THE GARDEN
A trip to the junk garden was our Saturday treat. None of us kids knew why there were entire boxes of discarded belongings piled up in he middle of an open plain. Not one of us asked whose toys we were hoping to find—whose Golden Books—whose Hot Wheels—whose deck of Go Fish cards. We just chewed our dirty fingernails in our father’s Desert Tan Plymouth Arrow pickup, our bird legs melting into the hot vinyl seat. Our heads bobbed in every direction but in unison down the dirt road that looked like it led straight into the Sandías.
I think it was me who named it the “junk garden”—someone’s private dump just loaded with kid’s stuff. There must have been other things there though, or our parents would never have made the weekly trip. They didn’t much care for change purses with missing clasps or jelly bracelets with dog teeth marks.
What I remember most were the games. All types of games: Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, Clue. None of them had all its pieces, so I was constantly sifting through the tumbleweeds and trash for a tiny metal thimble, a misplaced spinner, or some card that established it was the professor with a hatchet. Once, I found a Light Bright and spent half an hour collecting little, plastic, colored pegs from the rubbish before I was forced to give up the search. I never had more than a handful of pegs, and was always disappointed with the limitations it placed on my art. I made a circle out of them and used it as a frame for drawings or feathers . . . a bent photo of our cat Spike or some dark-skinned exotic woman I cut out of one of mom’s magazines. When I turned on the light, it made them glow.
The junk garden was paradise to my brothers and I. You never knew what you were going to find, and it was all free for the taking—first come, first serve. New loot was always piled up atop the old. It didn’t matter that the corners were bent or the dice yellowed or the instructions missing. We always walked away with treasures, and no one ever got yelled at for breaking them.
No one ever asked us if we knew how hard they had worked, or where money didn’t grow or how we got so ungrateful. Our junk garden finds were our very own. They were rained on, and faded from the sun and damaged in all kinds of ways, but they were ours. I once found a book of poems with someone’s name scribbled in the “this book belongs to” space. I quickly shredded the page and stuffed it deep into the stiff toe of an old boot. Mine now.
THE JITTERBUG
I picked up a fragment of leaf today while pretending to tie my shoelace. It cost me a jab in the rib with the blunt end of Hitoshi's ebony Jutte, but it was well worth the bruise. I only know his name because I heard it barked by the head officer as he pointed towards me. "Beat him. Beat him now" his glare screamed, and well-fed Hitoshi did...one powerful blow that knocked the breath from me and almost made me drop it, but I didn't. Marvelous skeleton of a rose leaf, the meticulous work of Popilla Japonica. Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Anthropoda, Class: Insecta, Order: Coleoptera, Suborder: Polyphaga...the Japanese beetle. It is certain we have no roses here, nor have I seen the likes of the glossy, iridescent beetle, but this fragment of leaf here in my hands gives me hope that beauty is close enough to be carried on the wind.
I show the leaf to Michi, the only other inmate in my barracks who speaks English. His is broken and muddled but he seems to share my need to know and so, we find a way. He does not seem to understand my joy at first. The fragile doily perched atop his grubby, small palm seems common to him. He doesn't say this but I can see it in his crusty eyes. A man gets good at reading eyes when words mean so little.
"Roses" I tell him. He does not know this word.
"Flower," I say.
Yes. Yes, he knows this one. He nods emphatically.
"Rose is flower".
Michi looks down at the leaf, trying to make the connection and clearly not.
"Beetle," I try instead. "Beetle did this". He does not know this one either.
"Bug," I try. What is it I am trying to share?
Yes. Yes, he knows "bug" but surely he is flipping through the Rolodex in his mind...past the thousands of bugs he has seen. He looks at the leaf, puzzled. Grasshopper? Slug? Caterpillar? Weevil?
I have no way of knowing if he makes it to "Coleoptera" and frankly, I don't care. I snatch the leaf from his hand, tearing it a bit in the process. I am instantly ashamed of this act but cannot contain the frustration that so rarely consumes me. Michi has not seen me like this, he stands sad and confused.
"Why so mad?" he asks.
I keep my back to him. I cannot respond now. I stare at the leaf, its veins spared, but dead still. Crisp and tan, drained of its chlorophyll...It looks like a map, roads or rivers all running into one. I think of home for the first time in weeks but stop myself before I get to the door. I don't let her open it, I can't see her. I turn to Michi.
"Beautiful" I say, holding the leaf out for him to examine.
"Yes," he agrees, "Beautiful". That is enough.
***
There are no windows in our barracks, just a doorway open to the elements. It is on a clear winter day that the Jitterbug--Coleoptera--the Japanese beetle shows itself in its brilliant colors. It catches what little light there is and throws it at me like a watch face in the sun. It has been months since I found his leaf, now little more than a crumpled twig. I notice his drunken crawl from my cot. His Frankenstein gait is amplified by the stillness of our barracks. Exhausted from forced labor, the kind that yeilds none of the goodness free work can, we lay limp and listless on our hard beds when he struts in. I rush to him quickly before Yuudai and Tomi spot him and. Yuudai and Tomi--"great hero" and "treasured man" Michi once explained. I have thought of this irony often.
I pluck the little bug from the dirt, pull the scrap of leaf from my pocket, and rush to Michi's cot. He is fast asleep but I wake him. The interruption is ill-recieved for an instinctual moment but he quickly remembers himself and gives me his cheery attention.
"Look," I say. The bug crawling up my left arm towards an infected scab, the broken leaf so small between my thumb and forefinger it must look as if I'm making the "ok" gesture. My eyes dart between the beetle, leaf, and Michi who inspects my right hand suspiciously before seeing the leaf and filling the gap.
"Bug!" he says.
"Yes," I nod emphatically. But not just any bug, I want to explain to Michi whose name means "pathway". Popilla Japonica, the most regal of all beetles. Beetle royalty here in this barren place--jewel-like and exotic. A weak flyer, yes, but with brilliant metallic armor...fresh from a strawberry or raspberry patch...full of leaves of fat grape or tomato plants...infused, perfumed with the sweet scent rubbed from tender roses.
"Bug eat leaf," he interrupts, sounding childlike though he is quite old.
"Yes," I respond weakly, still musing.
"Now..." he exclaims with a satisfied tilt of the head, "Man eat bug!"
We are not so alike after all, Michi and I.