Dust of Eden (4 page)

Masako, ayamare, hayaku ayamare
. Matsuko, apologize,

apologize quickly, but I went a little bit crazy.

The guards looked at each other, their rifles still

pointing at us, Grandpa kept bowing and bowing,

but I glared at them.
We didn’t do anything wrong,

I yelled. Grandpa gave me a scolding when we got

back, but I don’t regret what I did. Nick said

that he was proud of me, but to be careful, because of

that kid that was shot. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I don’t

know anymore.

Yours, Mina (Masako) barbed wires

Line after line.                                     To the mess hall.         To

the bathroom. To sign our lives in.

To sign ourselves out.                         To eat.             To

bathe.                          To talk, to send letters.

Line after line,                         snaking around

the barracks,                around the streets,       and

over the streets,

barbed wires

Separating us from rest of the world,

Lines that push us in.                          Push us away.

Lines to get     into the bus.

Lines to evacuate us.               Lines that border us in,

to say who belongs

where, who we are,

A line that stretches from north to south,       a horizon.

There is no room I can call my own.

My mother, Nick, Grandpa and I are all in the same room.

The Akagis are next door, separated from us by a thin

wall of a board, and everything they do we can hear.

No one talks; no one laughs. We stand in line.

When Nick leaves our room, he leaves behind a dark

thunder cloud. He has carried the gloom

with him for so long that it has become a part

of him and has settled in shadows of the room.

No one talks; no one laughs. We stand in line.

Complete darkness after ten p.m. There is nowhere

to hide here; the eyes of the guard towers, with their bright

beams, roam nightly. Everyone’s sighs, worries, and com-

plaints fly through the night air, entering through the gaps.

No one talks; no one laughs. We stand in line.

Someone’s dream enters into me. We dream the same dreams,

dreams of home and of going home, but when

the morning comes, the dreams are simply dreams, and give

way to sadness and days becoming one, standing in lines.

No one talks; no one laughs. We stand in line.

Dust enters

during the night like a thief,

leaving mounds

of sand in all corners

of the room where the wind left it,

leaving mounds like graves,

even on top of us, burying us

while we were asleep.

Dust enters through our noses

and mouths while we are asleep,

when we talk, when we breathe,

in this place just a few miles away from Eden,

where they know nothing of our lives,

where they know nothing of the people

who live behind the machine

guns and barbed wires,

buried in sand each and every morning.

Dear Father,

A baby’s been born.

The newspaper story said, “Emily

Harumi Shimada was born last night at 8:49 pm.

The mother and baby are in good

health. The father, Charles ‘Chuck’ Shimada,

is in D.C. working for the Foreign Services.”

All the women

walking around with laundry baskets

carried them as if they were

carrying around babies of their own.

When I told Grandpa about the baby,

Grandpa smiled

and told me that Harumi meant
Spring Sea.

But the first thing she’s going to see

is the barbed wire, the guards with machine

guns ready to fire, the dry yellow

land and the tumbleweeds that roll around

like herds of buffalo. The first

thing she’ll see is not a pink wall, the smiling

faces of nurses and doctors,

all she will see is the sad face of her mother

and a photo of her father far away.

Like us. School started a week ago in Block 21,

Hunt Junior High,
on November 16.

My class is so big—there seem to be fifty or sixty of us,

just calling out the roll takes forever.

Not that I’m complaining, but we don’t have a blackboard or

even enough books. We sit on picnic tables like we’re

outside. We might as well be outside. If you’re up front,

you burn to death from the single pot-belly stove;

if you’re in the back, you freeze to death. My teacher,

Miss Clarendon, seems nice—just out of Stanford—

but she’s sad that we don’t all have textbooks and classes are cut

short because there aren’t enough classrooms.

Mom works in the mess hall.

She earns $12 a month washing dishes, trays, forks

and knives. When she comes home late at night,

barely in time for the curfew, she comes in tired,

with red, chapped hands, wearing the night around

her hunched shoulders. Her body’s bent in half as if she

were still standing by the sink in front of all of those

dishes. She sighs a great sigh, and without taking off

her shoes, she sits on the cot, takes her shirt off, then

her skirt, and asks for the hand cream she bought from

the Sears and Roebuck catalog last month with her first

paycheck. Her very first. Some nights, she comes home,

tired, too tired even to use the cream for her hands, too

tired even to wish me goodnight.

Tonight she lies down on the creaking cot

with her clothes on, snoring as soon as her head hits the pillow.

Nick doesn’t talk to us anymore. He’s gone before

I wake up; he comes in after the curfew.

The only person who seems himself is Grandpa.

I miss you. I miss my family.

Your Daughter, Mina Masako

The air has been carrying the hint of angry

winter with it for the past two mornings.

When we woke up this morning, our breath turned

white like the solid columns of our house

back in Seattle, and when Mother opened

the window, the ground was completely covered

in snow, so white that it stung my eyes.

The yellow earth was covered; our barracks

were white, and even the barbed wire was white,

making me think, just for a second, that

I was looking at a white vine

with white berries strung unevenly along it.

Nick, Nick, look!
I yelled, but Nick just turned

away from me, turning his back toward me

and the room—our home. I ran outside,

and looked up the sky, where the sun was white,

where flakes kept falling and falling, each snow

flake a perfect many-pointed star,

melting as soon as they landed on my hand.

Each step left a perfect footprint, leading from home

to somewhere, uneven, toward the irrigation.

The sun wasn’t glaring; it was so much kinder, and so

soothing that I almost forgot Nick’s darkness

and the darkness of the room that we’d made our home.

Our family is shredded like small dresses that Mother cuts

up to make brooms. Nick doesn’t come home and no one knows

what he does all day. Mom works in the mess hall, washing

one dish after another, her hands getting redder and redder.

She doesn’t smile anymore. But Grandpa’s a snail with all

he needs on his back; he jokes with the other old

men in Japanese, though he says he misses working with

the land. Dad is far away, his letters criss-crossed by black

markers across his words. We are puzzle pieces, unwhole and apart.

Mina M. Tagawa

Miss Claredon 8th Core

December 29, 1942

“One Year Ago”

One year ago, Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and it broke all our hearts. It is the day that changed my life, though I’m sure it is the day that changed all Americans’ lives. I remember I was practicing with the church choir, when the news of Pearl Harbor came.

After that, everything changed. Some Japanese American men, like my father and our family friends, were taken away by the immigration agency as “dangerous aliens.” Then came the curfew from 8pm to 6am, so we all stayed inside, even our cat, Basho. Still, most of my friends in Seattle were nice to me.

Then came the order to evacuate to Puyallup. We packed everything quickly, and boarded the bus on April 29th— our zone was one of the last ones to leave–while friends saw us off. It made me very sad to leave my best friend, Jamie Gilmore, and Basho. We stayed at Puyallup until the end of August, when we were told to move to Idaho. Our block was one of the first ones to leave. We got on the train; the landscape looked very beautiful, but the closer we got to Hunt, the worse it got. It was all sage bushes and dry land and hot air. And now, here we are, in barracks half finished, with no hot water, and dust everywhere. I thought Puyallup was bad, but this is much worse. School started in November. We also had our first snow, our first Thanksgiving and now, Christmas. This is our home away from home, and we have to make the best of it.

Christmas here seemed like every other ordinary day. Still, we celebrated in a very small way. All Americans are going through a little of what we are going through. I pray that the war will be over soon, and that we can all go home.

Miss Claredon tells us

that we can’t speak Japanese

at school anymore.

We all have to learn

to become more American, she says.

From this day on,

she’ll give us American names.

So we can be more American,

she says. So we will be less

the enemy alien.

When Father came back to us, he carried

the weight of the sky on his back.

When Father came home, he walked stooped,

his steps in the rhythm of a broken wheelbarrow,

his legs so skinny that his pant legs seem

only half filled, wanting for more.

He climbed down from the bus,

one step at a time, just like Grandpa,

though they are separated by four decades.

When Father’s foot reached the ground,

Grandpa looked away as if he were looking into the sun,

as if the sight blinded and pained him;

then, in the same rhythm, Father and Grandpa

ran toward each other, then fell into each

other’s arms, their circle so tight that Mother

and Nick and I could not enter, but just watch.

When Father came home, he slept through the day,

through the night, through the week,

and Mother stayed by his side under the dim light,

praying each hour, thanking Jesus

for his safe return. And when Father awoke,

he did not say anything about Montana. He did not

say anything about what had been left

out of his blackened letters; he did not say

anything. He sat by the window and drank

in the new landscape of our new home, he sat

with his eyes not understanding, almost

disappearing in the sunlight, so light he was.

Dear Jamie,

Now that Father is home

Mother says that everything

is going to be okay.

Now that Father is home

Mother says that we can decide

what to do next.

Nick says that Father is

a coward; that’s why he got

out of prison

earlier than any one else.

But I don’t think so. He didn’t

do anything wrong. What’s wrong

is how he’s aged:

his face, so lined

and his hair so shocked

with gray. The lines around

his face are as deep as the dry

ground in Minidoka.

Jamie, I still wear

the half heart. Do you?

My heart
is
broken.

I miss you very much.

There’s no one like you

at school.

Your best friend, Mina

Masako, earth is a lot like people,

Grandpa says. Earth must be cared for,

tended. With patience, he says, you can

change a poor soil into a fertile

and rich soil, dark as chocolate and

so moist and rich that worms will

make it home, so tasty that when you chew

on it, the earth tastes sweet,

as sweet as sticky rice prepared to celebrate the new year.

This earth here, he says, has a chance

to become magnificent, and with time can become

rich and heavy. It just takes time,

it just takes patience, he says,

just like it does with people. Don’t give up

until you have done everything to change

yourself. Then, he says as he sits

on the doorstep, only then can you start

blaming others.

I pledge

allegiance

to the flag

(we move

our mouths

as one)

of the United

States

of America,

(with our

hands over

our hearts)

and to the republic

for which it stands:

one nation, indivisible,

(we move

our mouths,

but our

words are

quiet)

with Liberty and

Justice

(we move

our mouths

as one)

for
all.

Nick sits in a corner

bruised like a tomato,

not saying a word.

He broods; he sulks,

carrying the dark