Free When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

their father had sat. Was it the red chair? Or the sofa? The edge of his bed? She had pressed her face to the bedspread and sniffed.
    â€œThe edge of
my
bed,” their mother had said.
    That evening she had lit a bonfire in the yard and burned all of the letters from Kagoshima. She burned the family photographs and the three silk kimonos she had brought over with her nineteen years ago from Japan. She burned the records of Japanese opera. She ripped up the flag of the red rising sun. She smashed the tea set and the Imari dishes and the framed portrait of the boy’s uncle, who had once been a general in the Emperor’s army. She smashed the abacus and tossed it into the flames. “From now on,” she said, “we’re counting on our fingers.”
    The next day, for the first time ever, she sent the boy and his sister to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lunch pails. “No more rice balls,” she said. “And if anyone asks, you’re Chinese.”
    The boy had nodded. “Chinese,” he whispered. “I’m Chinese.”
    â€œAnd I,” said the girl, “am the Queen of Spain.”
    â€œIn your dreams,” said the boy.
    â€œIn my dreams,” said the girl, “I’m the King.”
    IN CHINA the men wore their hair in long black pig-tails and the ladies hobbled around on tiny broken feet. In China there were people so poor they had to feed their newborn babies to the dogs. In China they ate grass for breakfast and for lunch they ate cats.
    And for dinner?
    For dinner, in China, they ate dogs.
    These were a few of the things the boy knew about China.
    LATER, HE SAW CHINESE, real Chinese—Mr. Lee of Lee’s Grocers and Don Wong who owned the laundry on Shattuck—on the street wearing buttons that said, I AM CHINESE, and CHINESE, PLEASE. Later, a man stopped him on the sidewalk in front of Woolworth’s and said, “Chink or Jap?” and the boy answered, “Chink,” and ran away as fast as he could. Only when he got to the corner did he turn around and shout, “Jap! Jap! I’m a Jap!”
    Just to set the record straight.
    But by then the man was already gone.
    Later, there were the rules about time: No Japs out after eight p.m.
    And space: No Japs allowed to travel more than five miles from their homes.
    Later, the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park was renamed the Oriental Tea Garden.
    Later, the signs that read INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY went up all over town and they packed up their things and they left.
    ALL THROUGH OCTOBER the days were still warm, like summer, but at night the mercury dropped and in the morning the sagebrush was sometimes covered with frost. Twice in one week there were dust storms. The sky turned suddenly gray and then a hot wind came screaming across the desert, churning up everything in its path. From inside the barracks the boy could not see the sun or the moon or even the next row of barracks on the other side of the gravel path. All he could see was dust. The wind rattled the windows and doors and the dust seeped like smoke through the cracks in the roof and at night he slept with a wet handkerchief over his mouth to keep out the smell. In the morning, when he woke, the wet handkerchief was dry and in his mouth there was the gritty taste of chalk.
    A dust storm would blow for hours, and sometimes even days, and then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it would stop, and for a few seconds the world was perfectly silent. Then a baby would begin to cry, or a dog would start barking, and from out of nowhere a flock of white birds would mysteriously appear in the sky.
    THE FIRST SNOWS FELL, and then melted, and then there was rain. The alkaline earth could not absorb any water and the ground quickly turned to mud. Black puddles stood on the gravel paths and the schools were shut down for repairs.
    There was nothing to do now and the days were long and