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By Root 1123 0

from home. My mother delivered food, a message and the strength of her unseen presence, a silent but desperately vital link to outside. After several days when little changed in the routine of cold, solitary days and freezing, fearsome nights, I thought less and less of life beyond the walls. I clocked the light in my cell and waited for the singular benediction of my mother’s daily delivery. When I learned through the rice paper messages that bribes to Watanabe had proved fruitless and other official pleas had gone unheard, my focus narrowed even more. My breathing slowed, my eyes shrank, each sense dulled in waiting, pinpointed to the exact moment when the light would lie like a gift in my lap, the guard’s boots would crack the icy dirt outside the cell door, the key would turn in the lock and he’d deliver the bundle from Mother.

Major Yoshida interrogated me weekly in much the same manner as before, once saying I could have my husband’s letters when I confessed to being a spy. The letters would prove the truth of his involvement with the American government, the major said, and would also show how he had implicated me. Assured by their existence, I no longer cared about the contents of the letters. In those moments, I was oddly grateful that I’d been arrested, else I would never have known the fact of his constancy. I used my mother’s rice paper scripture as the basis to tell more about Jesus toward the end of each interrogation, as was Major Yoshida’s wish. He always left curtly.

The major’s strange curiosity about the Bible made me wonder if my imprisonment was a call for me to declare my faith, or was a test I’d passed, as evidenced by my relatively healthy condition, though I was slowly growing weaker. I knew I should be glad for the chance to share the Gospel, but the contrast of the nights to the days confused me. Even if I could accept that it was the opportunity to speak the Word that had spared me from the other side of the prison compound, the suffering inflicted there refuted the existence of a merciful, loving God.

Because of the humiliation of having to ask the guard, I tried to hold my need for the toilet to once at dawn and at sundown. I had to overcome my embarrassment and ask for rags when I menstruated, but I only bled the first month. I felt my body shutting down as my mind closed to sensation with each passing day. I kept the wool shawl wrapped around my head and over my face when I slept. Although I shook lice from my blanket every morning, I didn’t itch as much as in the beginning. I was given another blanket, but there was no protection from the frigid draft that rose from the frozen earth beneath the planks. I began to look forward to the interrogations because the room was somewhat warm and the guard would bring a washrag. When I talked about Jesus, I focused on the single brown ceramic cup of water, sometimes tea, on the table before me. I was grateful for its curve and the shimmer of light on the water’s surface. It gave me something pure to focus on and made me think of life, fluidity and strength.

I counted eighteen days of snow, six days of freezing rain, thirty-four days of clouds, twenty-three days of sunlight …

The twelfth week, during interrogation, I talked about the book of Luke, John the Baptist and the temptation of Satan in the desert. I remembered stories out of order but told them when they came to me. I spoke of miracles: the centurion whose slave was healed, the fishes and loaves, Lazarus, walking on the Sea of Galilee, the leper cured. I related what I could of the politics in the Acts of the Apostles, and the preaching of Peter and Paul. In a long pause that followed, I prayed to be given the words to continue.

Major Yoshida stood and left, as always.

The next five nights there were no sounds of torture, an unusual— and welcome—relief.

The twelfth Sunday, I woke to the quiet world of snow. Flakes drifted through the high window to land on my cheeks and melt like morning dew. The guard unlocked my cell. He led me to the toilet as usual, but this time, afterward, he took