The Nightjar and the Cherry Blossom
When I
arrive in Angel Island to meet my new husband, I expect a man in white, but he has
a dirty jacket. His face resembles the kind smile in his photograph.
“Sakura you
are more beautiful than the cherry tree you are named after.”
I nod.
Our
apartment is not what the Omiai promised. Dust enters through the walls and
soon my case of clothing turns sooty grey. A women next door disappears at night,
with her case. In the evening he comes to speak with my husband.
“Did you
notice her leaving?”
“No I was
repairing nets all day.”
“Did your
wife speak with her?” He looks to me with crimson eyes. I say nothing. My
husband is kind and pats my arm.
“Sakura never
knew her.”
The next day
my husband takes me to the fields.
“Don’t speak
with neighbors.” He says softly looking at the ground.
"It's dangerous."
My mother
would be ashamed if she knew I’m tearing corn, I don’t tell them in my letters.
In time my palms callous. Rarely, I miss sleeping on linens in Osaka and rubbing
camellia oil on my hands. The smell of my husband’s hair is now my home.
In the
fields I hear news of the war. My parents never write about invading Nanking or
oil embargos. The order comes. All Issei must pack.
“Order 9066
says to pack what we can carry.”
“Can we go
home to Osaka?”
“No.”
“Can we go
somewhere else?”
“No.”
The next day
we leave our apartment to walk to the corrals at the Salinas rodeo, then we board
the train to Poston. Yuma County is a dusty landscape. Again, I adapt to a
foreign place. The unit we are assigned, like the rail car slats has gaps from
redwood shrinking in the heat.
Mixing adobe
becomes my passion. I plan to seal up the unit before the baby arrives. If there
is too much water or too much clay the effort to get the bricks to dry in the
sun results in cracked and bumped blobs. If I add more sand to the mud, the
blocks set. There are no guard towers, so at night I hoist two buckets on my
shoulders to gather gravel from areas closer to the river.
Repeating
the exercise makes me strong. My skin becomes dark and ruddy from the work, but my
husband says I am beautiful.
As I walk to
find grit, a buff nightjar follows me calling cuk cuk cuk. I step carefully
under the starry sky. At this time when the cooler air rises I think of the
petals of the cherry trees shedding the pink candy and flying to heaven.
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