FICTION

Sakura

By Elissa C. Huang     VOLUME 59 No. 2

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Childhood: Then

“What does your school need to know?” her father asked, cracking open a Budweiser. He fervently insisted on only drinking Budweiser after seeing the commercial with a rainbow coalition of singers two-stepping in front of a map of the USA because it featured an Asian woman in a yellow pantsuit. He wanted—needed—to be a good American.

Serena looked at the worksheet. All that was on it was a thick trunk and a single branch with three leaves: her mother, her father, and herself. It was the saddest family tree in all of history. She scowled at the paper and shielded it from him as her father leaned in to look. “Ma . . .  ” she pleaded, hearing the whine in her voice.

The kitchen was small and hot, and the fan was so old it didn’t oscillate anymore. It made a whirring clicking sound, grinding its gears in vain. Her mom wiped her brow on her apron. “Ah, your Baba can help. I’m making dumplings right now.” Her hands were covered with flour as they expertly stuffed and crimped the dumplings, tossing the half-moons on the pile.

Her father pointed at the paper. “You know your aunts, your uncles, your cousins. You can put them down.”

“What about Ah-Gong and Ah-Ma? And mom’s parents?”

“Okay. Put them down. Big Auntie, Second Auntie, Third Auntie, Fourth Auntie, father’s side.”

“But what are their names? I can’t just put down numbers!”

“Why are their names important?”

“Because it’s the assignment—a family tree and an interview!”

Her father sipped his beer contemplatively for a minute. “Just make it up,” he said dismissively.

“Make it up?” She was incredulous. “They’re your sisters and brothers, your parents! You don’t know their names?”

“I know their Taiwanese names. I don’t know how to spell out their names in English. Just make it up.”

“You want me to lie on my homework?” she sputtered.

The sizzle of the dumplings being dropped into oil quieted them both momentarily. The wok was smoking, and her mother tossed the bok choy deftly, without pause.

“The assignment is to hand in a tree. Okay, so you hand in a tree. Makes no difference.”

Serena erased so hard the paper ripped. “I’m also supposed to ask you questions about the war, like I’m a reporter—”

“Who wants to talk about war? These stories are sad. What are they even teaching you in school? War is nothing that kids need to know about. Reporters get in trouble for asking too much.” He fiddled with the latch on the rickety frame and shoved the window open. “Ah, nothing but more hot air!”

She could feel tears of frustration building up behind her eyes. “How about your grandparents?”

“I don’t know! Make it up. Make it all up!” he spat out as the window refused to cooperate and slid back down.

“Christina’s grandpa was a pilot. Samantha’s grandpa was stationed in France. Why don’t you know? Why can’t you tell me?”

“These are private matters. It’s nobody’s business—why does the school care? Why is this your assignment?”

“It just is! We’re learning about war!”

“There’s nothing to learn from war! Why aren’t you concentrating more on math and science, concrete facts, things you can use in life? In Taiwan, the kids are so far ahead of you American kids! Nobody talks about history. We look forward!”

“It’s just a story!”

He yanked the phone off the hook. “What’s your teacher’s name? I’m going to call the school!”

“No, Ba! Please don’t! Ma, make him stop! Nobody calls the school!”

Her mom plated dinner on the table with finality, as if to say, “Enough!” Her father put the phone back in the cradle. They ate in silence, the sound of their chopsticks clinking against the bowls. The translucent dumpling skins soaked up the soy sauce and vinegar, the chili oil, ginger, all the flavors soothing their heated words with spice and salt and umami. Serena poked a chopstick through her last dumpling, impaling it.

Her mother sighed slowly, deeply. Finally: “Nobody had enough food. We ate rice, mixed with some chicken fat for flavor if we had it, tau yu if we didn’t. There were six kids. Everyone was very skinny, but it was tasty to us.”

Like a well-practiced routine, her father chimed in, “Only six! We had eight!”

Her mother retorted, “The boys ate first, even before my parents, then by age. I’m the youngest girl. I got whatever was left.”

Serena waited, hoping. But just like that, her parents were closed off again. She swirled her last dumpling around the bowl, imagining it was a fish, lost at sea. She sniffed loudly and whispered, “I still don’t know anything about the war.”

Her father closed his eyes with quiet desperation. “I don’t have any stories to tell you, Serena. I was only a child.” He looked at her then, a mixture of sadness and defeat. “Once, we were at the market with Ah-Ma when we heard the planes flying overhead. Ah-Ma quickly put my baby sister—your Ah-Goh, Cicely and David’s mom—in a basket, and we dove under a table for cover. The lady running the stall pushed us out, saying there was no room. When we went to retrieve my sister, Ah-Ma screamed. There she was, not even a month old, snakes wrapped all around her tiny body. Ah-Ma quickly pulled her out but was so upset that I had to carry your Ah-Goh home on my back.”

“Was it a bomb?” Serena pulled out her pencil, ready to write.

“Do you know what a bomb does, Serena?”

“Yeah, it makes a lot of smoke. My teacher read us a book about how Japan dropped a bomb on us and then we dropped a bomb on Japan and there was a big cloud of smoke.”

Her father’s face remained stoic. Her mother got up to fill the pitcher under the tap. Then, very slowly, he said, “Do you know what the codename for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was, Serena? ‘Little Boy,’ from The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart.” Her father knew such facts; he absorbed them like they were sunlight and air. He sat there, patting his pockets, in search of something, while Serena picked at the peeling vinyl on the table’s edge.

“I wish they didn’t teach you these things until you were old enough to understand.” Pulling out a lighter, he went outside for a smoke. Serena always pictured her dad this way, the scent of tobacco on his skin, an Asian Marlboro Man, a cowboy on horseback, lasso in hand.

Serena looked at her assignment, pencil smudged, paper wavy from her dried teardrops. She crumpled it up into a ball and looked down at the floor, her toes pointed in.

Her mother seemed far away, unsure of what to say. “War changes people, Serena. Your life, it splits. Before and after.”

She pushed Serena’s hair back from her tiny face and refilled their glasses. “Time allows your memory to create spaces to forget the things it needs to forget. How could any of us endure if we didn’t have those spaces?”

She tilted Serena’s chin up gently with her fingers.

“I’ll help you with your tree, okay? But these stories, they belong to us only if we live them. They aren’t something you read in a book and throw away, do you understand? If you repeat them, you must feel them, here.” Her mother placed her hand over her heart. Serena nodded. Her mother began clearing the dishes; she poured a little pool of hot tea on the tabletop to cut the grease and wiped it clean with a rag. When she was done, she sat down and said simply, “Listen.”



May 31, 1945

She had been biking to school, as many kids on the outskirts of Taipei did. They took the same route every day. They’d pedal as fast as they could so they could stop by Mr. Lee’s cart for a sticky rice roll washed down with hot, sweetened soy milk. They’d scrounge the street for stray coins, waiting for people to drop loose change from their pockets. Mr. Lee was kind, but he wasn’t one to hand out things for free. “Ya-Ya, good to see you! Are you studying hard?” It was his nickname for her because every time he saw her, she was gabbing away like she was an expert about this thing or the other to a group of disinterested kids who looked as if they were captive in a lecture hall; “ya-yaing” became a verb. The kids all laughed and began calling her that too, but she didn’t care. It was better than some of the crueler nicknames given to other kids, like Fat Bao who had a red moon face or Sponge Skin who had pockmarked cheeks.

Though she was the youngest of six and her mother didn’t love her, her father wanted her safe; he wanted her to be able to get home as quickly as possible. He hadn’t felt comfortable with her taking shortcuts through the fields, so he had enlisted Liu Xiao-An, a boy from the village, to accompany her. She told the poor boy to go away the entire way, often pedaling faster while he jogged alongside her. He said he was protecting her, her being a girl and all. She snickered because he was a good foot shorter and had scrawny arms and legs. With his wild-sprouted hair and dark leathery skin, people called him ugly. All the girls used to tease Ya-Ya about him, but he always had jokes and made her laugh.

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ELISSA C. HUANG’s fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Passages North, The Masters Review, Sycamore Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review, among others. She is a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fiction awardee. Her plays have received over 300 productions worldwide and are published by Stage Partners and Concord Theatricals.


VOLUME 59 No. 2