And the shoebox of origami I rescued from the trash. Mom must not have thought anyone would pay for it.
There’s the buzzing again. A hot electric current running under my skin. If I’m not careful, I’m going to ignite every paper creature between my hands just because I want something to burn.
“What’s that?” Minnow says, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Dad’s.”
“What is it, though?”
“None of your business,” I say, and regret it immediately. I don’t usually snap at my little brother—that’s Masaru’s deal. “Sorry, Minnow.”
He looks at me, and even though he’s almost as small as Tommy, he seems older than fourteen all of a sudden. He’s been everywhere these past couple weeks: drawing the mountains of luggage, doing portraits of the families waiting for the Greyhound buses, sketching the army soldiers and hakujin photographers the government sent in, his fingertips black with charcoal.
He’s always drawn a lot, but there’s something different about him lately. He used to disappear into the background like he was part of it. Now when he draws, you can’t miss him. He’s there in the middle of things, with this new ferocity, like if he doesn’t capture this moment, he’ll never get the chance.
That’s how it is these days. You hesitate, and your neighbors have vanished. You look away, and your friends have been stolen from you. You blink, and you’re gone.
I open the box.
“I always wondered where these went,” Minnow says, holding up butterflies and stars so the overhead light shines through them, making them glow.
I guess Minnow noticed Dad doing origami too. It shouldn’t surprise me. Minnow notices a lot of things—that’s what makes him such a good artist.
“Should we give it to Mas?” he asks. “I bet he could find space in the Chevrolet.”
I shake my head.
“We could carry it. I don’t think anyone would notice.”
But that doesn’t feel right to me either. I want to do something good with these scraps nobody would pay for. I want to change things, the way Dad changed all these old envelopes and ticket stubs and potato-chip bags. I want to do what Yum-yum did with her piano, what Mrs. Katsumoto did with her thank-you note.
I want to show they haven’t beaten me.
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I’ve got a plan. You wanna help?”
* * *
After Mas loads up the Chevrolet and drives off, me, Minnow, and Ma report to the Civil Control Station, where we weave between the curbside luggage, the army guards, the lines of weary people waiting to board the Greyhound buses.
Under one arm, I’ve got the box of origami.
Twitchy comes to see us off, and he doesn’t bat an eye when me and Minnow tell him the plan—you gotta love Twitchy for that—he just takes some of the paper figures as carefully as he’d handle his old butterfly knife and gives us a smile.
While we wait for our turn to go, we put on party hats me and Minnow made out of newspaper and, with big, flashy smiles, we march through the crowd, distributing Dad’s origami to the kids. We’re not evacuees today—we’re kings in a parade, we’re cheerleaders at a pep rally, we’re three beardless Japanese Santa Clauses, and Christmas has come early this year!
I give Jeannie Kitano, Jim and Shuji’s sister, a crane that flaps its wings when you pull its tail, and baby Don Morita a box he instantly crushes in one of his chubby fists. The Abe sisters get a ball they can blow up and bat around. Minnow hands Toshie Nishino a fox. Twitchy tosses her brother a cat. Every kid gets something on Evacuation Day!
When it’s almost 11:30 a.m., I turn to Twitchy, who’s not leaving until tomorrow, and press forty-five cents into his hand. It’s all the change me and Minnow could find in the apartment last night. “Get some candy for tomorrow’s evacuation,” I tell him as me and Minnow stuff our pockets with the last of the origami. “To give to the kids.”
“We were thinking malt balls or something,” Minnow adds, tossing the empty shoebox onto a mound of baggage.
Twitchy frowns, jingling the coins in his palm. “Your mom would want you to save this for a rainy day or something,” he says.
“C’mon, Twitch—”
“But I’m fine blowing it on chocolate!” He grins.
Me and Minnow grin back. We’re standing on a street corner with everything we’ve ever known about to come crashing down around us.
And we’re angry.
And we’re smiling.
And we aren’t broken.
THINGS THAT DON’T TAKE UP ANY SPACE AT ALL
my humor
my courage
my joy
When our group is finally called, we’re the last people to board, and as me and Minnow follow Mom to the back of the bus, we fish into our pockets for dogs, koi, turtles, and gulls, passing them out to the other families.
The Greyhound becomes a menagerie on wheels, a circus, a traveling zoo of paper animals, filled with the kids’ delighted shrieking and the imagined sounds of elephants and zebras and monkeys.
As we drive away, I see Twitchy standing on the steps where we watched the first families leave Japantown, waving like he’s trying to bring a plane in to land.
* * *
It doesn’t take long to get to Tanforan, but it feels like hours. I spend the ride unfolding and refolding the last piece of origami, following the creases Dad made years ago, a rabbit appearing and disappearing in my hands like a magic trick.
There and gone.
There and gone.
We see the barbed wire first. The chatter in the bus quiets. The fence seems ten feet tall, with guard towers at regular intervals, like it’s a prison.
Like we’re criminals.
Then the grandstand, the muddy racetrack, the tarpaper barracks, and now no one’s speaking.
You will not beat me, I think.
There are things you can’t take.
Mom reaches for my hand. She’s already holding Minnow’s.
I turn Dad’s origami rabbit in my fingers. It’s already starting to split along the creases, gaps opening up at the corners.
Gaman, I think.
We drive through the gates.
III
I Am Not Free
Yum-yum, 16
May–June 1942
Day 1
It’s a shock at first. One minute, Mom, Fred, and I are traversing the roads of San Bruno, California, like we’re on a road trip down Highway 101, headed for Los Angeles. The next, we’re being ordered off the buses between guard towers and armed soldiers, a barbed-wire fence separating us from the rest of the city—its streets, its schools, its citizens, wandering free.
As we’re herded toward the nearest buildings, I wonder if we’ll ever be allowed to wander again.
Between Mom and me, my younger brother, Fred, fidgets and tugs at our hands. At nine years old, he’s small for his age, with a cowlick at the back of his head that won’t stay flat, no matter how much you comb it. Mom likes to say it’s as unruly as he is.
I pull him closer.
Ahead, the crowd splits. Men are shuffling into one building; women, into another. Medical examinations, someone says. They want to make sure we’re not diseased.