delicious.
He takes off the tray cover and wants to be sick.
On the tray is one item. It is round, like a burger, and smells like feet.
He covers it up and pushes it away.
Then he eats it. He almost throws up, but he doesn’t.
Day Three
“Are you crazy yet?” Jenson asks through the peephole. “Don’t worry. You’ll get there
.”
Mike rises from his bed like a superhero and throws himself at the closed door so fast Jenson doesn’t have time to step back from it.
Jenson curses, then spits out, “You better not have damaged that door, inmate!”
Mike braces for a beating but Jenson remains outside the cell and, seconds later, retreats behind the Ad Seg pod door.
Mike stays on the floor, his shoulder hurting where it slammed into the metal. He smiles. One for him. He’ll pay for it later, he is sure, but for now, it’s something good.
Across the room in a spot he hasn’t noticed before, a previous tenant has scratched part of a curse word into the wall. The first letter is deep and clear. The second letter is only half-finished.
“Probably a U,” Mike whispers.
Maybe it isn’t a swear word. Maybe the writer was trying to write FUN.
Right.
Day Five
Another day, another tray, another ground-up boot to eat.
Mike sits facing his door so that he has a chance to see the face of the inmate bringing him his meal.
He misses faces. He never thought about faces until he couldn’t see them anymore. He misses darkness, too. He never thought about darkness until he was stuck under bright fluorescent lights glaring down at him twenty-four hours a day.
The outer door of the pod opens, then Mike’s food slot opens.
The face of the older boy stares back at him.
“You staying cool?” the boy whispers, sliding the meal tray into place.
“I’m not going to make it,” Mike whispers back.
“You are,” the inmate says. “Use what you have. Free your head.”
The CO yells. The inmate closes the meal-slot flap and Mike is left alone with his foot-burger.
“Use what I have?” asks Mike. “I’ve got nothing. Nothing!”
He kicks the tray across the floor. The tray cover comes off and Mike sees something new.
Along with the foot-burger, the tray holds two small packets of ketchup.
The red against the gray of the cell looks like all the flowers in the world.
One packet is enough to mask the taste of the chopped boot. The second packet goes under the mattress, a feast for another day.
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