I stood up, on wobbly legs. I hadn’t forgotten how to walk, exactly, but I wasn’t ready for the Olympics.

Funny. I knew what the Olympics was. I knew all sorts of things, come to think of it. That the mattress was horsehair, pillow too. I knew what color green was. I knew that this brown, wool, scratchy blanket was government issue. But who was I? Where did I come from? Who the fuck was I?

I sat back down on the edge of the bed; my legs couldn’t take standing up for long, and neither could the rest of me. Where did my memory begin? Think back. Think back.

I could remember another hospital. Yesterday, was it? Or longer ago? I could remember waking up in a hospital bed, next to a window, and looking out and seeing, goddamnit, seeing palm trees and screaming, screaming…

But I didn’t know why palm trees would make me scream. I did know what palm trees were. That was a start. I didn’t think seeing one today would make me scream. Shit, I needed some joe. That taste in my mouth.

Then I remembered looking at myself in the mirror! Yes, at the other hospital, looking at myself in the mirror, and seeing a man with a yellow face.

Fucking Jap! somebody said, and broke the mirror.

Still sitting on the edge of my rack, I lifted a hand to my forehead; felt a bandage there. The hand, I noticed, was yellow.

It was me. I broke the mirror. I was the one who yelled at the Jap. And I was the Jap.

“You’re no fuckin’ Jap,” somebody said.

Me, again.

You’re not a Jap. You think, you talk, in English. Japs don’t think and talk in English. They don’t know Joe DiMaggio from Joe Louis. And you do.