They came one day, their green army trucks all in one winding line, rumbling down the nearby road. I’d heard the noise, running to the balcony to look across the familiar swaying fields of sugar cane in our family’s plantation, palm fronds bowing gently to the humid breeze. Lazy mosquitoes flicked in and out of the courtyards of the large house, a solid white against the tropical background. Yet there was a difference; at the normally deserted road I could make out a line of trucks with their fluttering white flags and blood-red circles. Soon I heard the rush of running footsteps to find my mom tugging me away from the open balcony to the sheltered curtains within. She was joined by all the other women—the maids, my nanny and my older sister. I looked questioningly at their pinched faces, eyes revealing a fear they dared not voice. “Whose trucks are those, Mommy? The ones with the flags? Why can’t I look?” I was shushed by looks from the rest, all of them craning their necks to peek at the line. “Whose trucks are those, Mommy? The ones with the flags?” “Th- they’re the Japanese and that is their flag,” my mother answered hesitantly, adding bitterly, “probably bringing reinforcements for the cities.” The trucks were only a distant rumble now, like the thunder before a storm. I looked up at her, my ten-year-old braids swinging, wondering if this was about that word I’d heard whispered during meals. What was it? Occupation. One never said it out loud, as though to do so would be to accept defeat, but even I knew it existed, a looming storm cloud not yet bursting to rain. It meant long famished months of food shortages and foreign soldiers who destroyed our government, all the while claiming the Philippines as their own. It was 1942 and somehow, that storm cloud seemed so much closer to raining after I first saw the Japanese trucks. Somehow I knew our lives were about to change. How, I did not know. Somehow. * * * I’d heard my mom say often that change was slow on the islands. If it ever came at all, it came slowly. And even if it did creep up on us unsuspected, it was met with such determined opposition it usually ran away. She said all this with pride, as though change was something to be feared. Maybe there was more truth to her statements than anyone realized, for after that first day the Japanese came my world did change, and it was every bit as awful as Mom made it sound. Except it wasn’t slow; this change arrived overnight and no matter how hated I knew it wasn’t going to run away. Change was evident at school, where our class was taught about bomb raids. Once a week a shrill siren would sound and like scared cats in water at once we all jumped and huddled under our desks, glancing at each other. It was almost a game—who could remain the quietest and most still until the imminent all clear. Then, at home ugly black curtains were put up on all the windows every night, dark shadows next to the familiar flowered frills. When I asked why these were needed, Mom pursed her lips, while Daddy muttered something about needing to be “invisible” and “safety” against “bombs.” The following day Mom placed all her jewelry in one big metal box. The pearls I’d longed to play dress-up with, heavy gold chains and even the sparkling diamonds were all put in, never to twinkle again for a very long time. She gave this box to Daddy, who dug a hole one night and dropped it in, burying everything. My older sister finally admitted that it was to hide them in case of war. War? Who ever said anything about war? That was a long forgotten remnant of the past, remembered only in dusty school textbooks. The Japanese may be occupying the Philippines, yet they weren’t causing war. Really, they didn’t do much that we could tell, not yet at least. The bomb drills were a precaution, nothing more. But if all that was true, why was my sister talking about war? And suddenly it came to me. This change was war. “You’re the Japanese and I’m the Americans,” my sister announced one afternoon, weeks after the Japanese had arrived. We were playing a familiar game of Bad Guys versus Good Guys, except now the Japanese were bad and the Americans were good. Our plantation was a bubble, and though we might catch rare glimpses of the war outside, that bubble had yet to pop. Without any chance of seeing real battles, my sister and I had to be content with our own fake ones. And as usual, I was the bad guy. “Not fair! I was the Japanese last time!” “Fine . . . but only this once,” my sister conceded surprisingly Sometimes being the older, better, smarter sister wasn’t the unbeatable weapon it appeared. Satisfied, she started running down the lawn, whizzing past green-fronded plants and a menagerie of jewel-like flowers or even the odd bird, the scorching afternoon sun beating down relentlessly. Shaded by the cluster of trees, I waited. I was still too little to win if I tried to beat her running, so I listened to her feet pounding, bouncing, skipping, until finally my chance came. She stopped, gasping for breath, and I darted into the hot sun, tapping her back and declaring, “I win!” “You can’t win . . . The Japanese always win!” “Yeah well . . . the Americans are the good guys and the good guys have to win.” “If the Americans are so good, the Japanese wouldn’t even be here now!” “Shhh . . .” I was hissing at the sound of wheels on gravel breaking the tense silence. “What, it’s just a stupid truck.” All the same, she peered around the bush with me.
January/February 2006
Mouse
Roey looked sulkily into her bedroom mirror. She turned around, scrutinizing her nose from every angle, but whichever direction she faced her nose, slightly resembling a ski slope, looked the same to her. It wasn’t that Roey actively disliked the way she looked; just her nose. When you got down to it, she was actually quite pretty, and she knew it. Her flowing, fiery red hair could not match her personality better. Next came her favorite feature: her eyes. Dark brown, nearly black, and combined with her hair, they gave her an almost magical look. But, being human, she always saw the worst in herself and could only focus on her nose, her other features becoming unimportant and of no consolation. Roey sighed in frustration, feeling a little guilty. How could she be so shallow? She had much bigger problems to deal with than her looks. She made her way over to her bed. Out from under her white bed with pink trim, which she was about seven years too old for, she pulled a large book. It was thick and heavy, bound with leather. The pages inside were yellow with age, but being no expert, she could put no number on its years. The writing was not from a computer or a typewriter, but written by hand, with ink and quill, she imagined. There was no name, no one to take credit for all the work they had done. Strangest of all, though, Roey thought, was that there was no title. She had checked over and over through the whole book, but no miraculous change occurred. The cover was that of the type of book Roey would have expected to be engraved with gold letters, but that was not the case. The writing was not from a computer or a typewriter, but written by hand, with ink and quill Roey climbed into her bed and pulled the covers up. She opened the book and could hear the stiff binding crackle as a small trickle of dust came down on her. The discovery of the nameless book had been exciting. There was a minimal amount of books in Paristile. People referred to them as books, but in Roey’s mind they barely qualified. Pamphlets, a historic account of the formation of Paristile, a book of laws, dictionaries, and thesauruses—they weren’t books, though, merely resources. Roey’s definition of a book was something that made you think, made you question, made you wonder. None of these could even begin to make your mind work in the way that her new-found treasure did. Although she loved to read, this was a rare opportunity. It was usually herself and her writing she had to rely on for a bit of creativity. Roey had no idea how she could have overlooked the book so many times, but perhaps it had not always been there. Two nights ago, as she had been climbing into bed, she saw its unfamiliar spine mixed in with a pile of a few other so-called books on her bedside table. How it got there was beyond her. For some reason she decided not to tell her family. Mainly this was because she didn’t want to deal with the inevitable questions from her parents that would follow her vague explanation. “How old is it?” and “Where did it come from?” She felt strange answering questions on a topic she hardly knew anything about. But maybe the questions were what she longed for, what she wanted so desperately to hear. Her sister, Mouse, had been born with insatiable curiosity. You could see in her eyes the longing to explore the world around her the day she was born. Her name was actually Marguerite, but Roey had started calling her by the pet name she’d come up with years ago. When Marguerite was little she always wanted to know what was in cupboards or on counters, and so she would poke her head in like a mouse. Now the bedroom in which the seven-year-old should be sleeping was empty. Instead of her cozy bed, Mouse slept deeply in a hospital bed, with no certainty of waking again. Roey couldn’t bare to face her absence, and mentioning the book to her parents and not being immediately flooded by questions from Mouse would be too much. She would have to truly acknowledge the fact that her little sister may never come home. Roey could never forget a particular day, about two years ago. The memory of Mouse brought a smile to her face, in spite of everything. It had been Mouse’s fifth birthday. Roey could see pure delight on Mouse’s face as Mom brought in a beagle puppy She had never expected such an amazing surprise, and Roey, looking at the huge grin on the little girl’s face, was ecstatic seeing her sister so happy. Mouse had always been grateful for what she had, Roey knew. The littlest things, Mouse had always acknowledged, and it didn’t take much to earn her trust, her love, her gratitude. She had always admired how open Mouse was, never judgmental; Roey wished she could accept everyone that way. But Roey realized that all this happy memory meant now was that Mouse may never smile again. Roey had pushed these thoughts out of her head many times already, and once again attempted to shake them from her mind. She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t an issue, everything would be fine; the book was here now, that was the important thing. Roey replaced her dreadful feelings with the words of the book-with-no-name as she began to read. She was able to make out most of the handwritten words without difficulty. As the setting was described, Roey painted a picture of it in her mind. It seemed no different from her own world of Paristile, with nothing particularly distinguishable from any other place. Roey must have dozed off at some point. As she was reading, she was engrossed in the words,
