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jumping rope outside my house with Taro and Suki nearby. A cloudy, muggy summer day. Suddenly a bright light, then a shaking rumbling unlike any earthquake.
    I dropped the jump rope and instinctively reached for my brother and sister, holding them tight. We didn’t know what it was, but the sinking dread and nausea in my stomach told me everything I needed to know. I rocked my younger siblings until my mother came and brought us inside.
    Nagasaki, fifty miles away.
    We were spared for the most part. Except that many got sick, or died too young, like my parents. Mysterious blood ailments, hair falling out. Suki’s heart and mine were likely sickened by this poison. And for all I knew, Taro’s was, too. Perhaps that was why he could not accept the way things had changed.
    It seemed to me that the Japanese should have surrendered sooner. We were out of food, our people were dying, and thousands more died in Hiroshima. It seemed that the Emperor would have every last man, woman, and child die in Japan before he would give up his holy throne. The price was too high, too high either way.
     
     
    I DRANK THE LAST of my bitter Sanka and went back inside the house. The floors were torn up, the carpeting halfway pulled back. Charlie had gotten a discount on hardwood flooring and had been trying to install it. Only half the room was floored, with jagged edges too far from the wall.
    My husband fancied himself a great handyman. He would watch a home-improvement show on television and say, “That looks easy. I’ll try it.” But he always managed to leave out a step. As when he put in our sod—he put it over dead grass, then forgot to water it.
    So this was why our house was crumbling. If we had money for supplies, we never had it for professionals to do the work.
    I knew not to say anything about his flooring. It would only make him angry—angry that I had noticed—and frustrated with himself. “Charlie,” I said instead, over the radio, “how ’bout you and me go on trip?”
    He groaned, massaging his knee. I sat beside him and motioned for him to put his foot on my lap so I could massage it. “We’ve already been everywhere. Where do you want to go?”
    “Different now. Back then, work all time. When we live Hawaii, we never leave Honolulu even.”
    “There was no reason to.” Charlie didn’t want to see the other islands, not even the volcanoes or rain forests, no matter how much Mike and I begged. “Oahu had everything we needed. It was too expensive to go all over the place.”
    I took my hand off of him. “I want go Japan.”
    He was quiet, like he didn’t hear. Then he said, “Why do you want to go there?” like I had said I wanted to go to Iraq in the middle of the war.
    “You promise me we go back. I no go back. Now we almost too old to move. My sister dead. I see Taro, before too late.”
    Still he said nothing. Maybe he was hoping I’d shut up if he ignored me. “How ’bout it?” I asked.
    “Maybe next year,” he said. “We don’t have the money now.”
    “I do.” I plumped the brown floral couch cushion. We didn’t have money for furniture for fifteen years after we moved in here. Charlie had put a redwood patio chair set in this room. It had two seats, vinyl cushions, and a table in the middle with a hole for an umbrella. Mike was too embarrassed to have his friends over. He moved out as soon as he could. Sue was little and didn’t know any better. “I save little bit here and there.”
    “Your brother won’t even see you,” he said. “All these years, you hardly talked about him. You said you’re dead to him.”
    “He see me if I’m there. We both old now.” I wanted to believe this. Taro may have softened with age.
    Charlie shook his head. “I’m not coming.”
    “Because your knee?” He still said nothing. “You too proud. Not use cane. Not tell doctor you need new knee. Always wearing slippery shoes, falling all over place.” Charlie liked to wear Italian dress shoes,