by Paul Yoon
She turned to her sewing machine. At the base, written in English were the words: Little Betty. “Hello, Betty,” she said. “Where are you from?” From a basket on the floor she picked up a torn shirt and placed it on the tray. She couldn’t recall to whom it belonged. She cranked the wheel and the spool on top rotated, unwinding the gray thread. The machine was rusting. The paint on the desk formed continents.
Through the walls she heard a man’s voice on the radio. It was the news. There was to be a UN prisoner exchange with the North and the Chinese. Hill 255 was in the shape of a pork chop, another news segment explained. She wondered who had thought of that first, who called these things such names. Her window faced the front courtyard and beyond that were the main road and the hills that led to the orphanage. The hills were in the shape of ears, she thought, the sides of heads. Below her the main entrance opened and a soldier, discharged, stepped out onto the patio in uniform. He raised his hand to shade his eyes and looked around him as if he weren’t sure where he was and how he had come here.
After Junpei left the orphanage, Miya turned silent. She performed her chores with a mechanical precision and then did more, relieving the other children of their responsibilities. They avoided her, unsure of what to say. She didn’t notice. The weeks passed and she slept little, wandering the grounds and out to the field’s edge where the forest began.
She was chopping wood behind the kitchen one afternoon when Miss Hara approached her. Together, without speaking, they carried the split logs to the furnaces. She had cut extra and brought them to Miss Hara’s cottage, where she placed them at the doorstep. Miss Hara invited her inside. She was a slim woman with a receding hairline. She had long slender fingers that wrapped around her arms as she gazed down at Miya.
She had never seen the inside of the house before. It was sparse in its furnishings. A single tea table, a low desk beside the window where the woman kneeled and wrote letters. The walls were unadorned.
Miss Hara owned a single teacup and that evening they drank tea sitting on the floor, passing the cup back and forth as they watched the fire. Miya expected the woman would mention Junpei in some way but she didn’t. She stood to retrieve a sheet of paper and a pencil. “Much to do,” she said, and sighed. She told Miya of her plans for the next day. A list was drawn. She handed Miya the list and, smiling, lifted her hand and waved her off.
The next day Miya assigned chores to the younger ones: who would be picking vegetables in the garden, milking the cows, cooking, washing linen, cleaning the hallways and the dormitory. She made sure the mats were rolled and the floors swept. She enforced curfew. She led the children to the stable and fed the ponies, bringing their manure out to the field where she spread it over the soil.
She returned to Miss Hara, handing her the list. Miss Hara gave her another one. Again, she drank tea with the woman in silence. Another day came. Another list was given. In the years to come, she would, along with the others her age, begin to tutor the children.
She stayed, as did many. When a new child arrived, she was the first to carry them or take their hand, escorting them into the kitchen. The hours were quick and arduous. In her time, some, like Junpei, ran away, though this was rare. Even so, she grew used to this. And for those who approached her about leaving, Miya and Miss Hara assisted them in obtaining work with the local farmers and the fishermen. They would all gather in front of the orphanage and watch each child depart on a pony, their new employer guiding them down the road. There was even a marriage. They held a wedding ceremony. As a wedding gift the orphans built a house at the end of the field.
All the days ended at Miss Hara’s cottage and a single cup of tea. Few words were spoken. Lists were no longer required. Some nights they ignored each other completely, Miss Hara writing her letters, Miya reading a book. At exactly the same hour each day Miss Hara would turn to her and wave her away by flicking her hand. “Good night, Miss Hara,” Miya said, and the woman nodded, smiling.
It was in the summer, in the evening, that she saw the flicker of a lamp at the end of the road. A birthday had been celebrated, marking the day she arrived. She was, by Miss Hara’s calculation, twenty-six. Japan was at war. Some of the island’s residents had been enlisted to fight alongside them. She sat on the floor, gripping the windowsill, watching the light sway and grow larger. It beat in the rhythm of her heart. Then she saw the figure that held it. She rushed outside.
“Junpei!” she called, running toward him. “Junpei!”
The young man paused, perplexed, and looked at her, raising the lamp to Miya’s face. “Aren’t you pretty,” he said, and drank from a bottle of wine. He stepped closer. He ran his fingers down the length of her hair. She didn’t move away. He was sweating. He spat. “You are not from here,” he said. He then grasped her hand and lowered it between his legs and she felt him and stood there, studying the shape of his body.
The broom appeared like a spear thrown across Miya’s shoulder. She turned and there was the shadow of Miss Hara in the dark, raising her arms and beating the man. He had dropped the bottle and Miss Hara took it, shattered it on the ground, and stabbed the air with the broken bottleneck. She did this until the man was down the road and when he was gone she turned to Miya, who had begun to cry, and slapped her across the face and continued to do so until Miya fell. Miss Hara left her there.
In the middle of the night, after Miya had returned to the dormitory, Miss Hara came to her and took her back to the house. The woman washed the girl’s face. They shared the mat, lying beside each other and looking up at the beams along the ceiling and the starlight that swept over them.
In the first week of August the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And all the orphans woke one day to find that the Japanese army had left. The Americans came in their place. Cargo trucks could be seen on the roads and Miya kept waiting for the soldiers to take her and the others away. Instead, supplies were offered to them, including clothing, coffee, sugar, and toys. “Islanders,” they were called, with affection, and she realized she had been here for over twenty years.
So the orphanage remained. The school across the hills, however, was abandoned. She no longer walked to it. At night she heard the distant engines of trucks and imagined the students leaving and the Americans carrying crates of artwork out of the buildings, sending them off on ships across the Pacific.
Miss Hara had begun to teach her how to sew, from a machine they were given by an American chaplain. They sat beside her desk and Miya pushed the fabric under the machine’s needle while Miss Hara turned the wheel. A lamp was burning and the shadows of their arms loomed across the floor like birds. By then another war had started, this time on the peninsula.
All of a sudden Miss Hara spoke. “I have my vocation,” she said, guiding Miya’s fingers. “What will yours be?”
Miya didn’t respond. She had never heard Miss Hara speak so many words outside of the classroom. The tapping noise of the sewing machine filled the room, as well as the woman’s quick breathing. Her voice remained calm.
“I’m not the judge of this. But there is a world outside of this one. And someday they will go home. And we will be here.”
She left to check on their tea. Miya spun the wheel herself. She heard the cup drop and looked back to see Miss Hara’s outstretched arm on the floor behind a counter, the cup swiveling rapidly, then slowing. The sewing machine needle punched into Miya’s finger.
She would, at times, attempt to recall those hours. It would only come to her in quick images. Her attempts at waking the woman. Running to the barn for a pony. Her own rapid breathing, the tremor of her heart. Her desire to shout, yet inability to. Her inexplicable strength in lifting the body onto the pony’s back. Her galloping. Her ascent up the hills and crossing over them. Dusk.
For the second time in her life, she passed through the gates of the school. A young nurse, upon hearing the sound of hooves, stepped out onto the patio. Behind her, the faces of convalescents began to fill the windows, th
eir eyes betraying curiosity and bewilderment, this girl on a pony, a woman’s body slumped forward against the animal’s neck.
The young doctor she would later come to know as Henry stepped forward, carrying a stretcher. Miss Hara was brought inside and placed on a bed. He thought at first the woman had been wounded. Blood streaked her face and clothes. Henry searched for the source. He couldn’t find it. He turned to Miya and then saw her finger.
She returned to the orphanage after Miss Hara passed away. An American organization had decided to take over the institution. A married couple moved into Miss Hara’s cottage. The husband translated. They were from the Midwest, they told Miya, and she didn’t know what state that was. Each night they read the Bible before supper. They taught the children English and refused to allow the girls to bathe with the boys. Chaplains visited. Journalists, also. The dormitory filled with orphans from the mainland cities and towns.
Miya lasted there two months. The others stood in front of the orphanage to bid her farewell. She gathered Miss Hara’s teacup, an extra set of clothes, a comb, her unsent letters, which Miya had hidden, and placed them all into a satchel. She carried this and the sewing machine to the car that was to take her back to the hospital.
Later, in the room Henry offered her, she would read over Miss Hara’s letters. Most were requesting supplies, from the UN and Christian communities. The last stack, however, was a list: in columns were the names of orphans, copied onto dozens of sheets of paper in the woman’s handwriting, all addressed to refugee camps in the mainland and towns in Japan. Found, it stated, at the top.
She looked for herself. She wasn’t there, of course. She was nameless when she arrived, her age estimated. As was Junpei. She was about to put the letter away but then paused at the last person on the list. It was written as if it had been an afterthought, the handwriting less confident. She hadn’t known Miss Hara’s full name until then.
In the washroom she filled her teacup with water and then added salt taken from the kitchen. It was night, the room windowless. A light bulb hung from the ceiling, giving off a dull glow. She covered the cup with her hand and shook the liquid mixture. She then rubbed the saltwater onto her teeth and along the base of her gums. What remained in the cup she swirled in her mouth and then returned to her room. She didn’t bother with the light. Outside the hills faded into sky. She was wearing her hospital gown. She sat on the edge of the bed and combed her hair. The shirt she had sewn lay folded on her desk. Barefoot, she walked downstairs and into the ward.
Two nurses were making their rounds. They nodded to her and she returned their greeting. A weak light shone through the windows, touching the shoulders of the wounded. Someone coughed. Bed sheets rustled. There was the scent of ether and iodine. She passed the curtain, leaving it parted, and stood above Junpei. She leaned over him, toward the window, and peered out at the tree and the stone garden. A bird lifted off a branch, a speck of shadow. She watched the stones for movement. “Where are you?” she said.
“Where is who?”
She looked down at Junpei. His face was motionless, his eyes still covered. She leaned down and placed her ear against his dry lips.
In the next bed over Benson lifted his arms. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His chest was wrapped in gauze. “Where is who?” he repeated.
“Hello, Benson,” she said, and asked if she could get him anything. He didn’t respond.
She crossed the room to the sink and filled a bowl with warm water. She pumped powdered soap into it from the dispenser and then placed it beside Junpei’s bed. “You stink,” she said, laughing quietly, and patted Junpei’s hand. “You’ve been neglected, you poor thing.”
“What did you dream last night?” Benson called.
She didn’t know. She unbuttoned Junpei’s shirt and spread it out over the ends of the bed. There were bandages scattered across his chest and stomach, covering the sutures. She had watched Henry stitch the wounds, lifting the maroon thread and snipping the ends, closing the skin like shells.
“I dreamed of sand,” Benson said. “Everywhere. And everyone was sinking into it except me. I walked right over it. Right to the end.” He kept his hands raised, swinging them lazily in the air.
She dipped a sponge into the water and worked around Junpei’s bandages, scrubbing his body. The soap smelled of dust. She hummed to herself, tracing the shape of his shoulders. She spoke of her day, the blind boy she had recently met. She told him he would have liked the marbles.
“I saw a house once,” Benson continued while she washed Junpei’s neck. “It had collapsed sideways like a tree. The whole structure. It lay in the middle of an unpaved street. You see. Like this.” Benson tilted his arms over the bed.
Miya pressed the sponge against Junpei’s cheeks, the water running down onto the pillow. She told him of the shirt she had made. For when he woke. She watched Junpei’s mouth as Benson’s voice came to her, hovering by the curtain.
“An older couple lived there,” he said. “They had arranged the furniture to accommodate their new floor, which had once been their wall. They refused to leave. The husband was shaking a grenade. His wife stood by the sideways window. She had silver hair. She wore a brooch on her shirt, a flower, a star, I don’t remember. I asked to take the wife. The husband refused. I motioned for her to leave. ‘Come out the window,’ I said. It was open, no glass. She reached through it and took my hand. She squeezed my fingers. Her palms were warm. I could smell her insides. And that’s the last thing I remember.”
Water droplets ran across Junpei’s chest, carrying the light of stars. It was the nose, she thought, that remained from his boyhood. The flat bridge. His lips, too. The sharp angle of his jaw. She knew them well.
“You moved the stones,” she said, rubbing the gauze wrapped over Junpei’s forehead. “After the painter finished. You formed the shape of an arrow.”
She took Junpei’s fingers and placed them between her teeth. She trimmed his nails, which tasted of flour, and swallowed each crescent sliver.
“There,” she said. “All better.”
A light flashed across the ward then faded. The sound of a car passing the main road. The soft clatter of a nurse’s footsteps approaching a coughing patient.
“Some nights I dream that house is still there,” Benson went on. “It’s grown roots. It’s sunk. A window is used as a door. The couple’s still there, way down below, waving.” He turned his head in her direction for the first time. “Doll face,” he said. “When you sleep next to that man. I don’t know why you do. But you talk in your sleep.”
She looked across at Benson. She waited for him to go on. The night had thinned and the floor of the ward shone. Benson returned to staring at the ceiling. He stretched his hands into moonlight, as if attempting to take hold of it, and then brought them down over his eyes. His lips moved but what he said she didn’t hear. Her vision blurred. She wiped her face and looked down at the body she had just washed. “I never left,” she said.
Someone touched her shoulder. It was suddenly morning, the light of day abundant. Her eyes focused on Henry standing beside her. And then she saw a woman at the foot of the bed. She had a receding hairline and long fingers. She wore a shirt that wrapped across her chest and a long skirt that billowed. She was running her hands over Junpei’s toes. Miya smiled, thinking this a dream. “You’re here,” she said, taking Junpei’s hand.
Henry was watching her but she thought little of it. The woman was crying, staring at the body on the bed.
“It’s all right,” Miya said. “I’ve kept your sewing machine.”
“Miya,” Henry said, and took her shoulder again. He leaned forward and spoke into her ear. “Miya. Are you listening?”
She nodded. “It’s in my room. Little Betty, it’s called.”
“Miya. Listen to me.”
His voice was steady. She looked to see if Benson was awake but he wasn’t.
“Do I talk in my sleep?” she asked Henry,
and he didn’t answer. He pointed at Junpei. The blanket was pulled up to his waist and folded back. His shirt lay open and she apologized, reaching to button it.
Henry took her wrist. He spoke as if from a distance, though she could feel his breath against her cheeks, soft as wings. “The woman here. This is the boy’s mother. She heard about her son and has come to visit him. Do you understand, Miya?”
“Which boy?”
Henry pointed at Junpei. “This one.”
“He doesn’t have a mother,” Miya said. She smiled at him with patience. “Neither of us does. I told you, Henry. Ages ago. Remember?”
“It’s time to stop,” Henry said. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry, Miya. His mother’s here now. She’ll be staying with him. You can help the others. Like we agreed.” He gripped her arms. “Let’s go,” he said. “You need to rest.”
Miya refused to move from the chair, placing her hands underneath her legs. She turned to the woman. “I kept it. Like you said. I make clothes now.” She struggled against Henry’s hands, twisting her shoulders. He called her name, a bit louder now, though the more he did so his voice seemed to fade and she stood quickly and leaned over Junpei and held his face. Then she tore away the gauze and lifted his eyelids and saw the emptiness there, a pair of tunnels. The mother began to shout. There were footsteps. She was embraced.
“Junpei,” she whispered into where his eyes should have been. “Junpei. I have yet to find it.”
She was pulled as if tied to a string and she fell backward, her legs giving way. She was caught and dragged across the ward. Her gown skimmed the floor. She watched Henry’s body diminish, bending down to pick up her nurse’s cap. She saw Junpei’s feet, the woman still touching them. The faces of the convalescents passed by her, tall as trees. Out the window the hills swallowed clouds.
