TO SEE, PEACE

After darkness

We see

What had been

Un-seeable.

My sister lay across the laps of my mother and aunt in the back seat of the jeep. She was wrapped in a soft blanket, and Taeyo sat huddled next to her. My mother cradled Anna Maria’s bandaged head. Ako sat perched on one side, looking, pointing, or sometimes only staring. Kento sat between the two soldiers in the front seat, stiff and straight as he once sat in the canoe. Someday we would paddle back over the reef.

Once down the hillside, we skirted around our village, Tanapag, and then followed what was left of the coral road, pocked from bombs and explosions. We were being taken to a “camp” where they said there were already many natives. Was Ignacio waiting for us there? Kento’s father? The soldiers said we would be given tents for shelter, food, clean water, and medicine for Anna Maria. They talked to us through a translator, a young Chamorro man from Guam who knew Japanese and already some English. They addressed him as Ranger. Whenever his eyes met mine, he nodded.

The jeep bumped along. I looked at Ako. Her lips whispered, “Butterflies.”

Yes, we had survived.

The jeep stopped. We all lurched forward.

“Is there a problem?” I looked at the ranger, my heart already racing.

The ranger shook his head. “Just looking for a place to cross this river. It’s running high from yesterday’s rains.”

The soldiers walked up and down the bank, searching out a shallow area where they could drive the jeep across. I whispered to my sister, “We are back. Look, Anna Maria, the ocean.”

She tried to sit up but was too weak. My mother lifted her just enough so my sister could see the ocean.

“Ignacio,” she whispered, then looked at me. Her eyes said everything.

“Yes, maybe we will find him.”

My mother rewrapped the blanket and took my sister’s hand in hers.

I climbed out of the jeep and stared at the place where Kento and I had met secretly after school … long ago … and where I had carried my father. Many of the breadfruit and mango trees were gone, broken and ripped apart, but some were still standing.

Father, like the turtle, we waited.

A line of coconut palms swayed with the breeze, chattering with the wind as if nothing had changed. I followed the river’s bank to the shoreline and then stopped. The tide was changing. Surf crashed along the reef, leaping white and high.

Our ancestors were dancing—spinning, sweeping, flying.

The sea continues.

Our family had survived.

The ocean stretched out before me. I watched as waves washed over my bare feet.