Volume I - Number 1

We moved a lot. Our houses were always made of a hardly-stationary wood foundation; finalized with a dirt floor. There was no glass, metal or any other polished, permanent structure. We moved when the land had born us the best of its fruit. We couldn't afford to try and soothe another crop from a ravished ground.

My mother had died years before. I was young. I don't remember her but in sudden snatches of a wide smile and sensible cotton dresses. She died of a fever, father says. He had me removed from the house so that I would not catch what would later kill her. I was told, though I don't recall, that I stayed with the Shimada's who lived down the road. They had two daughters who use to snicker and laugh at me until I cried. I cried a lot more when I returned home without a mother.

Father took a trip back to his home country; Japan. When he returned, he came back with a new wife. She was pretty and quiet. She did not speak English and could barely understand my gnarled version on English and Japanese. I liked to call it Janglish. For the most part, we interacted very little. I was going on ten years old and she was going on settling into a new life in a foreign land.

It was not even a year later that she bore my father a son. A feat that my own mother failed to do. I am testament. The baby was big, round and healthy. The perfect strong newborn son. I, myself, had been told that I was a sickly little creature out of the womb. My half-brother was named Ichiro, meaning First Son. With his birth, I became an insignificant blotch on my father's new and improved family.

Now three years later, as times grow harder on the farmers, I realize how expendable my life has become. If my father is the head, then I am a toenail. I continue to grow and grow even as I am cut back farther and farther. For three years, I have continued to grow.

Supper is a poor affair. Although we are farmers, we have little to eat. Our meals are rationed, systematically representing our family's hierarchy. It goes like this: husband, son, wife and first-marriages surplus daughter. The surplus is, of course, me.

What father does not know, is that I share my skewed little portion with another lowly existence; a stray dog. I call him Sempai, a honorific name that can be interpreted as Senior. The dog can very well be my senior.

It started a little over a year ago. I had taken to eating my supper on the front porch, lest my father decided to reconsider my meager share. It was on that porch that I first saw Sempai. He was a straggly old thing; an obvious forgotten entity. Despite his misfortunes, he was friendly; a trusting and loving soul by nature. I fed him that first evening and I saw gratitude for the first time in a long while. I called him Sempai in gratitude as well.