Enough Space

I sometimes use my grandpa’s suitcase as a stepstool to reach the attic window. On sunny days, the light is contained in one rectangular spot in the center of the room, the sunbeams clogged by dust particles. My cat likes to lie on the floor in the sunspot. Once I lay down as well, and the cat sat right on my chest like a paperweight keeping me from flying away. 

The suitcase has been hidden in the attic since I moved here three years ago. It is thick, brown leather with my grandpa’s name in white paint: K. Sato. The paint from the ‘O’ dripped, looking closer to a ‘Q’: K. Satq. I only thought of the suitcase today because I helped Tammy from down the road pack a U-Haul with her belongings. Tonight, she will start the eleven-hour drive from Arizona to Colorado, sleeping at the hotel with breakfast and pool facilities that I helped her find. She has been packing for weeks, stopping by my house whenever she needed to complain over a cold drink. As I was hoisting boxes (with an incorrect form that I’ll feel in my back tomorrow), I thought of my grandpa. When his family moved, they did not have weeks to pack like Tammy. Or a U-Haul. My grandpa had a few days and a suitcase with his name on it. Then, he was on the train to spend the next three years living in makeshift wooden shacks with the other Japanese-Americans of the West Coast. 

I move the suitcase into the center of the attic, imagining how I would fill its contents. When I was seven, my grandpa bounced me on his knee like the shaking of a train car, and told me about his childhood behind barbed wire. For the next few months, I had recurring nightmares about the American government coming to take me away. I am half Japanese. Some of my full-friends called me white-washed for not speaking the language and never visiting the motherland. Still, I am Japanese enough to have been locked away during the War. My children, my children’s children, and my children’s children’s children would all be Japanese enough to have been locked away. I set a stopwatch on my phone and place it beside the suitcase. I will see how long it takes me to fold and stuff up my belongings like my grandpa once did. 

Into the suitcase, I first place the photo album, of course: my parents–prom sweethearts–, my school pictures, my family huddled together at my grandpa’s funeral like ducklings waiting to cross the road. The album is hefty, and one side of the suitcase is already half-full. I move onto clothing: functional trousers for farming, an array of t-shirts, a button-down, underwear, socks. I don’t pack a jacket as I will wear it on my back when the time comes to leave. Fifteen minutes pass, spent mostly by flipping through the photos and folding my clothes. Now, the suitcase is almost full. The last sliver of space will be filled with little joys: my favorite book, a watercolor set, my childhood stuffed animal. I go back downstairs to retrieve them. 

When I return, my cat is sitting in my grandpa’s suitcase. I bought the cat when he was just a runt off a woman on the street some years ago. She was selling the litter out of a cardboard box, each cat for twenty dollars. I did not ask where the mother was. Now, my cat is chubby and answers to Hugo. I let him roam outside, but he only ever gets as far as the doorstep. Hugo cannot come with me; there is not enough space for him in the suitcase. When I place Hugo back on the floor, he lets out a frustrated whine. I understand. This is a silly exercise, this reenactment of history. I dump the contents of my suitcase on the hardwood, startling Hugo, who bolts out of the room. After the recent election, a colleague from the office confided in me that she was considering moving out of the country. 

“Not a bad idea,” I responded. 

“Come with me?” She joked. I pretended to consider. The American Dream has curdled like milk, but I can’t just leave it to stink and waste. 

I take the empty suitcase to the garage where I keep my power tools. I drill small holes in the leather. Then, I use a knife to widen them until each hole is about the size of two fingers. I drive to the hardware store and buy some seeds and fertilizer. Back at home, I take the suitcase into the front yard and fill it with soil and one seed. The Arizona soil is rocky, but I have faith in this little seed, an ironwood, known for its resilience and hard bark. Soon, the seed will become a sapling. Young roots will fight their way through the holes of the suitcase into the soil underneath. As the tree widens, it will stretch the suitcase. 

The leather will loosen and disfigure. The paint of K. Sato will fade and peel, and the dust of it will combine with the tree’s soil. When my grandpa’s family returned after the War, their little farm had been bought up by their white neighbors. For the final time, my grandpa sat in the lettuce. The leaves were the same green that he had left behind three years before. He pulled apart leaf after leaf, nibbling and when he was full, tucking the extras into his pockets. You were grown to be mine. 

One day, the suitcase will be just tatters, a foundation for a tree that will last generations. I will guard this yard until the tree or I fall. Its bark will be the brown of leather, and it will grow into a landmark, a message shivering in the air: we will stay.