Free Dust of Eden by Mariko Nagai Page B

planted when I was
    born, feeling it, stroking it,
    gently, as he looks at the house,
    at the space where the nursery
    used to be, then he raises his hat,
    tips it gently, saying goodbye
    to everything, to the house, to the wintering
    roses left behind that will probably die
    without his care, and to the tree
    that has begun to bud.

April 1942
    Chinatown,
    where all the
    Japanese stores
    used to be, is
    boarded up.
    It’s a ghost town;
    no one’s about so early
    in the morning.
    It’s a ghost town
    now and maybe forever.
    A sign:
    Thank you for your patronage,
    it was a pleasure to serve you
    for the past twenty years.
    Then it gets smaller and smaller
    and finally disappears
    as we drive
    quickly
    toward the junction
    of Beacon Avenue
    and Alaska Street
    at the southern end
    of Jackson Park.

April 1942
    We are all tagged like parcels,
    our bags, our suitcases,
    my mother, me, Nick, Grandpa.
    Tagged with numbers, we have become
    numbers, faceless, meaningless.
    We were told to come to Jackson Park,
    just two suitcases each,
    no more names, no memories, no Basho,
    only ourselves and what we can carry.
    Here we are, waiting for the buses
    to arrive, photographers flashing and clicking,
    other Japanese like us, so many,
    all quietly waiting, wordlessly smiling,
    without resistance.
    And we all shiver because it is cold,
    because we do not know where we are
    going, because we are leaving
    home as the enemy.

Part II. “Camp Harmony,”
Puyallup Assembly Center, Puyallup, Washington
April 1942
    I fell asleep against a hard and unyielding
    Nick, rigid with his anger, as the bus trembled,
    shook like an old woman, like the rocking of a crib,
    and we all slept like children, lost, not
    sure where we were going. We were all
    brothers and sisters, cousins and more,
    our hair black, our skin yellow. No
    one ever told me that there are so many
    shades of yellow, that some of us aren’t
    even yellow and slant-eyed
    like the newspapers show.
    We got on the bus this morning.
    We packed our bags last night.
    Jamie came with her Mom, like she promised,
    and I smiled, though I wanted to cry,
    my smile hard on my face like
    a cracking plate. Soldiers yelled at us
    angrily, Get on the bus, quickly,
    pushing an old man into a bus with the butt
    of their rifles; Japs go home , a redneck yelled, his voice
    piercing the crowd.
    Outside the bus, the sea of heads,
    black, blond, brown, red, straight, wavy,
    curly, all waving, yelling, smiling, hiding tears.
    I leaned out the window and yelled, Jamie, take
    care of Basho, Basho likes to be
    rubbed on his belly, but be careful of his claws.
    Jamie nodded and held out the broken heart,
    I promise I will, I promise!
    Grandpa sat quietly next to Mother, looking ahead,
    his potted rose on his lap. Nick sat next to me,
    his eyes as hard as his fists. Americans don’t
    keep promises, you remember that, Mina, he hisses.
    I waved goodbye, and Jamie waved and didn’t stop,
    yelling promises that she’d write.
    I remember Jamie’s dad with his jolly made-up face,
    Jamie’s mom pressing a handkerchief to her eyes,
    Jamie next to them, waving her arm
    in a circle, mouthing something.
    Then the first bus started to move, and
    everyone became quiet. People outside.
    People inside. All of us quiet,
    so very quiet that it seemed we were watching an ancient
    movie from the 1920s, where people cried without sound.
    We were all sad, but put on smiling faces, like we did not
    care, like our hearts were not breaking, though if you
    listened hard, if you ignored the engines, you could hear
    thousands of hearts breaking, shattering, into pieces.

April 1942
    They open
    our bags,
    one by one,
    those soldiers
    with rifles
    and hard eyes,
    taking out this
    and that,
    holding up
    Mother’s underwear
    and mine, too.
    Mother looks
    away, her face
    bright red;
    mine is so hot
    I think I’ll burst.
    They probe
    me from head
    to toe,
    searching my
    head for lice,
    listening
    to my lungs
    for whistling,
    for