The Taste of Rain

by Monique Polak

  “Determined,” Jeanette says. “You can be very determined, Gwen. And we’ve all seen what you’re like when you lose your temper.”

  Which goes to show that Jeanette has not totally forgiven me for smacking her.

  “Corporal Hashimoto,” Miss E. says to herself, shaking her head. “The poor, poor man. I was so hoping he was safe.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want you to know,” I tell Miss E. “So you could still have hope for Corporal Hashimoto. The way you’ve given us hope. Even if it isn’t always true.” My voice breaks. Not only because I’m sorry for the lie and for being caught telling it, but also because I’m beginning to wonder if maybe there really is no hope. All of Miss E.’s songs and games, all of the Girl Guide teachings—what can they do in the end to protect us from evil and death?

  “There is always hope,” Miss E. insists. “It’s the one thing no one can take away from us. And if they try, we can’t let them. Never, ever.”

  I wish I could say what happens next is my idea, but it isn’t. It’s Jeanette’s idea—to make our own funeral for Mr. Liddell and Corporal Hashimoto. “And for Albertine,” Jeanette adds. “Even if we don’t have their bodies.”

  We join hands and form a circle.

  Miss E. is the first to speak. “Thank you, Lord, for giving us Mr. Liddell and Corporal Hashimoto and Albertine. We thank you for all the good they brought into our lives. We ask you to protect their souls.” Miss E. is quiet for a moment, and then, without lifting her head to look at us, she says, “You can say whatever you’d like to, Girl Guides. All that matters is that it’s honest.” I know that’s a message for me.

  “I’m sorry for lying.” As soon as I say that, I realize it’s not exactly right for a funeral service. But Miss E. said we could say whatever we want to. “There’s something else I’m sorry about…”

  “I hope you’re not going to apologize again for smacking me,” Jeanette says.

  “She should keep apologizing for it,” Cathy says.

  “I think she apologized enough,” Dot tells her.

  This funeral service is getting stranger by the second. I half expect Miss E. to tell us to focus on the loved ones we have lost, but she doesn’t.

  “It wasn’t the smacking I was going to apologize for. It’s something else,” I say quietly. I cannot look the others in the eye, so I keep my gaze on the ground. “I tried to poison a Japanese soldier. It was the only thing I could think of doing to help save Corporal Hashimoto’s life.” I try not to sniffle.

  Tilly lets go of my hand. “You did?” she says. “That’s amazing! How brave of you, Gwen! I didn’t know you had it in you!”

  “Neither did I.” This time I can’t help sniffling. “The poison spilled on the floor. But if it hadn’t spilled, I might have killed him.”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Miss E. says. “The Lord protected you—and the soldier too.”

  “I guess so. But I wish he’d also protected Mr. Liddell and Corporal Hashimoto.” It doesn’t feel right to include Albertine in this list, so I don’t. She gave her life to feed us. But it seems to me that nothing good came from either Mr. Liddell’s or Corporal Hashimoto’s death.

  I swallow hard. “Mr. Liddell and Corporal Hashimoto, I want to thank you. For setting such good examples. For doing so many good turns. And for being selfless.”

  “May your souls find peace,” Jeanette adds.

  Tilly is holding my hand again. “Mr. Liddell and Corporal Hashimoto, I want to say I’m sorry you two didn’t get a real funeral. I hope we’ve made up for that a little bit today.”

  Jeanette nudges Miss E. “Could you do a pirouette?” she asks her.

  “A pirouette? At a funeral?” Miss E. sounds surprised, but I can see her dimples showing.

  It’s an unusual ending for an unusual funeral. Miss E. doesn’t do a pirouette. Instead she decides to teach us how to do the move. She says it will take lots of practice before we’re good at it. But that there are some tricks. “A pirouette requires a lot of courage.” Miss E. looks at me when she says this. I think she is telling me that even if I’ve made mistakes, she thinks I’m courageous.

  “The dancer has to stay open—and lifted,” Miss E. continues.

  Tilly throws back her shoulders and lifts her chest. “Like this?” she asks.

  “Exactly. Very nice, Matilda,” Miss E. tells her.

  The rest of us throw back our shoulders and lift our chests exactly the way Tilly did.

  “You can’t expect to get the pirouette right on your very first try,” Miss E. says. “Like everything good and important, learning to do a pirouette takes many tries. Hundreds, thousands even! But not a single one of those tries will be wasted.”

  Tilly doesn’t wait for Miss E. to finish her lesson. Instead she tries to do a pirouette. When she loses her footing and stumbles, she laughs.

  Jeanette tries it too. But she says it makes her dizzy.

  “There’s a trick for that too,” Miss E. explains. “You need to focus on one point. Even when the world is whirling around you like a top, keep that one point always in your mind. And always, always keep your chin up.” She points to her own chin and raises it a half inch.

  Keep your chin up.

  It’s the first time Miss E. has told us that. It makes perfect sense coming from her. But I’ve heard those words many, many times. Why did I never think of them before? Keep your chin up. My mother said it to me every morning after breakfast. It was also the last thing she said to me when she and my father left me at the boarding school in Chefoo.

  I will keep my chin up.

  Not just when I practice my pirouettes—but always.

  Trying to be positive can’t fix everything. Sometimes not looking at the negatives causes problems too. But trying to be positive, trying to keep my chin up…well, I think I’d rather live that way.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  There’s been peace in Europe since just after our makeshift funeral in May. Now it is August, and we are still prisoners at Weihsien—caught in a kind of limbo. Our Japanese captors are nervous. They know the end is coming. But they’re also afraid of the Chinese guerrillas—communists who are sworn enemies of the Japanese.

  Miss E. says we must be patient. “It won’t be much longer,” she promises. “I feel it in my bones.”

  “What about the communists? Do you think they’ll come and set us free?” Jeanette asks Miss E.

  Tilly snorts. “Haven’t you heard, Jeanette? The commies have already been to Weihsien, only not to set us free. Just to steal our food!”

  “Is that true?” Jeanette asks Miss E.

  For a change, Miss E. doesn’t avoid the question. “I’m afraid,” she says quietly, “that Matilda is right.”

  “What if we die in here?” I ask.

  “We won’t,” Miss E. says. “I promise you we won’t.”

  “You can’t promise a thing like that,” Tilly snaps.

  “I can,” Miss E. answers.

  We wait until Miss E. leaves to continue the conversation. Since the news of the end of the war in Europe, we’ve been getting even less to eat. Some of the women are making soup from bones and rotten vegetables. Miss E. has gone to help them.

  We haven’t bothered with work detail in weeks. The Japanese soldiers are too worried about what will happen to them if they lose this war to bother enforcing rules or getting angry with us. Miss E. will insist we have our daily lesson, but in the meantime we lie on our sleeping pallets and chat, stopping now and then to swat a louse.

  “If we do die here,” I say to the other girls, “what will be left of us?”

  Tilly, who is next to me, shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says, looking up at the ceiling. “Nothing will be left of us—besides our bones and teeth.”

  “We should leave something,” I say.

  “Like what?” Dot asks.

  “Like…I don’t know…a message in a bottle.”

  “That’s for people who are lost at sea,” Cathy says.


  “We’re lost on land,” Tilly says.

  “What if we all sign our names?” I suggest. “So the world knows we were here.” I pause. “In case.”

  So even though we are too weak to do much more than lie on the sleeping pallets, we get up and write our names on the inside of the door to our hut. Twenty-eight names for twenty-eight girls. It’s a miracle that we are all still together. We could never have made it this long without Miss E.

  When she gets back I’ll ask her to add her name to our list.

  We are so used to the noises of Weihsien—the barking dogs, the shouting Japanese soldiers, the bells for roll call, even the sounds our hands make when we slap a louse or a bedbug—that we all turn to each other when we hear a droning mechanical sound overhead, coming from outside.

  An airplane!

  Can it really be an airplane?

  “Do you think it’s the guerrillas? That they’ve come to kidnap us?” Eunice asks.

  “The guerrillas don’t have food. How do you expect them to have a plane?” Tilly asks. She tugs on my hand. Though it’s sweltering hot in our hut and even hotter outside, Tilly’s hand feels ice cold. It’s from not getting enough to eat. “Let’s go see what’s going on.”

  All twenty-eight of us go to stand outside our hut. The grounds are thick with other prisoners doing the same thing as us—peering up into the sky. The droning sound comes closer. And now a silver airplane is circling overhead. “It’s a B-24,” a voice calls out. “An American B-24!”

  “An American B-24!” Everyone seems to be calling this out at the same time. “An American B-24!”

  I am standing between Jeanette and Tilly. The three of us fall into each other’s arms. But it’s hard to hug your friends when you are all jumping up and down. Other girls are dancing. Some prisoners are weeping. And here comes Miss E.—she’s doing a pirouette!

  And then the most incredible thing happens—a white parachute drops down from the underbelly of the airplane. Then there are more white parachutes. Seven in all. It’s like watching clouds fall from the sky. The Americans have come to set us free!

  Prisoners sing victory songs. Prisoners run over to the soldiers—hugging and kissing them. Tilly, Jeanette and I run over to the nearest parachute. Prisoners are helping to untangle an American soldier from the parachute’s cords.

  “Did you bring food for us?” Tilly calls out. “We’re starving!”

  The soldier has heard Tilly’s question even if he can’t see her. “Food is coming!” he promises.

  “Dr. McGregor! Get Dr. McGregor right away!” voices call from the field where several of the parachutes have landed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “This soldier’s hurt his leg. I think it’s broken!” someone calls out.

  Dr. McGregor is hobbling down the path, looking more old and tired than ever, but smiling like a boy on Christmas morning. The small crowd in the field makes room for him to crouch down and treat his patient.

  Word spreads quickly about the upcoming food delivery. It won’t arrive until tomorrow, when there will be more B-24s. These ones will drop canisters of food, clothing, cigarettes and chocolate.

  “Did you hear we’re getting chocolate?”

  “And Lucky Strike cigarettes!”

  Miss E. is as excited as we are. “We’re going to skip our lesson for today!” she announces, but no one is really listening. She claps her hands. “Girl Guides!” she says. “We have work to do. We need to make a giant sign for the pilots flying overhead tomorrow. We need to let them know where it’s safe to drop the canisters.”

  “What will we use to make a giant sign?” Cathy asks.

  I look out at all the action going on around me. That’s when the answer comes to me. “A parachute!” I tell the others.

  “Of course!” Miss E. says. She reaches out to squeeze my hand. “Honestly, Gwen, I don’t know what we’d do without you!”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  We use every pen and pencil and even some old shoe polish to write the words OK TO LAND in giant black letters on one of the parachutes.

  Early in the morning we lay our sign on the eggplant field. Though I’m as hungry as I was yesterday, I haven’t felt this energetic since…well, I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. Any moment now those canisters with food will be arriving. Oh, the thought of a square of chocolate melting on my tongue is almost too much to bear.

  “Here comes a plane!” someone calls out. It’s another B-24, and there are more to follow.

  The girls from my hut jump up and down. We point toward our sign. Several metal canisters drop down from the first airplane and land smack in the middle of the eggplant field. The pilot must have seen our sign.

  “Yay!” we shout—because our sign worked and because we’re finally, finally going to get real food to eat.

  We all rush toward the field. “No! No! No! Absolutely no!” Miss E. shouts. At first we don’t listen, but then she calls out after us, her voice hoarse from shouting, “It’s too dangerous. You could get hit by one of those canisters.”

  And so we go back and wait outside our hut for the moment when Miss E. tells us it is safe to leave.

  Just then there is a terrible crash. We hear voices shouting, “What is it?” “What happened?” and “What in God’s name was that noise?”

  One of the pilots didn’t see our sign. He dumped a giant wooden crate over the main kitchen, and it has made a hole in the roof.

  “Let’s go see what was in that crate!” Tilly calls out.

  Miss E.’s eyes flash. “I told you—absolutely NOT! In fact, Girl Guides, I insist you take cover until I tell you it’s safe to come out. Back to the hut this instant! On the double, Girl Guides!”

  What comes next feels like the longest half hour of our lives. “How much longer do you think it will be?” Jeanette asks.

  “How should I know?” Tilly says.

  “What do you think, Gwen?”

  “I’m sure it won’t be much longer,” I tell Jeanette.

  When we can no longer hear the drone of airplane engines, Tilly announces that she can’t handle any more waiting around. “Let’s go,” she says.

  “Miss E. told us to wait until she came back to tell us the coast was clear,” I say to Tilly.

  Tilly looks me right in the eye. “The coast is clear,” she says. I know what she’s doing. She’s asking me to go against Miss E.’s wishes. To be my own person—the way Tilly is and always has been her own person. Tilly seems to know what I’m thinking because she says, “She won’t always be there to look after us or to tell us what to do. Now that the Americans have come, we’ll be sent back to our own families.” Tilly gulps, and in that moment I understand I’m not the only one who has mixed feelings about returning to my family.

  What will I have in common with my parents? Miss E. is the closest thing I’ve had to a parent in nearly three years. If only there were a way for all of us to stay together.

  “Girl Guides!” It’s Miss E. She wants us to follow her. She says there are tins and tins of Spam and that we can each start with a spoonful. The wooden crate that made a hole in the kitchen roof was full of canned peaches. We can have those for dessert.

  “Is there chocolate?” Cathy and Dot want to know.

  “The chocolate is for later,” Miss E. says.

  The Spam is delicious. It’s hard to believe that there is more Spam, and other good things to eat, and chocolate. We won’t have to starve anymore. What will I think about? I have spent so much time these last years thinking about my empty stomach.

  A crowd gathers by the guardhouse. That’s where I saw Corporal Hashimoto’s body at the back of the small cell.

  “Let’s see what’s going on!” Eunice suggests.

  There’s the camp commander. The last time I saw him was when he stomped on Miss E.’s reading glasses. He is handing over his sword to an American soldier.

  “That’s Major Stanley Staiger,” someone whispers. �
�They call him the ‘flying ace.’”

  We gather around to watch what feels like an important historical moment.

  Major Staiger pushes the sword away from him. Why is he doing that?

  “I don’t want your sword,” Major Staiger tells the commander. But he says it loudly, and we know it’s because he wants us all to hear him. An interpreter repeats Major Staiger’s words in Japanese. “Besides, you’ll be needing your sword,” Major Staiger continues. We all gasp when he says that.

  “On behalf of the United States Army, I hereby order you to defend Weihsien and all of its inhabitants—every single one—against guerrillas and looters.”

  The commander bows low to Major Staiger. “Thank you,” he says.

  The men who were our captors are now our defenders. Soon the Americans and the Chinese authorities will find a way to return us to our families. Everything feels upside down. I don’t know if my life will ever feel right side up again.

  Then I think of something Miss E. taught us: to focus on a fixed point when the world is whirling like a top. I look up at the watchtower.

  I will always remember the afternoon Corporal Hashimoto led Tilly and me in that direction, and how scared we were. I will always remember how he lifted us up so we could see over the electrified wall.

  Most of all, I will always remember the sight of a world without walls and the feeling of freedom it gave me. The feeling that I could go anywhere, be anyone and do anything. Wherever life takes me, I will do my best to hold on to that feeling.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Much has been written about the Second World War. Most literature about this period is set in Europe. That includes my own historical novel, What World Is Left (Orca 2008), which was based on my mother’s childhood experience in a Nazi concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. But the war was also fought on another continent. And as in all wars, innocent children often ended up suffering.

  In Asia thousands of children spent the war imprisoned in Japanese internment camps. One was called the Weihsien Civilian Assembly Center. Originally built as an American Presbyterian mission, Weihsien became a place of unrelenting misery. There was not enough food, diseases like dysentery were rampant, and in addition to doing forced labor, prisoners—even those who were very young—were routinely beaten. Among the prisoners at Weihsien were some 140 students from a boarding school in Chefoo and their teachers. The teachers came up with an unusual plan: to encourage their young charges to follow the Girl Guide Code of Conduct. By doing so, the teachers hoped to raise the children’s spirits and to protect them from the harsh reality of imprisonment.