Radiance

    ASH MAID

W
HEN THE
H
IROSHIMA
P
ROJECT
WAS LONG OVER
and all the dust had settled, Daisy discovered that she could close her eyes anywhere, in a crowded room or doing the dishes, and see the girl getting off the plane. She would always think of Keiko as “the girl,” though she had been eighteen when she came to stay, old enough to be called a woman. The press seized upon the name Hiroshima Maiden—such an odd way to describe an A-bomb survivor: as though Keiko might have stepped out of an Arthurian legend, wearing a cone-shaped princess hat; as though being ravaged by the bomb might have transformed the girl, giving her, along with a history of suffering, some fairy-tale virtues. Purity perhaps. Or maidenly goodness.

Daisy Lawrence had stood in a small roped-off area on the tarmac of Mitchell Air Force Base, waiting for the airplane to land. Irene Day, one of the Hiroshima Project’s principal organizers, stood beside her. The rain was stiff that day—stinging pellets that flew at them sideways out of the gauzy marsh east of the air base. A few feet away a dozen journalists huddled in a grey group, hats pulled low.

Irene Day had dressed appropriately—she always did—in a mannish little fedora and matching kid gloves. She was the sort of woman, Daisy thought, who would choose the right outfit for a hurricane. Next to her Daisy felt dowdy—blond hair frizzing in the wet, feet aching in tight patent-leather pumps.

Of course she knew better than to be thinking about her shoes at a time like this. This was an important moment in history, this chill March day of
1952
: she was about to greet a Hiroshima survivor, the first ever to set foot on American soil. Daisy pulled in her stomach, already held tightly in place by her girdle, and did her best to adopt a look of calm expectancy. She moved closer to a freckle-faced young photographer, so that his broad back blocked the rain, which seemed to come from all directions now—stinging her chin and cheeks and the backs of her knees.

At last the gleaming plane hove into view above their heads. It headed out to sea, then banked and came in low, bouncing at the end of the runway, rising like a bird, landing, hissing, skipping. It hung poised for several seconds on one wheel before righting itself with a bump and coming to a stop, emitting black exhaust in a rather alarming fashion. For what seemed an inordinately long time the airplane engine thudded and the propellers churned and thumped. But at last the propellers stilled, the plane gave a final shudder and several air force cadets rolled the steel stairs into place.

The airplane door, massive and unyielding, seemed to need some battering knocks from the inside before it swung open. The pilot, a wing commander in a navy uniform complete with epaulettes, stepped jauntily down the steps, shook hands with the cadets, then walked across the runway. He was followed by two stewards and twenty tanned, robust soldiers—the plane seemed endlessly to disgorge them—men returning
from military duty in Hawaii, where the plane had touched down for refuelling.

Then at last Keiko stepped onto the platform. She lifted one gloved hand to straighten her hat. How strangely it glowed in the overcast air, whiter than white. Even from this distance Daisy could see the mottled rhubarb stain on her cheek. The famous atomic scar. She tottered on the platform, looking as though the hard rain might blow her away. The purse Keiko clasped—Daisy learned later—had been picked up in a Honolulu gift shop. It was encrusted with tiny iridescent nautiluses.

Daisy felt an urge to say something to mark the magnitude of the occasion. She turned to Irene, but she was already up ahead, arguing with one of the cadets guarding the gate. He clicked the metal latch with his thumb in an irritating manner, then shook his head severely.

“But I’m the
chief organizer
of this project,” Irene was saying. She wasn’t, but how was the cadet to know? He shrugged. Irene raised her hand, as though intending to knock the boy’s cap off. “Let me by,” she hissed, but all at once the freckle-faced photographer, the one whose broad back had sheltered Daisy from the rain, strode forward and leapt the rope. The cadet cried out for him to stop, but the photographer had an agenda of his own: he dashed towards the plane, leaping puddles, soaking his trouser legs, letting his hat blow off, not even turning to see it roll wildly away. And now the rest of them followed suit, and Irene and Daisy were picked up and blown, or so it felt, over the trampled rope and across the runway. They were no longer the official welcoming delegation, not by a long shot: they were part of a mob.

That was Keiko Kitigawa’s welcome to America.

The girl turned towards the advancing stampede. With one hand she groped behind her for the banister. The other hand she held up, fingers spread in an ineffectual fan, attempting to
shield her face, with its bubbled scar, from the repeated flash of the cameras.

I
MAGINE A GIRL
to whom you can attach any stereotype.

Imagine her stepping off a plane, holding up a hand to keep her prim round hat in place.

Imagine her as inscrutable.

Imagine her as incomparably damaged.

Imagine her as carrying the seeds of something entirely new—radioactive seeds—lodged in her bones, skin, hair.

Imagine her as the first of her kind to come to America: children of the atomic bomb. Children who are asked, repeatedly, in letters that arrive each spring, to donate their bodies to science, so that when they die—six years later, or forty—their hearts can be examined, their cells studied, their kidneys filled with turquoise dye, placed in a Petri dish.

Now imagine what it would take to shake these multiple identities. To stand up, under that weight, and launch yourself out of Tokyo on a Boeing
747
, to sleep and wake and find yourself over a huge grey sea—far below you there are the ragged shapes of waves, like ice floes on the tundra.

Whatever occurs down there is invisible. Some species of fish that live in those waters have never been discovered.

Keiko had come to America to have her face operated on. She had pulled herself forward to this place, urged by her mother, whose spirit she prayed to before leaving Hiroshima. She had risen early, before her Aunt Yoshiko could hear her, and she
had dressed in the smart outfit she wore for the first leg of her journey, a herringbone skirt and matching jacket with a cream satin lining. She had crept down the hall to the ugly little parlour decorated in the western way, all her uncle’s bad taste. She had knelt before the shelf that held the
ihai,
the little placards that represented the spirits of the dead. Grandfather’s placard was more august than Mama’s, though they were both quite simple markers, made of white wood with names inscribed in ink and the word
Matsumi
at the bottom.
Spirit.

During the night the oil light had guttered and gone out. Keiko relit the flame and then made her prayers. Always a tiny part of her asked for forgiveness. Always her mother’s spirit was quick to say yes—too quick. She had been prone to indulgences, always giving Keiko two of the red rice cakes at festival time, taking none for herself.

You have been greedy,
Keiko addressed herself silently.
And you will pay the price.

“Forgive me,” she said out loud—and what she meant was for living when so many others had died. When Mama died. When Grandfather died. And not only must she ask forgiveness for living, but for wanting to live; for receiving the highest marks in her graduating class at Hiroshima Prefectural High School; for rejoicing over things that ought not to bring so much happiness, like the breezes that come up from the Inland Sea, or a cascade of plum blossoms, only yesterday, falling around her, a young man—an American in uniform—smiling at her as she crossed the street. He had seen only one side of her face.

Her interview, four months before, had taken place at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in the building where
hibakusha,
atomic-bomb survivors, were routinely examined. She had sat up very properly in the small room, on the thin high bed covered in white cloth. She had let the American doctor study her
face, moving her chin back and forth, pushing back her hair, touching the round keloid behind her left ear. The handsome doctor, his name was Dr. Carney, murmured, “Exceptionally pretty,” not expecting Keiko to understand.

“Thank you.” Her English was polished, almost perfect. Her first surprise for them.

“Tell us a little about yourself,” the kind one had said. His name was Mr. Atchity, the head of the whole project—and because some instinct told her what it took to excel, the words had flowed out.
I believe we must work together to outlaw atomic weapons. Goodwill. Friendship.
And then—when that did not seem to be enough—she had begun to speak of the day of the bombing. Words she had never before spoken came from her mouth, as though guided by a spirit beyond her, like a singer finding, at last, a song in her exact range, a strange song she didn’t know she could sing until that moment.

“There was a bright light.”

Ah.

The two men stopped leafing through their notes, stopped looking to see the name of the next girl.

“I remember it so clearly. A bright, terrible light.”

They listened. Transfixed by what she might say next.

“I was standing on a rock in our garden and I raised my hand—like this, you see—to block the blast.”

The kind one put his papers down. He took off his glasses, wiped them on a handkerchief, put them back on his nose. The other one, the handsome doctor who smelled sweaty, jumped from his chair and took Keiko’s hands and pressed the palms with his thumbs—an excited gesture for which he didn’t seem responsible.