The Storm We Made, page 26
Jasmin rushed over and squatted above Yuki.
“You hit that little girl!” screamed her mother, stepping toward Fujiwara.
“At least I didn’t leave her to die like a stray,” he said.
It was all too much; Jasmin didn’t understand any of it anymore, and at her feet, Yuki let out a small piteous yelp.
The houseboy rushed over with a cloth and some warm water. He looked to the general for permission and, seeing the barely perceptible nod, pulled Yuki into a sitting position and began to pat her cheek with the warm cloth.
Behind Jasmin, her mother and the general were arguing. Jasmin only caught snippets, her mother saying, “I had no choice,” and “You didn’t want her,” and the general saying, “She’s ruined anyway.”
Jasmin didn’t want to know what was going on anymore. She looked at Yuki cradling her cheek, which had begun turning blue. The houseboy gestured for the girls to wait as he stood up carefully with the water bowl, pressing his palms against the sides to prevent the water from spilling over the edge. He turned to go back to the kitchen.
As soon as his back was to them, Jasmin pressed her hand into Yuki’s. Her mother and the general were engrossed in each other. She watched them turn away, their whispers sharp, as they walked toward the porch. Jasmin knew what to do. It was time. She linked her arm into Yuki’s. They rose as one unit, gathered their dresses under their armpits, clammy hands leaking into each other’s, and ran for the back door.
* * *
ABEL
Abel tried everything. He tried to lift Freddie but wasn’t strong enough, and the movement made Freddie’s bleeding thigh gush more. He tried to drag Freddie by the arms, but his friend screamed as his injured leg scraped the ground. He attempted to pull Freddie to his feet and help him walk, but Freddie collapsed on him.
“You have to move, Freddie!” he cried, feeling the shame of frustrated tears pressing against the back of his eyes. “Why are you being so stubborn?”
Freddie, he noticed, tried to glare at him, but even that seemed to take too much effort. His friend said nothing, just slid himself jerkily against the outside wall of the chicken coop, leaving smears of red against the brown sandy ground. Abel looked around for someone else, another boy, anyone to help him lift Freddie. The planes seemed to loom lower, but the air was clearing. Maybe he could run out and find someone. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Freddie at the coop alone, but he had no choice.
“I’ll be right back, Freddie. Don’t worry.”
Heat pummeled Abel’s body. Panic surrounded them, shouting and yelling filled the air along with, unexpectedly, the tang of ginger and herbs from the garden that Rama maintained behind the chicken coop.
“Stop,” Freddie said in a voice so commanding in its calmness that Abel turned around. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.”
So they sat together, thin backs wedged against the outside walls of the coop—the coop that had once broken Abel down into little pieces, now the only thing holding Freddie up. Around them, planes rumbled and sour death filled the air, but in their cocoon, it felt oddly placid. Maybe it would be all right to die here, Abel thought. Bits of ash tickled at his nose and throat, and he looked to see if they were irritating Freddie too. Freddie, who had his eyes closed as though in peaceful sleep, opened one eye and whispered, “I know I’m handsomer than you, there’s no need to be jealous.”
In spite of himself, in spite of the severity of the moment, the corners of Abel’s lips curved upward, and his stomach contracted into a laugh, the first he’d had in months. Then Freddie leaned his head against Abel’s shoulder. “My neck hurts,” he said.
Abel leaned away to give Freddie more room on his shoulder. His back itched against the back of the coop, but he held himself still.
“I’m sorry.” Freddie coughed.
Abel felt the spray of saliva against his neck. It smelled sour and bitter, but still Abel did not flinch.
“I’m sorry about Akiro. I just… I just wanted you to feel better.”
“Quiet, Freddie, you need to stop talking so much.” Abel pressed his fingers softly into Freddie’s cheek, feeling the clog of dust and sweat under his fingertips.
“I hope my mother will be there… wherever I’m going after this,” Freddie said hoarsely. “I’m afraid.”
“Stop saying stupid stuff, Freddie. You’re not going anywhere.” Abel felt the thin body on his shoulder shake, felt a deep intake of breath.
“Maybe I won’t get to see her because of what I did to you.”
The dark circle around Freddie’s leg had grown bigger, its earlier symmetry destroyed. There was no fighting it, Abel knew. This was all the time they had.
“ ‘When you wish upon a star,’ ” Abel sang, Freddie’s favorite song. He chewed the inside of his cheek to stop a telltale quiver from entering his voice. Absolution came in different forms. It was his turn to give it.
“ ‘Makes no difference who you are,’ ” Freddie whispered in response, his sour breath blowing against Abel’s cheek.
Freddie went silent before Abel finished the song, his breathing short and raspy. But Abel continued singing, one song after another, the songs they loved, a kind of hymn. Then Freddie’s breathing evened into soundlessness, the sour breath no longer tickling Abel’s neck, and he knew, he knew, he knew.
* * *
JUJUBE
“Jujube,” Mr. Takahashi called from the front of the teahouse. His voice carried through the kitchen.
Doraisamy turned to glare at her. “Jujube, are you watching the customers?”
“Yes,” she said. Her head pounded.
“Please put your things in your own space. I don’t want any contamination,” he said.
Jujube reached for the tapioca root that lay exposed on the countertop and nodded, a mask of meek acquiescence. Maybe she should get Doraisamy as well, she thought, but no, that would be mad, and she was not mad, she was simply vengeful. There was a difference. She watched Doraisamy’s retreating back, sweat snaking a line down his white shirt.
Then she walked out to the teahouse floor, the fingernails of one hand carving crescent moons into her palm. “Would you like some more tea, sir? I can boil more water.”
“Thank you, yes.” Mr. Takahashi’s voice, cheery. He did not notice the sticky wound on her head, inexpertly covered with her hair. He was distracted, had strolled in that evening with a sheaf of papers under his arm, late-arriving correspondence from Ichika that had been held up, arriving all at one go. He planned, he told Jujube, to arrange the letters in order and read them one by one so it would seem like Ichika was telling him a story, the order of the narrative round and complete.
Back in the kitchen, Jujube poured more water into the ornate blue kettle and put it on the stove. She opened the lid and watched as the bubbles began first at the sides of the kettle, then made their way to the middle until they were larger, popping, boiling. Then she tossed in the tea leaves and watched the water turn a muddy brown.
She turned her attention to the tapioca root. She thought about how her mother used to boil the root to remove the cyanide that existed in its raw form. Then she would mix it into their rice, and they all—when they were still a family of five—ate the gluey mixture they could barely swallow, lying to each other and saying they were full, then listening anxiously to the wireless for news. It had already felt barren and hopeless back then. Little did we know how much worse it would get, Jujube thought.
Jujube had not yet decided if she would stand over his body, owning the murder, or if she should run away before the cyanide took effect. She supposed they would eventually find her, and it would be obvious it was she who had poisoned him. Easiest perhaps to just own the action, watch him convulse, watch him bleed out of his nose and mouth as his stomach burned itself, watch him watch her and know it was she who had done the deed, watch the hope extinguish from his eyes as he died, knowing that Ichika would never see him again.
Jujube grabbed a knife from the drawer and admired its serrated edge. Like most things, it looked a lot more harmful than it was; the serrated edge was actually dull and in need of sharpening. As a tool of defense, it would be useless, but for her purposes, it would do fine. She scraped a powdery sliver of raw tapioca into Mr. Takahashi’s favorite green teacup, careful not to spill any on the saucer. Then she poured the tea into the cup, over the sliver of tapioca, which floated like a tiny, unmoored boat among the stray tea leaves that had escaped the kettle’s spout, before sinking. She scooped it out with a spoon, stirring any residual powder on the bottom.
Then she strode out of the teahouse kitchen and onto the floor, green cup in hand. The fans whirred, the afternoon humidity stuck to her back, an old man tapped his foot against the leg of a table with some impatience.
Her mind felt clear.
* * *
CECILY
There were rattan chairs on the porch, cushions fluffed and ready for someone to sit on, but Fujiwara removed his heavy military boots, lined them up behind a pillar, and lowered himself slowly and stiffly onto the wooden floor, crossing his legs under him. Cecily was surprised; she’d expected their screaming confrontation to continue. The storm too had passed, and the moonlight, bright and white, shimmered against his bare feet, fair, delicate but for a blister on the heel, probably from his hard boots.
He gestured at the space across from him. “Look. We need to handle this. They don’t need to see us fight.” His face was shrouded in shadow, cheeks sunken. Cecily mirrored him, crossing her legs under her body.
Cecily had never been a big believer in ghosts. It was true that sometimes nighttime noises, alien creaks, and the sounds that came with the expansion and contraction of old wooden houses scared her, but she wasn’t one of those people who worried themselves about the dead watching. Still, some nights when things felt particularly bleak, she wondered if Lina hovered around the edges of the shadows, if Lina cursed her to the life she had, to the fates she’d brought upon the ones she loved.
“So why do you want a family now?” Cecily asked, twisting her fingers together. “Not before?”
“I think maybe this is the end,” Fujiwara said. The moon lit one side of his face and darkened the other, his nose rising like a shadowed mountain. “The end of all we’ve worked for.” He leaned back against one of the porch pillars and sighed quietly, his breath pressing into the still night air. “It’s important for a man to leave a mark on the world.”
“This is not what you said it would be like.” Cecily was so angry she couldn’t find the words. How did one articulate the years of broken promises and broken lives, that nothing had added up to the equation they had intended?
“I just wanted to see what it would be like for me, us, to have a family. I thought just for a few days, I could show her more.” He paused for so long Cecily wondered if he had fallen asleep. Then he whispered, “She doesn’t deserve a world like this.” Before Cecily could reply, he said, “I didn’t know about the other girl. You have to believe me.”
Cecily pulled her knees to her chest, her housedress pressing into her legs. Perhaps this was as close as she would get to an apology, to regret. She didn’t know if it was enough, but she could feel the bitterness of his guilt, almost taste their combined sorrow.
“She’s a good girl, isn’t she, little Jasmin?” he said. “But the other one…”
She searched his face, but it was his body that told her more. Most of the moon had ducked behind a cloud, so all she could see was the unevenness of his shoulders, the weight he carried. Perhaps for the first time, Cecily understood him, a man who had taken everything but had nothing left.
“Maybe we deserve this,” Cecily said, gesturing at herself, all dirt and wildness, and him, all pain and stoop. She looked directly at the moon, which was so bright it hurt, not unlike looking directly at the sun.
He was silent but for a small whistling breath.
“I have to take them back,” Cecily said, facing Fujiwara. “They need a home.”
He nodded. “The English will come for me soon.” His voice was calm, soft. For a brief moment, it felt like the old days, just the two of them, whispering about a future they had thought would come to pass. Cecily pulled herself clumsily to her feet, shaking out the foot that had fallen asleep. Fujiwara lay back on the porch, spread his arms out, tilted his chin at the sky.
Behind her in the house, a shout from the houseboy, shrill and panicked, pierced the night air.
* * *
JUJUBE
Ichika’s letters floated like jellyfish on the ocean-green surface of the teahouse’s table. Jujube watched as Mr. Takahashi carefully extracted each letter. He smoothed them out, then laid each neatly atop its corresponding envelope. Having been folded for so long, the letters stood half-pleated on the table like little accordions. The sheets were of varying quality. Some were stained, some of the ink smudged, but Ichika’s looping penmanship, large and sure of itself, was unmistakable.
“Whoa, whoa, be careful,” Mr. Takahashi exclaimed as Jujube prepared to place the teacup on the table. An urge to tip the hot water onto Mr. Takahashi or onto the letters swelled through her, but she breathed it back. It was not the time or the plan.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Takahashi said, patting her arm. “I do not mean to shout at you. Just so excited.” The faint creases at the corner of his eyes deepened as he smiled. She placed the refilled teacup down in an empty space away from the letters, stepped back, and nodded, acknowledging his apology.
“Please,” he said, “sit with me.” He gestured at an empty stool next to him.
Jujube hesitated. This was not supposed to happen; she had not anticipated his affection. She gestured helplessly at the teacup. “Your tea, sir.”
“If the manager comes out to scold, I tell him I am ask for you,” he said. “Please, sit down. I want to…” He paused, searching for the word. “I want to share with you. A joyful moment.”
There was nothing else she could do. She sat down next to him, curled her toes under the stool, pressed them against her shoes nervously. Steam from the teacup rose quickly; it would get cold soon, but Mr. Takahashi was distracted.
“Where shall we start?” he asked gleefully. “Why, at the beginning, of course.” Chuckling at his own joke, he reached for the letter perched at the top-left corner of his arrangement. He cleared his throat and started reading aloud.
Ichika’s letters were mundane, filled with day-to-day details.
Today I went to the hospital and the patients were nice to me. A doctor was impatient, but of course, he has a lot on his mind. When I went to the market, I was excited to be able to buy our favorite root vegetable, with which I will use to make broth. It was chilly today as the weather is changing. I drew the sky today. I wished to paint but we do not have supplies so I am content to draw without color for now.
Ichika wrote very generally; she was not, Jujube noted with smugness, a good writer, able to evoke feeling and presence on the page. Her letters were stilted, like a child’s, prosaic statements of fact, no judgments, no poetics, no dramatics, descriptions of things, not feelings. Yet Jujube couldn’t help but be enraptured, listening to Mr. Takahashi’s halting translations. He would silently read a line or two, his eyes blinking quickly across the page, then slowly translate each sentence to English, stumbling over tenses, contractions, and pronouns.
From the letters Jujube learned that Ichika had moved away from Nagasaki to a smaller town, where she led a quiet life, despite the war. Still, her life, simple as it was, seemed to provide satisfaction and clarity and, the most alien of all, happiness. Jujube filled in the blanks in Ichika’s letters—in her mind, every day Ichika rose around the same time, as the yellow sun pressed its rays determinedly through the clouds. She lived with an elderly aunt with whom she would consume breakfast, a mug of tea and pickled vegetables on rice, the steamy tea cutting into the sourness of the pickles, somehow making them both sweeter and more tart. Then Ichika would change into her loose, stylish man-pants and leave for the hospital, where she ran around for hours doing all manner of things, from tending the wounds of soldiers, to reading books to the injured, to ferrying papers across the hospital, to and from doctors and nurses. She would be tired, the arches of her feet aching as she curled her toes under, trying to loosen the tight muscle at the foot’s base. After work, she would have dinner with her aunt, read her books, draw her pictures, then write these letters to her father filled with calm prose and girlish hopes that he would return.
Jujube also wondered about all the things that Ichika did not tell her father. Girlfriends whom she might hold hands with, browse new dress designs with, giggle with at cafés when handsome, lanky, studious men walked by. Or, for that matter, the men who might stop her on the street to compliment her long dark hair, or gaze at the pinch in her nose that made her look as though her face were always just a second away from a laugh. She might even feel the punch of desire blooming below her stomach that confused her when the narrow-eyed nurse at the hospital pressed her fingertips into Ichika’s wrist and held them there a second longer than she needed to, eyes trained determinedly on Ichika, though Ichika couldn’t or wouldn’t look up. The ache in Jujube’s head faded, replaced with a deep want. There was poetry to Ichika’s inner life, filled with love and desire and happiness and wonder, and Jujube longed for more of it, for all of it.
* * *
JASMIN
Jasmin could hear Yuki breathing next to her in the dark wheelbarrow as they lay side by side, arms parallel with their bodies, hands fisted in tight balls. Jasmin was sure that the gears in Yuki’s brain were working as quickly as her own, puzzling through all the grown-up shouting, all the back-and-forth, all the confounding emotions of the last few hours.
