The Language Inside (6 page)

we dressed in rainsuits and boots

helmets, masks and goggles

and worked our way inside

shoveling muck into bags

lugging bags out

Madoka and I were a team

taking turns bag-holding

muck-shoveling

picking out rotting fish

removing broken glass

teams of men hauled out

soaked tatami mats

and ruined appliances

we shoveled sludge from floors

then from under floors

from behind the toilet

from inside kitchen cabinets

we salvaged

               dishes, pots and pans

               jewelry, photos, unopened bottles of sake

we discarded

               furniture, futons, clothes, books, shoes, papers

               phones, place mats, curtains, stuffed animals

during lunch or breaks

sometimes Madoka and I

wandered the deserted neighborhood

among growing mounds of debris

we’d greet

whoever we saw

stop to talk

offer help

or just listen

once we found two girls

leaping onto and off

bent and broken

washed-up cars

wearing

               no gloves

               no masks

               no boots

so Madoka and I led them away

to a cleared patch of asphalt

found some stones

and started hopscotch

first the long spiral snaking kind

we learned in Japanese preschool

then the kind like a double-crossed T

I learned in Vermont

at night

in the tent we’d pitched

in a little park on high ground

I wrote by lantern light

some of the words people said to us

and some of the things

I couldn’t believe

we’d seen

we worked dawn to dusk

and on the fourth day

Madoka’s grandmother

came from the evacuation center

to view the house

and the changed neighborhood

stoic, tough

she’d come to join the cleanup

but when she saw my yellow rainsuit

greasy with sludge

my gloves foul black

she fell against my shoulder

and wept

even you, Emma-chan

even you are here to help

in June Mom and I returned for a week

to help Madoka’s cousins

and her grandparents’ neighbors

still shoveling

still cleaning

still bagging

and heaping debris

and in August I went up with Madoka

for what should have been two weeks

of helping all around

her grandparents’ town . . . 

and that’s where I was

when I got the news

about Mom

about our move

out of Japan

I had to leave Miyagi

return early to Kamakura

help with packing, sorting, storing

could only drop by

               the international school

               as classes were starting

could only drop by

               a volleyball practice

               at my old Japanese school

to say my good-byes

one minute my head was full of tsunami cleanup

with plans to visit Miyagi each school break

one minute I was a member of student council

with fund-raising plans for two adopted Tohoku schools

one minute I was headed back to teachers who knew me

a coach eyeing me for varsity volleyball

and a Model UN conference in the Philippines

one minute Toby was finishing summer homework

for his second term at Japanese middle school

after all-summer practice with his baseball club

one minute we thought the earthquake

was the only thing

to turn our lives upside down this year