before her legs start hurting.
I can’t remember what it feels like to be warm
on the floor where we three slept in the shape of the river.
As I sleep on the cold floor with Auntie and Asa,
our bodies are piled up like a ball of kittens.
FROZEN WATER
Water is as precious
as food here. The well
is iced over this morning.
We throw the portrait
of the Emperor into the fire
to melt the ice so we can drink
the water, so we can warm
ourselves. At least he’s good
for something, finally.
THE SCHOOL
Each classroom is filled
to the brim with people like peaches
we’d eat from the can Tochan always ordered
for Asa on special days.
I walk down the hallway,
glass out of the panes,
and clothing dangles from the doorways,
from window frames and pegs
that students used to hang their coats.
The entire school smells
of latrines and Horse’s dirty stall
and unwashed bodies
and bad breaths and stale-smelling hair.
People spill out from the doorways
to the hallway, people sleeping,
people eating and doing their stuff,
just like they would at home,
though we are so far away from home.
THE WAR ALREADY FORGOTTEN
The Chinese section of the city
does not remember there was war not
too long ago. Signs from restaurants hang
in many different colors and shapes:
blue for Muslims where they don’t serve pork;
a gourd shape for where they sell
alcohol and men come out with red faces;
and a white udder shape for milk shops.
Sometimes, someone stops and whispers,
“Do you want to be my daughter?”
but I pretend I don’t hear and run away.
And sometimes, if I stay long enough,
if I look sad enough, someone comes out
and gives me leftovers that I take
home. Asa’s face lights up
like it used to back before all this,
Auntie looking at me like I did good.
We dive in like chickens during
feeding time, our thoughts only on food,
pecking and pecking
at the last little crumbs on the floor.
PART FIVE
LATE AUTUMN
A GHOST IN THE CITY
“Chi fan le ma? (Have you eaten well?)” a Chinese voice rings out.
“Yes, have you?” a voice calls back.
“Cigarettes! Cigarettes, anyone?” a Japanese voice yells.
“Here, boy, keep the change,” a Russian voice replies.
“Japanese? Japanese? Japanese smart, very clean.
How much? How much?” I turn left at the marketplace
toward my favorite part of the city: the side streets,
where the city suddenly becomes narrow, cluttered, and dirty
full of smells and voices. Men sit on unevenly paved streets,
sucking on long-stemmed pipes. Chickens run around in flocks
while children run around with toys. Dogs lounge lazily on stone
steps and under tiled roofs. Voices call out to one another
from houses on both sides of the street, their faces invisible.
The smells of twisted ginger and bearded ginseng fills the streets,
and I feel alive like the dancing red Chinese characters waving
from signs above me. Here, an old man sells tea and spices,
his thin beard grown down to his chest.
All over the city, posters cover poles, on walls,
and on sides of buildings, posters with pictures
and a few words written in Russian, pictures of men
doing something, arrows pointing the way.
There, a storefront shop with baskets and baskets piled
on top of one another threatening to fall at any minute.
A woman selling Chinese pancakes slaps pieces
of dough against the hot stove, and when they fall on the ground,
the surface brown and cooked just right,
she slaps the other side until it, too, falls on the ground.
It’s as if the war never touched these people,
not like it touched me. And I feel so alone,
as if I am a ghost who can’t share my story with others.
BACK TO NORMAL
Auntie takes a basket
of clothing out of our closet
and sits in front of the door
with her bad legs thrown
in front of her.
“Never leave home without a sewing kit,”
she had said once, a long
time ago, “when I was a little girl,
clothing was more precious than food.”
She takes a needle
and a thread, and mends a shirt
that has been mended too many times before.
I had given to her, the one I found
on the street, and she starts
to draw a picture of a house.
I take out a book I found
in what used to be a school library
and open it; it’s a book
about astronomy. Some words are
hard to read. But I read out loud
a page, then another, and another,
and Auntie mends and Asa keeps
drawing houses after another and another.
The air is cold. Our breath comes
out in white plumes. But the story of sun
keeps us warm, away from here.
I LOOK AND I DON’T CARE
Men from the Japanese Community grab
the body by the ankles
and wrists carelessly, and carry it
down the hall and down the steps
toward the open pit. One, two, three,
they throw in the body.
(I look, and I don’t care.)
The yard is covered with holes,
filled with frozen naked bodies.
A stiff pair of arms pokes
out of one of them
like two sunflower plants.
(I look, and I don’t care.)
“Why aren’t they buried?”
Asa asks, and turns away.
I tell her it’s almost like
when Kachan died
and Tochan had to thaw the ground
with hot water because the earth
was frozen over with winter snow.
(I look, and I don’t want to care.)
Hundreds and hundreds of bodies
—they looked more like lumber,
or plants, their bodies stiff
and pale and not at all like people.
Asa reaches over and slips her cold
hand into mine. “Promise me
you wouldn’t just leave me
in a hole like that.”
(I look, and I care.)
THIS IS HOW PEOPLE DIE
Quietly. In the night.
When no one is awake.
The dying close their eyes.
And in the morning,
they are dead.
THE DEEP OF WINTER
My nose runs and freezes
right as it comes out.
I have icicles for eyelashes,
and no matter how many times
I blink, my eyes water and freeze.
I stamp my feet but no one pays attention.
They bury their noses in fur
coats and walk hurriedly past me
and I have to move in order
to stay warm. I sure don’t w
ant
two bowls of that awful
sorghum gruel but winter has
frozen the hearts of people.
By the gate of the school,
a woman grabs my hand,
“Are you a Japanese boy?
Come home with me, I’ll feed
you well, I’ll treat you as my real son,”
she says in Chinese.
I push her hand away. So many
people like her outside the gate.
Why can’t people just leave me alone?
SOMETIMES, WHEN I THINK OF HOME
I can’t help it. It’s always when
I am with Auntie and Asa.
It’s always when we are sitting
together, telling one another
what has happened during our day.
Maybe Auntie says something
about someone from the settlement,
maybe it’s Asa saying something
about a friend’s parent who died,
my heart pangs, and I think of home.
Before I can stop myself,
my mouth starts to move,
and I start talking about Horse
and Tochan and hens and Goat
and Auntie’s plum tree and the settlement
and the Wall. Auntie doesn’t stop me
but lets me talk. Asa stops me
and tells me I’m remembering wrong.
I can’t stop my mouth once I start.
I can’t stop myself. I’m scared that if I
don’t say these things, I’ll start forgetting.
THE DRUNK RUSSIAN AND HIS WALLET
I walk behind a Russian soldier.
His gait wavers, and he loses his footing
on the patch of ice, then rights himself.
Then I see it: his wallet is about to fall out
of his coat pocket. My heart pounds.
All I have to do is to reach over
and snatch the edge of his wallet and run.
That’s all I have to do. I swallow, hard.
Then I dash, snatch his wallet,
and push him hard onto the sidewalk.
I run as fast as I can, through the streets,
running this way left, that way right.
I push people out of the way,
holding the wallet to my chest.
I run and run through the maze of shops.
And when I stop in a small alley,
my heart pounds. It’s going to pop
out of my mouth. I open the wallet
to find many bills. I have stolen,
and it is so easy. When I show Auntie
the money, she looks at me hard,
without saying a word,
like she’s trying to make me talk,
and I look away, as would a guilty dog,
“What would your Tochan say?”
she says quietly, and pulls me to her chest.
I know I will never steal again.
I don’t want Auntie to be disappointed in me.
DISAPPEARING CHILDREN
As the icicles get thicker and bigger,
the voices outside of the gate
get louder and louder.
“Sell us your Japanese children!
Sell us your Japanese wives!
Japanese are strong and smart
and they are hard workers.”
Russians look the other way.
They are soldiers. They don’t need
wives or children.
And every day,
I see children disappear
in exactly that way:
mothers send their children
to Chinese men and women
who have no children
of their own, or who have a son
and wanted a girl-bride to raise
and marry when she gets older.
Or Japanese women walk alone
to the gate, selling themselves
to become the wives of Chinese men.
Auntie clucks her tongue
in disapproval. “I will never do
that to the two of you, you hear,
Natsu, I will never sell you two
just so that I can live.”
But I hear mothers crying
inside the toilet stalls,
pressing their mouths against
their hands so that the only thing you hear
is the choking sound
as if they are having a heart attack.
WINTERING CITY
The snow has turned the streets white.
There is no one working on the street.
The only thing I can do is to stay inside
in our broom closet. Asa and I huddle
close to each other, and I hope
that we can wake up in the morning
alive, and that spring comes
sooner than never.
RUMORS
People say that all the men
who survived the Soviet invasion
were taken up north across
the Soviet border to a place called
Gulag where they make the men
work sixteen hours a day
in the coldest place on Earth.
People say that the Americans
wiped Japan, no one is alive,
and that’s why there is no boat
that can take us back to Japan.
Because nothing is left.
Even the Emperor has been killed.
People say that Japan is now a part
of America, and just like
the black people who were slaves
a hundred years ago in America,
Japanese are now slaves.
People say that Japan was
run over by the Soviets
just like Manchuria,
and what happened
in Saipan and Guam
and in Manchuria
happened in Japan, where people killed
themselves rather than surrender
and live the life of shame.
I don’t trust anything
anyone says.
It’s like on that day
I found out about
Japan’s surrender.
All the things I thought
were true were lies,
and only lies matter
in this world now.
THE BATH
Asa and I take off
our shirts, flapping them
like surrendering enemies
flapping white flags,
shaking the shirts against the fire.
Lice eggs fall out,
pop against the open fire.
Asa stands there
without her shirt,
ribs sticking out
like fishbones in her chest.
Asa points at my chest,
“Natsu-chan, you have breasts!”
and laughs. My face burns.
I punch her arm,
and she giggles.
I shake the shirt again,
and more white eggs pop into the fire.
We laugh as we watch
lice pop to death.
At least they died warm,
at least they died without knowing.
EMPTYING CLASSROOMS
People are no longer arriving.
They are disappearing.
One day the entire classroom
is emptied out.
The next day there are more
naked bodies in the hole.
Sometimes, it is the children
who are herded out
like ducks about to be slaughtered
by the men from the Japanese
community center.
They’re taken to an orphanage
somewhere outside
the city. Sometimes
they just disappear
and nobody sees them
ever again.
Just like cats do
when they
know they are
about to die.
RUMORS OF GOING HOME
The word about the boat taking us
back to Japan starts from the Teachers’
room to the First Year’s Classroom
to the Second Year’s Classroom
through the library to the third floor
and the Third Year’s Classroom
then to where we are in the closet.
Next day, different news: there is no
boat taking us back to Japan.
But instead, the Soviets are rounding
us up and taking us across the border
to the gulags, where they treat
people like slaves and even slaves are better
off than being with the Soviets, I think.
Men from the Japanese Community,
men who are go-betweens with us
and Russians, us and Chinese,
make sure everyone is looked after.
They go around asking what we need,
they tell us which rumors are lies
and which rumors may be correct. A week later,
there is news that a school is starting up,
and this rumor turns out to be true,
though how I wish it was a lie.
SCHOOL
I tell Auntie I don’t want to
go to school. There’s nothing
I need to learn. I need to look
after Asa, doesn’t she know? Auntie peels off
my jacket heavy with dirt and grime,
my sweater I haven’t taken off
ever since August, my shirt that is gray
and she takes a wet sponge,
rubs my body head to toe,
then roughly rubs my shorn head
to shake off the lice.
My body’s covered in goose bumps.
She hands me a clean shirt,
a sweater and jacket
that must have come from …
and I shake that thought away.
She’s not done.
“You go to school in these clothes,
you hear, you go to school
and come back and tell me
what’s going on in the world.”
I smell of soap. I smell of Auntie.
I smell of something close to home
for the first time since forever.
LEARNING AND FORGETTING
For the first time in so many months,
I sit in a classroom not to live