When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

of crepe-paper flowers. Hymns were sung. The body was blessed. Years later the boy would recall standing beside his mother at the service, wondering just what kind of flower it was the man had seen.
    A rose? A tulip? A daffodil?
    And if he
had
plucked it. Then what?
    He imagined exploding ships, clouds of black smoke, hundreds of B-29s falling down in flames from the sky.
One false move, pal, and you’re dead.
    THE HEAT RETURNED. The sun rose higher and higher in the sky. The war did not end. In May the first group of army volunteers left the barracks for Fort Douglas, and a four-year-old girl in Block 31 was stricken with infantile paralysis. Several days later, the street signs appeared. Suddenly there was an Elm Street, a Willow Street, a Cottonwood Way. Alexandria Avenue ran from east to west past the administration offices. Greasewood Way led straight to the sewer pump. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be leaving here any time soon,” said the boy’s mother.
    â€œAt least we know where we are,” said the girl.
    Now he’ll know where to find us,
thought the boy.
    The days were long now, and filled with sun, and there had been no mail from Lordsburg for many weeks.
    EVERY DAY SEEMED to pass more slowly than the day before. The boy spent hours pacing back and forth across the floor of his room. He counted his steps. He closed his eyes and recited the names of his old classmates whenever a dark ugly thought—
he’s sick, he’s dead,
he’s been sent back to Japan
—tried to push its way into his head. He asked his mother when she thought the next letter from Lordsburg might arrive in the mail. Tomorrow, maybe? “Tomorrow’s Sunday.” What about Monday? “I wouldn’t count on it.” What if he stopped biting his nails and remembered to do everything the first time he was told? And said his prayers every night before bed? And ate all of his coleslaw even when it was touching the other food on his plate? “That might just do the trick.”
    SUMMER WAS a long hot dream. Every morning, as soon as the sun rose, the temperature began to soar. By noon the floors were sagging. The sky was bleached white from the heat and the wind was hot and dry. Yellow dust devils whirled across the sand. The black roofs baked in the sun. The air shimmered.
    The boy tossed pebbles into the coal bucket. He peered into other people’s windows. He drew pictures of airplanes and tanks with his favorite stick in the sand. He traced out an SOS in huge letters across the firebreak but before anyone could read what he had written he wiped the letters away.
    Late at night he lay awake on top of the sheets longing for ice, a section of orange, a stone, something, anything, to suck on, to quench his thirst. It was June now. Or maybe it was July. It was August. The calendar had fallen from the wall. The tin clock had stopped ticking. Its gears were clotted with dust and would not turn. His sister was sound asleep on her cot and his mother lay dreaming behind the white curtain. He lifted a hand to his mouth. There was a loose molar there, on top, way in back. He liked to touch it. To rock it back and forth in its socket. The motion soothed him. Sometimes he’d taste blood and then he’d swallow. Salty, he’d think to himself, like the sea. In the distance he could hear trains passing in the night. The pounding of hooves on the sand. The faint tinkle of a tin bell.
    He’d close his eyes. That’s him, he’d think. He’s on his way.
    HE COULD COME BACK on a horse. On a bike. In a train. On a plane. In the same unmarked car that had once taken him away. He could be wearing a blue pin-striped suit. A red silk kimono. A grass skirt. A cowboy hat. A halo. A dark gray fedora with a leaf tucked up under the brim. Maybe he’d touch it—the leaf—and then he’d raise his hand slowly into the air, as though he were Jesus, or the man with the