Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.

We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.

It would be autumn, and our fathers would be out threshing in the fields. We would walk through the mulberry groves, past the big loquat tree and the old lotus pond, where we used to...

And if anyone asks, you’re Chinese. The boy had nodded. “Chinese,” he whispered. “I’m Chinese.” “And I,” said the girl, “am the Queen of Spain.” “In your dreams,” said the boy. “In my dreams,” said...

Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father’s place. That’s not him, we said to our mother,...

Or was their guilt written plainly, and for all the world to see, across their face? Was it their face, in fact, for which they were guilty?

Overnight, our neighbors began to look at us differently. Maybe it was the little girl down the road who no longer waved to us from her farmhouse window. Or the longtime customers who suddenly disappeared...